George Santayana: World Citizen1

Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. The Richard Stockon College of New Jersey

INTRODUCTION

No one achieves world citizenship completely. One is always rooted in place and time, in the origin of one’s life and heritage, and these grounded circumstances of life shape one’s outlook, perspective, and philosophy. Yet some few people, even philosophers, attempt to disclose the illusions of one’s place and outlook and thereby gain a perspective that while based on one’s origins escapes the partial, parochial, and illusional aspects of individual existence. Santayana is such a philosopher. He achieved this independent perspective through his heritage, personal history and philosophical orientation. Joseph Epstein, in a recent review of Santayana’s letters, writes:

If Santayana may be said to have an overarching philosophical message, it is to strip oneself of all possible illusions –a task that can never be entirely completed– while understanding, as best one is able, the powerful attraction of illusions to others. The person who can do that, as Santayana consummately could, deserves to be called philosopher.2

One may ask what does “world citizenship” mean? Clearly the term is not to be taken literally, as if one person could have a passport from all nations in the world. Rather I am using the term to suggest there is a global perspective that is sympathetic to all national and individual perspectives, a sympathy that nevertheless does not discount or discredit the value of one’s own perspective and culture. How is this possible? For Santayana, this global perspective, this world citizenship, is possible if one recognizes the natural basis of all life, the multiplicity of values for all living beings, and the integrity of each individual life including one’s own.

1 Portions of this paper were previously published in “Santayana’s Autobiography and the Development of his

Philosophy,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 4, Fall 1986, pp. 18-27. Some portions were also included in addresses given at University of London, Spanish Institute, March 1990, and Spanish Diplomatic School, Madrid, March 1990, as well as various papers presented at Texas A&M University in the 1980s and 1990s.2 Epstein, Joseph: “The permanent transient,” The New Criterion (June 2009), p. 16.

Before we can explicate Santayana’s outlook, it is important to ascertain his heritage and experience.

I. LIFE

Santayana’s heritage rests in Spain’s diplomatic history. His father and mother were each tied to Spain’s diplomatic corps, and their lives were shaped by the accidental aspects of time and international relationships, large and small. Santayana indicates there are three ways to understanding his life and three approaches to understanding his thought.

Interestingly, Santayana’s account of his life does not parallel his geographical locations. If one focuses on Santayana’s principal residences, one would divide the geographical chronology of Santayana’s life into three parts: nine years in Spain (1863-1872), forty years in Boston (1872-1912), and forty years in Europe (1912-1952). But Santayana’s account of his own life, also divided into three parts for his autobiography (Persons and Places), more accurately describes the development of his person and of his thought: (1) background (1863-1886), (2) America and Europe (1886-1912), and (3) Europe (1912-1952). The background of his life basically spans his childhood in Spain through his undergraduate years at Harvard. Santayana’s trans-Atlantic penchant for traveling led him to describe his years as a graduate student and professor at Harvard as on both sides of the Atlantic, a description he suggested as a title for the second part of his autobiography. Likewise, the third part of his life “all on the other side” indicates the forty years he spent as a full-time writer in Europe after retiring from Harvard in 1912.

A. Background: Mother and Father1. Father: Agustín SantayanaThe lives of both his parents are based on the contingent patterns associated with the

lives of Spanish diplomats. His father, Agustín Santayana, was born in 1812. He studied law, practiced for a short time, and then entered the colonial service for posting to the Philippines. He was a remarkable man who, while studying law, served an apprenticeship to a professional painter of the school of Goya. To his credit, he translated four Senecan tragedies into Spanish, wrote an unpublished book about the island of Mindanao, had an extensive library, and made three trips around the world. In 1845 he became the governor of Batang, a small island in the Philippines. He took over the governorship from the recently deceased José Borrás y Bofarull, who was the father of Josefina Borrás. Josefina was later to become Agustín’s wife in 1861 and the mother of Jorge Agustín Nicolás Santayana y Borrás (George Santayana) on December 16, 1863. One might have expected Agustín and Josefina to begin their courtship and eventual marriage on the island of Batang, but there is considerably more adventure to this diplomatic happenstance of two people meeting. Although it is not fully clear why Josefina left the island shortly after Agustín arrived, there is some indication that she felt uncomfortable being the only Spanish woman on the island with Agustín present. She left for Manila and there married a Boston businessman before her eventual and somewhat mysterious marriage to Agustín.

In 1856 Agustín again met Josefina while traveling on board ship from Manila for Spain. Josefina was then married to George Sturgis, a Boston merchant, and their three surviving children were traveling with them. This particular trip took Agustín to Boston, then to Niagara, then to New York City, and by steamer to England. His last diplomatic post

was that of Financial Secretary to the Governor-General of the Philippines, General Pavía, Marqués de Novaliches. Due to the ill effects of the tropics on his health, he retired early. He was in his late forties, an age similar to that of George Santayana’s future son’s retirement age from Harvard (age forty-eight). In 1861 he returned to Spain and there, once again, met Josefina Borrás Sturgis, now widowed. They married that same year.

2. Mother: Josefina BorrásGeorge Santayana’s mother’s history is no less filled with contingent forces. Though

Spanish, she was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1826 or 1828. She spent her girlhood in Virginia (USA) and Barcelona (Spain), and a portion of her womanhood in the Philippines and Spain, and the last 43 years of her life in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father left Spain for Scotland because of his political views. When they moved to the U.S., ironically he became the American Consul for Barcelona, Spain. Later, when the fashion of the Spanish government turned more in his direction, he was appointed to a lucrative post in the Philippines. The voyage from Cádiz to Manila around the Cape of Good Hope lasted six months, through one of the worst storms the captain had ever experienced. On arriving in the Philippines, her father discovered there had been a change in the political climate back home and that the high-paying position in the Philippines was no longer available to him, but a smaller post, the Governor of Batang, was his.

When her father died, Josefina remained on the island, establishing a moderately profitable export business, until Agustín Santayana arrived as the new Governor. She left for Manila when Agustín Santayana arrived. In Manila she met George Sturgis, a Boston aristocrat and businessman. They married, conceived five children, two of whom died in early childhood, and then her first husband died. George Sturgis was young when he died, his business was going badly, and his widow was once again stranded in the Philippines and this time with several children. A brother of her husband contributed a sum of money3 to help her, and she moved to Boston.

Remarkably, in 1861 she made a trip to Madrid, met Agustín again --he was close to fifty years of age and she was probably thirty-five. They married and George Santayana was born in 1863. The family moved from Madrid to Ávila between 1864 and 1866. Josefina seemed determined to raise the Sturgis children in Boston, and, finally, in 1869 she left for Boston with her two daughters, the one surviving son from the first marriage having left earlier. From 1869 until 1872 Agustín and George lived together in Ávila, and then in 1872 they traveled to Boston where George was left with his mother. According to letters, Agustín made an effort to adjust to Boston and American life, but he preferred Spain and Ávila. The separation of mother and father was permanent. In 1888 Agustín wrote to Josefina:

When we were married I felt as if it were written that I should be united with you, yielding to the force of destiny . . . Strange marriage, this of ours! So you say, and so it is in fact. I love you very much, and you too have cared for me, yet we do not live together.4

3 $10,000. The same dollar amount Santayana would inherit when his mother died in 1912.

4 Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 9.

B. Portals of Ávila Santayana’s own life was in many ways shaped by his residence in Ávila, the town he

identifies as a principal residence of his childhood and also as the origin of his ties to Spain. The uniqueness of Santayana’s perspective lies, in part, in his allegiance and respect for his heritage as well as in his vision beyond that lineage. Throughout his life, Santayana respected his origins. He retained his Spanish citizenship to his death, never becoming a citizen of any other country even though he spent only the first nine years of his life residing in Spain. Just a few months before his death, he renewed his papers at the Spanish Embassy in Rome and, tragically, fell on the Spanish Steps seriously injuring himself. Santayana’s sense of rootedness and vision may perhaps be understood as an image of his home city, Ávila.

Ávila’s history is bound within its medieval walls. The Celtic bulls and boars (symbols of strength) from the Early Iron Age stand within the walls paying tribute to Ávila’s early heritage. These walls eloquently blend Ávila’s Roman and Christian heritage by incorporating Roman stones in the majestic medieval walls, particularly evident at Puerta del Alcázar. The strength of its heritage is formed in stone as the Ávila Cathedral not only serves as a place of worship but forms a part of the city battlements enhancing its defenses.

Inside the wall all is cloistered, protected; one’s heritage is secure and incorporated into every aspect of quotidian life. But from each small portal in the wall one gains a view of the world outside. The gates of Alcázar and San Vincente provide views of churches and commercial life, and beyond are the hills, farms, and shepherds’ fires at night. The southern gates open to the mountains (Sierra de Gredos) and the more westerly portals look to the granite outcroppings in the fields and hills, and beyond to where the wonderfully surrealistic Castilian Plain begins. It is through these portals that citizens of Ávila gain their view of the world, and it is through them that Santayana became a world citizen, never losing the strength of his origins but gaining a perspective beyond contemporary and parochial interests.

C. Harvard Years: On Both SidesFrom 1874-1882 Santayana was a student in the Boston Latin School, and from

1882-1889 he completed his B.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University. From 1889-1912 he was a faculty member at Harvard University, building with William James and Josiah Royce one of the great eras in the Department of Philosophy. Among his students were poets (Conrad Aiken, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens), journalists and writers (Walter Lippmann, Max Eastman, Van Wyck Brooks), professors (Samuel Eliot Morison, Harry Austryn Wolfson), a Supreme Court Justice (Felix Frankfurter), numerous diplomats (including his friend, Bronson Cutting), and a university president (James B. Conant).Santayana’s Harvard years were remarkably active as an undergraduate, graduate, and professor. As an undergraduate he was a member of over twenty clubs, traveled to Europe each summer following his freshman year, and clearly enjoyed the adventures and frivolity of an undergraduate young man as is attested to by his letters to family, particularly his father, and to friends. Two of his graduate years were spent abroad, primarily in Germany and England, but his delight at being in academia began to dim with increasing restriction on his intellectual license. Josiah Royce, his dissertation advisor, assigned Santayana the philosophy of Rudolf Hermann Lotze as his dissertation topic rather than Santayana’s preference of Schopenhauer. Royce noted that Schopenhauer might be an appropriate topic for a master of arts but not for a doctor of philosophy. This was a

misdirection that Santayana regretted even in maturity and led to what he called his “dull thesis for the Ph.D.”5

Santayana’s career at Harvard was productive, active, and remarkable in achievement. In 1894 he began what he refers to as his metanoia, an awakening from somnambulism. At about the same time he began planning for early retirement, finding the university life unsuitable for his desire to be a full-time writer. He found faculty meetings, committees, and governance structures largely empty and their discussions mostly partisan heat over false issues, and the general corporate and business-like adaptation of universities not conducive to intellectual curiosity, development, and growth. He provides a general description of the Harvard faculty as “an anonymous concourse of coral insects, each secreting one cell, and leaving that fossil legacy to enlarge the earth.”6 But, in spite of this awakening outlook, his successes as a professor are well documented, and, indeed, these successes made possible his early retirement. At the same time, the new expectations and restrictions accompanying his achievements convinced Santayana that the academic environment was not the proper place for a serious philosopher with the desire to be a full-time writer.

After several books of poetry, Santayana, in his mid-thirties, published his first philosophical works: The Sense of Beauty (1896) and Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900). The Sense of Beauty was a natural outgrowth of his Harvard course on aesthetics. Contrary to the prevalent doctrines of the time, the work rooted aesthetics in natural sensibilities, not in any refined qualities of mind, and placed beauty in the natural order of the world as a construct and response of human and animal activity. His boldness in writing was again affirmed in his second philosophical book where religion and poetry are viewed as imaginative by-products of the natural order, by-products that supervene on the natural order. Santayana’s mentors and colleagues at Harvard were known for their views of muscular imagination; it was thought and imagination, according to them, that made possible the hope of pragmatic changes in the world.

The offense was clear. Santayana’s emerging view was that thought is meaningless in its consequence but eloquent in its expression. Its value is not practical, but celebrational and festive. This was a theme not well received in a department and university attempting to shape and structure future generations by its documented impact on the nation’s governance and business. However, Santayana’s five-volume Life of Reason (1905) was well received partly because it was misunderstood. To some it seemed that Santayana had finally crossed the American line since it appeared to some that he now maintained the practical impact of mental constructs. And even though he expressed this construct in classical terms, it seemed to his American colleagues a welcome turn to practical affairs. Regardless of his reception, favorable and unfavorable, his notice as a serious philosopher was well established by the turn of the century.

Long before his retirement Santayana was a celebrated philosopher whose writings were widely read and who was a frequent guest lecturer at major universities. In his last years at Harvard there is evidence he was being courted by Columbia, Williams, Wisconsin, and Berkeley. However, his resolve for early retirement is confirmed in letters to his sister in

5 Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, 389. See also Paul G. Kuntz, ed.: George Santayana, Lotze’s System of

Philosophy (Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Press, 1971).6 Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 397.

1909. When he announced his retirement in May 1911, President Lowell asked him to wait and agreed to provide Santayana with as much free time as he wanted. Santayana initially assented to teach only during the fall term with a full year’s leave for 1912-13. However, in 1912 his resolve overtook his sense of obligation to Harvard and, at the age of forty-eight, he left Harvard and the U.S. to spend the remaining forty years of his life in Europe.

Santayana’s distinctive nature at Harvard is clear. In background he was Spanish and Catholic, and Harvard with its protestant, puritanical, New England roots was hardly his native soil. He was the only classical American philosopher who was a classicist, and his lineage and allegiance to Europe made him an outsider in a university he considered more and more parochial. His numerous travels in Europe and Asia set him apart. And his interest in art, poetry, and religion made his philosophy dubious in a department and university where practicality and action were becoming the principal marks of philosophical inquiry. But difference can both set one apart and also make one more interesting and more attractive. The latter was Santayana’s fate; it was one of the portals that led to his being a world citizen, and his last years at Harvard brought trips to major universities, receptions and parties in New York, and widespread recognitions and friendships.

The death of Santayana’s mother on February 5, 1912, released him from his family ties to America and also financially eased his planned retirement. His mother, Josefina Sturgis de Santayana, became ill in 1909, probably a victim of Alzheimer’s disease. In May 1911 Santayana wrote to his half-sister, Susana (residing in Spain), that their mother was comatose most of the time. During his last months at Harvard, Santayana visited his mother frequently and, finally, daily. She was slowly dying. Upon her death he inherited $10,000 from her estate and made arrangements for his half-sister, Josephine, to be cared for in a home in Spain where Susana now lived and where Santayana first thought he would reside as a full-time writer. This inheritance plus Santayana’s steady income from his publications made retirement easier. He asked his half-brother Robert to manage his finances (something Robert had done for their mother) with the understanding that Robert or his descendants would inherit the full capital upon Santayana’s death. Hence, in January 1912, at the age of forty-eight, Santayana was free to write, free to travel, free to choose his residence and country, and free from the constraints of university regimen and expectations. Santayana welcomed the release.

D. Europe: All on One Side

Between 1912 and 1914 Santayana made twenty-odd trips between England and Europe to find a suitable place to live and write. Settling on Paris, he found himself in London at the outbreak of World War I and remained in England, mostly at Oxford, until 1919 when, rejecting offers for a lifetime membership at either Corpus Christi or New College, he returned to his chosen life as a traveling writer. Paris was no longer his settled choice of residence, and he then was truly the vagabond scholar. Thereafter, his locales revolved around Paris, Madrid, the Riviera, Florence, Cortina d’Ampezzo, and finally by the late 1920’s his established patterns began to center more and more in Rome. Harvard attempted to bring Santayana back several times. As early as 1917 Harvard asked Santayana to return, and as late as 1929 he was offered the Norton Chair in Poetry, one of Harvard’s most respected chairs. In 1931 he turned down an invitation from Brown University, and Harvard later tempted him to accept for only a term the William James Lecturer in Philosophy, a

newly established honorary post.7 But Santayana never returned to Harvard or America. He appeared on the front of Time magazine February 3, 1936, in conjunction with his best-selling novel, The Last Puritan. Unsuccessful in his efforts to leave Rome before World War II, in 1941 he entered the Clinica della Piccola Compagna di Maria, a hospital clinic administered by a Catholic order of nuns better known as the Blue Nuns for the color of their habit. His autobiography, Persons and Places, was smuggled out of Rome during the war and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1944-45. He died at the clinic on September 26, 1952, at the age of eighty-eight, having published 27 books and numerous articles during his lifetime.

II. PHILOSOPHY

Throughout the editing of The Works of George Santayana I reflected on the development of Santayana’s philosophy and, in particular, on his own account of the development of his philosophical thought, on the portals through which he gained his perspective. For Santayana, philosophy is not a methodology, nor metaphysics, nor an ideology; it is an expression of the values and beliefs inherent and discoverable in living and acting. This perspective is derivative of Santayana’s place, time, and ancestry, as well as the result of his creativity. In Persons and Places there are some marginal comments excluded from previous publications in which Santayana describes three important stages in his thought. I shall use these comments as the basis for discussing the mature thought of Santayana. They are the three principal portals through which Santayana views the world: first, his materialism; second, his moral relativism; and third, his sense of integrity or self-definition.8

A. Materialism

In Chapter XI of Persons and Places, “The Church of the Immaculate Conception”, Santayana describes the development of his own thought. It is a journey from the idealisms of boyhood and from the intellectual materialism of a traveling student to the complete, materialistic outlook of the adult Santayana. Throughout this chapter he emphasizes the continuity of his life and beliefs, contrasting the seeming disparate tones of his developing thought to the overall unity of his outlook. He writes, “The more I change the more I am the same person.”9

In a marginal heading he records that his boyhood idealisms were never his genuine beliefs.10 These idealisms were not expressed in philosophical form, but they were “intensely felt by me to determine the only right or beautiful order possible for the universe. Existence could not be right or beautiful under other conditions.”11

7 McCormick: George Santayana, pp. 301-302.

8 These three steps are described in marginal comments (headings) in the holograph of Persons and Places. These

comments were omitted from publications prior to the 1986 critical edition of the autobiography.9 Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 159mh.

10 Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 166mh.

11 Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 166.

But those ideal universes in my head did not produce any firm convictions or actual duties. They had nothing to do with the wretched poverty-stricken real world in which I was condemned to live. That the real was rotten and only the imaginary at all interesting seemed to me axiomatic. That was too sweeping; yet allowing for the rash generalisations of youth, it is still what I think. My philosophy has never changed.12

Hence, he notes, in spite “of my religious and other day-dreams, I was at bottom a young realist; I knew I was dreaming, and so was awake. A sure proof of this was that I was never anxious about what those dreams would have involved if they had been true. I never had the least touch of superstition”.13 Santayana cites poems,14 written when he was fifteen or sixteen, as revealing this early realism, and he quotes from memory one stanza of “At the Church Door” where the realistic sentiment is the same.

By the time he was a traveling student seeing the world in Germany, England, and Spain his “intellectual materialism” was firmly established with little change in his religious affections.15

From the boy dreaming awake in the church of the Immaculate Conception, to the travelling student seeing the world in Germany, England, and Spain there had been no great change in sentiment. I was still “at the church door”. Yet in belief, in the clarification of my philosophy, I had taken an important step. I no longer wavered between alternate views of the world, to be put on or taken off like alternate plays at the theatre. I now saw that there was only one possible play, the actual history of nature and of mankind, although there might well be ghosts among the characters and soliloquies among the speeches. Religions, all religions, and idealistic philosophies, all idealistic philosophies, were the soliloquies and the ghosts. They might be eloquent and profound. Like Hamlet’s soliloquy they might be excellent reflective criticisms of the play as a whole. Nevertheless they were only parts of it, and their value as criticisms lay entirely in their fidelity to the facts, and to the sentiments which those facts aroused in the critic.16

The full statement and development of his materialism did not occur until later in his life. It was certainly in place by the time of Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923) but not fully so at the time of The Life of Reason (1905).

Within Santayana’s fully cultivated materialism, the origins of all events in the world are arbitrary, temporal, and contingent. Matter (by whatever name it is called) is the principle of existence. It is “often untoward, and an occasion of imperfection or conflict in things.”17 Hence, a “sour moralist” may consider it evil, but, according to Santayana, if one

12 Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 167.

13 Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 167.

14 Santayana, G.: “To the Moon” and “To the Host,” Persons and Places, p. 168.

15 Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 169.

16 Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 169.

17 Santayana, G.: Realm of Matter (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), p. v.

takes a wider view “matter would seem a good . . . because it is the principle of existence: it is all things in their potentiality and therefore the condition of all their excellence or possible perfection.”18 Matter is the non-discursive, natural foundation for all that is. In itself, it is neither good nor evil but may be perceived as such when viewed from the vested interest of animal life. Matter’s nondiscernible, neutral face is converted to a smile or frown by latent animal interests. But “moral values cannot preside over nature.”19 Principled values are the products of natural forces: “The germination, definition, and prevalence of any good must be grounded in nature herself, not in human eloquence.”20

From the point of view of origins, therefore, the realm of matter is the matrix and the source of everything: it is nature, the sphere of genesis, the universal mother. The truth cannot dictate to us the esteem in which we shall hold it: that is not a question of fact but of preference.21

Even prior to the idealisms of boyhood and the intellectual materialism of the traveling student, the force of contingent, material events is evident in the background, birth, and early childhood of George Santayana. The contingent factors of his background, birth, and childhood form a backdrop for Santayana’s mature materialism. Here are forces beyond one’s reach, shaping one’s destiny, and at the same time providing a chance for a reasonable and good life.

1. Non-reductive Naturalism

Although difficult to classify, Santayana’s materialism is best identified as a non-reductive naturalism. This aspect of his thought bridges many philosophical borders and provides sympathetic readings across cultures and centuries. It is the reason that much of his work was translated in both the West and the East. Santayana focuses on the historical content of the issues (Aristotle, Berkeley, Descartes, Euclid, Fichte, Heraclitus, Hume, Kant, Plato, Protagoras, Schopenhauer, Socrates, and Spinoza) with little or no discussion of positions that were contemporary in 1923 -though clearly some of these were targets of his wit. Even so, much of his work has close parallels to contemporary issues as found in the works of Strawson and Wittgenstein.

Santayana, Hume, Strawson, and Wittgenstein all focus on skepticism rebutting arguments, basically claiming there are inescapable natural beliefs that stand apart from rational discourse and argument. Wittgenstein’s approach is based on language users, but Santayana carries the discussion to quite a different level, revealing that Santayana not only marches to a different drummer but that he also marches in a different direction. Santayana indicates the kinds of inescapable beliefs and their relationship in far greater detail than either Hume or Wittgenstein. And he, like Hume, refers to nature as the basis for these commitments, but he does so with an emphasis on physicobiological processes rather than

18 Santayana, G.: Realm of Matter, p. v.

19 Santayana, G.: Realm of Matter, p. 134.

20 Santayana, G.: Realm of Matter, p. 131.

21 Santayana, G.: Realm of Matter, p. xi.

sociological communities of language-users. Santayana’s insight was that neurophysiological approaches to understanding human action and behavior are moving in the right direction. Although there are technical articles that report on neurophysiological approaches to human actions, belief, and even understanding of self, there are few articles and books written for the general public. If one is interested, two recent works by Dr. Todd E. Feinberg, psychiatrist and neurologist at The Albert Einstein College of Medicine, are available.22

Santayana’s is a festive, dramatic approach to doing philosophy. He adopts the posture of a foundationalist seeking the bedrock of certainty on which all beliefs must rest. In so doing, however, his purpose is to show there is no bedrock of certainty and likewise that there is no escape from skepticism through reason or experience. Skepticism-establishing and skepticism-rebutting arguments are equally idle and empty. The only open avenue, indeed already undertaken, is the natural belief, the animal faith in the external world, i.e., the belief already implicit in a smile when he announced “Here is one more system of philosophy.”

Santayana’s philosophical antics allow him to depict both the foundationalist and the thorough-going skeptic in one characterization. Like Descartes, he poses as a skeptic “to purify the mind of prejudice and render it all the more apt, when the time comes, to believe and to act wisely”.23 But unlike Descartes, he also poses as a foundationalist to show the emptiness of that approach. The search for the foundation of reason and experience finds its culmination, for Santayana, in the “solipsism of the present moment”24 where the conscious act is absolute and indubitable but where there is no knowledge because there is nothing to know.25 With such a position and such a conclusion, Santayana’s wit as well as his unusual perspicuity and rigor are revealed, particularly when considering that the work was published in 1923.

2. Epistemology: Solipsism of the Present Moment and Animal Faith

Santayana’s path to the solipsism of the present moment is similar to a position discussed by Strawson in the final chapter of his book.26 Santayana draws one’s attention to what is given in an instant of awareness, and he maintains that any knowledge or recognition found in such an instant must be characterized by a concept or abstract idea (or essence to use Santayana’s term). Concepts cannot be limited to particular instances, rather the particular object is seen as an instance of the concept and there may be other objects that are also instances of this concept or universal (essence). Hence, Santayana concludes that if one is attempting to find a bedrock of certainty, one may rest his claim only after he has, at least theoretically, recognized that knowledge is composed of instances of awareness that in themselves do not contain the prerequisites for knowledge, i.e., concepts, universals,

22 Feinberg, Todd E.: From Axons to Identity: Neurological Explorations of the Nature of Self. W. W. Norton & Company, Ltd., 2009 and Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self, Oxford University Press, 2002.23 Santayana, G.: Scepticism and Animal Faith, 1923 (Dover, 1955), p. 64.24 Santayana, G.: pp. 17,18.25 For a fuller explication of Santayana’s approach see Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr.: “Some Remarks on Santayana’s Scepticism” in Two Centuries of Philosophy in America, ed. Peter Caw, London, Basil Blackwell, 1980.26 Strawson, Peter F.: Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 81-83.

or essences. This position is both a thorough skepticism and a thorough foundationalism that leads nowhere (in the sense that one cannot analyze experience any further). That both skepticism and proofs against skepticism lead nowhere is precisely Santayana’s point.

Santayana’s approach is similar to Wittgenstein’s discussions of “seeing as” in Part II of the Investigations. There Wittgenstein is discussing the application of a descriptive general term or predicate to an observed object, e.g., seeing an object as green or as grass. He writes, “The flashing of an aspect on us [i.e. suddenly seeing something as such-and-such] seems half visual experience, half thought”,27 and he asks “is it a case of both seeing and thinking? or an amalgam of the two, as I should almost like to say?”28 Elsewhere he speaks of “an echo of a thought in sight”29 and “What I perceive in the dawning of an aspect [i.e. in coming to see something as something] . . . is an internal relation between it [the object] and other objects”.30 Strawson refers to these sections of Wittgenstein and adds his own suggested metaphors: the visual experience is “infused with” or “irradiated by” or “soaked with” the concept.31 These quotes are taken from Strawson, “Imagination and Perception,” in Freedom and Resentment (London: Methuen, 1974), p. 57.

Strawson’s use of the above discussion is considerably different from that of Santayana. Strawson is exploring the possibility that universals are implicit in our common and most evident experience -“Platonism demystified,” he says.32 But Santayana is attempting to show that in common experience universals or essences are required for knowledge or belief and, yet, such universals cannot be contained in any single moment of awareness; they are intrinsically general. So one might argue that “seeing-as” involves “thinking-of-as” and that “thinking-of-as” already assumes knowledge not implicit in any moment of awareness. What is the basis for this knowledge? For Santayana, animal faith is the arational basis for any knowledge or any belief. It is the netherworld of biological order operating through our physical, non-conscious being. But such belief or knowledge is “something radically incapable of proof”.33 It is a vital constitutional necessity, to believe in discourse, in experience... All these objects may conceivably be illusory. Belief in them however, is not grounded on a prior probability, but all judgments of probability are grounded on them. They express a rational instinct or instinctive reason, the waxing faith of an animal living in a world which he can observe and sometimes remodel.34

Santayana (like Hume, Wittgenstein, and Strawson) holds that there are certain inevitable beliefs; they are inescapable given nature and the individual’s physical history. And like Wittgenstein, he maintains that these beliefs are various and variable. They are determined by the interplay between environment and psyche, i.e., between natural conditions and the inherited, physical “organisation of the animal” (the psyche). That the inescapable belief in external objects and the general reliability of inductive reasoning, for example, is a result of physical history and the natural conditions of the world and the self.

27 Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Philosophical Investigations, 1953 (New York, Macmillan Company, 1968), p. 197.28 Wittgenstein, p. 197.29 Wittgenstein, p. 212.30 Wittgenstein, p. 212.31 Strawson, p. 82.32 Strawson, p. 83.33 Santayana, G.: p. 35.34 Santayana, G.: p. 308-309.

Since these beliefs are relative to physical histories, if history and biological order had been different, natural beliefs also would be different.

The environment determines the occasions on which intuitions arise, the psyche -the inherited organisation of the animal- determines their form, and ancient conditions of life on earth no doubt determined which psyches should arise and prosper; and probably many forms of intuition, unthinkable to man, express the facts and the rhythms of nature to other animal minds.35

On this point, Santayana’s relativizing is more thorough than Strawson’s. Strawson maintains there is no question of an alternative view in relation to commitments that are “pre-rational, natural, and quite inescapable, and sets, as it were, the natural limits within which, and only within which, the serious operations of reason, whether by way of questioning or of justifying beliefs, can take place”.36 But Santayana maintains that even though contingent biological history and circumstance generate an inability to act on alternative commitments, this limitation should not prevent recognition that the surd of physical change could give rise to animals with quite different basic creeds.

B. Moral Relativism: The Forms of the Good are Diverse

After materialism, two other significant portals remained to be opened before Santayana’s philosophy was “wholly clarified and complete.” Santayana describes these gates as the two insights “that the forms of the good are divergent, and that each is definite and final.” The first step enabled Santayana to overcome “moral and ideal provinciality, and to see that every form of life had its own perfection, which it was stupid and cruel to condemn for differing from some other form, by chance one’s own.”37

Santayana’s moral relativism is consistent with his non-reductive naturalism. Indeed it is one of the foundational aspects of Santayana being a world citizen. From Santayana’s perspective, every individual has personal integrity and definitive personal and cultural outlooks rooted in the natural structures of one’s physiology and of one’s physical culture. The neutral perspective of a naturalistic observer can observe the behavior of others and value it for what it is, not because it coincides with his own interests but because the naturalistic observer understands the basis for action and thought.38 No doubt this insight was influenced by the diplomatic careers and lifestyles of his parents, their distant and respectful marriage, the experiences of the young Santayana in Miss Welchman’s Kindergarten on Chestnut Street and in the Boston Latin School, the wanderings and deliberations of the traveling student, the personal and professional experiences of the young Harvard professor, and the success and travels of the mature, distinguished writer. It is clear that being Spanish, having a Catholic background, and perhaps being an “unconscious homosexual” set him apart in Protestant America. He nevertheless participated in and valued the American experience though he could never fully identify

35 Santayana, G.: p. 88. 36 Strawson, p. 51.37

Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 170.38

This perspective is comprehensively discussed in Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), but, unfortunately, there is not a single reference to Santayana.

with it. Later, he chose Hermes the Interpreter as his god,39 paralleling his mature insight as interpreter of views and values. Hermes is at home in the world of discourse -unraveling, decoding, and interpreting one perspective for another. Likewise, Santayana approaches philosophy as reflective discourse, understanding and interpreting many perspectives in his own dialect.

Materialism provides the naturalistic basis for morality while the chaotic realm of essence provides unlimited forms for imagination and interpretation. Santayana’s naturalism projects a neutral, objective view towards the moralities, the vested interests, of animals. His realm of essence, likewise, is neutral to the realization or status of any possible form.

“Any special system has alternatives, and must tremble for its frontiers; whereas the realm of essence, in its perfect catholicity, is placid and safe and the same whatever may happen in earth or heaven.”40

Santayana’s insight that the forms of the good are divergent reveals a chaotic realm of possible goods not logically or morally ordered by animal interests or talents. However, an absolutely neutral perspective is not possible. Perspectives derive from some living being in a particular place and time with latent interests originating from their physiology and physical environment. Santayana’s naturalism is balanced by a polarity between the neutral, objective understanding of behavior and activity on the one hand and the committed, vested interest of the living being on the other hand. One may recognize that every form of the good has its own perfection, and one may respect that perfection, but “the right of alien natures to pursue their proper aims can never abolish our right to pursue ours.”41 Hence, Santayana’s second insight: each form of the good is definite and final.

C. Integrity: Each Form of the Good is Definite and Final

Integral to Santayana’s world citizenship is his respect for the multiplicity of human (and animal) interests suited not only for survival but for living well in one’s lifetime. As Santayana notes: “Survival is something impossible: but it is possible to have lived and died well.”42 Living and dying well are not abstract values that are the same for all, but rather they are rooted in one’s heritable traits, physiological development, and are sometimes reflected in speech and written documents. However presented, they are reflections of individual physiology rooted in diverse human and animal cultures.

Santayana’s philosophy rests on his materialism and on his humane and sympathetic appreciation for the excellence of each life. But from the perspective of autobiography, Santayana’s clear notion of self-knowledge, in the sense of the Greeks, is his most distinguishing mark. For Santayana, “integrity or self-definition is and remains first and

39 Santayana, G.: “Hermes the Interpreter,” Soliloquies in England (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,

1967), p. 259.40

Santayana, G.: Realms of Being (one volume edition) (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942), p. 8241

Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 170.42 Santayana, G.: Dominations and Powers, pp. 209-210.

fundamental in morals…”43 Like his naturalism and his realm of essence, this insight establishes his thought in a wide tradition, and it marks his career and his personal life with distinction. Decided elements of his self-definition are found in his retirement from Harvard and his life as a roving scholar. After Harvard, his daily activities and long-term achievements were matters of his own direction. Free to choose his own environment and habitual practices, his life was festive and fruitful. Santayana was true to his own form of life to the end. Two days before his death Cory asked him if he was suffering: “Yes, my friend. But my anguish is entirely physical; there are no moral difficulties whatsoever.”44

EPILOGUE

Few philosophers, or writers of any sort for that matter, have captured strains of thought that carry weight through the centuries. A central part of the gravitas of Santayana’s outlook is his account of the relative values of all life, relative to one’s heritable traits, one’s physical development, and the physical structures of one’s culture and the natural world. Respecting all forms of life and all forms of good does not remove the central integrity of one’s own life and the natural drive to flourish and to live well in accord with one’s natural psyche and physical culture.

Santayana died of cancer on September 26, 1952 and is buried in the Campo Verano cemetery in Rome. The Spanish Consulate at Rome provided the Panteón de la Obra Pia Española as a suitable burial ground for the lifelong Spanish subject. Wallace Stevens memorialized Santayana in "To an Old Philosopher in Rome":

Total grandeur of a total edifice,Chosen by an inquisitor of structuresFor himself. He stops upon this threshold,As if the design of all his words takes formAnd frame from thinking and is realized.45

Somewhat like fictionalized accounts of Santayana’s life, these lines (especially the last two) miss the intent of Santayana’s materialism. But there is drama in Stevens’ account that focuses on the quality and strength of Santayana’s chosen life, and certainly “Chosen by an inquisitor of structures / For himself” does accurately and poetically depict the decidedly clear form of Santayana’s life.

Perhaps one can characterize the whole of Santayana’s life in the manner he depicted his early boyhood.

. . . a passing music of ideas, a dramatic vision, a theme for dialectical insight and laughter; and to decipher that theme, that vision, and that music was my only possible life.46

43 Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 170.

44 Cory, D.: The Later Years, p. 325.

45 American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume One (The Library of America, 2000), p. 357.46

Santayana, G.: Persons and Places, p. 159