George SantayanaReviews

12/11/21

It has been said this was the author's only novel. It may have been a novel, but read more like a book on philosophy and morality. I started this book in 2019 and just finished the last third. I believe that this work by Santayana went way over my head. On the surface, it is the story of Oliver, a very confused young lad and young man as well. Every area of his life is filled with doubts. He wants to escape these doubts and be free, but I don't think he ever will. What the higher meaning is, I have no idea. From the title, I originally thought this would be a Puritan life in New England; I was wrong! 794 pages½

I read this some time ago in trying to improve my writing skills. It lived up to what I expected, and then some.

Summary: A philosophical discussion of the nature of beauty, grounding it in the pleasure of the perceiver with an object and its associations.

Classically, philosophy has spoken of three transcendentals: Truth (logic), Goodness (ethics), and Beauty (aesthetics). To satisfy the requirements of tenure at Harvard, George Santayana wrote this book, based on lectures, to offer his own outline of an aesthetic theory in what was his first book. Perhaps the most striking move of Santayana was to move beauty from the realm of the transcendental to that of human perception of value in the object perceived. He contrasts physical pleasure, focused on the organ of sensation, with aesthetic sensation, focused on the object from which pleasure arises. He defines beauty as "pleasure objectified."

He then explores this sense of beauty under three headings: the materials of beauty, form, and expression. The materials of beauty focus on the various human senses, chiefly sight, hearing, memory and imagination, through which perception and appreciation of objects occur. Form has to do with both external realities that give rise to sensation and their mental representation. He explores aspects of these that produce pleasure including symmetry, uniformity, and multiplicity, and also the idea of "indeterminate" forms such as landscapes that derive their beauty from the perceptive interpretation of the observe. Finally, Santayana explores the nature of expression which means the qualities one associates with an object. This suggests that one's sense of beauty develops from immediate perception to a deeper perception where past experience, imagination, and other associations shape the kind of aesthetic pleasure one has in the object.

Santayana elaborates each of these elements in a discussion that is highly abstract, that I won't attempt to outline or summarize here. What troubles me in his treatment, which seems to me a sophisticated way of saying, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," is the elimination of the transcendent aspects of beauty. For those who sense beyond perceived beauty an author of beauty, Santayana would say this is simply one's sense experience, and one's sense of the sublime is simply ecstatic pleasure. There is nothing "beyond" to which beauty points. The sehnsucht or longing that C.S. Lewis writes of in Surprised by Joy when listening to Wagner, or glimpsing a scene in nature, to Santayana signifies nothing more than the interplay between object and sense eventuating in aesthetic pleasure. When Bono says, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for," Santayana might reply, "and you never will. All you may find is what you are looking at."

I find myself wondering how much Santayana's aesthetic has shaped both the making of and the appreciation of art. How might artists pursue their work differently when they do not compose and paint, write and dance, with the object of "Soli Deo Gloria" and instead see their work as evoking aesthetic pleasure in those who partake of them. How are we changed as we are discouraged, when experiencing what we might call the "transcendent" in a work to think of it as nothing more than a confluence of the material of our senses, the form of a work, and its expressive associations. What happens when wonder is turned inward, rather than upward?

These were some of the questions I was left with on reading Santayana.

[From A Writer’s Notebook, Doubleday & Company, 1949, “1941”, p. 341:]

I have been reading Santayana again. It is a very pleasant exercise, but after you have finished a chapter and stop to ask yourself whether you are the better or the wiser for having read it you hardly know what to answer. He is commonly praised for his fine phrases, but a phrase is fine when it elucidates a meaning; his too often obscure it. He has great gifts, gifts of imagery, of metaphor, of apt simile and of brilliant illustration; but I do not know that philosophy needs the decoration of a luxuriance so lush. It distracts the reader’s attention from the argument and he may well be left with an uneasy feeling that if that were more cogent it would have been stated in a manner less elaborate.

I think Santayana has acquired his reputation in America owing to the pathetically diffident persuasion of Americans that what is foreign must have a value greater than what is native. So they will offer you with pride French Camembert regardless of the fact that their own home-made product is just as good, and generally much better, than the imported. To my mind Santayana is a man who took the wrong turning. With his irony, his sharp tongue, common-sense and worldly wisdom, his sensitive understanding, I have a notion that he could have written semi-philosophical romances after the manner of Anatole France which it would have been an enduring delight to read. He had a wider culture than the Frenchman, a wit as keen, a less circumscribed horizon and an intelligence of a more delicate calibre. It was a loss to American literature when Santayana decided to become a philosopher rather than a novelist. As it is he is most profitably read in the little essays which Pearsall Smith extracted from his works.

Spanish born George Santayana (1863-1952), philosopher, literary critic, poet and novelist was one of the leading American thinkers of his time. Reason in Art along with The Sense of Beauty are his works in the field of aesthetics. His writing style is elegant and erudite and requires careful reading, but his ideas and wisdom are well worth the effort. Personally, I enjoyed Reason in Art, having read the book and listened to the audio book multiple times.

When reading Santayana it is well to keep in mind he was a naturalist, that is, someone who sees matter or nature as the principal of existence and life’s ultimate reality. Indeed, the ideas of Darwinism and the science of his day had a profound influence on his thinking. We should also keep in mind Santayana emphasized the psychological dimension of our experience and greatly valued creative imagination in all phases of life.

Reason in Art consists of eleven chapters: 1) The Basis of Art 2) Rationality of Industrial Art 3) Emergence of Fine Arts 4) Music 5) Speech and Significance 6) Poetry and Prose 7) Plastic Construction 8) Plastic Representation 9) Justification of Art 10) The Criterion of Taste, and 11) Art and Happiness. In order to give the reader a sampling of Santayana’s language and reflections on art, below are five quotes from Chapter 10, The Criterion of Taste, along with my comments.

“Dogmatism in matters of taste has the same status as dogmatism in other spheres. It is initially justified by sincerity, being a systematic expression of a man’s preferences; but it becomes absurd when its basis in a particular disposition is ignored and it pretends to have an absolute metaphysical scope.” ---- I recall sitting at the family dinner table, age twelve, and telling my father I didn’t like the taste of liver. My father replied that I didn’t know what was good. How absurd! – thinking one’s personal preference in food is a universal standard. The same thing unfortunately happens all the time in the world of art and music – a number of people continually take their own preferences and individual tastes in art or music to be the gold standard, which can come across as arrogant.

“The very instinct that is satisfied by beauty prefers one beauty to another; and we have only to question and purge our aesthetic feelings in order to obtain the criterion of taste.” ---- The key words here are ‘instinct’ and ‘feelings’. If you want to know what you think is beautiful, ask yourself two questions (these two questions are key to Santayana): 1) What does it look like to you? and 2) How does it move you? I recall viewing the geometrical art of Victor Vasarely as a teenager and wanting to keep looking and looking; I found Vasarely’s lines and circles and shapes so incredibly captivating. I have always been drawn to art that has this type of clarity and simplicity. When I view Vasarely’s art, it looks great and I feel uplifted, thus, for me, his art serves as a kind of standard and criterion of taste.

“Taste is formed in those moments when aesthetic emotion is massive and distinct; preferences then grown conscious, judgements then put into words, will reverberate through calmer hours; they will constitute prejudices, habits of apperception, secret standards for all other beauties.” ---- I grew up by the ocean. When it comes to nature I’ve never had a more satisfying and enjoyable time then when, as a boy, I walked on the sand along the ocean or went for a swim or took my surfboard out for a round of surfing. Santayana would say my boyhood experience will color all of what I experience as an adult. Matter of fact, this is quite true: when I spent a year of college in the mountains of eastern Kentucky I felt claustrophobic.

“Good taste is that taste which is a good possession, a friend to the whole man. It will not suffer him to dote on things, however seductive, which rob him of some nobler companionship.” ---- It is frequently said we should associate with people who lift us up and bring out the best in us. Santayana is advising us to do the same with art.

“The truth is that mere sensation or mere emotion is an indignity to a mature human being.” ---- I recall Irish poet John O’Donohue talking about glamor versus true beauty, how once we receive the initial hit of visual pleasure from something that is glamorous, that is all there is to it. A work of art that is truly beautiful, on the other hand, has a depth, so no matter how many times we return to it, our experience will be enriched. I’ve found this to be true – there are some novels I have reread many times and each rereading proves a richer experience. Same thing holds with my experience of film, photographs, painting and poetry.

Spanish born George Santayana (1863-1952), philosopher, literary critic, poet and novelist was one of the leading American thinkers of his time. Reason in Art along with The Sense of Beauty are his works in the field of aesthetics. His writing style is elegant and erudite and requires careful reading, but his ideas and wisdom are well worth the effort. Personally, I enjoyed Reason in Art, having read the book and listened to the audio book multiple times.

When reading Santayana it is well to keep in mind he was a naturalist, that is, someone who sees matter or nature as the principal of existence and life’s ultimate reality. Indeed, the ideas of Darwinism and the science of his day had a profound influence on his thinking. We should also keep in mind Santayana emphasized the psychological dimension of our experience and greatly valued creative imagination in all phases of life.

Reason in Art consists of eleven chapters: 1) The Basis of Art 2) Rationality of Industrial Art 3) Emergence of Fine Arts 4) Music 5) Speech and Significance 6) Poetry and Prose 7) Plastic Construction 8) Plastic Representation 9) Justification of Art 10) The Criterion of Taste, and 11) Art and Happiness. In order to give the reader a sampling of Santayana’s language and reflections on art, below are five quotes from Chapter 10, The Criterion of Taste, along with my comments.

“Dogmatism in matters of taste has the same status as dogmatism in other spheres. It is initially justified by sincerity, being a systematic expression of a man’s preferences; but it becomes absurd when its basis in a particular disposition is ignored and it pretends to have an absolute metaphysical scope.” ---- I recall sitting at the family dinner table, age twelve, and telling my father I didn’t like the taste of liver. My father replied that I didn’t know what was good. How absurd! – thinking one’s personal preference in food is a universal standard. The same thing unfortunately happens all the time in the world of art and music – a number of people continually take their own preferences and individual tastes in art or music to be the gold standard, which can come across as arrogant.

“The very instinct that is satisfied by beauty prefers one beauty to another; and we have only to question and purge our aesthetic feelings in order to obtain the criterion of taste.” ---- The key words here are ‘instinct’ and ‘feelings’. If you want to know what you think is beautiful, ask yourself two questions (these two questions are key to Santayana): 1) What does it look like to you? and 2) How does it move you? I recall viewing the geometrical art of Victor Vasarely as a teenager and wanting to keep looking and looking; I found Vasarely’s lines and circles and shapes so incredibly captivating. I have always been drawn to art that has this type of clarity and simplicity. When I view Vasarely’s art, it looks great and I feel uplifted, thus, for me, his art serves as a kind of standard and criterion of taste.

“Taste is formed in those moments when aesthetic emotion is massive and distinct; preferences then grown conscious, judgements then put into words, will reverberate through calmer hours; they will constitute prejudices, habits of apperception, secret standards for all other beauties.” ---- I grew up by the ocean. When it comes to nature I’ve never had a more satisfying and enjoyable time then when, as a boy, I walked on the sand along the ocean or went for a swim or took my surfboard out for a round of surfing. Santayana would say my boyhood experience will color all of what I experience as an adult. Matter of fact, this is quite true: when I spent a year of college in the mountains of eastern Kentucky I felt claustrophobic.

“Good taste is that taste which is a good possession, a friend to the whole man. It will not suffer him to dote on things, however seductive, which rob him of some nobler companionship.” ---- It is frequently said we should associate with people who lift us up and bring out the best in us. Santayana is advising us to do the same with art.

“The truth is that mere sensation or mere emotion is an indignity to a mature human being.” ---- I recall Irish poet John O’Donohue talking about glamor versus true beauty, how once we receive the initial hit of visual pleasure from something that is glamorous, that is all there is to it. A work of art that is truly beautiful, on the other hand, has a depth, so no matter how many times we return to it, our experience will be enriched. I’ve found this to be true – there are some novels I have reread many times and each rereading proves a richer experience. Same thing holds with my experience of film, photographs, painting and poetry.

will review later

will review later

will review later

Let’s start with the basics: George Santayana was born in Madrid in 1863, but was reared in the United States. He was educated at Harvard and eventually taught there. Among his students were the writers T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Gertrude Stein. The great American poet Wallace Stevens counted Santayana among his friends. Much of Santayana’s philosophy pervades modern culture in the form of aphorisms and quick bon-mots. The Philosophy of George Santayana is a dense book filled to the brim with the life’s work of one of the twentieth century’s most prodigious thinkers.

First, a few excerpts:
• Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
• When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.
• Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge.

It would neither befit the breadth and scope of Santayana’s work to try and sum it all up here. His writing flows well and goes into the philosophies of religion, war, art, beauty, fashion, society, and love. He did not adhere to any particular religion, but generally considered it to be a benign entity (it was the deeds of the believers that caused him consternation). His philosophical stances take pieces from but still question the pragmatic, the metaphysical, and the epiphenomenal. This, quite frankly, is what I believe should be the proper stance of philosophy—to synthesize, to grow, and to ask. Santayana does all these things particularly well. I don’t recommend reading this one straight through like I did. It’s best for small consumption over a long period of time. A heady but enlightening book.½

The Last Puritan is both a novel of ideas and one of personalities--real people living real lives. The places, the backgrounds are accurately depicted while the events of the novel are sketched as dramatic incidents. The scenes evoke an America of a certain age and the characters speak with a language that not only conveys ideas but emotions as well. Some of the sections of the novel that I enjoyed the most were the conversations which were, fortunately, not too terribly impeded by the trappings of the story's structure with its quotidian details of everyday life.
The protagonist, Oliver, is the masterful character whose individual personality is drawn with all of its perplexity, sensitiveness, and youthful seriousness. The other characters are no less real with both women and men exhibiting believable emotions including love that is both platonic and physical. The novel presents a good story in addition to the ideas that are presented. One may enjoy it for its story but the primary appeal for this reader is the novel of ideas in the robust realization that Santayana brought to his creation of a lifetime.

A typical Harvard product: a novel in form but not in substance, sadly over-intellectualized, self-conscious, contains startling insights delicately expressed, but fundamentally negative.

This is a book of reprints of separate pamphlets, each originating in special lectures at Oxford. Three of these works were first presented at the prestigious Herbert Spencer Lectures: George Santayana on "The Unknowable," Bertrand Russell on "Scientific Method in Philosophy," and William Bateson on "Biological Fact and the Structure of Society." Each of these are very important lectures, well worth reading today. The Santayana essay is one of the best written reviews of one philosopher by another (Santayana takes on the doctrine that most Spencer scholars ignore, his doctrine of the Unknowable. Santayana ably sees the error in it, and, more importantly, sees the point, too.)

I have not read all the other lectures . . . which means I'll be coming back to this volume.

This is the book that contains Santayana's most famous aphorism, about learning from history.

The book is much more than this one aphorism, or the string of elegant phrases astute readers have come to expect from Santayana. The book is a rehabilitation of the Common Sense school of philosophy, in materialist perspective, but without a hint of the reductionist errors of other "plain" philosophers. Santayana was no simpleton, and he was no fool. This is an amazing defense of common sense AND of philosophy (usually thought to be the critique of common sense).

The highlight of this fascinating collection of essays is the fourth section of his extended review of Bertrand Russell's philosophy, "Hypostatic Ethics." This is not only beautifully written and well reasoned, it was completely on-target. So much so that Bertrand Russell famously changed his mind and recanted the doctrine he espoused!

This doesn't happen often in philosophy, so this book and this essay in particular are must-reads.

Great essays by the best philosophical writer the English language has ever been blessed with. Contains the essay on Herbert Spencer, "The Unknowable," which may be one of the most amazing essays written about one philosopher by another. For this essays alone, this book is worth shelling out quite a bit of money.

Edition: // Descr: 191 p. 18 cm. // Series: Call No. { (?) } Contains Introduction and Conclusion. // //

It's now available as an ebook on the MIT press portal http://mitpress-ebooks.mit.edu/product/letters-george-santayana-book-six-1937194...

It's now available as an ebook on the MIT press portal http://mitpress-ebooks.mit.edu/product/letters-george-santayana-book-seven-19411...

It's now available as an ebook on the MIT press portal http://mitpress-ebooks.mit.edu/product/letters-george-santayana-book-five-193319...

It's now available as an ebook on the MIT press portal http://mitpress-ebooks.mit.edu/product/letters-george-santayana-book-eight-19481...