overheard in seville.30.2012

7/30/2019 Overheard in Seville.30.2012

1/42

Bulletin of the

Santayana

SocietyNo. 30

Fall 2012

Overheard in Seville


2/42


3/42

Bulletin of the

George Santayana

Society

No. 30 FALL 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Announcement of 2012 Annual Meeting,page 2Note from the President, page 3 Recent Books about Santaana,page 39 Overheard in Sevillepublication information,page 40 Some Abbreviations for Santaanas Works,page 40

Diana Hene 4 Santaana on Value: Expressivism,Self-knowledge and Happiness

Michael Brodrick 14 The Importance of God as an Idea

Richard Colton Lon 19 The Spirits Alchemicana

Kristine W. Frost 32 Bibliographical Checklist:Twent-eighth Update

Overheard in Seville, which appears annuall, is formatted and composed fortpesetting b the Santaana Edition and is published b Indiana Universit PurdueUniversit Indianapolis.

Copright 2012


4/42

The George Santayana Society2012

ANNUAL MEETING

The Societs annual meeting will be held in conjunction with theDecember meetings of the American Philosophical Association(Eastern Division) at the Marriott Atlanta Marquis in Atlanta, Georgia.

Topic

Philosophical Expression and Literary Form

Speakers

Vincent Colapietro

Pennslvania State Universit

Literar Forms, Heuristic Functions, and Philosophical Fixations:Santaanas Emancipator Example

John J. Stuhr

Emor UniversitPhilosoph, Literature, and Dogma:

Santaana and the View from Somewhere

Jessica WahmanDickinson College

Literar Pscholog and Philosophical Method

Chair

Glenn Tiller

Texas A&M Universit at Corpus Christi

9:00 a.m. 12 noon, Saturda, December 29th

ANNOUNCEMENT


5/42

George Santayana Society

News and Activities

December 2012 will mark two ears since the GeorgeSantayana Society ratied its constitution and elected aPresident, Vice-President and Secretar-Treasurer. As statedintheconstitution,eachoftheseofcesshallbeheldfortwoyears,renewable. The GSS will therefore hold a vote at its annual meetingto elect new ofcers or renew these positions. Elections will be

determined b a majorit of members present and voting. All whoare able to attend the annual meeting are encouraged to participate.News of the election results will be announced via email and on theSociets website at the start of the new ear.

Apart from the annual meeting of the GSS held this Decemberin conjunction with the eastern division meeting of the AmericanPhilosophical Association, the GSS is pleased to announce its

participation in several other notable events. On October 3031the members of the GSS will participate in the IV International

Congress on George Santaana in Rome at Universit di Roma TorVergata. Information on this event can be found at this website:http://irca.uniroma2.it/rst-page/santayana/.

Next ear marks the 150th anniversar of Santaanas birth. Inhonor of this event, a special panel discussion on recent Santaanascholarship will take place at the Societ for the Advancement ofAmerican Philosophs 2013 annual meeting this coming March 79in Gallowa, New Jerse. In addition to the panel discussion, HermanSaatkamp will talk about the establishment of the Santaana Edition,

the Santaana Societ, and Overheard in Seville: The Bulletin of theSantayana Society, which he founded and edited with Angus Kerr-Lawson. Details of this meeting will be posted on the GSS website inthe new ear. Last, but certainl not least, the 23rd World Congressof Philosoph is scheduled for next August 410 in Athens, Greece.Althoughallthedetailsarenotyetnalized,plansareunderwayforthe GSS to have a Societ Meeting and present a number of papers.More information on the World Congress of Philosoph can found athttp://www.wcp2013.gr/.

Whether or not ou are alread a member of the George SantaanaSociet, and whether ou are a professor, a student, or simpl curiousabout philosoph, we hope to see ou at one or more of the aboveevents. All are welcome to join us in discovering the writings anddiscussing the philosoph of George Santaana.

GLENN TILLER


6/42

Santayana on Value: Expressivism,Self-knowledge and Happiness1

It is widel agreed that Santaanas position in metaethics falls into the non-cognitivist camp.2 Indeed, the textual support for this claim is nigh indisputable:

The cr,How beautiful! orHow Good! ma be sincere, and it ma be applauded, butit is never true. (RB 479)

In . . . moraljudgment . . . it is hard to see how there could be an truth. The onl truthconcerned would be that such a judgment was passed, that it was more or less generaland lasting, and more or less passionate. But there would seem to be no conceivableobject or realit in reference to which an tpe of moralit could be called true. (RB

474).It has been further suggested that Santaana is best read as an expressivist.3

Again, the textual evidence is strong:

The word true in such a [moral] case is unmeaning, except perhaps as a vague term ofpraise, a reiteration of some automatic impulse, as if we cried Amen. (RB 474)

Moral terms are caresses or insults and describe nothing. (DL 3839)

I think that the obvious interpretation here is the right one. But once we acceptthat interpretation, we must ask Santaana for his response to the problem that faces

all expressivist views: how to account for our practice of using moral languageas if it is trul propositional, as if it has just the sort of meaning or reference theexpressivist would den it.

I understand this problem as posing two challenges:

(1) An explanator challenge: to explain wh our moral language takes the form itdoes; and

(2) A normative challenge: to offer a verdict regarding whether our use of suchlanguage is legitimate.

Santaanas writings offer a detailed response to the explanator challengeand an explicit, albeit brief, response to the normative challenge. M task in thispaper is to set out therst anddevelop the second; in doingso, I aim to showthat Santaanas version of expressivism is capable of responding not onl to thechallenges posed b our everda use of moral discourse, but also to more pointedcriticisms of expressivism as a whole. Although I do not endorse Santaanas moraltheor, I suggest that the contemporar expressivist stands to learn something fromSantaana.

1This paper was presented at the 2011 meeting of the George Santaana Societ in Washington,DC. I have since revised the text for clarit, and added a number of footnotes to capture themost salient expansions called for b session participants. Thanks also to Ken Bod, CherlMisak, and Hasko von Kriegstein for their thoughtful commentaries on an earlier version ofthe paper.

2 See Lachs (1967 [1964]); Sprigge (1995 [1974]); and Tiller (1998) and (2000).

3 See especiall Tiller (1998) and (2000).


7/42

SANTAyANA ON VALUE 5

I. Background: Santayanas Afrmation of Expressivism

Before we can understand the solution Santaana offers for the problem of explainingmoral discourse, it will be helpful to remind ourselves just what the expressivist iscommitted to. Expressivism is a species of non-cognitivism, the general view that

moral beliefs are not intentional and that moral judgments are not truth-functional.The expressivist version of non-cognitivism further claims that although our formof moral language suggests that moral beliefs and judgments do track matters offact, our moral talk is reall just a wa of dressing up our preferences as judgmentsabout the world. We can put the expressivist thesis about moral judgments this wa:

Moral judgments are not truth-functional; the ma express sincerel held attitudesor preferences but do not have an truth-value, as the do not describe the world but

merel express our emotive states.4

Clearl, Santaanas remark that the cr, How good! ma be sincere suggeststhat moral talk is not utterl vapid; something is expressed in our declaration ofmoral judgments. It is simpl not what we might naivel infer it to be based on the

propositional form of such utterances that is, it is not a fact about the world thatis captured b our exclamation.

In addition to falling under the umbrella of non-cognitivism, expressivism isoftenafrmed alongside naturalism, here understood as the view thatwhateverexplanations are on offer for the phenomena in question must appeal to natural (ascontrasted with supernatural) facts. It makes sense for these positions to be closel

allied: non-cognitivists often appeal to facts of biolog or pscholog to explainwh moralit cannot be all that it seems. The problem for expressivism is preciselto sa wh, given that moralit is not all that it seems, not a realm of facts or entities,we talk about it as if it were. Like other non-cognitivists, expressivists tend to appealto facts about the phsical world or about human nature to solve the explanatorchallenge presented b our linguistic practices.

WewillseethatSantayanadoesjustthat.Despitethesuperciallymetaphysicalbent of his take on everda experience he analses our experience as havingelements of four realms of being: essence, matter, truth and spirit he is a resolute

naturalist, and a materialist all the wa down. Indeed, Santaana explicitl disclaimsspeculative metaphsics qua dialecticalphysicsinhisafrmationofmaterialismwhen he sas that I do not profess to know what matter is in itself. . . . But whatevermatter ma be, I call it matter boldl, as I call m acquaintances Smith and Joneswithout knowing their secrets (SAF viiviii). He describes his Realms of Beingas only kindsor categories of things which I nd conspicuouslydifferent andworth distinguishing (SAF vi). Thus, it is fair to sa that Santaana is no more ametaphsician than the kitchen maid is, for if belief in the existence of hidden partsand movements in nature be metaphsics, then the kitchen-maid is a metaphsician

whenever she peels a potato (SAF viii).In conjoining non-cognitivism and naturalism in his view of moralit, Santaanaoffersametaethicalpositionthattscomfortablyintothecontemporaryrubric.Butas we shall see, his solution to the challenges posed b the problem of everda

4There is a parallel expressivist thesis with respect to belief: moral beliefs are not intentionalstates about the world, but expressions of our own felt intuitions.


8/42

OVERHEARD IN SEVILLE6

moral discourse suggests a form of expressivism quite different from much of whatis on offer toda in large part because, unlike man materialists, Santaana utterlresists the reduction of the other realms of being to that of matter, though the mustsupervene upon it.5 With this admittedl swift sketch of some of Santaanas general

commitments in place, let us now consider the resources he offers for the resolutionof the problem for expressivism posed b the form of moral discourse.

II. A Solution to the Explanatory Challenge

Although Santaana reall onl provides us with the skeleton of a metaethicalposition, he does offer an explicit response to the explanator challenge in theposthumousl published piece, The Projection of Values. A close reading of thistext, supplemented b foras into selected other works, gives us an account of whwe speak of moral essences as if the were material entities or forces.

TherstparagraphofTheProjectionofValuesgetsstraighttothepoint:In primitive or poetic thought it is natural that moral essences should be treated as ifthe had a personal unit and material subsistence (things incompatible at bottom, butloosel projected together into the same object, as into a man). (AFSL 350)

Further:

[M]oral essences are doubl secondar: not onl are the mere appearances, like allessences given in intuition, but the are appearances supported b a mass of facts withnoneofwhichtheyhaveanyafnityofessence.(AFSL 350)

This rich paragraph gives us, in an incredibl condensed expression, an indicationof what the real basis of moral judgment is and wh we are inclined to treat it assomething which it is not.

First, it tells us that what we experience directl in moral life are essences,which for Santaana are a distinct form of non-material, non-existent being. Suchessences are mere appearances precisel because the do not have an phsicalinstantiation. So what does it mean to sa that good and evil are mere appearances?The are valuations made b the agent regarding some object, event, or state ofaffairs; the are our felt responses about how such things stand with respect to our

preferences. Because Santaana is not a reductionist, he maintains a separate realmof being for these essences, each of which is perfectl individual, perfectl self-contained and real onl b virtue of its intrinsic character (RB 18).

Next,ittellsusthatitisnaturalforustoconfusedlyhypostatizemoralessences to treat them as if the had material subsistence, though essences do not. In thispassage, Santaana suggests that it is natural because the essences we mistakenlreif in the statement of moral judgments come as part of a package deal (along withmatter, truth, and spirit). He makes the same point in his earl work, The Sense of

Beauty,wherehealsogivesanadditionalreasonforourhabitofhypostatization:

Man has a prejudice against himself: anthing which is a product of his mind seems tohimtobeunrealorcomparativelyinsignicant.Wearesatisedonlywhenwefancyourselves surrounded b objects and laws independent of our nature. (SB 4)

5This important point resurfaces in the next section.


9/42


Becausethemoralessencesimpactussoforcefully,wearereluctanttorecognizethemasproductsofourownthought,sowetendtohypostatizethem.Itisnaturalfor us to treat good and evil as if the were caused b things outside of ourselves

but valuation is a human practice, and intuitions of value belong to the realm of

essences. The are not material entities, nor do the derive their force from directcorrespondence with such entities. Thus, it is a mistaken attribution to project theuniedessencesweencounterinmoralexperienceontoobjects.

Finall, Santaana points out that there is a mass of facts in the vicinit ofthe essences expressed in moral judgments. This contributes to the confusion

b tempting us to suppose that the truths regarding those facts somehow conferobjectivit on our moral judgments. The facts in question are facts regarding thematerial elements involved in the situation leading to the moral judgment, butthose facts about the constitution of things are not the central or characteristic

element of moral judgments the belong to a different realm of being, that ofmatter. Moral judgments respond to facts in the realm of essence, where the nerveof moral judgment is preference (RB 473), and all preference is arational (SB13).Judgmentsofvalue,includingmoraljudgments,arecharacterizedbyhavinga trace of passionate reprobation or of sensible delight, b having a basis insensibilit (SB 14). Moral judgments navigate us through what Santaana callsthe sad business of life: to escape certain dreadful evils to which our natureexposes us, death, hunger, disease, weariness, isolation, and contempt (SB17). This view of the business of life, combined with Santaanas position that

there is no value apart from the appreciation of value and no good apart fromthe preference for a thing over its opposite or absence, gives us an account of theorigin of moral judgments.

Santaana locates that origin in the preferences of an animal vulnerableto certain ills, aware of those ills, and desiring to avoid them, but it is not mereconsciousness that creates the possibilit of worth. To have value also requires will:for the existence of good in an form it is not merel consciousness but emotionalconsciousness that is needed (SB 13). Thus, the experience of the moral essenceevil is had at the level of consciousness in an organism, but is prompted b a

disharmon between the animal and its environment. Indeed, internal harmon isall that moralit can require, and if we still abhor the thought of a possible beingwho should be happ without love, or knowledge, or beaut, the aversion we feelis not moral but instinctive, not rational but human (SB 134).6 What we dub evilis that which disrupts our phsical substratum or impedes the satisfaction of our

preferences, preferences also dictated b brute facts about our constitution. Thisis Santaanas response to the explanator portion of the problem presented btheformofmoraldiscourse:wehypostatizetheessencesofgoodandevilthatwe

6

This passage points to what I take to be the most serious possible criticism of Santaanasmoral philosoph: it appears to sanction a ver radical form of relativism, where what ismoral is utterl individual, as all that moralit can require of the individual is that she pursueher own internal harmon. If there is a response to be made on Santaanas behalf, it mustinvolve giving our instinctive or human responses to harmonies of others that jar with ourown some normative clout. This will not be an eas task and I make onl the briefest gesturesin this direction here. It ma be, of course, that the most faithful reading of Santaana supportsreading him as a radical relativist.


10/42


directl experience in response to satisfaction or dissatisfaction of our preferences;in doing so, we cloak moral essences in the language of objectivit.7

III. A Solution to the Normative Challenge

Once armed with an explanation for the propositional structure of moral discourse,the expressivist is faced with another question: so now what? What ought we todo, given what we now know about the basis of our moral intuitions? Two obviousresponses to the so-what question suggest themselves. One can:

(1) Be a moral discourse apologist; or(2) Be an eliminative materialist with respect to moral language.

Santaana clearl rejects both of these options. In their place, he offers butdoesnt explicitl develop a third option:

(3) Be a poet.8

Before developing the third option, which I see as Santaanas suggestive responseto the normative challenge, I take a brief look at his reasons for rejecting (1) and (2),which should be of special interest to the contemporar expressivist.

To be a moral discourse apologist would be to offer reasons wh, despiteafrmingtheexpressivistthesis,weshouldcontinuetospeakofmoralessencesasif the were entities. I see Santaana as rejecting this option for at least three kereasons. First, he repeatedl refers to the use of thing-language in moral judgmentsas primitive and superstitious, and even goes so far as to call verbal andmechanical proposition[s], that [pass] for judgment[s] of worth . . . the great cloakof ineptitude (SB 14). Second, to continue to treat elements of the realm of essenceasiftheybelongedtotherealmofmatteronceonehasrealizedthemistakeistofailto appreciate the richness of our experience, and to let the lure of parsimon offered

b reductionism obscure the realm of essence entirel. Finall, and perhaps mostimportantl, Santaana stresses that moralists who cling to the notion of absolutemoraltruthdedicatealltheirzealtophrasesandmaximsthatrunintheirheadsand desiccate the rest of their spirit (RB 482). As a great lover of the life of the spirit,it is highl implausible that Santaana would advocate for an course which wouldso surel steer people awa from that life and towards moral fanaticism.

Despite this robust criticism of our everyday, non-reective use of morallanguage, Santaana also rejects (2). He doesnt defend our everda practice ofexpressing our preferences in the form of moral judgments, but he doesnt go to

7This is a point at which contemporar expressivists ma be inclined to push back againstSantaanas account: he insists that essences are not reducible to matter, as the two arecategories of experience conspicuous and worth distinguishing. yet our experience of themoral essences is based on our preferences, which are determined b our animal constitution

so although the reduction of essence to matter ma not be straightforward, it is still possible.Santayanas response, I suspect,would be to emphasize the phenomenological difference

between encountering an essence vs. encountering matter. Within the expressivist camp, thequestion then becomes an empirical one: are the aspects of experience Santaana picks out asrealms of being conspicuous and worth distinguishing, or not?

8 For the suggestion, see the Preface to Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, whereSantaana remarks that poetr has a moral function (IPR3).


11/42


the extreme of suggesting we abandon the practice altogether, for he allows thatVerbal judgments are often useful instruments of thought even though it is not

b them that worth can ultimatel be determined (SB 14). Santaana also remarksthat insight into the basis of our preferences . . . would not fail to have a good

andpurifyinginuenceuponthem(SB 6). The ke is to not remain ignorant aboutwhatisprojectedinmoraljudgments.Oncewerecognizethemastheexpressionof preferences, moral judgments can become a helpful diagnostic tool. When weresistthereicationofgoodandevil,welearnsomethingaboutourselves:aboutour

preferences, and which objects, events, and states of affairs satisf them.9This brings me to what I suggest is Santaanas solution to the normative challenge

to expressivism, which is option (iii): be a poet. For Santaanas suggestion as tohow we should react practicall to our awareness that moral discourse, despite its

propositional form, ultimatel expresses arational preferences based on our animal

nature,IreturntothespecicwordingusedinTheProjectionofValues.Intheopeningpassagepreviouslyquotedwendthekernelofaresponsetothenormativechallenge:

In primitive or poetic thought it is natural that moral essences should be treated as ifthe had a personal unit and material subsistence. . . . (AFSL 350)

And:

In essence [moral intuitions] are irrelevant to their basis in nature, and forcontemplation do not suggest it: which is the reason wh primitive and poetic fanchpostatises them into existences on their own account. . . . (AFSL 351)

Isuggestthatintherstofthesepassages,primitiveorpoeticmayalsobereadas primitive and poetic, as the pairing is put in the second passage, and whichsuggests not two names for a single categor of thought or fanc, but two distinctcategories. We have alread seen that Santaana would not advocate simpl stickingwith primitive thought about moralit once weve lifted the curtain, but this leavesthecategoryofpoeticthoughtasonewherewemightndthatthehypostatizationof moral essences in language alone, free of metaphsical freightage, is a usefulexercise. And if we take seriousl the idea that the poetic use of moral language is

an alternative to the primitive use of such language, or simple abandonment of thatlanguage, we can bring together two parts of Santaanas philosoph in a new andinteresting wa.

To see that appropriately reective use of the language ofmoral judgmentsmight constitute poetr, we can consult Santaanas writing on that topic, The

9 One might protest that we would be learning ver mundane things about ourselves: I likespic food; Being late makes me feel anxious. Certainl, such truths about our phsicalconstitutions dont sound particularl important but if the aim is harmon, small factors

as well as large must be balanced. There is also the possibilit of learning rather more centralthings, such as the truth about ones sexual orientation, which can dramaticall alter onesexpectations about what things in life provide pleasure. In m view, the complaint againstSantayanaherethattheelementsthatneedtobebroughtintoharmonyarentsignicantenoughstems from a more basic complaint: the complaint that achieving internal harmon is not whatwe reall think being moral is about. And the worr about relativism lurks just beneath thesurface here, as it seems Santaana ma have little to sa to someone whose internal harmonstrikes us as monstrous, save to express our experience of their harmon as an evil one.


12/42


13/42


Euphuism, the choice of coloured words or of rare or elliptical phrases, allowsustoreplaceorreconguretheconventionalusesofwords.Indoingso,itmakespoetryamechanismfordisruptingorunderminingsupercialunderstanding.Thiselement, which leads to Colapietros comparison of poetr to alchem, is what

enables us to use poetr to redescribe our experience in novel or unusual was. Withrespecttomoralexperience,theattempttoreplaceunreectiveuseoftheeverydaylanguage of moral judgment with less tpical terms of expression ma force us toconsider more carefull what it is that we are tring to express, what our preferencesreall are. When we describe an object or event as not plainl good or evil, but strivetondmoreexactormoreevocativewords,wemayndtheactofredescriptionchanges our perception of the essences involved, or at least temporaril puts us atadistancefromourprimitivedescriptionsadistancethatprovokesreection.

The third element of poetr Santaana describes is experiential immediac.

Poetr is the product of an agent situated in a certain context, and attempts tomake a particular experience had b that agent available to herself, to relive theexperience, but also to others. In doing so, it enables us to return to an object orevent that provoked strong, pleasant, or disturbing intuitions, and engage with themanew. Perhaps more importantl, it allows us to tr to engage with the intuitionsof others as expressed in their poetr. In the case of poetr that is self-consciouslabout the experiences that lead to the expression of moral judgments11 we mandourselvesledtoquestionorthodoxy,anoutcomeSantayanawouldendorse,despite his genial support of common-sense philosoph.12

Experiential immediac is closel tied to the fourth element of poetr, rationalimagination. The poet develops a work to give a particular articulation of anexperience in the work itself, one which tries to be adequate to the world, to histor, tolived experience. When poetr strives to tether our intuitive responses appropriatel

b capturing the structure of our experience, it demands of its audience or interpreterthat she do justice to the authors intent. This is perhaps the most compelling elementof poetic expression of the language of moral judgments, for to have the rationalimagination required to approach a poem in search of the articulation of experienceintended b the author is to deliberatel adopt an empathetic stance towards the

poets experience.13

In the case of experience of moral essences, that empatheticstance is the tonic to moral fanaticism.As a piece of evidence that Santaana himself might support the resolution to

the normative challenge for expressivism that I have begun to develop on his behalfhere, I submit the following passage from The Elements and Function of Poetr:

11An example is Wilfred Owens Dulce et Decorum est (Pro Patria Mori).

12 Consider Santaanas comparison of established orthodoxies with vegetation: right in thesense that they are right for their climate, their context,but destined toconictwith one

another eventuall (SAF 78).13Angus Kerr-Lawson has captured beautifull what taking the artist seriousl ma offer us:novel was of seeing things, was which ma be aestheticall pleasing, or revelator of

particular emotions, or lead to some new ideal (1999, 36). Again, the notion that we canaccess and be moved b one anothers ideals, even if those ideals are ultimatel based onindividualpreferences,givessomeplausibilitytoamodicationofSantayanasmetaethicsinto an expressivism without relativism.


14/42


ifwe...thinkofpoetryasthatsubtlereandinwardlightwhichseemsattimesto shine through the world and to touch images in our minds with ineffable beaut,then poetr is a momentar harmon of the soul (IPR289). That internal harmon,on his account, is all that moralit can require of us. Poetr can help us to achieve it.

IV. Expressivism, Self-Knowledge, Happiness

Santaana offers the kernel of a solution to the normative challenge regarding theexpressivists use of moral language that elevates the acknowledgment of the truthof the expressivist thesis to the position of an avenue to self-knowledge. In order tofull grasp the value of the poetic use of moral language, we must remind ourselvesthat Santaanas theor of mind (or spirit) is epiphenomenalist: though the mindoccupiesitsownrealmofbeing,onlymatteriscausallyefcacious.Thismeansthatthe conscious mind faces endless potential for frustration. At various points in his

writings, Santaana offers two courses one can take to escape this frustration: onecanovercomethefrustrationofbeinganitebeingwithinniteaspirationsbylivingthe spiritual life, free of attachments, absolved of the pain of having preferences; orone can get wise to ones particular constitution and take enjoment in the thingsthat suit one best. I agree with John Lachs closing remarks about the spiritual lifein Santaanas Moral Philosoph: it is not clear whether Santaana thought thespiritual life could reall be lived at all; if it could, for how long; or, indeed, whetheranone would reall want to live much of her life as a spiritual life anwa (1967[1964], 349). Thus, I suggest we take Santaanas other suggestion seriousl: we

pursue happiness in the form of the self-knowledge that leads to wisdom.Following the Stoics, Santaana sees happiness as the purview of the wise:

Happiness is impossible and even inconceivable to a mind without scope and withoutpause, a mind driven b craving, pleasure, and fear. (LR5 252)

To be happ. . . . you must have taken the measure of our powers, tasted the fruitsof our passions and learned our place in the world and what things in it can reallserve ou. To be happ ou must be wise. (EGP 152)

He also remarks that Wisdom comes b disillusion (LR1 202). Grasping the truth

of the expressivist thesis certainl involves disillusionment, but it is a disillusionthat puts us on the path to self-knowledge: once we admit that what we express inmoral judgment is merel our own preferences, we gain a more intimate knowledgeof those preferences as well as of what things in the world satisf them.

CrispinWrighthassuggestedthattheafrmationofexpressivismamountstoagrotesque lapse of rationalit (1996, 4). In Santaanas subtle sstem, this is notso. Rather, expressivism opens an avenue to authenticit, to taking ownership ofones animal nature and doing ones best to reconcile spirit and the matter in whichit is embodied, to harmon. Not onl does Santaana provide us with the resources

to resolve the explanator and normative challenges posed b the form of moraldiscourse,hisafrmationofexpressivismisofferedfromwithinasystemwherehuman dignit is not preserved b a realm of objective moral facts or forces, but brealizing,andmakingpeacewith,ourplaceintheworld.

DIANA HENEy

University of Toronto


15/42


Reference List

Colapietro, Vincent. 2009. A Poets Philosopher. Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society 45 (4): 55178.

Kerr-Lawson, Angus. 1999. Whither Santaanas Aesthetics? Overheard inSeville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society 17: 3536.

Lachs, John. 1967 [1964]. Santaanas Moral Philosoph. In Animal Faith andSpiritual Life, 32949.New york: Appleton-Centur-Crofts. Reprinted fromThe Journal of Philosophy 61: 4461.

Santaana, George. 1955 [1896]. The Sense of Beauty. New york: Dover.

____. 1957 [1900].Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. New york: Harper.

____. 1916.Egotism in German Philosophy. New york: Charles Scribners Sons.

____. 1955 [1923]. Scepticism and Animal Faith. New york: Dover.

____. 1926.Dialogues in Limbo. New york: Charles Scribners Sons.

____. 1942.Realms of Being: One Volume Edition. New york: Charles ScribnersSons.

____. 1967. The Projection of Values. InAnimal Faith and Spiritual Life, editedb John Lachs, 35051. New york: Appleton-Centur-Crofts.

Sprigge, Timoth. 1995 [1974]. Santayana: An Examination of His Philosophy.New york: Routledge.

Tiller, Glenn. 1998. Caresses or Insults: A Note on Santaanas Metaethics.Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society 16: 2224.

____. 2000. Expressivism, Projectivism and Santaana.Journal of the History ofPhilosophy 38 (2): 23958.

Wright, Crispin. 1996. Truth in Ethics. In Truth in Ethics, edited b Brad Hooker.Oxford: Blackwell.


16/42

The Importance of God as an Idea

The conict between religion and science is receiving new attention fromthinkers on both sides. According to a view now widel held, the future of

religion hinges on the debate between scientists and creationists over theorigin of human life, and the outcome of that depends on the existence of God. IfGod does not exist, then he could not have created the world and humans; believersare wrong and should give up their claims. On the other hand, if God does exist,scientists should admit their mistake and stand aside, allowing religion to pla theleading role in explaining the world and human life.

Thissimpliedaccountservestheneedsofcriticswhoreasonablyconnectsomeoftheviolenceintheworldtotheinuenceofreligiousbeliefssupportedbylittleor no hard evidence. But these critics tend to see religion as engaged in the work

of science, searching for truth in the narrow sense of attempting to describe whatexists. This approach ma have a place in certain debates, but it degrades religion

b forcing it to deal with unvarnished facts. Instead of expressing our highest ideals,religion is reduced to competing with science in a race that, to the satisfaction of itsopponents, religion is ill-equipped to win. At the same time, human life is greatlimpoverishedbythelossofreligionasareectionofitsmeaningsandvalues.

The Spanish/American philosopher George Santaana suggests a promisingwa of addressing this problem b reminding us that religion is a kind of poetr.Religion and poetr, Santaana writes, are identical in essence, and differ merelin the wa in which the are attached to practical affairs. Poetr is called religionwhen it intervenes in life, and religion, when it merel supervenes on life, is seen to

be nothing but poetr.1 Santaana concludes that religion is better off as poetr thatdoes not attempt to deal with matters of fact. For the dignit of religion, like thatofpoetry...liespreciselyinitsidealadequacy,initstrenderingofthemeaningsand values of life, in its anticipation of perfection; so that the excellence of religionisduetoanidealizationofexperiencewhich,whilemakingreligionnobleiftreatedas poetr, makes it necessaril false if treated as science.2

Religion that is nothing but poetr will seem profoundl unsatisfing to thosefor whom all that is important in religion hangs on proving the existence of God.Religious dogmatists and the scientists who oppose them agree that religion attemptstodescribeexistence.Theconictbetweenthemarisesonlybecausethedogmatistthinks the attempts successful, while the scientist sees them as unsuccessful. Thus,the notion of religion as nothing but poetr will seem tantamount to retreat andfailure to the dogmatist. He is understandabl worried that religion as poetr cannot

provide the same or equivalent comforts as dogmatic religion. At the same time,livinginanageofscience,heisbombardedbyitsndings,manyofwhichallbutrefute his dogmas.

If Santaana is right that religion is reall a form of poetr and that it is betteroff making no claims about matters of fact, scientists must pa for their victorover religion b admitting the did not know enough about their enem to aim their

1 George Santaana,Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (New york: Scribners, 1900), v.

2 Ibid., vvi.


17/42

THE IMPORTANCE OF GOD AS AN IDEA 15

arrowsatitsheart;theirbestshotsmerelygrazedtheouteredgesoftheirtarget.The outcome is better for religious dogmatists and better still for religious personswho are put off b dogma, a population that seems to be growing. Religion as anexpression of the meanings and ideals of human life can provide comfort in the hour

ofneed.Itssymbolsandideasmakelifemoresignicant,morebeautiful,andmoresatisfying.ThisisespeciallytrueoftheideaofGodasabeingofinnitecompassionand understanding. The fruitless conict that has arisen between science anddogmatic religion would not arise if religion were understood as poetr. Religionwould be free to be outwardl what it reall is at heart: a sheer enhancement of ourlives.

The question of the existence of God has vexed philosophers through theages. St. Anselm reasoned from the concept of God that of the most perfect

being imaginable to the necessit of his existence.3 Anselm thought existence

a perfection, from which it seemed to him to follow that God would not be themost perfect being if he did not exist. Accordingl, Anselm concluded that Godnecessaril exists.

In a famous criticism of Anselms argument, Kant claimed existence is notreall a predicate.4 It makes sense to sa God is omnipotent or omniscient, becauseomnipotent and omniscient are predicates; but existence adds nothing to thecharacter of an object, which either exists or does not exist as itself.

St. Thomas offered a version of the cosmological proof of Gods existence.5 Hereasoned that ever existing event must have a cause, and its cause a cause, and so

on.Sinceaninniteseriesofcausesisunthinkable,acausethatisnotitselfcausedis posited, and this uncaused cause, it is assumed, is God. But nothing that exists isthe cause of its own existence, so St. Thomass uncaused cause cannot exist.

The design argument for Gods existence is the most popular toda. It hangson an analog between human artifacts and natural organisms and processes. Theintricate structure of a microprocessor immediatel suggests an intelligent designerwithaspecicpurposeinmind,andsoarguablydoesthehumaneye, thewoodpeckersbeak,andthepollinationofowersbyinsects.Butanalogyisoneoftheweakerformsoflogicalargument,andevenifwecouldndconclusiveevidence

of design in nature, it would be reasonable to credit man designers with the work,and these beings might not be immortal or even compassionate; the might be moreinterestedineasorelectronsthaninhumans.

Unfortunatel for some, none of these arguments succeeds in establishing theexistence of God. But the failure of the arguments just described did not lead to thedeath of God crisis that erupted during the second half of the nineteenth centurand continued well into the twentieth. What happened is that science matured.

Newton was a devout Christian, to the point of conceiving absolute time and spaceas the mind of God; and Newtons phsics, which makes of nature an intricate

3 St. Anselm of Canterbur,Proslogion, in Classics of Western Philosophy, ed. Steven M. Cahn(Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), 415.

4 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (Boston: St. MartinsPress, 2003), 5006.

5 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, in Classics of Western Philosophy, ed. Steven M.Cahn (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), 45253.


18/42


machine,seemedtorequireacreator,ifonlyintheformofarstcause.ButaGodwhose primar role is to wind up a clockwork universe has little religious value, andlater developments in celestial mechanics, not to mention the arrival of Darwinstheoryofevolutionbynaturalselection,reducedthenotionofacreatororrstcause

to an unnecessar hpothesis.The failure of traditional arguments for Gods existence and the results of currentscience seem to support Santaanas view that religion is better off as poetr thatmakes no claims about facts. What would religion look like if it made no suchclaims? In a wa, it is easier to imagine what religion would be like if it did notmake claims about facts than it is to understand the claims of dogmatic religion.The incarnation, the resurrection, and the trinit remain inscrutable msteries, butthe ideals the express are relativel clear and deepl familiar. Jesus was both fulldivineandfullyhuman.Heexperiencedthepainsandsorrowsofnitude;atthe

same time, he was able to see beond them to a world free of limits in which,because it is unlimited, sorrow and pain have no part. We are in a similar position inthat while we must live within our limits, we can readil imagine what it would belike to be able to exceed them.

Another ideal expressed b the stories of Jesus is that of freedom from cravingthrough union with the eternal. Although it animated the bod of a man, the will ofJesus was one with the will of God. This enabled him to endure even his passion anddeath with composure. We do not alwas will what God wills, but when we forgetour desires, our minds rest peacefull in the present. Objects of consciousness,

Santaana explains, are timeless forms;6

while our attention rests on them, we tastethe peace of eternit. The passion of Christ is thus a smbol not of our desire toexceed our limits but of our longing to transcend them altogether.

Itiseasytondhumanidealsexpressedinotherreligions.TheZenmastersnotionofattainingnirvanaanon-spatial,non-temporalrealityfreeofallconict

is one; the Taoists idea of oneness with the Tao or complete self-surrender isanother. Like the obedience of Jesus to his Fathers will, these ideas express ourdesireforliberationfromthelimitsofnitudeandforthejoyweimaginethatwould

bring.

Religionthatattemptstodealwithmattersoffactisorganizedarounddogmasthat are supposedl indifferent to evidence; in realit, the are indifferent toevidence onl for those who, like Abraham, are prepared to believe on faith alone.For everone else, belief depends in varing degrees on some sort of evidence. The

belief that God exists is no different in this respect from the belief that our planetspinsinspaceorthattheworldcontinuesbeyondthehorizon.Objectsofbeliefarenecessaril hidden from view; it is because the are not self-evident that it makessense to sa we believe in them. If we act as if we have direct access to the realitieswe believe in, we do so because our faith in them is perfect, but even the most

perfect faith ma be disappointed. There is, as Pascal noticed,7

a gamble or wagerbehind the kind of religion that purports to deal with facts. Whether it succeeds orfails depends on whether its dogmas turn out to be true or false.

6 George Santaana, The Realm of Essence (New york, Scribners, 1927), 1825.

7 Blaise Pascal,Penses, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (New york: Penguin Group, 1995), 12126.


19/42


20/42


similarideal.ReectingontheideaofGodasapurespiritofinniteunderstandingand compassion helps us approximate if not achieve this ideal.

Man religious dogmatists sa the enjo a personal relationship with God. Isthere an sense in which an idea can live up to their demand for a personal God?

There is. The explanation is that personal relations do not reall require personsin the sense of intentional beings. Some drivers relate to their favorite cars aspersons, and childrens tos often enjo the status of persons conferred on thembytheirowners.Objectsthatmaybeviewedaspersonsaresufcientforpersonalrelationships, and these objects, in man cases, are no more than ideas.

All ideas are timeless realities that seem to shine in clarit and peace above thechaos of existence. To view them for their own sakes is to rise above the chaos. Buttothosewhocontemplateit,theideaofGodasabeingofinnitecompassionandunderstanding offers not onl peace but a kind of unconditional validation of the

individual that makes that peace more complete and more durable. Not even thosewho love us the most can provide this, for their love, no matter how great, is notunconditional. God, on the other hand, would understand and feel for us as if fromthe inside out, seeing our struggles and our frustrations just as we see them, andknowing, as we often do not, what we reall want and wh we go wrong. Perhapsmore importantl, God would take an interest in us, no matter with how little interestor with what contempt or disdain we were viewed b our fellow humans. Here isan idea of God that is not without beaut; and it is one that at least comes close to

providing the sort of comfort and satisfaction sought b religious persons of all

tpes.In Catholic theolog, God is held to exist outside of space and time, observingthe turbulence of the world from the serene environment of eternit. If this isunderstoodasaclaimaboutfacts,itpresentsascienticproblem.Howcananythingexist outside of space and time? But if religion is poetr that makes no claims aboutfacts,theideaofGodasabeingofinnitecompassionandunderstandingsimplyexpresses one of the highest ideals of human life. It suggests the peace of eternit.But its value does not end here, for it also suggests unconditional acceptance andafrmation of each individual, and that suggestion alonehelps us approach the

peacewecrave.Fortunately,religionaspoetrydoesnotdependonthendingsofscience; it is possible as long as we continue to think and to imagine.

MICHAEL BRODRICK

Indiana University School of Liberal Arts, IUPUI


21/42

The Spirits Alchemicana

The intellect in its widest sweeps and highest reaches comes back and back tothe concrete, the particular, the momentar perception. Our generalities are

rootedthere,andndtheirconrmationthere.Indispensableasconceptionsare to all that we call reason, deliberation, or judgment, the et are secondar ordependent: conception must look tirelessl to perception for inspiration and support.Therealkernelofallknowledge,Schopenhauersays,isreectionorthinkingthat . . . goes back to the primar source, the foundation, of all concepts the

percept, the datum of sensible intuition, or to what Schopenhauer sometimes calls apicture . . . of the imagination.1

Ifunitary,momentary,individualimagesareparenttoourgeneralizations,theyare not of course the onl begetters. Forconcepts ma also breed concepts, mating

andreproducingtheirkindwithproigateabandon.Suchoffspringwillbecalledwise if the steadil honor their ancestors. Too often the do not. The encounterswith the things of the sense which gave rise to their line will be ignored. Merewords will now breed words. Philosoph will become a verbal exercise, havingfor its material what Schopenhauer calls mere husks of thoughts . . . empt, poor,and . . . insufferabl tedious.2 Or, changing his metaphor, he likens these merecombinations of conceptions lacking ground or warrant in perceived particulars tothe notes of a bank which for securit has again merel deposited other promissornotes, not cash.3 As Emerson would put it twent ears later, a paper currenc isemploed, when there is no bullion in the vaults.4 Wall Street philosophers we shallalwas have with us, and Schopenhauers tart advice here is perhaps the best: Oneshould not speak to them more than is necessar.5

Emerson counted on the wise scholar and poet to pierce this rotten diction andfasten words again to visible things. In his ees the discourse of an original thinkerwill be known b the spontaneous imager which serves it, and from which it isinseparable. A man in alliance with truth, he sas, will hold fast to the things ofnature. And in the hands of such thinkers we are delivered back to the world weknow, so that once again the woods wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls andshines, and the cattle low upon the mountains.6

The resolve to carr up into general concepts our dail experience of a quotidianworld must attend the work of both philosopher and scientist. But it is the poet,preeminently, who insistswith vehemenceon the nal authorityof experiencedparticulars. For the poet the alone are the elements of the real, comprising the

1Arthur Schopenhauer, The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufcient Reason [1813], trans.E. F. J. Pane (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Compan, 1974), 154.

2 Ibid., 14748.

3 Ibid., 155.

4 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature [1836], in Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed.StephenE.Whicher(Boston:HoughtonMifin,1957),33.

5 Schopenhauer, The Fourfold Root, 154.

6 Emerson, Nature, in Selections, 34.


22/42


onl realities he is able to see clearl and hold fast. And no one has examined withgreater energ and precision the nature and status of these particulars than the

poet-philosopher Santaana. He called them essences, and declared them to be thebedrock upon which the super-structures of science, of poetr, of philosoph and

religion are built.And no one understood him. Are essences, like perfumes, aromas more or lessexotic, attending certain perceptions? Are the Platonic Ideas in disguise, idealtypes subsisting behind or beyond the apparent? Or are they, perhaps, articialsections,freeze-frames,cutfromthestreamofconsciousness?Perhapstheyarethevisions of a mstic, or the intensities of consciousness cultivated b a self-absorbedaestheticist. Santaana as an old man would laugh at these miscomprehensions, butI wonder if the perdurable oung man within him did not weep a little also. To speakanaccuratespeechwashispassionbutthen,havingspoken,tondthathiswords

meant nothing, or meant little, or meant the wrong things to those he would reach:I think his might heart must have shaken more than once. Late in his life, notingthegeneraluneaseandbafement,heobservedwithperhapsalittlewistfulness,M theor [of essence] ought to be intelligible to poets and artists who have not

bothered with modern philosoph. . . .7

That suggestion is one we would do well to pursue. I want to make a beginningtonight b noticing in the work of several poets and poet-philosophers theirapprehensions of the world under the aspect of the essences it embodies, writers whowouldrecognizeandsalutethemashouseholdfamiliars.Theywouldunderstand

at once how in discerning essences the world suddenl becomes available to themind,howinandthroughthemwetouchtheonlyrealitieswecanevernd,wouldunderstand their being as indelible identities, timeless and perfectl individual. Ofcourse this approach is one wa toward the discover of essence; it is not the onlwa. Santaana argues, as ou know, that a rigorous skepticism will lead us there(and with less danger of overbidding our hand), as also will dialectic or spiritualdiscipline. Essences have no exclusive or necessar connection with the arts, but itis the contemplative or aesthetic road, as Santaana calls it, which I want to travelfor a short while tonight.

The wish of the poet and of the poet-philosopher to join the concrete to thegeneral and the general to the concrete springs from the vivacit and intimac ofhisengagementwiththemundane.Itmaybeapassabledenitionofpoetrytosaythat it is discourse which resolutel maintains its ties to momentar but momentousencounters with the things of the earth: the milk in the pan, the glance of the ee,a certain slant of light, the look of a pineapple or a clock, the taste of a madeleinedipped in tea, the red of the wheelbarrow or the green of the lettuce, the clink of

bottles, the stir of the tops of hemlock trees in which the sun can merel fumble.YoumayrecognizethetreesasthehemlocksofWallaceStevens,contemplatingthe

vexed relations between the world of fact and the world of imagination. Here areStevens words, taken from his essa on The Figure of the youth as Virile Poet:

If we close our ees and think of a place where it would be pleasant to spend a holida,and if there slide across the black ees, like a setting on a stage, a rock that sparkles, a

7 George Santaana, Apologia Pro Mente Sua, in The Philosophy of George Santayana, ed.Paul Arthur Schilpp (New york: Tudor Publishing Compan, 1940), 500.


23/42

THE SPIRITS ALCHEMICANA 21

blue sea that lashes, and hemlocks in which the sun can merel fumble, this inevitabldemonstrates, since the rock and the sea, the wood and sun are those that have beenfamiliar to us in Maine, that much of the world of fact is the equivalent of the worldof the imagination, because it looks like it.8

Three isolated particulars, made to rise from their sleep at the touch of Stevenswords, become the complex essence known to man of his readers as the coastof Maine. This quick-brush demonstration of a poets legerdemain is designed toestablish Stevens philosophers thesis: that such images as these when focused,

brought stage center and intensel apprehended are revelations of realit, or ofthat portion of realit which has thus been brought from half-light into light. Theworld of fact and the world of imagination seem one. Stevens goes on to sa,

True imagination is . . . the sum of our faculties. Poetr is the scholars art. The acuteintelligence of the imagination, the illimitable resources of its memor, its power to

possess the moment it perceives if we were speaking of light itself, and thinkingof the relationship between objects and light, no further demonstration would benecessar. Like light, it adds nothing, except itself.9

These are large claims. yet in saing of poetr that it is the sum of our facultiesand the scholars art, Stevens stakes a claim for poetr not bolder than Emersons ahundred ears before him, and the echo of Santaana is clear in Stevens metaphorof light: for the Spaniard, too, a sleeping world lies waiting in darkness for the lightof spirit, a quickened awareness, to reveal things as the are or rather, this thing,as it is, an indelible component of our fated world. Onl through our heightened

attention to the particular, the given datum, ma we achieve that incandescenceof the intelligence which Santaana called the sheer light of [pure] intuition.Awaken attention, he says, intensify it, purify it into white ame, and theactual and unsubstantial object of intuition will stand before ou in all its livingimmediac and innocent nakedness.10 So lucent an apparition the object, as itwere, proclaiming its identit is now an essence.

We might sa that the familiar, the too familiar things of our everda lives aretransformedundertheraptgazeofthepoet,aswhen,inWallaceStevenswords,welookattheblueskyforthersttime,thatistosay:notmerelyseeit,butlook

atitandexperienceitandforthersttimehaveasensethatweliveinthecenterofa phsical poetr.11 For it is a metamorphosis to which the poet bears witness. AsEmerson might put it, the dull miscellan and lumber-room of the world is madetosoarandsing,animatedbyatriesufcientlyattended.12

To see the world as continuous with the imagination, to see it, for the moment,as ideal through and through, requires, it is clear, that we bring attention to whiteheat in the presence of the particular. To the Romantics, to the Smbolists, naturewhispered a perpetual promise: come close, come closer, come closer still, and I

8Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel(New york: Vintage Books, 1965), 61.

9 Ibid., 61.

10 Santaana,Realms of Being(New york: Charles Scribners Sons, 1942), 15.

11Stevens, The Necessary Angel, 65.

12 Emerson, The American Scholar, in Selections, 78.


24/42


will ield m secret. yet such intimac will not be won through attentiveness alone or sa, rather, that the kind of attention exacted b the object exacts of its lover atranscendence of the self and the accustomed claims of the self. Theres a wonderfulfable devised b Rilke in a letter to Merline in which nature appears as a reluctant

bride. The things of a phsical world will disclose their essential life onl to thesuitorwhowillbringproofs ofselessdevotion;hemustcometothepromisedunion without preoccupation; he must go out of himself in his total absorption in theobject before him. In the absence of these, Rilke sas, the object will refuse

to give ou its heart. . . . If a thing is to speak to ou, ou must regard it for a certaintime as the only one that exists, as the one and onl phenomenon, which, thanks toour laborious and exclusive love, is now placed at the center of the Universe, andthere, in that incomparable place, is this da attended b the Angels.13

That the hosts of heaven, singing hallelujahs, ma attend the acute perception of a

table will doubtless seem to the commonalit a pleasant piece of nonsense. And Imafraid that for man contemporar philosophers it has seemed either trivial or darklmstical to declare as momentous the discover that a thing is what it is. yet for the

poet it is so: upon his revelations of identit what he sees and hears and feels whenthe world is made to stand still not less than everthing depends. Let me read a

passage of Wallace Stevens meditation on An Ordinar Evening in New Haven:

We keep coming back and coming backTo the real: to the hotel instead of the hmnsThat fall upon it out of the wind. We seek

The poem of pure realit, untouchedB trope or deviation, straight to the word,Straighttothetransxingobject,totheobject

At the exactest point at which it is itself,Transxingbybeingpurelywhatitis,A view of New Haven, sa, through the certain ee,

The ee made clear of uncertaint, with the sight

Ofsimpleseeing,withoutreection....

14

Such shocks of recognition recognition of New Haven, sa, as it is are a resultofthepoetspowertox,ortransx,theobjectsheencounters.Theybecomeforall time radiant nodes in the histor of a human spirit, items in the catalog of whatStevens calls the spirits alchemicana.

It is an alchem worked not onl b the attentive mind or spirit but, in the poetscase, the apposite words he chooses to serve his recognitions; intuition and languageconspire to transform the earth or, what is now the same thing, to transform thelandscape of mind. There is no harm in this celebrating of the poets powers. But it

wouldbebettertosaythatunderthepoetsgazetheworldleapsintobeing,acquires

13 Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to Merline (1920), tr. Violet M. MacDonald, in The ModernTradition: Backgrounds of Modern Literature, eds. Richard Ellmann and Charles Feidelson,Jr. (New york: Oxford Universit Press, 1965), 48.

14Wallace Stevens, An Ordinar Evening in New Haven, The Collected Poems of WallaceStevens (New york: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), canto IX, 471.


25/42


formforthersttimeandisnottransformed.NoticethatinStevensreectionsonNewHaventhepoetdoesnottransxtheobjectbutistransxedbyit.Totheexclusionofallelse,itfulllsawarenessindeclaringitsbeing.Itdoesnotspeakofhumangeniusbutonlyofitself.Itisanding,adiscovery,anewterritoryofthe

real into which the poet has come. The fact of the discover ma be momentous forthe explorer, but the thing discovered stands indifferent, knows nothing of humanvicissitudes, remains simpl what it is. We must put histor and pscholog andautobiograph to one side if we would understand how it ma be said that a poets

business is to realize the world or wh essences are objective and not subjectivein their intrinsic nature. The witness who apprehends them drops from view, and,

being absent, is neither lamp nor mirror. Vision is self-transcendent.Forconrmation,letmegotoJamesJoyce,andtohisredoubtablegureofthe

outh as virile artist, Stephen Hero. Hero believes it to be the artists business to

register in his work those most delicate and evanescent of moments which he callsepiphanies.Inthenormaltrafcoftheeverydaythereisnothingwhichmaynot,suddenl, ield its nature a vulgarit of speech or of gesture or . . . a memorablephaseof themind itself.SuchanepiphanyHerodenesas a suddenspiritualmanifestation. And as schoolmaster to his thin-lipped companion Cranl, StepheninformshimthattheBallastOfceclockiscapableofanepiphany.Hegoeson,

I will pass [the clock] time after time, allude to it, refer to it, catch a glimpse of it.It is onl an item in the catalogue of Dublins street furniture. Then all at once I seeit and I know at once what it is: epiphan. . . . Imagine m glimpses at that clock as

the gropings of a spiritual ee which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. Themoment the focus is reached the object is epiphanised.15

Its amusing to think of the unpredictable schoolmaster Joce in Trieste, tringsomehow to open the ees of his pupils to the things around them. One of them, poorBoris Furlan, asked b his master to describe an oil lamp, fumbled helplessl,Ellman tells us, and Joce then took over and spent half an hour, in what seemedto Furlan a descriptive lust, explaining the lamps obvious and minute details.16ThisistheJoycewhotoldFurlantolayasidehisSchopenhauerandNietzscheandread Thomas Aquinas instead, and who himself read Aquinas a page ever da, in

the Latin. It is applied Aquinas which Stephen Daedalus, that later apparition ofthe oung artist, administers to his friend Lnch. Daedalus is tring to explain toLnch the moment of silent stasis (as he calls it) wherein the clear radiance ofthe esthetic image, is apprehended luminousl . . . , although a basket now and nota clock waits for discover. It is the word claritas, named b Thomas Aquinas as athird and essential element of the beautiful, whose meaning Daedalus searches. Andhendsitinhisdiscoverythatthebasketis,ashesays,thatthingwhichitisandno other thing. The radiance of which [Aquinas] speaks is the scholastic quidditas,the whatness of a thing. This supreme qualit, he concludes, is felt b the artist

whentheestheticimageisrstconceivedinhisimagination. 17 I wonder if Wallace

15 James Joce, Stephen Hero: A Part of the First Draft of A Portrait of the Artist as a YoungMan (New Directions, New york, 1944), 211.

16 Richard Ellman,James Joyce (New york, 1959), 353.

17 Joce,A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), in The Modern Tradition, 140.


26/42


Stevens was thinking of Joce when he said of the outh as a virile poet that he livesa life apart from politics . . . in a kind of radiant and productive atmosphere, assurel he was thinking of Joce when he titled his essa.18

Perhaps we can sa, then, that artists or poets are men and women who pa

attention, as the more usual run of our kind do not or cannot. Having come into a dalitworld, poets will be impelled to tell others what the have seen, in a language moreor less impassioned. The ma speak of a revelation alwas at hand, an annunciationor an epiphan, a vision of things as the are. And et their audience continues onits somnambulistic wa and will be all too apt to jeer. In the marketplace it is the

poetwhoisnamedthedreamer,andhisrealizedparticularstheproductionsofanoverheated fanc. The essences which the precisionist poet lovingl delineates will

be called, to use Santaanas language, mere ghosts that someone sas he has seenin the dark.19 To all these uncritical realists Santaana replies, these ghosts are the

onlyrealitiesweeveractuallycannd:anditisratherthethought-castlesofscienceand the dramatic vistas of histor that, for instant experience, are ghostl and merelimagined.20

Why does the obvious escape everones notice? Idealists have alwas ponderedthe question of mens blindness to what lies nearest to them, and have soughtthrough metaphor to characterize it.We live in a cave, dimly lit, seeing onlyshadows, ignoring the light which is their cause. A veil, the veil of Maa it ma be, isinterposed between ourselves and realit. At our birth sand was thrown in our ees,and fallen man sees imperfectl the sharp edges and colors of the creation. But such

fablesasthesecharacterizeaconditionanddonotexplainit.TheyoungSantayana,in the late 1890s, arrived at an explanation while attempting to demark the terrain ofpoetr as distinct from that of prose. For purposes I hope to show, I want to quote atsome length from that essa, The Elements and Function of Poetr:

[I]n its primar substance and texture poetr is more philosophical than prose becauseit is nearer to our immediate experience. Poetr breaks up the trite conceptionsdesignated b current words into the sensuous qualities out of which those conceptionswere originall put together. We name what we conceive and believe in, not what wesee; things, not images; souls, not voices and silhouettes. This naming . . . subservesthe uses of life; in order to thread our wa through the labrinth of objects whichassault us, we must make a great selection in our sensuous experience; half of whatweseeandhearwemustpassoverasinsignicant,whilewepieceouttheotherhalfwithsuchanidealcomplementasisnecessarytoturnitintoaxedandwell-orderedconception of the world. This labour of perception and understanding, this spellingof the material meaning of experience is enshrined in our work-a-da language andideas; ideas which are . . . prosaic because the are made economicall, b abstraction,and for use. . . .

[But] the poet retains b nature the innocence of the ee, or recovers it easil. . . .

18 Stevens,Necessary Angel, 57.

19 Santaana,Apologia, 500.

20 Santaana, On the Unit of M Earlier and Later Philosoph, Preface to Volume VII ofTheWorks of George Santayana,Triton Edition (New york: Charles Scribners Sons, 1936), xiii.


27/42


The fulness and sensuousness of [the poets] effusions bring them nearer to ouractual perceptions than common discourse could come; et the ma easil seemremote, overloaded, and obscure to those accustomed . . . never to be interruptedin the algebraic rapidit of their thinking b a moments pause and examination ofheart, nor ever to plunge for a moment into that torrent of sensation and imager over

which the bridge of prosaic associations habituall carries us safe and dr to someconventional act.21

Santaana, in arguing here the primac in experience of the immediate datum,sees our obliviousness to it as a function and consequence of forward intent, theneed of the practical intellect to read its data as signs of the next and of the removed.In this earl passage lie the seeds of a hundred later growths in Santaanas mature

philosoph. The mental images of which he speaks in the same paragraph willelsewhere be called essences, and he will understand essences as the fundamentalterms of all awareness the sensible primitives of the poet but also the conceptualprimitivesof thephilosopher.Hisearlyplatonism,rened,willbecomearadicalnominalism. The workings of practical intellect will be called in the later philosophanimal faith, and while animal faith ma blind us to the obvious and prevent ourunderstanding of poets, he sees it as instinctive. It is the ground of what properlshould be called knowledge, and a name for the onl belief we ma call inevitable

the belief in existing things which outrun all presence to thought or dream. Inthose directions, of course, lie his chastened pragmatism and his materialism.

ThereectionsoftheyoungSantayanainthe1890s,reectionshonoringtheseizableandthedenite,testifytothegreatinuenceofWilliamJamesinshapingthe philosoph of his student. Of course, the later Santaana would move awafrom the later James, but the ounger James, like his brother Henr an artist uponwhom nothing was lost, was acknowledged master to the oung Santaana. Iimbibed from the spirit and background of his teaching . . . , the Spaniard hastestied, a sense for the immediate: for the unadulterated, unexplained, instantfact of experience . . . alwas momentar and self-warranted. He learned fromJames, he said, A mans life or soul borrowed its realit and imputed wholenessfrom the intrinsic actualit of its successive parts.22 Late in 1899, two months afterSantaana had submitted to Scribners his manuscript ofInterpretations of Poetryand Religion, a French philosopher whom James admired extravagantl, HenriBergson, was publishing in theRevue de Paristhereectionsthatwouldbecomehis essa on laughter. Bergsons observations there on Art and Realit are sostrikingl consonant with Santaanas that the two oung men would seem to havedrawn their insights from the same text.

It is Bergsons contention that an alwas original music plas in our heads butwe do not hear it a metaphor Santaana would himself use later in speaking ofessences. The individuality of things or of beings escapes us, sas Bergson. Andwh? Wh is a veil interposed between ourselves and realit? a veil that is

21 Santaana, The Elements and Function of Poetr, inInterpretations of Poetry and Religion,Volume III ofThe Works of George Santayana Critical Edition (Cambridge and London: TheMIT Press, 1989), 15556.

22 Santaana, A General Confession, in The Philosophy of George Santayana, ed. PaulArthur Schilpp, 15.


28/42


dense and opaque for the common herd, thin, almost transparent, for the artistand poet? Because, he sas, life demands that we grasp things in their relations toour own needs. Life is action. Life implies the acceptance onl of the utilitarian sideof things in order to respond to them b appropriate reactions: all other impressions

must be dimmed or else reach us vague and blurred. Also serving to conceal theobject, in Bergsons view, are words: we do not see the actual things themselves;inmostcasesweconneourselvestoreadingthelabelsafxedtothem.Theartistwho would reveal the forms of things will be free of urgencies. His is an innateand speciall localised disinterestedness of sense or consciousness which revealsitself b a virginal manner, so to speak, of seeing, hearing, or thinking. To theadequate artist is given the power, Bergson sas, to perceive all things in theirnative purit: the forms, colours, sounds of the phsical world as well as the subtlestmovements of the inner life.23 Thus spake the man who would become master to

that formidable connoisseur of essences, Marcel Proust.Let me note in passing that Santaana would in time react with vehementprotests, as ou know, against Bergsons developed philosoph. It encouragedan aesthetic which was, in Santaanas words, too passive, too feminine. Nor didSantaana incline to anti-intellectualism. Bergson was, in his ees, all too read tomake matter the pack of which ideas are the cards.24 That, too, was the source ofhis disma with the later James: the world seemed to vanish without remainder intoour collective experience of it.

Thinking in these was of the whatness of things, of the absolutel individual

character of each moment or rather, of what each moment contains, thinkingof things as the come to us in our quiet times, we are confronted b the loominggureofSchopenhauer.Schopenhauerpresideswheneverwetalkofdetachmentfrom life or a supreme disinterestedness as a condition of clear vision. The Idea,the eternal form of a thing, he declares, will be known onl on condition that wesuspend the will, abstain from the anxious quest for understanding, and refuse to begoverned b the concepts of abstract reason. Raised up b the power of the mind,Schopenhauer sas, we relinquish the ordinar wa of considering things, and ceasetofollowundertheguidanceoftheformsoftheprincipleofsufcientreasonmerely

[the]relations[ofthings]tooneanother,whosenalgoalisalwaystherelationtoour own will. Thus, he continues, we no longer consider the where, the when,the wh, and the whither in things, but simpl and solel the what. . . . [We] devotethe whole power of our mind to perception, sink ourselves completel therein,andletourwholeconsciousnessbelledbythecalmcontemplationofthenaturalobject actuall present, whether it be a landscape, a tree, a rock, a crag. . . . We loseourselves entirel in this object, . . . [which] at one stroke becomes theIdea of itsspecies.25

23 Henri Bergson, Laughter, tr. Brereton and Rothwell (1911), inModern Continental LiteraryCriticism, ed. O. B. Hardison, Jr. (New york: Appleton-Centur Crofts, 1962), 19093.

24 Santaana to the writer, letter of 1 March 1949. Published in The Letters of George Santayana:Book Eight, 19481952,ed.WilliamHolzberger(Cambridge,MA:MITPress,2008),148.

25 Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819), Volume I, tr. E. F. J. Pane(New york: Dover Publications, 1969), 17879.


29/42


We know from long experience that such observations as these ofSchopenhauer, of Santaana, of Bergson will set the stage for philosophic war.Epistemologicall the are dualist, asserting two levels of awareness, two modesof consciousness, two was of knowing. The world that lies before the ees of the

poet and the world confronting the utilitarian simpl have a different look. It is oneworld and et two. The poet or poet-philosopher inevitabl feels even thoughhe ma insist on the equal legitimac, the equal necessit of the two perspectives that in penetrating to the essences of things he has come home to his native place,recognizedforthersttime.Itis,afterall,notsimplyperceptionthepoethonors,butpureperception.Theadequateobjecticationoftheworldthroughthediscernmentof the essences it embodies will be called, irresistibl, a higher or a deeper mode ofthe intelligence, an awakening, a raising up of the mind, a proof of its transcendentalstatus and powers. And et how shall the naive realist, the commoner, the positivist,

the literalists of science or religion, how shall all those who are blind to the worldas Idea, be made to see?Schopenhauer, despite his sustained, impassioned reasonings, despaired of

converting the multitudes, those condemned in advance to the tragic workings ofprivate interest and, as it were, private perception. So also the impassioned WilliamBlake dismissed with contempt the generalit of men the idiots, as he calledthem so little able to transmute corporeal appearance into spiritual presence.

Now Santaana might have gone to Blake as easil as to Proust to report a languagelikehisownincharacterizingessences.Blakecallsthemeternalidentities,another

name for all created things when seen with the ee of Blakes man of imagination,the burning ee which renders the opaque transparent: a kind of perception hecalls spiritual sensation. To his eternal identities Blake opposes the material worldofgeneration andux, theniteand temporal. ThisWorld of Imagination, inradicalcontrast,is,hesays,Innite&Eternal.Blakesidentities,likeSantayanasessences, are not abstract; each is perfectl individual. The Oak dies as well as theLettuce, Blake sas, but Its Eternal Image & Individualit never dies. And howver close to Santaana, how close to Proust, is Blake in the feeling of liberationwhich attends the visitations of essence: If, Blake writes, the Spectator could

Enter into these Images . . . , could make a Friend & Companion of one of theseImages of wonder, which alwas intreats him to leave mortal things . . . , then hewould arise from his Grave, . . . and then he would be happ. General Knowledgeis Remote Knowledge; it is in Particulars that Wisdom consists & Happiness too.26

A centur before Blake, that great forerunner of the Romantics, George Berkele,sought to bring men to their senses, back to sensation. Under the banner of actuall

perceived particulars, Berkele went to war against abstractions and general names.Thoseaccustomedtotrafcinthemmaterialists,skeptics,thewholebandofminute philosophers seemed to Berkele to have lost the use of what he called

their visive facult. Onl b a direct and immediate seeing could men recover theirpower to apprehend things in their native forms.27 Its not to m present purpose to

26William Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgment (1810), in The Complete Writings of WilliamBlake, ed. G. Kenes (New york: Random House, 1957), 605, 611.

27 George Berkele, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713), inBerkeley (Newyork: Charles Scribners Sons, 1929), 342.


30/42


mark the fundamental was in which Santaana departs from Berkele; I would notehere onl that in the Bishops multitudinous, separate, and inert ideas of sensation weencounter once more the insubstantial particulars of the world immediatel at hand,images become images of wonder. Philonous best advice to the unregenerate Hlas

ishisadmonition,Look!lookattheelds,thewoods,theriver.Anysceneofnature, an object in nature, when apprehended b a mind which has come to restin the immediate and proper objects of sight, will ield the liberating assurancethat alltheuniverseisjustsuchanapparitionanindenitelyextensibleseriesof

pictures in the imagination.Pragmatists have found in Berkele a forerunner of pragmatism, and for good

reason. But Santaana did not fail to discern the oung enthusiast, the lric poet andPlatonist, at the center of this philosoph. Here is Santaanas judgment:

Berkele gloriousl detached the idea, the pure phenomenon, from the irrelevant

strains of presumption and idolatr with which animal life originall encumbers it.The stupid world calls this an act of abstraction; but Berkele, who hated abstractions,knew it to be an act of realisation. Realisation, indeed, simpl of the obvious, and ofthe idealit and unsubstantialit of the obvious. He rose at once to a radical insightwhich it had taken all the experience and discipline of Indian gmnosophists toreach. . . . When Berkele denied the existence of matter, he felt not the unrealit

but the intense realit of experience, enjoing it as a vast web of heavenl music,perfectl composed and performed, with its recurrent phrases coming in at the rightplaces. . . . The gladness of [the world] came of its vividness as an experience and itsunrealit as a power.28

To speak trul, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not seethe sun.29 Those are Waldo Emersons words. Despite that skeptical judgment,Emerson held fast to the faith that Americas new democrats might et be made tosee the things around them. Entering his peaceable kingdom, we have left behind thethunder and lightning in the atmospheres of Blake and Schopenhauer; the clementman who speaks to us would persuade us gentl that we, too, have genius enoughtoalchemizethebasemetalsofappearance.Nowriter,I think,hassearchedwithan energ and ingenuit greater than Emersons for the apposite word which mightconve the exaltation felt when the dark engine of nature opens itself to mind. Andits not surprising that Santaana should sa that if all American philosoph wereconsigned to oblivion, Emersons should be the last to go.30

Emersons bimodal theor distinguishes two levels of apprehension: that ofthe Understanding and that of the Reason. It is Reason which brings us face toface with nature. It is Reason which transfers nature into mind b leading us upinto the presence of the ideas, or what Emerson also terms immortal necessaruncreated natures. In their luminous presence we are transported out of the districtof change.31 Although these eternal natures lie at our doorstep, the will now be

28 Santaana, Bishop Berkele, in Volume VII of The Works of George Santayana (TritonEdition), 205.

29 Emerson,Nature, in Selections, 23. Italics mine.

30 Santaana, comment to the writer, Jul 1948.

31 Emerson,Nature, in Selections, 4647.


31/42


perceived b a jaded ee. Like the aging Matisse, explaining his need to go onpainting, we must recover again and again our naivet in the presence of things.

Paradoxicall, for language, this coming closer to things involves a kind ofestrangement from them a distancing which renders the familiar unfamiliar.

The world then stands before us as a vivid dream, a spectacle, a puppet-show. Thereal or rather, what we usedto call the real has become unreal. The worldweveknownsolid,xed,refractory,impenetrablebecomesallsurface;itis all outside, and has no inside. Emerson, whose words and metaphors I have justbeenusing,insistsitsnotsodifculttocomeintothespiritsinheritanceinthisway,toseetheworldasphenomenal.Achangeofphysicalpositionsufcestogivethehintofapossibletransguration:lookattheworldupsidedownbetweenyourlegs!Theoldthenseemsnew;thexedisunxed;theworldisputaoatandacquiresapictorialair.Oranunaccustomedcarriageridewillsufcetoworkthemagic:A

man who seldom rides, sas Emerson, needs onl to get into a coach and traversehis own town, to turn the street into a puppet-show. The men, the women, talking,running,bartering,ghting,theearnestmechanic,thelounger, thebeggar,theboys, thedogsareunrealized[aremadeunreal]atonce,and,whollydetachedfrom all relation to the observer [are] seen as apparent, not substantial beings.32

At some level of the psche of George Santaana, Emersons man-in-a-carriage was not forgotten. A centur after the appearance of Emersons Nature,when Santaana tried his own hand at leading his readers toward the discoverof essences, the carriage reappears. In the passage before me, Santaana seeks to

establish the position that the clearest and purest realit is formal and ideal.He has begun to chart the third of the possible roads to essence, the aesthetic orcontemplative road weve been travelling for the past hour. To show us that road,to suggest the experience of having his thought absorbed in the image and arrestedthere, Santaana invokes a cart: As I was jogging to market in m village cart,he writes, beaut has burst upon me and the reins have dropped from m hands. Iam transported, in a certain measure, into a state of trance. I see with extraordinarclearness, et what I see seems strange and wonderful, because I no longer look inorder to understand, but onl in order to see. I have lost m preoccupation with fact,

and am contemplating an essence.33

These words are a part of Chapter One of The Realm of Essence, a chapterwhich Santaana read aloud in manuscript to an Oxford philosophical club in1923, four ears before the books appearance. In the presence of that knowing,indocile audience he found no smpath in the air . . . everbod, he reported,seemedatsea,andcaughtatphrasesortriesthatstruckthemasodd.34 That wasa portent, although b mid-centur Santaana would be met with more than blankincomprehension: a certain irritabilit and hostilit toward the idea of essenceswas manifest in the critical essas gathered together for the Librar of Living

Philosophers volume devoted to his work. And that, too, was a portent of much thatwould follow in the often perplexed criticism of our own time.

32 Ibid., 43.

33 Santaana,Realms of Being, 67.

34 Santaana, Persons and Places, Volume I of The Works of George Santayana, CriticalEdition (Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press, 1986), 521.


32/42


Perhaps we are all poets in the beginning and poets at the end. In the middlepassages we are, or we sa we are, carring out the necessar business of the world.But from the poets vantage, our business has the look of a distraction, a sad waste oftime. In all ages there have been poets and philosophers who would, instead, sustain

lifelong meditations on things under the aspect of their essences. From the Indiansand Plato to the neo-Platonists and scholastics, to the transcendentalists, Romantics,and Smbolists, to the phenomenologists and poets of our own time, we can tracethe tradition. It is a tradition that springs from the perennial discernment that the realis constituted b the ideal whether we give those constituents in their purest formthe name of essences, Ideas, eternal identities, immortal natures, quiddities, nativeforms, pure phenomena, or eternal objects. So we are returned to the question: WhsomuchpuzzlementandmisapprehensionofSantayanasmeaning?

Santaana himself supplies a man-sided answer, of course, in his indictments

of modern philosoph as subjectivistic and moralistic in its muddle-headedconation,forexample,ofideaasmentaleventandideaasobjectivecontent,ortheconationofpureessenceandessenceassign,confusionswhichunderpinthenotionthat our ideas are the objects of knowledge. These discriminations were correctiveswhich Santaana the Platonist would urge upon empiricists who seemed ignorantof Platonism or could not feel its force. But his special genius la in his power todisentangle the theor of essence from the unnecessar dogmas, the overbeliefs, of

poets and philosophers inspired b it. Extravagant knowledge claims, extravaganttruth claims have too often followed in the wake of a reversion to immediate

experience: msticism or solipsism ma follow, or a monistic metaphsics groundedin the pathetic fallac, or an irrational poetr of sensation and impulse.35 Liftingthe Ideas out of their customar historical contexts in theological and metaphsicalassertion and debate, and out of their contexts in modern subjectivist aesthetics,Santaana asked us to see that the still are there, shining luminousl, not in heaven

but here, in the back garden, waiting for notice. Essences are not agents or powers;the are not things or existences; the are not abstractions or universals; nor do thespeakofabenecentprimalCauseofcreation.

Here, I think, we arrive at an explanation for man of the miscomprehensions of

Santaanas critics. The have not been able to free themselves, as Santaana freedhimself, from the long historical associations and the accretions of belief clingingstill to the idea of essences. Thus man a commentator, venturing a leap momentousfor both conscience and for criticism, has ascribed confusion in himself to confusionin the philosopher.

No one needs reall to insist that essences are alive and well and in our midst.Men and women everwhere will go on, as Wallace Stevens sas, stepping barefootinto realit. A reminder of this came to me in an issue ofThe New Yorkermagazine.CynthiaOzickreectsthereonthefeelofthepassageoftimeforawomaninher

sixties. Whatever signals of her redundanc or of superannuation come to herfrom the outside world, she knows that within her are certain fastnesses imperviousto time:

35 George Santaana,Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, Critical Edition (Cambridge, MA,and London: The MIT Press, 1989), 161.


33/42

Itisnotsomuchaxityofselfasitisofcertainexactnesses,neitherlostnorforgotten:a phrase, a scene, a voice, a moment. These exactnesses do not count as memor, andeven more surel escape the net of nostalgia or memoir. The are platonic enclosures,or islands, independent of time, though not of place; in short, the irrevocabl are.Nothingcansnuffthem.Theyarenot likecandleames,liabletowaverorsputter,

and not like windows or looking glasses, which streak or cloud. The have the qualitofclearphotographs,orofstonefriezes,orofthelivingeyesinancientportraits.Theyare not subject to erasure or dimming.36

CouldtherebeaclearerconrmationthanthesewordssupplyofSantayanasbelief that poets and artists would understand him?

RICHARD C. LyON

36CynthiaOzick,AlfredChestersWig,The New Yorkermagazine,30March1992,79.


34/42

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CHECKLIST

TWENTY-EIGHTH UPDATE

The items below will supplement the references given in George Santayana: ABibliographical Checklist, 18801980 (Bowling Green: Philosoph DocumentationCenter, 1982) prepared b Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. and John Jones. These referencesare divided into primar and secondar sources.

overheard in seville.30.2012

Documents