{"id":884,"date":"2009-08-13T13:15:56","date_gmt":"2009-08-13T13:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=884"},"modified":"2009-08-13T13:15:56","modified_gmt":"2009-08-13T13:15:56","slug":"recent-reading-3-santayana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/recent-reading-3-santayana\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent reading 3: Santayana"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Santayana
\nI’ve just read the memoirs of philosopher George Santayana, as mentioned in this earlier post<\/a>.\u00a0 They were published in three volumes, being written during and just after WW\u00a0II.
\nThe personal aspects of these memoirs are fascinating, and very enjoyable.\u00a0\u00a0 Santayana seems to have known everybody, or if not, he was related to them.\u00a0 He had two families – one via his mother and father, Spanish colons<\/em> in the Philippines, and one via his mother’s first husband and their children, American from Boston, not quite Brahmins but\u00a0society people.\u00a0 The two families, at least from\u00a0this account, were Faulkneresque in their eccentricities, entanglements\u00a0and bedevilments.\u00a0 Santayana’s writing is as smooth as a gimlet and the reader is carried along as if reading a Doris Lessing novel.\u00a0 No wonder the one novel he wrote – about his family and friends (The Last Puritan<\/em>) –\u00a0was such a financial success.
\nAt least the first volume of his memoirs was smuggled out of Italy (where Santayana was living), allegedly with assistance from the Vatican’s international network, and published during the war.\u00a0\u00a0 It is therefore not surprising that it makes no mention, even allusively, to current political events.\u00a0 Ditto the second volume.\u00a0 I was surprised that even the third volume makes no real mention of the war, although it does contain a section near the end which seems to present Santayana’s political positions, although in an indirect and abstract way.\u00a0\u00a0 I wonder if the reticence was due to the extremity of his political beliefs.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Having been able to retire anywhere, he chose Rome and stayed there through the Mussolini years.\u00a0\u00a0 He also barely mentions the Spanish civil war in his memoirs, but perhaps this was still too close, with the possibility of his family being affected by his writing.\u00a0\u00a0 From the few comments he makes on matters political it is apparent he was a conservative, although he gives no good reasons for this.\u00a0\u00a0 (Nor could he.)
\nI can make no sense of Santayana’s\u00a0writing in philosophy.\u00a0\u00a0 His writing typically consists of a sequence of abstract assertions and generalizations, none of which is supported by evidence or even argument. \u00a0Against each one I cavil and wish to argue the case, or at least to have\u00a0 the pleasure of being the recipient of a case in support;\u00a0 since he provides no justification for these assertions, argument-against them is difficult, and there are so many, it is tiring.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps this style was typical of the philosophy of his day.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I find that every academic discipline takes some significant statements or assumptions for granted, and that people in the discipline expend most their intellectual heft arguing over the trivial remainder.\u00a0 People outside the discipline wonder how anyone could argue about the trivialities while ignoring the big issues assumed or implied at the start.
\nFor the record, I’ll include here some quotations which struck me:<\/p>\n

With parents evidently Catalans of the Catalonians how did my mother come to be born in Glasgow, and how did she ever meet a Bostonian named Sturgis?\u00a0 These facts, taken separately, were accidents of travel, or rather of exile and of Colonial life; but accidents are accidents only to ignorance; in reality all physical events flow out of one another by a continuous intertwined derivation;” (page 8, Santayana 1944)
\nCatholicism is the most human of religions, if taken humanly:\u00a0 it is paganism spiritually transformed and made metaphysical. It corresponds most adequately to the various exigencies of moral life, with just the needed dose of wisdom, sublimity, and illusion.” (1944, p. 98)
\nEven what we still think we remember may almost become the act of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to the interests of the present.\u00a0 This, when it is not intentional or dishonest, involves no deception. Things truly wear those aspects to one another.\u00a0\u00a0 A point of view and a special lighting are not distortions.\u00a0 They are conditions of vision, and spirit can see nothing not focused in some living eye.” (1944, p. 155)
\nIt is or it was usual, especially in America, to regard the polity of which you happen to approve as sure to be presently established everywhere and to prevail for ever after.” (1947, p. 138)
\nUnattached academic obscurity is rather a blessed condition, when it doesn’t breed pedantry, envy or ill-nature.” (1953, p. 103)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

References:<\/em>
\nGeorge Santayana [1935]:\u00a0 The Last Puritan:\u00a0 A Memoir in the Form of a Novel<\/em>. (London, UK:\u00a0 Constable.)
\nGeorge Santayana [1944]:\u00a0 Persons and Places<\/em>. (London, UK:\u00a0 Constable.)
\nGeorge Santayana [1947]:\u00a0 The Middle Span<\/em>. (London, UK:\u00a0 Constable.)
\nGeorge Santayana [1953]:\u00a0 My Host the World<\/em>. (London, UK:\u00a0 The Cresset Press.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve just read the memoirs of philosopher George Santayana, as mentioned in this earlier post.\u00a0 They were published in three volumes, being written during and just after WW\u00a0II. The personal aspects of these memoirs are fascinating, and very enjoyable.\u00a0\u00a0 Santayana seems to have known everybody, or if not, he was related to them.\u00a0 He had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,35,70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-recent-reading","p1","y2009","m08","d13","h13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}