Overheard in Seville.8.1990

7/27/2019 Overheard in Seville.8.1990

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Overheard in Seville

bulletin o ftheSantayanaNo. 8Fall 1990


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OVERHEARD IN SEVILLE

Bullet inof t ikeSantuyana Society

N O . 8FALL 1990

T AB LE O F C O N T E N T S

David A . Dilworth

Nathan HomerAngus Kgrr-Ltmson

Morris GrossmanHenry S. I^evinson

Harold KirkerHerman J, Sa atkamp, Jr.Herman J . Sa atkamp, Jr .

iii

1

10141829353839

Table of ContentsAnnouncement of the1990 Annual MeetingThe Problem ofTheoretical Self-Reflexivityin Peirce and SantayanaSantayana's PeirceSubstrative MaterialismInterpreting InterpretationsWhat Good is Irony?Santayana in RomeThe Santayana EditionBibliographical ChecklistSeventh Update

Edited for th e Santayana Society by Angus Kerr-Lawson, Department of Pu re Mathematics, Universityof Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1, and by Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr., Department ofPhilosophy, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4237. All communications should besent to one of the editors. The bulletin will appear annually. It is formatted and composed fortypesetting with Waterloo Script and PostScript, and printed by Graphic Services, University ofWaterloo. It is published and distributed by the Department of Philosophy of Texas A&M University.


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A N N O U N C E M E N TThe Society's annual meeting will be held in conjunction with theDecember meetings of the American Philosophical Association (EasternDivision) in Boston, Massachusetts.

SANTAYANA SOCIETY1 9 9 0ANNUAL MEETING

Chair: PaulG.KtmizEmory University

Speaker : Richard LyonDean Emer i tusHampshi re Col lege"Oliver's Last Soli loquies"

Commentator: Angus Kerr~Lazu$onUniversity of Waterloo

Presentat ion of a brief update on theSantayana Edi t ion an d the upcom ing pu bl ica tionof the critical edit ion of Th e Last Puri tan:

Herma n J. Saatkamp, Jr.General Editor , Santayana Edit ion

7:30 -10:30 p .m. 28 Decem berHarvard Room

Boston Marriot t Hotel


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The P rob lem o fTheore t i ca l Self-Reflexivityin Pe i r ce and Santayana

PEIRCE'S THREE CATEGORIESHere is one more paper on Santayana. If my readers should smile, I smilealong with them . And I have thrown Peirce in for good me asure. The p leasureis doubled, and so is the work of interpretation. Santayana's philosophy,inimitably crafted, shines forth in many connected volumes. By contrast,Peirce's career-text incorporates a great diversity of scholarly interests butapp arently lacks a major, unifying work.The latter difficulty, I think, we can take in stride. Despite the manifacetednature of his writings, Peirce may have been the most original theorist in theannals of classical Am erican philosophy. A solid stud ent of Kant, Peirce knewthat philosophers exercise a legislative right, based on the human mind's ownconstructive po wer of thoug ht. He was self-conscious of his own speculativeachievem ent. "But I seem to myself," he wrote William James in 1902, "to bethe sole depositary of the completely developed system, which all hangstogether and cannot receive any proper presentation in fragments" (8.255),'Elsewhere he inveighed against certain "one-idea'd philosophies," and drewupon Kant to support his own construction of an architectonic classification ofthe sciences (6.7-25).In the final analysis, Peirce constituted a foundational theory, one of themo st original as well as systematic in the history of philosoph y. "Chance isFirst," he wrote, "Matter is Second, Evolution is Third" (6.32). Looking at lifephaneroscopically, he everywhere articulated a trinity of monadic, dyadic, andtriadic experiences (1.351; 7.528); of feelings (qualisigns), molitions, andhabits (8.303); of possibilities, events, and thoughts (1.431, 537); of theimmediate present, actual past, and generality of the future (1.343); oforiginality, obsistence, and transu asion (2.89); of presentness, struggle, an d law(5.41, 45, 59); of variety, uniformity, and passage from the first to the second(6.97); of tychasm, anancasm, and agapasm (6.302); of chance, logic, and love(L409). These "Kainopythagorean categories," as he called the m (7.528), formthe inner latticing of Peirce's thought, subtending its various specialarticulations.

A version of this paper was presented at the International Sesquicentennial Charles S. Peirceconference at Harvard University in S eptember of 1989,1 All Peirce references are to Collected Papers of Charlm Sanders Peirce, vols, 1-6, ed . by CharlesHartshorne and Paul Weiss, and vols, 7-8, ed. by Arthur W. Burks (Cambridge: The Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press, 1931-58).


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2 OVERHEA RD IN SEVILLEImplicit in Peirce's manifold formulations of the growth of mind is the

suggestion that it is the world's enduring t ransmiss ions of thought that providethe resource s of o ur pre sent civil ization. Au then tic intellectua l activity does n otbreak with the achiev em ents of the past. Rath er, we repossess the quali tativegenerali t ies of the natural orders and the human tradit ions in our activeintellection of the possibilities of contemporary life.

He re I would unde rscore the point - perh aps m ore expl ic i tly than Peircehimself does - that we repossess the quali tat ive perceptions of the tradit ionsthrough the self-developing forms of our sciences and arts. We also do so byreenacting the major philosophical and religious theories in modern forms.Most of the contemporary s tyles , including those with a rap about process andnovelty, are nothing new; and they s t i l l presuppose the substantive his tory ofphilosophy.

The last cluster of ideas appears to have been always near but never quiteon the tip of Peirce's pe n. For in the ir peda gogic al practices the classicalAmerican Pragmat is ts , Peirce included, tended to promote the new anddisparage the old. To som e exten t, they extra pola ted th eir melioris t ic - or inPeirce\s word, mel lonist ic - doc tr ines f rom the expe r ime ntal m eth od s andmethodologies of the special sciences . Santayana, to the contrary, was always"in Boston but not of it"; almost l ike Confucius , he sought to r ean imate the o ldin order to know the new. An d he functio ned as a tre nc ha nt crit ic both of theassumptions of the "modern" special sciences and of what he called the"youthful," pro testa nt en thusiasm s of his Am erican p hiloso phic al co lleagues.Indeed, among professional philosophers , Santayana may go down as havingbeen the outs tanding cri t ic of "modernity" in the twentieth-century. 2

To be sure, in formulating his Pragmaticism Peirce dis tanced himself fromthe exis tential and voluntaristic tend enc ies of Ja m es ' Pragm atism - a nd f inallydiverged from those of Dewey an d Me ad as well . But, in the ma in, P eirceconspicuously took his epis tem ic po int of de pa rtu re from the objective a ndopen-ended or ienta t ions and methods of the logical , mathemat ical , andphysical sciences. T hi s is w ha t his essays on how to m ak e o u r idea s clear, on thescientif ic att i tude and fall ibil ism, on some consequences of four incapacit ies ,and on abduct ion and induct ion , are about .Peirce's theory of signs, which undergirds his various classifications of thesciences, can also be cited in this reg ard. I t too was th e pr od uc t of Peirce 'slaboratory-minded observations and synoptic analyses of the perspectives andmethods of the special sciences . His broader "cosmogonic phi losophy" r ingsfur ther general iza t ions on th is or ienta t ion . Th us by pr ivi leging an ope n-en ded ,exper imen ta l perspective Peirce developed what he called "a social theory ofreali ty" which , by tran sce nd ing every ma n's private idiosyncracy, is destin ed to

' - .See G e or ge Sa n ta ya na, Character and Opinion hi the United Slates (New York: C harles Scribner'sSons, 1921); and The Gentee l Tradi t ion a t Bay , "Analysis of Modernity, '" ( L ondon: A dc lph i , 1932 ;reprinted by Haskell House Publishers, Ltd. , Brooklyn, N.Y., 1977, 5-17): "For my part , though a loverof antiquity,"! should cer ta inly congra tula te myself on l iving am on g the mo dern s , if the mo dern s wereonh mo dern e no ug h, and dare d to face na ture wi th an unpre jud iced m ind an d a c lear pu rpo se" (p .lit)'.


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PEIR CE AND SANTAYANA 3appear " in the long run ."

But the que stion on e can raise he re is wh ethe r Peirce fully acc ou nte d forhis own ph ilosophically legis lative text in that idiom. Can we u nd ers tan dPeirc e 's radical arc hitec tonic of the thre e categories by any sociology ofkno wle dge? Is it to be tested - confirmed or refuted - by some special scientificcommunity employing fall ibil is t ic hypotheses? Rather, Peirce ' s fundamentalideas now loom large as enduring resources for scholarship and philosophicalspec ulatio n. I t has , an d I thin k, will withstand the test of time as precisely thesemanticaily complete, nomothetic system of thinking that i t is .

Pei rce 's relation to Hegel can be clarif ied in this con text. He gel 'scontr ibution, Peirce asserted, consis ts in his concept of generali ty or continuity,"the very idea the mathematicians and physicis ts have been chiefly engaged infollowing out for three centuries" (1.41-42). While rejecting Hegel 's dialecticalmethod, Peirce even opined that the one intell igible theory of the universe isthat of objective idealism, which envisions a progressively mental creation(6.25; 1.362, 615). In this kind of theoretical assert ion Peirce placed his owntext well beyond the fallibilistic criterion he laid upon the special sciences.

When Peirce came to name his own philosophy, he said that Tychism, orFirs tness , is subsidiary to continuity, or Thirdness , and thus he called i tSynechism . T h e gove rning assum ption of this doc tr ine is wha t he called "thepr incip le of Habi t , " or "the self-development of Reason," or again, "thought asan active force in the world" (1.337, 340, 348). The principle of habit as theuniv erse 's own gene ralizing ten denc y, unde rgird s his various form ulations ofth e spre ad , plasticity, an d insistency of ideas, which a re manife station s ofevolution in the widest sense (1.350, 409, 621, 140; 6.204, 289). Synechisticevolution accounts for the very possibil i ty of abduction, hypothesis-making, orretroductive reasoning rooted in the connaturali ty of mind and universe (1.80;6.10; 1.81; 5.172; 7.46).

Now, although to my knowledge Santayana did not explicit ly take upPeir ce 's theory, m y sense is tha t he would have subjected i t to the sam e kinds oftrenchant cri t iques of empiricis t ic and idealis t ic theories he laid upon theGerman phi losophers , and in o ther respects upon such contemporar ies asJames, Royce, Dewey, Russell , and Whitehead, among others . What I do knowon th is subject occurs in a le t ter Santayana penned f rom Rome, on December2 3 , 1 9 2 6 .

I saw Peirce only once, at a lecture after a dinner at Wm, Jam es's. He had a re dnose, a straggled grey beard, and an evening coat that seemed lopsided and thirtyyears old. As to his life, save that it was retired and, they say, bibulous, I knownothing; but if you can enlighten me, I shall not be incurious. As a philosoph erPeirce has come late to be recognized, but his quality is unmistakably good, farbetter logically than Wm. James's, and anything speculative from his pen would bewelcomed, I think, by the learned public.3

3 The Letters o f George S a n t a y a n a , ed . with introduction and commentary by Daniel Cory (New York:Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955), p. 224.


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4 OVERH EARD IN SEVILLEContemporary scholars wi l l not be incur ious to learn more about the mutualperceptions of Peirce and Santayana.4 Very germ ane to such an un der s tan din gwould be these two philosophers* lack of awareness of each other 's potentials tature. Ne ithe r ph iloso phe r, however, s taked the legis lative claim of his text inthe f lux of exis tential imp ressions.

For ou r purpo ses he re , however, I sugges t that th e laboratory-minde d,pha nero scop icai Peirce may have l imited his own speculative enter pri se. HisPragmaticism is set within a foundational theory, framed in the complexlatticings of the th re e catego ries. But it is no t optimally self-reflective in th esense that it fails explicitly to define its own act and its degree of philosophicalgenerali ty. Peirce 's con cep t of generali ty or contin uity i tself rem ains vaguelyopen -end ed, when the sense-const i tu t ing param eters of h is own theory are not .

Any phi losophy self-referentially insti tutes a foundational discourse onnatural and human kinds of being, or knowing, and on acting in the world.Peirce, as every authentic philosopher, consti tutes a f inal framework - aworldframe - in which all the actual and potential problems of philosophy andthe special sciences and arts are at least implicitly ad dr ess ed . In th at sense histheory represents some degree of phi losophical mind a t some"definitive d e g r e eof generali ty. Bu t at the same time, i t takes i ts plac e in th e wider, m or esubstantive history of philosophy.

Peirce's theory of the three categories provides a powerful model for suchan exercise in phi losophical self-reflexivity and comparativity aris ing out of thehistory of philosop hy. H e even explicitly en do rse d th e nom ot he tic andarchitecto nic cha racters of philosophy defined by Kan t. How ever, in train ingand pract ice h is a t tent ion was drawn to the h is tory an d p roc edu res of thespecial sciences; and he generalized the pragmaticist perspective of his textfrom that narro we r vantage poi nt . Pragma tis ts of various s tr ipes have followedPeirce 's lead, wavering between the two poles .

SANTAYANA'S THEOREHCAL A C T

Now Santayana, we observed, produced another wor ld-c lass phi losophy.His career-text may rank with the most completely developed systems in theanna ls of thou gh t. I refer to the quantity and quali ty of his cor pu s of writ ings.I refer especially to his systematic articulation of basic categories in the fourvolumes of his Realms of Being, with their introductory exposit ion in Scepticismami A riimal Fai th .

Santayana, we already note d, was no t a Pragm atis t . Ph iloso phe rs , he insists,begin in medias res. The fragile life of the philosophical spirit, together with allthe other aspirations of scientific and literary psychology, perpetually perishesin the same mulat to rerum.

Th us Santayana muses that if ever a phi losoph er drea m s he has fa thom edthis thin g before him called the world - still less tha t he c an ch an ge it - it is ju st

1 See Nathan I louser's excerpted paper . "Santayana's Peirce," which follows immediately below.


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PEIR CE AN D SANTAYANA 5tha t the wan d of his intuit io n is t ickling his nose. Intuit ion chea ts him evenwhile enr ich ing h im . M oth er N atu re, who whispers all these tales in his ear , "islau gh ing at him an d fondlin g h im at the same time." Philosoph y at its best is akind of kindly f iction. T h e dre am s M othe r Na ture inspires may be very mu chto the philosopher's mind, but still, in the final analysis, "the lies she invents forhis benef i t are h er poe t ic mas terp iece* an d no t h is .5

In many other places Santayana analogises the l ife of the mind to anevenin g a t the th eat re . H e wri tes , for example:

I like the theatre, not because I cannot perceive that the play is a fiction, butbecause I do perceive it; if I thought the thing a fact, I should detest it; anxietywould rob me of all my imaginative pleasu re. Even as it is, I often wish the spectaclewere less barbarous; but I am no t angry because each scene does no t last for ever,an d is likely to b e followed by a thousand o thers which I shall not witness. Such isthe natu re of endless comedy, and of experience. (SAF 53)While for Santayana this is true of experience in general , i t has a specialappl icat ion in unde rs tan din g the s ta tus of phi losophical expe r ience . T heplayful and godlike minds of philosophers , he says, only "make a play-world forthemselves which is g lor ious to dominate , much as o ther men of genius ,prolonging the masterfulness of childhood, continue to play at this or at that intheir poli t ics and religion" (SAF 103).

In Santayana's own well-wrought scenario, the f l ights of philosophicalspeculation only reach a fantastic palace of Sleepy Beauty, or some otherLim bo of shady charac ters . Th is is because th e roots of spir i t are in m atte r .However , there are no reasons for mat ter in mat ter itself. A philo sop hic faith,l ike all ot he r form s of anim al faith, is no t fou nde d on reaso n bu t p recip itatedin physical actio n. Essences themselves, the infinite set of the m , are dr eam -lights kin dle d by fancy (SAF 86 ). Like all the o th er te rm s in o u r literarypsychologies , they do not need to be previously resident either in the objects ofanimal act ion or in the organs of sense.

To Santayana, therefore , both in the mater ia l rmiario rerum and in the l ightof eternity all the past , present, and future systems of thought are equally airyand ee r ie - m ere w inds o f doc t r ine . Th a t is why he begins Scepticism a n d A n i m a lFai th with the Santayanic verse: "Here is on e mo re system of philo soph y" (SAFv). H e is rem ain ing tru e to the sense-consti tuting functions of his own th eoryof the world.

F rom Three Philosophical Poets (1910) to Th e Realm of Mat ter (1930) and o therla te r works Santayana's writ ings consti tute a series of holograms. 6 A closerea di ng of these w orks will reveal the consis tency with which h e frameskaleidoscopic variations on the former work's symbolic representations of the

5 See page 96 of George Santayana, Scepticism and An imal Fa i th (New York; Dover Pu blication ,1955) : abbrevia ted h ere as SAF.

6 G e or ge Sa n ta yana , Three Philosophical Poets (Garden City: Doubleday and Co. , 1953: abbrevia tedas TPP ; Th e Re a lm o f Mat t e r (New York: Charles Scribne r 's Sons, 1930): abbre viated as RM.


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6 OVERHEARD IN SEVILLEphilosophical poets, Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe's Faust. Goethe's Faustfocuses Santayana's recurrent theme of the romantic idealist, and theprotestant spirit, and again the "modernw empiricisms and pragmatisms (seeTPP 199). Dante, the Catholic, signifies the spirit's flight into pure logos,Apollo sublimated beyond narcissus into essence and tru th (TPP 209-10; RM30). Lucretius poeticizes the pagan principle, that is, symbolizes nature, thegenerative father, in the realm of material existence itself (TPP, 212-15; RM204-06).Santayana rings many changes on this trinity of themes in the systematicframework of his major writings. In such articulations Santayana always insiststhat the appea rances of essences are as epiphenomenal as they are natural forthe hu m an, philosophising spirit.7 When all life is a drea m , an illusion, a magicshow, it is an exercise in hyperbole to invest the supervenient dreams ofphilosophical consciousness with existential or pragmatistic reference, orindeed to institute any form of ideological ontology.8Here, on his own fundamental assumptions, Santayana explicitly undercutsthe possibility of Peirce's phenomenology of the three categories, whichdefines degrees of reality in the terms of progressive continuities of mentalawareness. In Dominations and Powers Santayana even organizes the materials ofhis text into three orders: the generative, militant, and ration al ord ers. Whilethese roughly correspond to Peirce's three categories, Santayana reverses thepriority Peirce assigned to th em . He asserted th at the naturally generative a ndmilitant orders und erlie any spiritual life. In similar fashion, Santayana isprepared to reduce any metaphysics of mind to his own metaphysics of physics,so to speak.

In an archie analysis of his text, we see that he was a pure materialist, in thetradition of Anaxim enes and D emocritus, H e shared with those ancien t physisphilosophers, as with Epicurus, Lucretius, Spinoza, and also Peirce (as overagainst Jam es, for ex am ple ), an orientation to the objective factual existence ofthe world in contrast to which the "each form" of existential subjectivity is notepistemically constitutive or authoritative.However, by adhering to the form of Anaximenes's and Democritus'sthought, Santayana diverged from Peirce's text in all other sense-constitutingrespects. To Santayana, the deep-structures of material existence are unknown,and unknow able. Th e m otive force of life is resident in th e always ante ced entmomentum of material existence, on which the currents of animal instinctcarry human intuitions forward as so many waves crashing on the beach.Santayana invests a special, symbolic, mea ning in the words of Shakespeare: Tn

7 See John L a c hs , George S a n t a y a n a (Boston: Twayne Publ ishers , 1988) , pp. 65 ff.H Th e recu r rent image of li fe as a dream is a function of San tayan a's substrative ontolo gy. H e

combines this with a strong objectivism, as exemplif ied in the typical passage: '"All is a tale told, if notby an idiot , at least by a drea me r; bu t i t is far f rom signifying n oth ing . Sen sation s are rapid d ream s:percept ions a re dream s sus ta ined an d deve lop ed a t wil l; sc iences a re drea ms abstracted, c on t r o l l e d ,measured., and rendered scrupulously propor t iona l to the i r occas ions" (InterprelMiom o f Poetry andReligion (New York: Charles Scr ibn er ' s Sons , Tr i ton Edi t ion, vol . 2, 19S6), p. xxv.


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PEIRCE AND SANTAYANA 7sequent toil, all forwards do contend."The sense-constituting assumptions of Santayana's text are its objectivity inperspective, its substrative or materialist sense of reality, its logistic do ctrine andm ethod of essence intuition, a nd its elemental principle. This latter principleof Santayana's text is finally a postulate as to the contingency of the materialflux itself combined with an ontological parity of the appearances of essences.It functions for him as a principle of "animal faith,* as well as of destiny, fate,necessity, or more generally as the absurd yet wonderful power and force, ofthe world.The basic doctrine here is that the matter of the world precedes and againoutlasts all the gam uts of its manifestations. Santayana, we can say, has apowerful con cep tion of the weakness of spirit. Spirit pays the price ofperishability for its gifts of limitless imagination in scientific and literarypsychology.FURTHER COMPARISONS

But let us now bring Peirce back into th e picture. Like Peirce's, Santayana'sthought itself enters into the substantive history of philosophical thinking,which has the kind of enduring and synechistic qualities Peirce hasem phas ized. Th eir theo ries now coexist in a wider field of no mothe ticutteranc es. Am ong o ther things, therefore, it would be futile to comp are theirrespective doctrines piecemeal, when they diverge so radically in basicassumptions. Again, it would be a foolish heat in a partriot to refute one withthe oth er, wh en each of their self-referential systems con trol all of th e relevantitems of discourse.Outside of either framework, however, one difficulty with Santayana'sdo ctrine may be suggested he re. It is that Santayana's text purp orts to have aneternal point of view. He is the perfectly detach ed theo rist. "Seen un de r theform of eternity," he writes in Dominations an d Powers, "all ages are equally pastand equally future; and it is impossible to take quite seriously the tastes andam bitions of ou r contemporaries."9 This is nice work if you can g et it.In the meantime, I venture to reply, we must take critical cognizance of thetastes an d am bitions, if no t of all men , at least of the pre em inen t exem plars ofhigh er civilization, whe ther they are contemporary o r not. We must take thelegacy of all the philosophers seriously, and again the legacies of our artistic,literary, musical, and scientific traditions. In fact, we already d o so as we ho no rth e virtuoso performers of our fine arts and crafts, and again the works of ourpree m inen t scholars, critics, an d thinkers.With or without Santayana's eternal point of view, I am maintaining here,we still have to live by the standards of thought, action, and appreciation thatare institutionalized in the best of our sciences, arts, an d crafts. Unless we do

9 G e or ge Sa n ta ya na , Dominat ions and Powers: Reflections on Liberty , Socie ty , and Governtneni (NewYork: Cha rles Scr ibn er 's Sons, 195 1) . See page viiL


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8 OVERH EARD IN SEVILLEso we can no t ever fully app recia te or em ulate Santay ana's own care er .

To return then to Santayana's metaphor about his sorry self s i t t ing there inthe dark , jus t o n e in a theatre ' s ser ried pack of op en -m ou the d fools, hung ry foril lusion, looking across the f loodlights at the actors or the prima donnas on thestage (SAF 52) - are we ju st passive on th ose occasions? D on 't we, ra th er , invarious degrees , active-mindedly participate in the genius of Shakespeare,Mo zart, or Verd i, as well as in the virtuoso performances of Sir Lawrence Olivier ,Ar turo Toscan in i , or Maria Callas? Can we not engage the scores and l ibrettosof the ph iloso ph ers , Santayana's includ ed, in a s imilarly ene rge tic fashion? T obe true to our humanity, do we have any other choice?

But my larger po int here is that Peirce and Sa ntayana , form idablephilosophers that they are, each falls a l i t t le short of explaining theconsum matory qual ity of his own philosophical tex t. Peirce , in my ju dg m en t ,has the better principle - namely, the principle of habit , the self-developmentof reason, the efficacy of good ideas, or thought as an active force, in the world.But Peirce 's Pragmaticism, as every other kind of Pragmatism, harbors thedanger of sell ing out the legis lative r ight of philosophising to themethodologies of the special sciences . For his part , Santayana produces adoctr ine of weak philosophical spir i t which nevertheless has an eternal point ofview. While remaining true to i ts own form of materialis t ic discourse, i t doesno t do full justic e to the s trength of his own nom ot he tic act an d i ts ar t iculatetheoret ica l product .

As a nom ot he tic m aterialis t , Santayana partial ly clarifies th e essentialcontinuity of his own text with those of Anaximenes and Democr i tus . 1 0 I n d e e d ,he was the one good classicis t among all the c lassical Am erican phi loso phers .However, it may be a point worth discussing that even Santayana was not fullyself-conscious tha t he inhabitated the same essent ia l paradigm of purematerialism as those ancient physis phi losoph ers . H e was program matical ly lessconcerned than Peirce with s ignifying the essential continuity of ideas whichhis own amplif ication of tha t materialis t ic para digm entails .

The net result of this series of considerations, I submit, is that thephilosophies of Peirce and Santayana give evidence of fall ing short of self-conscious realization of the optimal potentiali t ies of their own theoreticalformu lations. Both have pro du ce d "completely dev elop ed systems," in Peirce 'sphra se. They have realized eternal essences of tho ug ht, if you will, bu t the seare essences that end ure in the annals of tho ug ht as renew able an d extend ibleresources of mind or spir i t .

The career-texts of Peirce and Santayana are exemplary philosophicaltheories. They may still belong, however, to a synechistic field of philosophicalm ind , not fully art icula ted by eithe r Peirce or Santayana, in refe renc e to whichwe can strive to see their essential interface with one another as well as tocompare them with the wider variety of his torically realized philosophical

10 For further discussion of this point , see David A. Dilworth, "Santayana and Democritus; TwoMutually Interpreting Philosophical Poets." (hierheard in Sevi l le: Bul le t in o f tfie S a n t a y a n a Socie ty , 7 (Fall1989), 9-19.


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PEIRC E AND SANTAYANA 9theor ies .Peirc e 's Synechism can be a pprec iated as a version of an Aris toteliannaturalism - contracted, however, by a perspective of scientific fallibilism;Santayana endorses such a perspective in his own text, but recasts it in theframework of a Democritean naturalism, or materialism.1 1For this reason Santayana produces a logis tic but epiphenomenal doc t r ineof essences, while Peirce is committed to real thirds , and an ontology of thegrowth of m ind . Santayana can be jud ge d to have the mo re general theory .Peirce 's , however, is more servicable as suggesting an architecture of theoriesthat reflexively accounts for the possibility of these theories.

DAVID A. DILW ORTHState University o f New York a t Stony Brook

11 For Santayana's explicit mater ialism, see Th e Re a lm o f Matter, p p . v-xiv, and his "Apologia ProM e nte Sua , " Th e Philosophy o f George S a n t a y a n a , The Library of Living Philosophers, I I , ed. by PaulArthur Schilpp (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1940, 495-606) , p. 504 ff .


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Santayana's Pei rceClaims and specula t ions about the inf luence of Char les Peirce on the thoughtand writ ings of George Santayana have been made frequently, though usuallym ore as guesses th an as conclusions. Th at can also be said abo ut what I have tosay he re . T he con sensu s is probably that Santayana was influen ced by Peircebut that the ex ten t of Peirce ' s inf luence is yet to be de term ine d. Peirce ' s d i rectinfluence was probably very s l ight and his indirect influence, primarily throughJam es an d Royce, thou gh probably greate r , is impossible to de ter m ine . Th is isnearly the conclusion I shall draw a bit further on, but that is not quite thewhole of it. Something more can be sa id .

S tuden ts of Am erican thou ght have good reason to wo nde r abou t th einfluen ce of Pe irce on Santayana . Thirty-five years ago Ju stu s B uc hle rpublished part of a let ter in which Santayana wrote about Peirce and thenmade the following intr iguing remark: "One could never te l l whetherSantayan a's inn oc en t factual lapses con taine d seeds of irony. His sharpobservations, on Peirce for example, reveal how much went on in his reflectionthat failed to appear either in his theoretical work or his autobiography." 1Buchler seems to be invit ing his readers to suppose that Santayana reflectedconsiderably on Peirce.

On 15 Octo ber 1937 Santayana wrote to Buchler that he had heard one ofPeirce's Harvard lectures, identified by Max Fisch as Peirce's th i rd 1903 lecture .The relevant passage from Santayana's let ter to Buchler is often quoted, but asit is on e of the m ost revealing direct s tatem ents ab ou t Peir ce 's influen ce I shallrepeat i t :

I heard one of [Peirce's] Harvard lectures. He had been dining at the James's andhis evening shirt kept coming out of his evening waistcoat. He looked redn osedand dishevelled, and a part of his lecture seemed to be ex-tempore an d whimsicalBut 1 remember and have often used in my own thought, if not in actual writing, aclassification he made that evening of signs into indexes and symbols and images[icons]: possibly there was still another distinct category which I don't remember.(AFSL68)Eleven years earlier, in a letter to Maurice Firuski (23 Dec. 1926) Santayana hadma de a mo re obl ique reference to the same lecture . Santayana ha d bee n

This i s an e xcerp ted version of a paper presented to the Char les Sanders P e i rce SesquicentennialInternational Co ngre ss held at Harvard U niversity in Septe mb er of 1989. T h e full pa pe r is ex pec ted toappear in congress publ ica t ions

1 Se e " O ne Santayana or T w o" by Justus Buchler , page 68 of An imal Fa i th and Spiritual Life, (NewYork: App leton-Ccn tury-Crofts, 1967) edi ted byJo hn L achs. Hereafter refe rred to as AFSL.


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SANTAYANA'S PEIRCE 11approached about edi t ing some of the papers of Peirce that Harvard hadobtained after Peirce 's death in 1914. He wrote to Firuski:

I am glad to hear that Charles Peirce left copious materials yet unpublished, but Iam not at all the person to undertake editing any portion of them. Find someyoung philosopher or mathematician, in whose career such deserving work mightbe of use and profit. I saw Peirce only once, at a lecture after a dinn er at Wm.James's. He had a red no se, a straggling grey beard, and an evening coat thatseem ed lopsid ed a nd thirty years old. As to his life, save that it was retired and, theysay, bibulous, I know nothing: but if you can enlighten me, I shall not be incurious.As a philosopher Peirce has come late to be recognized, but his quality isunmistakably good, far better logically than Wm. James's, and anything speculativefrom his pen would be welcomed, I think, by the lea rned public.2

I would l ike to call at tention to two things in particular about Santayana's let terto Firuski, in addit ion to i ts reference to Peirce 's Harvard lecture. First,Santayana knew enough about Peirce ' s work to real ize that a mathemat ic ianm igh t be as app ropr ia te as a phi losop her for edi ting h is pap ers , and second, h efel t ab le to ju d g e th at Peirce's quality was "unmistakably good ." Per hap s hisju d gm en t was based merely on the opinions of Jam es and Royce, but i t seemsdoubtful that he would have spoken so unequivocally without directacquaintance with Peirce ' s work .

Santayana referred to Peirce's lecture again in 1950 in his interviews withBr uno Lind. In Lind's well-known account of his conversations with Santayanawe find the following report:

"When I was young I was influenced by Percy." "Percy?" I asked blankly. "Don't youknow him, the pragmatist? Well, nobody could hire him. He was a drunkard. Butwhen h e was sober! I hea rd some of his lectures. I rememb er particularly anillustration he used - a therm om eter. It's a dynamic symbol - anything telling youquantity. Th at, of course, fits in with my system. I distinguish between the dynamicside of na tur e and all the imaginative or symbolic side, which is ju st ideas."3According to Lind, Santayana began h is reminiscence by remarking: "Isuppose one is inf luenced without knowing it." J o h n M c C o r m i c k r e c o m m e n d sthat Lind's report be read sceptically, partly because he doubts that Santayanawould have misp ro noun ced Pe i rce ' s nam e - and Lind, of course, would be gladfor any information that would explain why Santayana might have knowinglyp r o n o u n c e d t h e n a m e as h e r e p o r t e d .

I t rem ains unc lea r how man y times Santayana saw Peirce. Lind rep orts tha tSantayana sa id he had heard some of Peirce 's lectures but, earl ier , Santayanahad writ ten to Firuski that he had seen Peirce only once "at a lecture after

2 See pages 223-224 of Danie l Cory, ed. Th e Letters o f George S a n t a y a n a , (New York: Scribner 's ,1955) .

3 See pages 35 and 36 of Vag abond Scholar: A Ve n ture in to th e Privacy o f George S a n t a y a n a , B r u n oLind, (New York; Bridgehead Books, 1962) .


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12 OVERHEARD IN SEVILLEdinne r a t Wm. J am es . " McGormick4 writes that according to Dickinson S.Miller , Santayana a nd Peirce, togeth er, followed sem inars of Ja m es o n the"Psychology of Pleasure and Pain" and on "Mental Pathology" but that is almostcertainly inc orre ct . I t seem s that McGormick has mistak en G eorg e Pierce ofSmith College for Ch arles Peirce. So i t rem ains uncle ar whe the r Santayan a sawPeirce m ore tha n on ce , or atten ded m ore than o ne of his lectures . I t ispossible, of course, that Santayana attended more than one of Peirce 's lecturesbut tha t only o n e re m ain ed vivid for him . This is con sis tent with yet a no th eraccount from a letter sent to Max H. Fisch in 1951 in response to Fisch'sinquiry whether i t was true that Santayana had taken no notice of Peirce in hiswrit ings. Santayana rep lied that i t was doubtless true but tha t he re m em be re done of Peirce 's Harvard lectures (notice that here one might as reasonablyinfer that one of Peirce 's lectures s tood out in Santayana's memory as that hehad only att en de d on e lecture ) . Santayana describe d the lecture for Fisch: "Itwas abo ut s igns, an d m ad e a las ting impression up on m e; tha t all ideas , in so faras they convey knowledge, are s igns has become a favourite doctr ine of mine.But I have never s tudied his published works, and i t is from your book that Ihave first gain ed a gen era l view of his ach iev em ent . If he h ad bu ilt hisphilosophy on signs I mi ght have been his disciple."

Surely Santayana can be taken at his word t hat Pe irce 's lecture m ad e alasting impression on h im . This is obvious by how often an d consis tently herem arke d on the lecture when Peirce was br ou gh t up in discussion. Anylecture so well rem em be re d after nearly half a century must have had animp act. But how , exactly, was Santay ana influe nce d by Pe irce 's lectur e?Santayana's memory of the lecture clearly centers on Peirce 's discussion ofsigns an d thei r classification into icons, ind exe s, an d symbols. H e se em edespecially partial to Peirce 's indexes which were most appropriate forrepresent ing the dynamic s ide of nature .

The example Peirce gives of an index, as recorded in the version of hislecture which was published in the Collected Papers, i s that of an hygrometer ,which , as Peirc e no ted , "is so contriv ed as to have a physical re act ion withdryness and moisture in the air, so that the little man will come out if it is wet,and th is would happen jus t the same i f the use of the ins t rument should beentirely forgotten, so that it ceased actually to convey any information." 5 O n e

1 See page 91 of Joh n McCormick's Getngr S a n t a y a n a : A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,1987).

", See i tem 73 of Volume V of Collected Pttpen of Charles S . Peirce, e ds . Cha r l e s H a r t shor ne a nd Pa u lWeiss, (Camhridge: Harvard University PICKS, 19H1).


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SANTAYANA'S PEIRCE 13can well imagine that as a more ordinary example Peirce might also havement ioned a the rmomete r a s San tayana r emembered .

Several of the ideas presented in Peirce's lecture will later resound inSantayana's writ ings, but I do not believe we can conclude that Peirce was amajor influence on Santayana - except, perhaps, for turning his attention tosigns at a crucial po int in his dev elop m ent. I t is evident tha t , however wellSantaya na knew Peirce, it was no t very well. Re m em ber that h e wrote to MaxFisch that if Peirce had "built his philosophy on signs I might have been hisdisciple." But Peirce did build his philosophy on s igns, and Santayana couldno t have go ne very far into Pe irce 's writ ings witho ut knowing that . Santayanaand Peirce travelled down different paths of philosophy, clearly paths in thesame country, even, perhaps, the same terr i tory, but different all the same.Santayana's path was the high road, sometimes the very high road carrying himinto the clouds, but where, on a clear day he could see a vast world belowtho ug h f rom a great d is tance . Peirce ' s path was on th e low gro un d whe re hecould see th ings up close. H e was m ore attu ne d to detail . I f Peirce missed th eawesomeness of Santayana's panoramic view, he at least had the pleasure ofc lose contact .

NATHAN HOUSERIndiana University at Indianapol is


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Substrative MaterialismIn "Santayana's Peirce" above, Nathan H ous er raises an in tere sting que stion:what exactly was i t about the Peirce lecture attended by Santayana which som uch s tuck in his min d? I t is clear that , as Santayana himself says, a part of thiswas his favourite notion of the symbolic character of all knowledge; Houser'smeasured conclusion credits Peirce for turning Santayana's at tention to s igns"at a crucial point in his development" But wha t abou t the the r m om ete r andthe hygrometer? As Hou ser perceives , som ething ab ou t these exam ples wasespecially int rig uin g to Santay ana. (See pag es 12 an d 13 above .) Passages likethe following from The Realm o f Matter h em: on th is ques t ion:

Meantime the practical arts . . . deal directly with matter, whereas a graphic ordialectical analysis can be immediately concerned only with images which aresymbols, or with symbols which are words. When the act of measuring is an actualtransition,, like a journey, both the m etre and the thing me asured are material a ndequally internal to the flux of substance. Th e measure is then cong ruous and literal, . . bridging truly external relations, and catching nature in her own net. Agraphic analysis or a map may afterwards be constructed to give definition . . . butnow in another realm of being from that in which it might actually occur: for itwould occur in the realm of matter, and it is surveyed in th e realm of essence.1

H ere th e focus is on in ternal ity to the mater ia l rea lm. I f the surr ou nd ingair is wet, a litde man wil l emerge f rom the hygrometer , whether or notsome body is th ere to conv ert this fact into info rm ation . San taya na's view ofscience and i ts m od er n successes rests on ju st such a pict ure exc lud ing thementaL Scientif ic observation scrupulously compares two material aspects ofan event , wi thout the in tervent ion of any t reacherous mental ca tegor ies ordefined term s. H e does not merely say tha t f inal causes m ust be s tr ip ped fromthe scientif ic endeavour, but also insis ts that experiment s tr ip away all that ism enta l , leaving no th in g bu t physical interac tions. Of cours e, variables m ust b enamed and theor ies cons tructed af terwards ; but these conceptual izat ions arenotor ious ly uns table , (an d are regular ly supersed ed by " incom m ens urab le" newtheories). The stability and reliability of science, however, rests on skill inrecording the p lay of events qui te apar t f rom our current unders tanding ofthem, and from how variables might be defined or theories devised.

Nowhere does Santayana give a sustained development of this s impleinsight, al though he comes back to the idea frequently in The Realm of Mat teran d in the m any m anu scri pts associated with its writing. 2 I t wou ld be som eth ingof an extrapolation, then, to attr ibute to him a full-f ledged philosophy of

1 See pages 239-240 of Realms o f Being, one-volume edit ion, (New York: Scribner 's , 1942) .2 John and Shir ley Lachs have gathered toge ther many of the most impor tant manuscr ipts in

Physical Order and Moral IJlmly , Previously unpu blish ed essays of Geo rge San tayana , (Nashvil le:Vanderbilt University Press, 1969).


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SUBSTITUTIVE MATERIALISM 15scien ce with this ide a as its ce ntr ep iec e. Nev ertheless, th er e is a powerfulinsig ht h er e, of which h e was well aware, an d which clearly ties in with thePe irce lec tur e. T h e insight is powerful, it mu st be em pha sized , only for thosewho accept a substrative ontology, something found in radical form inSantayana's realm of matter . Those in the dominant empiricis t tradit ion of thephilosophy of science would clearly have difficulty seeing any merit in thisformulation; their whole concern is how we convert observations into theories ,and they insis t on the complete futi l i ty of considering things as they are inthemselves .

In de ed , the Peirc ean idea , as app rop riate d by Santayana, seems even toresis t any formulation in the accepted terminology of the philosophy ofscience, which beg i ns i ts enquiry with observational reports , and eschews anyment ion of under ly ing subs tances . Of course , the not ion of probing mater ia lobjects with physical probes, in order to elicit an observable physical reaction,wo uld no t be den ied . All this can be interpr ete d in emp iricis t term s; however,th er e is no p lace for the sharp dis t inction between th e unk no wn objects in therealm of m atte r an d the various accoun ts of these in th e realm of essence. I t isthis ontolo gical sepa ration which gives power to the Peircean idea. O n theempiricis t account, i t remains a permanent mystery how science can have suchstrikin g success, while scientific theo rie s are so fragile and so often re nd er edobsole te . In Santayana's terms, there are real tropes realized by the movementsof nature , and modern exper imental probes exhibi t these t ropes in a fashionwhich is immune to the fate of the laws by which the tropes are tentativelydesc ribe d. N or is the dem arc atio n between hard physical science an d th esocial sciences a puzzle in the context of Santayana's thought; the lat ter areclassified with literary psychology, insofar as they go beyond behaviourals tudies .

In many respects , The account of science given by Santayana is close to theclassical empiricis t posit ion; both hold that physical laws represent regulari t iesin na tu re . Santayan a believes tha t th e laws are confused with the regularities byempiricis ts , however, and introduces tropes to establish a clear separationbetween the two, A trope is the essence of an ac t ua l regulari ty under scrutiny;the corresponding law is the best scientif ic description of that trope, anotheressence. The law is expressible in the full regalia of a rigorous and precisescientif ic theory . I t ten ds, however, to be hypostasized by those philo soph ieswhich exclude f rom cons iderat ion the under ly ing regular i ty which the law ismeant to represent , and the t rope of that regular i ty which the theory a ims todesc r ibe .

In hinting at a possible answer to Houser's question, I borrow one of thecategories used by Dilworth above (page 7) and in his recent book: Santayana'sontology was a substrat ive one, whereas those who are assessing i t are usuallyessentialists or Humean existentialists.3 Dilworth wonders of Santayana's

3 See Philosophy in World Perspective: A Comparative Hermeneutic o f the Major Theories, (New Havenand London: Yale University Press, 1989) .


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16 OVERHEARD IN SEVILLEsystem, whether the subs tra tum under ly ing exper ience is not too remote , andthe objectivity too severe, to permit an explanation of and commitment to thecul tura l exemplars of our her i tage . How can the commitment be sus ta ined, inthe presence of a complete scept ic ism? And how can th is commitment bedirected at the particular exemplars of our own culture, in the face ofSantayana's Olympian objectivity, and his unwillingness to take seriously theaims and a mb it ions of h is contemporar ies? Di lworth asks wh eth er Santayanacan answer the problem of self-reflexivity, whether the mater ia l ism espoused bySan tayan a has the re sou rces within itself to justify th e de ta ch ed , objectivist,eternal point of view found in his writings.

One may ask whether "problem of self-reflexivity" is not itself a somewhatOlympian phrase to describe a problem which seems at f irs t to be l i t t le morethan the usual challenge which must be met by every philosophy worthy of thename: does i t present solid reasons which lead from its assumptions to theconclusion s drawn? However, the re is m or e involved. O n e additio nal po int isan im po rtan t s tress as given here , that this will be an inte rna l justif ication, an ddoes not aspire to sa t is fy those unprepared to accept the groundingassu m ption s. T h e self-reflexivity pro bl em , th en , is very differe nt from th ede m an d frequen tly m ad e tha t a philoso phy m ust justify i ts f inal claims to allcomers . This is terrain with which Santayana would be entirely comfortable.

Self-reflexivity is no t chiefly con ce rn ed with epi stem olo gic al justific ation .Rather i t appears to ques t ion whether a mature phi losophy - one which at leastimplicitly addresses "all the actual or potent ia l problems of phi losophy and thespecial sciences" - w he the r this philoso phy can expla in i ts "consummatoryquality" in its own te rm s. San taya na's system, a n d t ha t of Peir ce to o, fail to d oso, although in both cases , this cr i t icism is made in the context of greatadm iration for the text as a whole.

Certainly Santayana's scepticism is thorough-going in one direction, asmight be expected of materialism in a radical substrative form; Dilworthpresen ts a tel l ing survey of his sceptical assert ions. I wo uld su pp lem en t this ,however, with Santayana's claim to useful knowledge of a symbolic character ,gene rated by in teract ions wi th our surroun dings ; onc e we re l inquish the not ionof l i teral knowledge of the external world, and revise our concept of what kindof kno wle dge is accessible to us, we see tha t this symb olic kno wl edg e isade qua te to our need s . I t is an obs tacle nei th er to the searc h for mor al idealsand cultural exemplars , nor to the effort to realize these.

I t is clear , and agreed, that Santayana had a l ively appreciation of the "preeminent exemplars of higher civilization." It is fairly clear as well, I feel, how hewould respond to the criticism that his materialism fails to justify thisap pre cia tion . H e would first insist on t h e relative status of all aspe cts of ou rallegiance to higher civil ization. To make moral demands absolute, in his eyes,is to remo ve the ir releva nce , which derives precisely from th eir relativity tohuman needs . The same re la t iv i ty mus t apply to exemplars of cul ture ; theyretain their value only so long as the collective mind is able to be swayed bythem. Ou r com mitm en t to these h igher exempla r s does no t hang on our* positof their etern al validity. Th ey are eter nal as essences, of cour se, but their valueremains relative to the present consti tution of human kind. This is not


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SUBSTRATIVE MATERIALISM 17unvarying, as the Greeks had thought; and indeed over a long space of time willundoubtedly undergo radical var ia t ions .

What posit ive explanation, then, can be found in materialism for theim po rta nt b ut relative status of the claims on us of these "exemplars"? Ind eed ,wha t exp lana tion can b e foun d for any fact at all , as Aris totle com plains aboutDemocr i tus , i f no th ing more is said than that it always happens in a certainm a n n e r ? 4 T h e ex plan ation for "e xemp lars" that ar ises in this materialism is ameagre one, and does not go much beyond a few simple beliefs . The materialpsyche can and does generate spir i t ; while we have no explanation of this , theyare mistaken who think to refute i t on the s trength of their scientif ic notions ofmatter , which are partial , functional, and symbolic. The human psyche, aspresendy consti tuted in Western society, has an attraction to certain Ideals a n dforms. Som e exceptio nal pe rsons are able to pro be de ep er into this partiallyshared psyche, and create art of almost universal appeal. Although this appealcan be ex pec ted to cha ng e an d evolve, ther e is a remark able s tabil ity within ou rt radi t ions .

For the substrativist, these simple beliefs must suffice, because nothingfur ther is know n. Oth ers may Insist on more complete explanat ions . In sodoing, however, they often go astray, by insisting that the appeal is strongenough for the ideals to be absolute, or that i t is the more accessible spirit,rat he r than th e obscure psyche, which is involved. Discourse becom es m oreclear an d pre cise, but the topic has shif ted away from what on e inte nds to talka b o u t .

In the case both of the material psyche and of tropes of physicalregulari t ies , Santayana is pointing to hidden things about which there is l i t t leexact kno wle dge . T he ex plan ation s to Which on e is led by posit ing psyche an dregulari t ies are general and imprecise. Nevertheless , these explanations areprefer red by a subs tra tive phi loso pher to the mu ch greater e laborat ions whichcan be developed when these unclear , latent, posited objects are replaced by"reductive substi tutes" that are clear , manifest , and open to logicalInvestigation; for th e lat ter are n ot th e objects of interest .

ANGUS KERR-LAWSONUniversity of Water loo

4 Santayana's most eloquent treatment of this ancient challenge is given in "The Secret ofAristotle," Dialogues in Limbo , With Three New Dialogues, (New York: Scribner's, 1948),


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In te rp re t ing Interpretat ions- i -

When I f irs t wrote about Santayana long ago, I assumed that I was workingmore with literary critical categories than strictly philosophical ones. Myattempt to see Santayana stylistically, in terms of drama and irony, was differentf rom other approaches a t the t ime. Li terary in terpreta t ions have grown andeven beg un to prevail in philosophy. This is seen in th e bu rg eo ni ng ofphilosophy-and-literature enterpr ises , in decons truct ion , and in the somet imesstrange indiscernability of texts with respect to whether they were writ ten byprofessors of l i terature, professors of philosophy, or by some total interloperfrom somewhere across the disciplines . There are now frequent l i terary andstylistic studies of poet-philosophers like Plato and Nietzsche, of barely-poet-phi losophers l ike Hobbes , Hegel and Hume, and even of non-poet-philosophers l ike Kant and Peirce. For better or worse, philosophy as l i terarycrit icism, even philosophy as art , is s taking out large claims and gaining widerecogni t ion .

Remarkably , these newer approaches have been d irected a t phi losophersfor whom they are far less suitable than they would be for Santayana - agen uin e philosoph ical poet. Santayana scholars ten d to gra pp le with Santayanain tradit iona l, orderly, sensible, analytic fashion. The y thin k to disenta ngle theessential doctrines from the literary overlay; they even think to uncover seriousarguments and moral claims that s tand secure as Santayana's own - not to beconfused with o ther arguments and c la ims that somehow got lodged in thetexts in some peripheral and embarrassing way.

This inclines m e, in a spir it of corrective mispris io ning, to go to gre ater andgreater lengths to see only irony and drama, even more than I once saw, and todismiss those arguments and doctr ines that in the pas t I thought could besaved. I bega n by f inding m uch irony an d dra m a in Santay ana, alon g withsom e argu m enta tive seriousness and even some "posit ions.* Now I f ind, o rhave dec ide d to f ind, only irony and d ram a and l i terary art . Th is is the"dialogical" way some scholars approach Plato, and it is fitting to attempt it withSantayana.

Briefly the n , i f by arg um ent on e m eans anything l ike a ser ious dev elopm entof a posit ion which is then maintained univocally and securely, then there areno arguments or doctr ines in Santayana as there are , indeed, no doctr ines inPlato. T he re is an abs ence of religion and philosop hy in San tayan a in quite thesame sense that he found such an absence in Shakespeare. They were both toogood, too aloof and too remote to have to carry along that kind of baggage.

This is a revised version of a paper read to the Santayana Society in Atlanta, Georgia, onD e c e m be r 28, 1989.


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INTERPRETATIONS 19There is a r isk In finding irony everywhere, and in not at least striking abalan ce betw een irony and seriousness . But on e gets widesprea d consoling

support these days. Richard Rorty1 sees or locates more irony amongph iloso ph ers tha n anyo ne else would ever have dare d. Part of th e r isk of Ironyis its invulnerability, which is why practitioners of it love It and enemies hate it.Irony can hard ly be faulted or refuted using the ord inary ways of philosoph y,and there is no avoiding the irony that f inding irony in texts (as Rorty endlesslydoes) is s imply the nether s ide of practicing irony in the interpretation oft h e m .

At a recent conference, I heard Rorty scolded on the grounds that ironycan be oppressive, and also t h a t Irony was a form of self-therapy. Any way ofdoing philosophy is oppressive to someone doing i t another way. S o m e o f u s(sic) f ind declarative sente nce s, me re assertive ju dg m en ts , oppressive,particularly when a bit of interpretive acumen, or s leight of hand, or irony, canturn them in to som ething r iche r and mo re in teres t ing . And if dra m a (of whichirony is a form) is the rap eu tic, it only confirms what Aristotle said about it longago , without derogat ing i t .

I have elsewhere argued that irony is compressed drama - which is to sayth at it involves at least two voic es. Iron y never means merely the opposite ofwh at is said; that wo uld r ed uc e it to a trivial code . Th is is tru e even of massiveirony, like Swift's "Modest Pro po sal." Irony, to be sure , will deplo y voices indiffering ways and with varying emphases, sometimes making those voiceslop side d in de ed . But no o n e voice prevails absolutely, an d the task of assessingthe emphases is tradit ionally a l i terary one. With irony so rampant inphilosophy, it Is also a philosophical task. According to Rorty, ironists don'thave to decid e who is a poet an d who is a philos oph er. Only com m on sensemetaphysicians worry about gett ing, as he puts i t , "the g e n r e right." Rortywrites:

[Hegel] began a tradition of ironist philosophy which is continued in Nietzsche,Heidegger, an d D errida. He helped turn [philosophy] into a literary genre . , .Hegel's so-called dialectical method is not an argumentative procedure . . . butsimply a literary skill at producing surprising gestalt switches by making smoothrapid transitions from one terminology to ano ther . (Rorty 79)

Th is las t can m or e exactly be said of Santayana tha n of Hege l. I t is ironic thatSantayana is not on Rorty 's l is t of ironis ts , though Habermas and Foucault are.And how can Rorty forget the very beginnings of irony in Xenophanes,He racli tus and Plato? Rorty refers to "we ironis ts ," bu t that has to be looked atguardedly , coming from a n ironist. Santayan a, who at least o n on e occasionreferred to his use of irony, would not have given it the central status of aphi losophical a t t i tude or genre .

In any case, I 've veered to my extreme ironic interpretation in part ,perhaps, because no one else (with respect to Santayana) chooses to occupy

1 See Cont ing e ng , Irony a n d Sol idari ty , (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).


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20 OVERH EARD IN SEVILLEthis cri tical place . My rules , or axioms, are appall ingly s im ple:

(1) There are no contradictions in Santayana.(2) Everything in Santayana is ironic or dramatic.

If contradictions seem to be discovered in a text, and (1) is threatened, use (2)to pu t things arig ht. Axiom s, I think, shou ld be l ike fr iends; n ot consis tent, notindependent , and wil l ing on occas ion to help each o ther out .

It should follow from the above, as surely as day follows night, that acapsulated account of a Santayana text, a univocal s ta tement of i t s theme andits "argument," always misses th e mark. Sh ou ld we be su rpr ise d at the essentialInadequacy of a summary statement when the object of it is a poetic essay, or aprose poe m , or an ironic disquis ition? If the sum ma ry or arg um en t could d othe jo b , why doe s the au thor g ive deta i led , com plicated , chal lengin g, poet icelaborations? Ar e the latter (recall Santayana) m erely spre ad on the form erlike but ter? A re they filler to fatten oth erwise slim volu m es of clearly statedprinciples and truths? Such summ aries are no m or e to be taken seriously, i .e .unironical ly , than are Monarch notes , or th i r ty minute papers read a tconferences .

Summary fails whether we do i t for Santayana or whether Santayana does i tfor us , tho ug h this lat ter case Is interpretively m or e chal len gin g. Santayan a has ,in fact, provided us wi th a num be r of neat sum m aries of himself, t e m p t e d a tt imes by fr iends and corre spo nd en ts wh o ne ed ed q uick philoso phica l f ixes, orperh aps provoked by publ ishers who wanted prefaces an d in t rodu ct ions .Santayana's Preface to Interpretat ion^ is a good case in point, and allows me, atthe outse t , to comment on h is in terpreta t ion of Interpretat ions. Santayana onSantayana might be more in teres t ing , though in no way more reliable, thananybody e lse on Santayana. For we ne ed to und ers tan d h is com m ents abou thimself as ironical an d inde ed as par t of a com plic ated dr am a. Po rte (4)quo tes a let ter to Ja m es in which Santayana, back ed as he indica tes by theauthority of Plato and Aristotle, writes, ul have the r ight to be s incere, to beabsolutely objective and unapologetic, because i t is not I that speak but humanreaso n that speaks in m e." This is vintage Santayan a in his summary m o d e ,ironically jux tap osin g, in a s ingle sen tenc e, the poses of false prid e a nd hu m blepiety.

In his Prefac e (3), Santayan a says th at his essays aregathered together in the hope that they may lead the reader, from somewhatdifferent points of approach, to a single idea. This idea is that religion and poetryare identical in essence, and differ merely in the way in which they are attached topractical affairs. Poetry is called religion when it intervenes in life, and re ligion ,when it merely supervenes upon life, is seen to be nothing but poetry.

This is summarily provocative and neat, but there is no such s ingle idea in the

- In terpretat ions of Poetry and Rel ig ion. Originally published in 1900 by Scribner 's in New York, i thas jus t ap pea red in Apr i l 1990, as Volume 3 of the San tayana Edi t ion, p ubl ished by Th e MIT Press,and edi ted by Wil l iam Ho lzberger an d Herm an S aa tkamp. Page references are to the lat ter . As in thetitle, this will be ci ted briefly a s Interpretat ions.


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INTERPRETATIONS 21texts, no ide a so co he re nt in its shar p boldness . Like the "argument" of adra m a, i t lays the gro und wo rk for what is to be further exp lored , bu t it is not itssubstance and, indeed (unless taken ironically) betrays, rather than preparesfor, the richness of what follows.

A dis tinction quite parallel to that between "su perve ne" and ' Inter ven e," isthe one that Santayana mak es between Don Quixote and San cho Panza. "Themass of m an ki nd is divide d in to two classes, the Sa nc ho Panzas who have asense for reality, but no ideals, and the Don Quixotes with a sense for ideals,bu t m ad . T h e ex pe die nt of recognizing facts as facts and ac ceptin g ideals asideals, - and this is all we pro po se, - al thoug h appare ntly s imple en ou gh , seemsto elude the normal human power of discrimination" (4) . This again ismin ima l an d by no m ean s all that Santayana prop oses . I t is merely th ebeginning of the drama, the cast of characters , and diminishes, by s implis t icsum ma ry, the m ea nin g an d scope of what is to follow. A re n' t such prefatoryremarks, on the face of it, ironic, or best to be seen as such? Th ey don't get tothe details . W hen an d why do ideas in tervene and supervene? W hat are theconcre te agons of mad ness an d sanity?

It is obviously not a simple matter to know when Ideals ought to drift offin to ar t and imaginat ion (supervene) and when they should be tur ne d a rou ndto direct life with practical pu rpo se (inte rve ne) . It is th e who le incredib lydifficult art of life to make such assessments, or to wTrite about how they arem a d e .

That Santayana's self-summaries are ironic can be supported obliquely, by apassage on Browning (po inte d to by Joel P orte) w here Santaya na says that ,"even In the poems where the effort at impersonality is most successful, thedramatic disguise is usually thrown off in a preface, epilogue or parenthesis.** 3

Could Santayana, knowing about throwing off dramatic disguises , fail us byactually thr ow ing off his own dra m atic disguise in his Preface? Ha rdly. T oknow you are throw ing off a dram atic disguise is to engag e in on e! SoSantayana, we must conclude, only seems to say a few things that arestraightforward, s imple, compressed, and univocaL For Santayana withoutdra m atic d isguise is no t Santayan a. His Preface is an artful a nd iron ic series ofreduc t ion 1st summar ies .

While Santayana could write summary ironic sentences about entire essays,even on occas ion a condemnatory i ronic word ("potboiler") about an ent i rebook, his preferred way was to give his iron}' some range and scope, and towrite essays about sentences ra ther than sentences about essays.

I happened recent ly to read Carol Gilligan's In a Dif ferent Voice (Harvard ,1982) , while concurrent ly rereading the Santayana essay on Homeric Hymns .Th ey both deal with the s tory of Per sep ho ne an d D em ete r . I t goes withoutsaying that their interpretations are different, s ince Gill igan summarizes themyth from a feminist pe rspective. T he re 's no ne ed to m ake invidiouscomparisons; interpretations of myths are further myths, variously true andimaginative, depending up on further interpr etatio n. But what s truck me was

:i See page 127 of Interpretat ions, a nd page KM for Porto's reference in his Introduction.


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22 OVERH EARD IN SEVILLEthe greate r detail and Inventiveness in Santaya na's acco unt. He discussesrelatively few lines at relatively great leng th. His In ter pr eta tio n Is ne ith er asummary of plot ( thoug h that is provided) n or a sum ma ry theory ( thoug hseveral hover in the background). His Interpretation becomes, in effect, asubs tant ia l poem about a poem.

- I I "T o h e l p understand the dramas and ironies that are my focus, I propose what Icall a doub le m oral grid, a s tructure that is often hi dd en in Santayana andhe nc e not sufficiently take n into acc oun t in studies of hi m . It can be ap plie d tom uc h of Santay ana, th ese essays as well as ot he r writings. It co nn ec ts with w hatSantayana refers to as the still non-existent "poet of . . . double insight." Alsoto what has been called his own "binocular vision."I turn first to Th e Sense o f Beau t y ,4 which was writ ten a bo ut the sam e time asInterpretat ions, and which has a section on religious art which could have beenincluded in Interpretat ions. In SB, k4work" an d *play" ar e first disting uish ed intheir conventional ways and In terms of common linguis tic usage. But thenSantayana sets th e concepts in mot ion , exam ines them , inverts them , an d showshow each of th e terms can be, inde ed n eed s to be , furth er scrutinized. Both"work" an d "play" are shown to have two com plex ions , morally good a nd badsides. Obviously, seizing upon a part of the discussion, even a wonderfullyquotable l ine , and neglecting the totality of the textual play, will give a non-Santayanian, i .e . a nondramatic, glimpse of the Issues at stake.Cons ider , once again , in tervening and supervening ideas . Men generateIdeas; these ideas sometimes intervene in l ife and give i t moral direction; suchideas, cre ated by art, wit an d passion, modify how m en live. Th is is go od , an drat ional - an d p ar t of th e work of life. Is it only that? N o. Is th er e a ba d side toIt? Yes, be cau se if Ideals were m erely pra ctical, a nd nev er visionary a ndextravagant, the re would be a paucity to l ife, and a di m in ut io n of i t . Is i t goodthat there are superve ning ideas? Yes, becau se they are en rich ing , im practicala n d playful Is it bad? Yes, beca use they ru n t he risk of irrelev anc e an dmadness .- Th e ambiguities are even more subtle than this . Some ideas areen te r ta ined hi imagination, do not modify actions, and seem merely tosupe rvene . No neth eless ther e is a difference, even a practical difference,between imagining something and not imagining i t , between imaginat iveactions and l ife actions. Th ese ideas may expre ss poetically, an d even truly, thegenuine needs of those who generated them, but they do not or cannot af fectessent ia l or mo tor behavior . Yet a superven ing idea , when ente r ta ine d,"intervenes" in th e imaginative life of somebo dy, a nd i t seem s to mak e apractical difference w heth er he had it or not. Is such a sup erv enin g idea goodor bad? "Bad" if imaginative extravagance, poetic decadence, and even

1 Volume 2 of the Santayana Edi t ion. (Bos ton; Th e M IT Press , 1988), edited by WilliamHolzberger and H e r m a n Sa a tka m p. C i te d hecafter as SB.


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INTERPRETATIONS 23religious mysticism t urn atte ntio n away from righ t actio n. "Good" if theyen ha nc e a nd supp lem ent one ' s merely pract ica l life by add ing to it andenriching i t in another dimension. Santayana characteris t ically makes andunm ake s his dis t inctions, as when he dis t inguishes rational a nd post-rationalmorali ty, and suggests that post-rational sentiment be admitted into the l ife ofreason.

This double moral grid, as I have called i t , here crudely set down, mighthe lp tts to unders tand the groundwork of the complicated moral c la ims thatSantayana variously develops. The dis t inction between poetry and religion, thedefinit ions of intervene and supervene, the characterizations of Don Quixoteand Sancho Pair /o , do not begin to dramatize the larger issues, let alone evenaddress them. They only start us off.

How sane oug ht the D on to becom e? If the ch ang e from m adn ess were tobring him io dullness , ought he make the move at al l? Mightn't he be morallypref erab le as is? He is not en tirely oblivious to facts. H e recog nizes a wo ma n asa woman , even if he misses som e of the finer point s of he r char act er. An dwindm ills, especially in Spa in, actually look a lot like giants. As for plo dd in g,dull Sancho Panza - how much l i terary, religious and philosophical educationfor him? W ould we know the point at which we are no long er en rich ing his lifebu t ru ini ng it? Do we know these things for ou r students? For ourselves? T h eprob lem is not that t he world is divided into Don Quixotes an d Sanc ho Pa nzas.The problem is that we are so divided, and are always facing the task of what tod o abotit i t. T he c harac ters and conc epts ar en ' t out there; they are us , and incons tant d ispute . The appropr ia te mix of t ru th and imaginat ion awai tsongoing discover) ; i t cannot be blocked out or provided by prior definit ion; i tis ge ne rate d by the poet IT of human self-creation, in the detailed words ofun ce rta in effort. It always involves sim ultan eou s attentio n b ot h to wh o we areand who we ought to be, which can be churned out only in endless irony andd r a m a .

Imagina t ion an d t ru th are anoth er pair ing , no t unl ike supervene andinte rve ne , eac h with its do ub le set of mo ral inflections. Im ag ina tion h as itsram pa nt, extrava gant, m ad s ide, as with Don Q uixo te. Pressured by ne ed , willan d desire, it gen erate s the fantastic, the rem ote, the un tru e. I t some times"moralizes physics," as in Platonism, and leads people to turn their desires ofwhat ought to be into false claims about what is. Thus, even the greatest poets,H om er an d Dante , dis tort . Imag ination gives its the illusory and the false; itcan accompany an unwillingness to face the world as it is .

But imag ina tion has its wo nd rou s, positive side. It en rich es life. Itgen era tes poetry, religion, ideals . It is even n eed ed in ord er to discover truth .I t also gives us something to envis ion which might be better to attend to thanm ere tru th. In a word, ( tho ugh it takes m ore than a word to re nd er the dra m aproperly) some of Santayana's language lauds imagination, and some of i tlauds facts an d truth . Som e of it deplores imaginativeness for i ts dangers , andsome of it faults facts and truth for be ing dttll and humanly incomple te .

Santayana's bare definitions do little for us, as little as do any summaries ofhis philosophical "posit ions." But the complicated dramas of moral choice hecreates with them, the momentous batt les set upon a large and actively peopled


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24 OVERHE ARD IN SEVILLEstage, do a great deal . Santayana's plots , l ike Sha kes pea re 's , are co nven tionalan d derivative. T he re is no sense in sum m arizing the m . But the d ram aticissues, sometimes in their carefully nuanced complications and sometimes intheir u ne xp ec ted and widely leaping m oral mo dul ation s, are what his writ ing issignificantly about.My delin eatio n of this dou ble m oral grid, this oft-repeated Santayanastructure, can at best be helpful in a negative way. Perhaps attention to it canforstall hasty jud gm en t ab out what is ha pp en in g in a text . T oo often, cr i t ics ofSantayana focus on a part of him, to the exclusion or neglect of other parts .Th is ma kes him seem m ore co her ent th an h e is , and l ikeable in different waysto different p e o p l e . In response to faulting critics, Santayana somewhere saidthat he was content, l ike the curate 's egg, to be good in parts . This is anotherinstance of sum ma ry irony. He aspired to who leness , even at the painful priceof logical inc oh ere nc e. (He also aspired to co he re nc e, at the painful price ofloss of wholeness . ) My interp retation prop oses tha t we try to unde rsta nd an dconsume, sometimes with our own comparable pains and diff icult ies , the wholeegg.

He re are a few samples of what hap pe ns when the eg g is bro ken an dscram bled, when parts are taken in isolation from t he whole . I qu ote th e part ,an d then supply the dram atic context in which i t is em be dd ed . I po int to thedouble gr id that might o therwise not be immediate ly apparent .

T h e ideal of mysticism is accord ingly exactly co ntr ary to the idea l ofreason; ins tead of perfect ing hum an nature it seeks to abol ish it . . . (14) .But we elsewhere learn that mysticism, spiritual life and post-rational moralityperfect a different way of being.

In evaluating those barbaric poets Browning and Whitman, Santayanasuggests that they had "no grasp of the whole reali ty, and consequently nocapacity for a sane an d s teady idealization." Also, "The com paratively ba rba rou sages had a poetry of the ideal; they had visions of beauty, o rd er an d perfection "(104) . Sane idealization is at onc e an oxym oron and also the whole impossibleart of l ife. Visions of beauty, orde r and p erfection r isk de pa rtu res from thetrut h. T he re is n o way of having everything, both Dichtung u n d Wahrheit, o t h e rthan by dram at iz ing the th ings that canno t be had to gethe r . Santayanacharacteris t ically envis ions the unattainable unity.

Santayana writes of "The silence of Shakespeare and his philosophicali n c o h e r e n c e . . . " ( 9 6 ). B u t o n e c o u ld s p ea k o f s uc h i n c o h e r e n c e inSantayana as well . In bo th m en, a hig her dram atic wisdom is pre dica ted on theeschewal of a false co he ren ce an d orde rliness . In m any places in his texts ,Santayana m ocks, always ironically, logical orderline ss an d co he ren ce .

Interpretat ions is largely con cer ne d with gett in g at the dram atic andemotional feel of a variety of religions and religious att i tud es, which religionscould not co he re tog eth er . T he m asterful skil l with which Santayan a regularlyen ter ed into imag inative and his torical roles is evident, for exa m ple, in the wayhe vivifies pagan belief. He shows how it had a sense for "the real existence ofre lig ious objects . . . " and knew that "god was not an invent ion bu t a fact. "But the n declin e and de cad enc e came abo ut. "Reflection . . . an d desire for


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INTERPRETATIONS 25philosophical truth led inevitably to . . . the reduction of posit ive tradit ions tom oral al legories . . . . W hat an age of imagination had intui ted as tru th, anage of ref lect ion could preserve only as fable . . . " (38 , 39) . So we see almostin process how that moral decline (from the perspective of enthusiasm andim agin ation ) yields to moral advance (from the perspective of truth an dph iloso phy ). A nd conversely. I t is this kind of tragic and ironic recognition,provided by that double moral insight, which pervades Santayana.

Santayana ironically scolds "that zealous Protestant X e n o p h a n e s " fo r"decry ing th e fanciful polytheism of the poe ts." A nd h e says th at Socrates,"invoking the local deities of brooks and meadows . . . is m o r e r e as o n ab l e a n dn o b l e to o u r m i n d s t ha n a r e t h e h a r d d e ni al s of X e n o p h a n e s . . . " (39) .Rea sonab le and nob le inde ed ! Is that what Socrates is abou t? Santayan a willsoon show tis not the nether s ide of the argument , but a developed a l ternat iveargument that i s the nether s ide of the drama.Santayana himself sought in various ways to articulate a natural religion, ahuman orthodoxy that wottld be at once imaginatively poetic andphilosophically true. In Interpretations he conveys the poignance of the conflictwhich h e was never to resolve because the re could be no resolution to i t. H er e,nat ura l religion is seen as "most unna tura l ." I t has bee n "the appa na ge of a fewph i losopher s in ages o f r e lig ious d i sin teg rat ion . . . " (43 ) . And It is theappanage of Santayana himself, who in many respects was at one with the Stoicswh om he scold ed, and w ho himself lived in an age of religious dis inte gration .

Joel Porte nicely gets to the essential psychological drama when he writes,"Santayana's cr i t ique of the [Catholic] modernis t accordingly amounts to anoblique exercise in self-castigation, as if the believer in him needed to reprovethe skeptic when he went too far and seemed about to commit spir i tual suicide"(xviii).

Again, sttch squibs an d summ ary jud gm en ts are at best interpretive s tart ingpoints . Th e dram at is personae by themselves do not give us the feel for what itIs that the drama celebrates , the moving intensity of certain opposit ions, madeto run th ei r careful cours es. Santay ana characteristically gives us notarg um en ts for viewpoints, which would be lean an d Insufficient, butIntellectually passionate cases for them; as he also makes intellectuallypassionate cases for their opposites . To uncover the details , the inflections, thenu an ce s of how he do es this is beyon d redu ctionis t arg um en ts or s taticInterpretive schemes. Proper writ ing about Santayana needs i tself to beapprecia t ive and dynam ic, sus ta ined and developed. Th e exegeses that m erelyuncover or under l ine cer ta in arguments in Santayana, or that d i rect cer ta inarg um ent s a t h im, are necessar ily threadb are an d insufficient.

- I I I -I ve ntu re som e exp an ded atten tion to an essay I have already alluded to, "TheAb sence of Religion in Sha kespe are." I t certainly dram atize s viewpoints , andpar takes of the uncer ta in t ies and problems that have a l ready been sketched.Perhaps it tests to its very limits my critical approach of always attributing ironyto San taya na. It allows for a focus on some textual minutiae, and suggests the


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26 OVERHEA RD IN SEVILLEpossible4 value of directing many words at very few."W e might say," Santay ana says, "that the ab senc e of relig ion in Sh ake spe arewas a sign of his good sense . . . and that he was in that respect superior toHomer and Dante." And, "we might say," that the lat ter gave us arepre senta tion of life that was "indirect an d partly unr ea l" (99 ) . Earlier ,Shak espea re s abse nce of religion was seeti as a we akne ss. T h e two sets ofclaims build from different prem ises; we could easily det ect , a nd ind ee d havealready seen, what those premises are and why the arguments must clash.

I t is not too often that Santayana gives us a metacomment on his method, alittle postscript in his text that is at once a con firm atio n of his two viewpoints aswell as a crib for an i ronic in terpreta t ion . But he re he writes, "What I havetreated as a l imitation in him would, then, appear as the maturity of hiss t rength" (99) . The s t rengths and weaknesses of Shakespeare are explored , asare the s trengths and weaknesses of the poets used for comparisons - D a n t ea n d H o m e r . H e r e qttite clearly is that do ub le m oral grid .

The dramatizations, however, are not as f inished and as sett led as theymight be (and as they become in Three Phi losophical Poets),5 and the elusiveironies have to be carefully discovered, puzzled over, weighed and prescribed.Santayana here writes "those who think it wise . . . to refrain from searchingfor general pr inc ip l es . . . may well see in Shakespe are the i r natura l pr op he t"(100) . He is g iv ing us the perspect ive of " those who th ink . . . " in an essaythat m ight well have been w rit ten as a dialogue betwe en those wh o think thisand those who th ink that. A little further down, however, there is a twist."Those of us , however, who believe in circumnavigation, and who think thatboth human reason and human imaginat ion require a cer ta in to ta l i ty in ourviews . . . can ha rdly find in Sha kesp eare all tha t the hi gh est p oe t could give"(100) . "Tho se of us . . . " sou nd s like an a uth oria l persp ectiv e, p rivilegedabove the f irs t one.

These l i t t le phrases , "those who think" and "Those of us , " manage to en t r apboth Santayana and me in our mutual problem of get t ing h im proper lyinte rpre ted . If we can extr icate ourselves from this , ot he r interpre tiveprob lem s will seem easy an d rout ine by com pari son . T ho se , by the way, whothink that this is all a critical tempest in a tiny teapot clearly differ from those ofus who delight in attention to the nuances of Santayana's texts , and who wouldl ike some comparable nuances detected in our own.

T he pro ble m , to purs ue i t relentlessly, is that we seem to f ind in Santay ana's"Those of us," a clear s tance, a move away from Shakespeare as ult imate poet, amove to Dante and Horner as the l ikely exemplars of that superior person.Santayana even dares to say, and surely there is em erg ing irony he re, tha t "whatis required for theoretic wholeness is not this or that system but some system.Its value is no t the value of truth, bu t that of victorious im agin atio n" (100).Ind eed ! Santayana seem s to be turn ing away from dram atiza tion of his views toan unexpected univocacy; he seems to be replacing a preference for truth witha preference for imaginat iveness . Has he momentar i ly forgot ten that he has

* Cambridge: Harvard University Press, " 947. Hereafter ci ted as TP P.


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INTERPRETATIONS 27been concerned also about the falsenesses in Homer and Dan te and theChris t ian tradit ion, memorably and imaginatively wonderful though they are?He was later to sustain the drama more fully, and to acknowledge that Homerand Dan te too , a long with Shakespeare , Lucretius and Go ethe , are no t th ehig hes t poe ts. Th ey were all grea t, bu t in different ways, an d with resp ect todifferent values that needed to be argued and developed from differentprem ises . T h e h ighes t poet is merely Imagined in Three Philosophical Poets and isyet to come.

Is there any other way of reading the move from uthose who think . . . n to'Those of us . . . "? I must make my own crit ical move here, summon up myaxioms, and suggest that Santayana was being ironic against all appearances ,though the appearances do not suggest any Irony. Those who think that he wastaking an unequivocal moral posit ion might be r ight, merely r ight, but those ofus who say he was ironic might be doing him a greater interpretive andimaginative service!

In effect I propose that we had better see Santayana as ironic, and not assincere, when he s ides against Shakespeare and even against t ru th . W e shoulddo i t for his own good, and for a truth of sorts , our proper recognition of hisIdeal a n d profottnder self. In a word we would see Santayana in more moralfashion, and closer to the sources of his deepest inspiration, if we credit himhere with irony rather than seriousness . Santayana himself will

Overheard in Seville.8.1990

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