Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 26 Fall 2008

              What Grounds the Categories?
Peirce and Santayana1
As for me, in stretching my canvas and taking up my palette and brush, I am not vexed that
masters should have painted before me in styles which I have no power and no occasion to
imitate; nor do I expect future generations to be satisfied with always repainting my pictures.
Agreement is sweet, being a form of friendship; it is also a stimulus to insight, and helpful,
as contradiction is not; and I certainly hope to find agreement in some quarters. Yet I am not
much concerned about the number of those who may be my friends in the spirit, nor do I care
about their chronological distribution, being as much pleased to discover one intellectual
kinsman in the past as to imagine two in the future. That in the world at large alien natures
should prevail, innumerable and perhaps infinitely various, does not disturb me. On the
contrary, I hope fate may manifest to them such objects as they need and can love; and
although my sympathy with them cannot be so vivid as with men of my own mind, and in
some cases may pass into antipathy, I do not conceive that they are wrong or inferior for
being different from me, or from one another ... [i]f somehow, in their chosen terms, they
have balanced their accounts with nature, they are to be heartily congratulated on their moral
diversity. — George Santayana (RB xvi-xvii).2
To erect an edifice that shall outlast the vicissitudes of time, my care must be, not so much to
set each brick with nicest accuracy, as to lay the foundations deep and massive. Aristotle
builded upon a few deliberately chosen concepts—such as matter and form, act and power—
very broad, and in their outlines vague and rough, but solid, unshakable, and not easily
undermined...The undertaking which this volume inaugurates is to make a philosophy like
that of Aristotle, that is to say, to outline a theory so comprehensive that, for a long time to
come, the entire work of human reason, in philosophy of every school and kind, in
mathematics, in psychology, in physical science, in history, in sociology, and in whatever
other department there may be, shall appear as filling up of its details. The first step towards
this is to find simple concepts applicable to every subject — Charles S. Peirce (1.1,
cl897).3
Peirce's admiration of Kant's philosophy is roughly matched by Santayana's
antipathy towards it. Whereas Peirce is out to invigorate Kant's thought in light
of the latest innovations in logic, Santayana sees Kant's philosophy as wrong-
headed (and would surely view its assumption of Aristotelian logic as among the least
of its failings). Their disagreement about Kant's legacy is reflected in their
disagreement about what a doctrine of ontological categories is for and how it is to be
defended. I discuss their views on these questions and suggest that with respect to
their search for a doctrine of categories Peirce and Santayana can be said to be
engaged in a common project in only a superficial sense. Their divergence, I claim, is
1 I am grateful for the careful criticism of Andrew Lugg, Glenn Tiller and those present at the
annual meeting of the George Santayana Society (held in conjunction with that of the American
Philosophical Association) in Baltimore on December 29th, 2007 where this paper was read. I
dedicate this paper to the memory of Peter Hare who, in conversation afterward, was
characteristically insightful and supportive.
2 References of this form are to Santayana's Realms of Being (New York: Cooper Square
Publishers, Inc., 1972).
3 References of this form are to Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 vols, C. Hartshorne
and P. Weiss (eds) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960) and cite the volume and
paragraph number followed by the year the passage was written.