Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 23 Fall 2005

              The Autonomy of Spirit
Despite his characterization of spirit as impotent, George Santayana speaks on
occasion of the autonomy of spirit An impotent spirit cannot be autonomous
under the standard reading, on pain of contradiction. One cannot say that
spirit supervenes on a causally autonomous realm of matter, and then add that spirit
itself is autonomous in the same sense. However, he makes his intentions clear: it is
autonomous in an entirely different "moral" sense. What Santayana has in mind
depends on the fact that spiritual experiences and moral evaluations, once occurring,
can never be annulled. In this, he sees something of a victory for spirit, not in the
sense that the pain of events is removed, but in the sense that suffering is seen in a
different light. It may become more tolerable, once understood and mastered in an
intellectual sense. While this might seem of small comfort, he would perhaps suggest
that spiritually inclined persons would comprehend. I believe that, provided one takes
into account the unfamiliar sense assigned to 'autonomy' in the case of spirit, there is
no conflict here with his naturalism.
An issue touching on his ontology arises here on which Santayana makes his
position much less clear. In order for Santayana's account of the autonomy of spirit to
carry full weight, the moments of spirit that make up experience must be recorded in
the realm of truth and must be known along with material facts. Has Santayana made
provision for this? A moment of experience, as a physical event, has its own essence,
and this will differ radically from the essence intuited in the event; but from the
spiritual point of view, it is the latter that is important and is needed in the realm of
truth. However, Santayana has very little explicit to say about this double occurrence
of essence in a moment of spirit This calls for an explanation. I deal with this issue
following some further comments on his remarkable doctrine that spirit, although
impotent, is in a special sense autonomous.
The immaterial, says Santayana, is "indomitable" (rb 672). Actual experiences cannot
be abolished by being ignored, and essences cannot be changed by being dragged
down into the flux of change. He assigns to essences a non-existential priority over the
events in which they participate, and has them figure in a truth that is eternally
unchanging. Life cannot annul the discoveries that spirit has once made in the life of
any person. Obviously, hostile existences can extinguish the organs of spirit; they can
and eventually will destroy any physical records of human experience. However, they
cannot remove from the record experiences that have taken place. To this fact, he
attaches the name 'autonomy of spirit':
... but the autonomy of spirit, while spirit lives, is inalienable. The things felt will have
been felt, the things loved will have been loved, whatever may ensue; and no contrary
judgment supervening will ever have the field to itself. Ignorant as it may be of all
contradictions, it will be contradicted; unconscious as it may be of aHen goods, the alien
goods will exist. So that the clouds that traverse the spirit, in being seen, are in one sense
abolished: spirit has outflanked them, set them down to be clouds, and thereby vindicated
the supremacy of light and of vision. (RB 672)
Santayana employs several different terms to describe this characteristic of spirit. It is
indomitable and inalienable, and as well it has intrinsic authority. This latter is the
sixth and last on his list of the characteristics of intuition. He does not mention truth in
the above passage or in his discussion of the sixth characteristic. However, there is
little doubt that he has in mind the participation of moments of spirit in the realm of
truth. Thus in another text: "Yet who knows what intuitions, what moments of spirit,