Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 21 Fall 2003

              Santayana's Review of Dewey's
Experience and Nature:
Pivotal Expression of a Philosophy of
Living Nature and Vivacious Spirit
Spirit lives in moments and in spots; yet from any station it may survey everything, rescuing
its causes from ignorance of themselves. By the least joy it can redeem them from futility,
and from the least pain it can wring the conscience of the Fates and challenge their selfish
somnolence (RB 850).
Dewey published his Experience and Nature in 1925. It was a major work in
the tradition of American pragmatism. But when Santayana reviewed it in
The Journal of Philosophy for December of that same year, he came loaded
for bear. Both philosophers were claiming the territory of philosophical
naturalism. Neither could win the ensuing confrontation as each staked his claim to
first principles. Each won in his own way by privileging the hermeneutical circle of
his own thought. We today are also winners as we inherit the legacy of their
exchanges.1
Each philosopher kept a wary eye out for the other until 1952, the year they both
passed away. Let us remember that that was only fifty years ago; indeed, in the dusky
eyes of the owl of Minerva, 1952 was only yesterday. This fact has prompted me to
begin this paper from the perspective of the continued relevance of their debate for
today.
But as I weigh the Santayana/Dewey debate now, I see the scale tipping toward
Santayana's side. On the one hand I see Dewey's philosophy as closer to, indeed
anticipatory of, a range of present-day theories and practices; but on the other hand I
regard Santayana's impugnment of Dewey's culturally fore-grounded "naturalistic
metaphysics" as the more critically prescient, providing a skeptical purchase on a
broad range of philosophical practices that prevail today, while offering much more
besides.
What was at stake for Santayana on the other side of this watershed of skeptical
critique?2 On the affirmative side of the divide we find his foundational insights
concerning living nature and the life of the spirit.    The latter is the solitary,
1 This paper was presented to the Santayana Society at its annual meeting in Philadelphia on
December 29, 2002.
Santayana's "Dewey Naturalistic Metaphysics," a review of Dewey's Experience and
Nature (EN), the review first appearing in The Journal of Philosophy, December 1925; page
references to the same piece are herein cited from its republication in Obiter Scripter, ed. Justus
Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz (New York: Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1936).) Santayana's review,
to the chagrin of Dewey, appeared again in the volume dedicated to Dewey in The Library of
Living Philosophers series edited by Paul A. Schilpp.) Dewey's various responses are found in
his collected works (to be elaborated): in short form, they consist in Dewey's ingenuous call—
like Royce's in a prior decade—for Santayana to "overcome" a pervasive dualism in this thought
between essence and existence.
2 This present paper is greatly indebted to the Dr. Jessica Wahman's dissertation, "Signs of
Transcendence: A Naturalist Critique of Transcendentalism," (Philosophy Dept. SUNY, Stony
Brook, 2001) which has developed this point at length.