Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 20 Fall 2002

              Santayana after September 11,2001
In George Santayana, Literary Philosopher Irving Singer encourages the reader to
admire Santayana as a novelist and writer of memoirs, a literary critic and
aesthetic theorist.1 For Singer Santayana is "the first great aestheticlan in the
history of American philosophy" (198), and* even more important* "his creativity
in the literary presentation of his philosophy excels as only great art does."
Santayana's works are especially valuable today because "[t]he world in which we
now exist needs such aesthetic achievements more than ever before" (199).
Santayana has been especially relevant for Singer himself because he has served "as a
model of the literary philosopher trying to overcome Ms alienation from a world that
has become increasingly oblivious of its need for the humanities" (198). Singer is
not, however, entirely uncriticaL Santayana, he suggests, had an "Imperfect
appreciation of romanticism," perhaps because Ms willed detachment from personal
ties left Mm unwilling to see "the world in terms of moral and interpersonal
problems" (141), wMch were the problems paramount to the Romantics. Perhaps the
most "serious shortcoming" of Santayana's pMlosophy in Singer's view is its Implicit
support for "the maxim that Might is Right." Acknowledging that Santayana Mmself
insists that "Ms doctrine is in fact more intricate," Singer finds that Ms "etMcal
theory cannot really meet the arguments of one who believes that Might makes Right"
(185-6).
Whatever objections critics might raise to particular points of interpretation,
George Santayana, Literary Philosopher surely succeeds as an introduction to a
thinker that too many otherwise educated people know only as a famous name.
Singer's Santayana is an attractive figure whose literary creativity insures that readers
will enjoy Ms work even when they disagree. From reading Singer one would learn
that Santayana was not only a gifted writer and perceptive critic of literature and art
but also an insightful observer of human life who could aid an individual seeking
emancipation "from possessiveness, egoism, self-deception, and the restless hunger
for dubious goods" (121). TMs should be enough to convince anybody to begin
reading Santayana's own work, and yet there is sometMng lacking. Singer explicitly
renounces any claim to present Santayana's work in "the more technical branches of
pMlosophy" (5), and that is fair enough. It would be unreasonable to expect Professor
Singer's small book to cover all aspects of Santayana's oeuvre; it would be even more
unreasonable to expect Singer to have anticipated the events of September 11, 2001.
Yet it would be unfortunate if readers introduced to Santayana through Singer's
appealing portrait failed to realize that in addition to Santayana the literary man and
Santayana the analyst of metaphysical and epistemological tangles, there is Santayana
the cultural critic, the shrewd commentator on politics and society. Singer emphasizes
the first, acknowledges the second and, in tMs book, neglects the tMrd. Yet it may be
that today, especially after the events of 9/11, It is Santayana the cultural critic whose
revival is most urgent.
A student introduced to Santayana tMough Singer's book would not learn that
Santayana had once articulated an immensely influential critique of American culture
whose key term, the "genteel tradition," became the enemy against wMch a
1 Irving Singer, George Santayana, Literary Philosopher (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2000). Future citations from this text will be identified by page numbers in the text This paper was
presented to the Santayana Society at its annual meeting in Atlanta on December 29,2001.