Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 20 Fall 2002

              Santayana and Limited Government
Although Santayana wrote about reason in society in his early years, and about
a rational political order in his last book, he was never a political philosopher
in the sense of advocating one specific form of government over another.
Indeed, in the preface to that last work, Dominations and Powers,1 he voiced his
desire to see all types of society from within with toleration and understanding, hi all
of them, he sees the emergence through human genius of a measure of spiritual
freedom and happiness, different societies flowering in wholly different directions. It
is this wonderful diversity which is at risk in the developing world economy.
In my personal contacts I found [all types of society] tolerable when seen from the inside and
not judged by some standard unintelligible to those bom and bred under that influence.
Personally I might have my Instinctive preference; but speculatively and romantically I should
have been glad to find an even greater diversity; and if one political tendency kindled my wrath,
it was precisely the tendency of industrial liberalism to level down all civilisations to a single
cheap and dreary pattern.2
Recent discussions of limited government have of course not drawn at all upon
Santayana's ideas; but at least one commentator believes that his analysis throw light
on the issues, hi a short but appreciative 1992 study, Noel O*Sullivan argues that
Dominations and Powers gets to the level of the first principles of limited government
without introducing an ideological bias, something nobody else has managed to do.3
Santayana, he says, "offers one of the most profound and subtle responses to the crisis
of humanism that the present century has witnessed" (23). Calling Santayana's
naturalism a "philosophy of modesty," O'Sullivan continues:
... naturalism enables him to provide the first completely non-ideological theory of limited
politics in the history of modem political thought. Such a theory, he considered, provides the
only means of rescuing the ideal of limited government from the pernicious illusions with which
liberal intellectual orthodoxy has surrounded it during the past two centuries. (77)
An important theme in Dominations and Powers is Santayana's suggestion that a
world government is needed, and that a rational world government would limit itself
to ensuring economic prosperity and political stability; it would not seek to dominate
religion or the arts. He points to an underlying fact here, which leads him to the
moral distinction he wants to make. Different races and societies have a flair for
developing in different cultural directions, a radical divergence which is harmless and
in fact an intrinsic part of human morality. However, all humans survive and nourish
themselves under similar conditions, so that a uniform economic regime would be
advantageous. A world government ought therefore to restrict itself to the economic
arts, and to leave the liberal arts undisturbed. Here Santayana touches on the topical
theme of limited government, although without the latitude on economic matters
usually found in today's proponents of minimal government.
O'Sullivan sees damaging incoherencies in Santayana's position, despite its
promising non-ideological starting point.  He feels that consistency would require of
George Santayana, Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government,
(Scribner's: New York, 1946). This book will be cited as DP hereafter. The author is grateful to the
Liberty Fund for sponsoring discussions of this text.
2 See page vii of the Preface to DP.
3 Santayana. Thinkers of Our Time Series. The Claridge Press, 27 Windridge Close, St. Albans,
Herts. England AL34JP. References to this monograph will consist of the page number alone.