Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 19 Fall 2001

              Is Santayana Tragic?
Charles Padron*s presentation of Santayana's notion of the tragic is refreshingly
speculative. Not wanting to dig another theoretical pigeonhole for Santayana
scholarship, Mr. Padron steps back and surveys a remarkable philosophical-
literary career, finding the tragic to be a pervasive and conspicuous presence
throughout; a presence, he furthermore argues, which is not merely conceptual since
the tragic manifests in Santayana's thought as a courageous, sober-minded response
to a metaphysically given reality. This less 'theoretical' approach has the advantage
that it allows for a thematic access by way of a single thread, one whose unraveling
need not destroy, as it were, the whole sweater. One may, if one wishes, take
Padron's claim seriously without compromising any pet interpretations of the subtler
points of Santayana's formal ontology, or more informal philosophical reflections
(Padron even suggests two further "notions" that might be explored.) Briefly stated,
we are offered a sort of a psychoanalysis by Padron, which is profitable not for having
provided a governing principle from which the rest of Santayana's philosophy can be
derived, but as I like to think of it, an interpretive foothold which offers a visionary
glimpse of what might be lurking below the surface of the multi-layered narrative the
great philosopher leaves us.1
Needless to say, there is a challenge presented by the long view Padron takes,
one that he himself acknowledges but to my mind doesn't sufficiently confront in the
presentation he gives us here. This challenge can be surnmarized by what I detect as
an equivocation regarding the exact status of the tragic character he (otherwise) so
deftly identifies. In regard to this equivocation, I wish to probe into the philosophy of
mind driving Padron's analysis. Furthermore, it will be instructive to compare
Padron*s presentation to the one he contrasts his own with by John McCormick,
delivered before this Society in 1982.
To support his contention that Santayana's thought bears a notion and not a mere
concept or idea of the tragic, Mr. Padron offers his own philosophical understanding
of what he variously calls "constitution," "character," "attitude," "sentiment,"
"passion," and "mind". Distinguishing himself from McCormick, Padron wants to
consider the tragic as a relation in Santayana's thought which reflects on these
aforementioned phenomena in such a manner that helps (among other things) reveal
something of 'Santayana the man*. The question to consider with respect to this last
concern is what, if anything, of Santayana is revealed in a sheer conceptual analysis
of the sort offered in McCormick* s 1982 address?
First, one must observe the warning McCormick issues regarding any
consideration of the tragic in Santayana: "No reconstruction of Santayana's idea of the
tragic can be satisfactory..,if it ignores the many occasions in his writings when
Santayana uses the words 'tragic* and 'tragedy' with apparent casualness, even
carelessness"2. As McCormick persuasively goes on to say, this carelessness is only
apparent since, as devout readers are well aware, Santayana was a remarkably careful
purveyor of concepts, which in other places he more appropriately calls "themes".
1 An earlier version of this paper was read to the annual meeting of the Santayana Society in New
York on December 28, 2000, in response to Charles Padron's paper, "Santayana's Notion of the
Tragic".
2 McCormick, John, "Santayana's Idea of the Tragic" in Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the
Santayana Society. Vol. 1: 5.