Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 19 Fall 2001

              20 OVERHEARD IN SEVILLE
permanent suffering, a tragic metaphysical presence the escape from which could
only be a mystical one. I feel that these criticisms more than suffice as evidence for a
theoretical development or comprehension of the tragic in Santayana.
Thus, in my concurrence with McCormick, I cannot help asking the question:
what accounts for Padron's isolation of the tragic, not merely as one amongst a set of
developed concepts in Santayana's thought but as an "attitudmal connection to the
world at large" resurfacing in his advanced age with "a comforting vengeance"? This
is the question that perplexed me when considering Padron's fruitful investigations,
and it is not one for which an answer was forthcoming until I approached the issue as
follows. It seems to me that there is an equivocation regarding the status of the tragic
notion Padron identifies, which is reflected in the following alternatives: is the
pervasive tragic sense Padron gives us one which centrally functions as a portrait of
Santayana himself} Or does it simply capture a particular insight of Santayana's into
the world? For myself, there is a crucial difference between these two conclusions, a
difference it appears Padron does not find crucial in the presentation he offers here.
To conclude, Mr. Padron*s welcome examination of Santayana's notion of the
tragic invites us to consider it as no mere concept-among-concepts, but as providing a
broad, thematic access which serves as an interpretive foothold. What I understand to
be the central significance of Padron* s examination is as follows. I feel that he has
indeed put his finger on the pulse of Santayana's work — if not having identified the
fundamental strain in his philosophy, at least one of them. Santayana's unremitting
(and to some cold and merciless) willingness to conjure up the sober-minded view of
things, based upon a deeply naturalistic insistence upon human finitude and
limitation, is unparalleled in twentieth-century thought. My only difference with
Padron concerns whether and to what extent this insight is wholly tragic (why not
equally credit the comic?), and as such, an appropriate way to understand Santayana
the man, rather than simply, Santayana the philosopher.
MATTHEW CALEB FLAMM
Southern Illinois University
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