Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 18 Fall 2000

              Beauty and the Labyrinth of Evil:
Santayana and the Possibility of
Naturalistic Mysticism
Among the thinkers of this passing century that offer themselves to the future for
its reflection, Santayana must stand out as a singular figure, one whose thought
is dedicated to the overarching possibility of the spiritual life undertaken without
religious faith or metaphysical dogma-l Among the throngs that fill the philosophical
bestiary of the 20* Century, Santayana may be the one genuine contemplative of note.2
The majority of doctrines dominant in the century have been directed either toward the
goal of action (Marxism, pragmatism, existentialism) or the problem of knowledge, truth
and meaning (positivism, analytic philosophy, phenomenology). Genuinely
contemplative philosophies cannot be classified with either one of these categories,
however much they may touch upon common themes. Given that Santayana sought to
find a basis for philosophy as a contemplative life by grafting the classical doctrine of
essence onto the modernist theory of matter as power, his thought engages nearly the
whole of the history of the west, while ranging into the field of the systems of India as
well. This may seem a puzzling bequest to the future from this century so filled with
violence and wreckage. If the true historical parameter of the century is measured by
events, we might find that it could be dated from 1914 to 1991, from the onset of World
War I to the exhausted collapse of the Soviet Union, a period in which the world was
either preparing for war or actively engaged in it. But the violence of the century must
include the rapid and constant reorganization of life forced upon the globe by
technologies some of whose impact is as yet hardly discerned. It* is possible to view
Santayana against this backdrop as a piece of intellectual nostalgia, rather like a
beautiful old church in a buzzing urban center that someone forgot to bulldoze to the
ground.
I think such a response would be unfortunate because the spiritual life is a perennial
concern for us, one that politics and technology cannot address however successfully or
intelligently managed they may be. The thought of Santayana offers then a permanent
opportunity to explore the dimensions of the spiritual life without the confusions
introduced by archaic physics or forgotten political aspirations. In the words of William
James, "Mystical classics have ... neither birthday nor native land" and so have the
opportunity to be as accessible or inaccessible as the contingent features of the world
permit.3 Santayana's writings may be read from this angle, and it is this approach I will
take myself. Thus the problem which I intend to explore does not try to address
Santayana as a figure of the 20th century or even as an "American" or "pragmatist" of
whatever stripe. Rather, I want to raise an internal issue to the prospect of the spiritual
discipline or askesis presented especially in Santayana's later philosophy, the problem
of the relation of the spiritual and the moral lives. What, if anything, does the quest for
a beatific vision have to do with the "problem of evil" in a naturalistic mysticism such
1 An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Santayana Society at its annual meeting in
Boston on December 28,1999.
2 Along with Thomas Meiton, a theologian rather than a philosopher.
3 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Harvard, 1985), p. 332.