Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 16 Fall 1998

              34 OVERHEARD IN SEVILLE
tragedy and the sublime, among other things. Aesthetics cannot be primarily positive
because beauty must be counterbalanced with a substantive negative aesthetic leading
to positive moral value.
VII. Conclusion
Given that "the architectonic of his thought, his moral philosophy** structures his
metaphysics, philosophy of science, epistemology, and aesthetics, Santayana himself
sometimes seems to recognize that his differentiation of ethics and aesthetics is tenuous
(Munitz v). Art contributes to a moral life because "an ingredient in [man*s] ultimate
happiness, is to find satisfaction for his eyes, for his imagination, for his hand or voice
aching to embody latent tendencies in explicit forms" (wia 35). Fine art is practically
desirable because it speaks to the need to appreciate beauty and allows the individual
to express herself. Aesthetics is a kind of ethics distinguished only in trivial ways: "In
moral philosophy, then, there is as little room for a special discipline called 'aesthetics*
as there is among the natural sciences" (wia 40). With its incorporation into the Life
of Reason, aesthetics, like religion, becomes a culmination of morality as a fuller
understanding of the relation of man to his environment and of man to himself, the state
of development that poetically orchestrates the demands of the individual with the
world. Tills balance marks the goal of Santayana's ethical system as perfected
aesthetical activity, but it also characterizes a difficulty for a naturalized philosophical
theory under which only a difference in typical emphasis rather than in kind can
distinguish the disciplines.
MATTHEW C. ALTMAN
University of Chicago
The Santayana Edition
The Santayana Edition is largely on schedule. Our first priority has been the Letters.
During the summer we sent samples of the first volume to MIT Press, and we continue
to work on the details of the software program being used for electronic publishing. The
Marginalia volume is in the main complete, and we will be seeking a publication
subvention that will permit MIT to publish the volume.
An important new development is that the General Editor is now in Indianapolis.
Effective 1 August 1998,1 accepted the position of Dean of Indiana University's School
of Liberal Arts in Indianapolis along with appointments in philosophy and in the School
of Medicine. Through June 1999, the Edition will remain at Texas A&M University
with John McDermott serving as Advisory Editor and Kris Frost continuing her excellent
work as Associate Editor. I continue to serve as General Editor until the project is
moved to Indianapolis in July 1999 when we expect to have a new person filling that
role. Thereafter I will be the Consulting Editor for the project.
The move to Indiana is good news. Indiana University and Purdue University at
Indianapolis already hosts the Peirce Edition Project. Two major editions being in the
same location may permit economies of scale that will add to more efficient and
effective editorial processes. I am grateful to Nathan Houser and the Peirce Edition
Project staff for their support.
HERMAN J. SAATKAMP, JR