Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 03 Fall 1985

              Categories and Orders of
Santayana's Christian Neo-Platonism
In the "Preface" to Scepticism and Animal Faith Santayana writes that "The
Realms of Being of which I speak are not parts of a cosmos, nor one
great cosmos together; they are only kinds or categories of things which I
find conspicuously different and worth distinguishing, at least in my own
thoughts."1 Does this mean that categories are as real as the cosmos or
that we make the categoreal distinctions in our thought? Scepticism and
Animal Faith can be read in either an objectivist or a subjectivist way.
The significance of order in Santayana's philosophy had not fully
developed by 1889, in Lotze's System of Philosophy, though there is a clear
repudiation, following Lotze, of a single cosmic order as in Leibniz, a
"best of all possible worlds."2 The full significance comes with the process
by which matter takes on form, the central problem of the production of
art in The Sense of Beauty and Reason in Art} Order is central also in
Santayana's moral and political philosophy, and the preliminary chapter
"Chaos and Order" shows this.4 What is particularly helpful in
understanding the relationship of the four categorical orders to each
other is his manuscript "The Order of Genesis and the Order of
Discovery." How does Santayana's thinking about the four "realms" relate
essence to existence to truth and to spirit? The answer is made very clear
in Scepticism and Animal Faith and this shows that the initial problem of
order in The Life of Reason5 was, to Santayana's satisfaction, solved in
Realms of Being.6 I think badly of Dewey's rejection of the Realms to leave
This paper was read to the Santayana Society, New York, December 29, 1984.
1 Scepticism and Animal Faith (New York: Scribners, 1923), p.v. For convenience I shall
abbreviate this Preface to The Realms of Being "SAF" and sometimes quote from the selections
in Max H, Fisch, Classic American Philosophers (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951),
p.268 (abbreviated in text "CAP"). Unless otherwise noted, books and manuscripts mentioned
are by Santayana.
2 Although Lotze speaks, in Santayana's words, "of the unity of the cosmic process and of
the purpose of nature, . . . this unity will never constitute for him the value and justification of
what comes under it; rather it will be the condition and means of producing conscious and
happy life." Paul G. Kuntz, Ed., Lotze's System of Philosopy (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1971), p. 138. Santayana ascribes this idealistic optimism to a way of thought in Kant and
Hegel called "formalism," which Santayana defines as "a system that tends to reduce things to
the relations between them." Ibid.
3 I believe we need to study the progression from The Sense of Beauty to Reason in Art as
mediation between matter and form, and therefore of prime metaphysical importance.
4 "Chaos and Order," Ms., early draft for Dominations and Powers, 5 p., gift of Corliss
Lamont, Columbia University. The chapter "Chaos and Order" occurs as Book First, Chapter I
of Dominations and Powers. See Beth Judith Singer, "Order and Liberty in Human Life: A Study
of Santayana's Metaphysics of Society," Ph.D., Columbia University, 1967.
5 The Life of Reason begins "Whether Chaos or Order lay at the beginning of things," a
question debated between Dialecticians who appeal to a "principle" prior to creation while
Naturalists trace creatures springing from chaos. Reason in Common Sense (New York:
Scribner's, 1922), p. 35. (This first volume will be abbreviated in the text as "RCS")