Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński

Santayana on Love

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loveSantayana on Love. Love has a natural, animal, instinctive, sexual, and biological basis and, on the other hand, it has some ideal object (RS 8), which means that someone we love, apart from being desired and needed, is also seen as one embodying some impersonal ideal or ideals that we, the loving persons, long for and prize, the beautiful for example. Hence, someone we love is desired and, at the same time, idealized in our imagination: the loving person imposes upon the loved person some features (one or many) that is believed to be objective (truly belonging to that loved person), perfect, and, perhaps, long-lasting, and these are the essential factors that make us say that we love. Hence, a role of imagination; actually, Santayana, in the chapter “Love” of Reason in Society, narrows down the term ‘love’ to “imaginative passion, to being in love” (RS 7). The role of imagination in love is potentially hugely important because the lover can, if s/he is able to, use his/her imagination to approach the lover as if the lover were herself/himself the ideal (Singer 2009, 36). In other words, we do not love other people as such (although we desire them as such), but rather we love the ideal features they possess or seem to possess; love is an appreciation of ideals, not a relationship between loving persons (Madigan 2011). However, these ideals, are hardly ever fulfilled (IPR 126), hence love is hardly ever to be consumed in such a way as desire can be, especially sexual union. Imagination can be unlimitedly developed: “To possess things and persons in idea is the only pure good to be got out of them; to possess them physically or legally is a burden and a snare (PP 428).”

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Santayana: A Philosophical Guide

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492px-George_Santayana

George Santayana

Philosophers provide us with different things: thoughts, inventions, reflections on various topics, worldviews, lifestyles, and their own visions of philosophy. Some of them can be seen as masters who can teach us how to live well, others as scientists who provide us with theories, still others can serve us as guides and interpreters.

I have been encouraged to blog about Spanish-American philosopher, best-selling author, and poet, George Santayana, or Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás (1863-1952), seen as a thinker who, by means of his abundant output and wide scope of his interests, can show us his own way of looking at practicing philosophy, at other philosophers, philosophical schools, arts, philosophical problems within different disciplines, and even philosophical reflections about the places he visited.

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Español

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Mis textos en español son dedicados principalmente a tres áreas de investigaciones.

I 

La primera es la filosofía de George (Jorge) Santayana, un pensador
nortamericano-español, y eso incluye, entre otros, las siguientes publicaciones:

Introducción a “Simposio sobre la filosofia politica de Jorge Santayana“, director invitado Krzysztof (Chris) Piotr Skowroński, Limbo. Boletin Internacional de estudios sobre Santayana (Spain), 29, 2009; “El pragmatismo abulense de George Santayana: un epitome” en: Debats. Revista trimestral editada por la Institució Alfons el Magnanim (Valencia), 2010/3 (108), pp. 82-83; “Santayana y America.” En: Santayana: un pensador universal (ed. J. Beltrán, M. Garrido y S. Sevilla). Universidad de Valencia, 2011, pp. 49-54; “Aspectos ontológicos de la obra de arte literaria en Santayana. Un bosquejo introductorio” en: Limbo. Boletín de estudios internacionales sobre Santayana (Spain), 28 (2008), pp. 137-158.

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2004-2017

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I gave the following courses in the past:

  • Filozofia (dla Filologii Czeskiej)
  • Filozofia (dla studentów Instytutu Sztuki)
  • Gombrowicz i filozofia współczesna (studia doktoranckie z filozofii)
  • Persuasion and Rhetoric (dla studentów English in Public Communication)
  • Multiculturalism (Erasmus students)
  • Politics and Aesthetics (Erasmus students)
  • Persuasion and Rhetoric (in English for the students of English in Public Communication)
  • Philosophy (Humanistic subject in English for the students of English Philology and of EPC)
  • Erasmus programme (in English for international Students)
  •  Doktryny i idee artystyczne sztuki współczesnej (dla studentów Instytutu Sztuki)
  • Philosophy (dla studentów anglistyki i English in Public Communication)

Table of Contents

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                SANTAYANA: A PHILOSOPHICAL GUIDE

  1. PHILOSOPHY
  • What is Philosophy?
  • The Role of Philosopher
  • Methodology of Literary philosophy
  • Teaching philosophy
  • Universal character of philosophy
  1. PHILOSOPHERS
  • Plato
  • Aristotle
  • Lucretius
  • Berkeley
  • Locke
  • Leibniz
  • Spinoza
  • Kant
  • Schopenhauer
  • Emerson
  • Peirce
  • James
  • Dewey
  1. SCHOOLS AND MOVEMENTS
  • Platonism
  • Neoplatonism
  • Epicureanism
  • Stoicism
  • Thomism
  • Scholastics
  • German Idealism
  • Transcendentalism
  • Utilitarianism
  • Pragmatism
  • Critical Realism
  • Existentialism
  • Analytic
  • Marxism
  • Postmodernism
  1. PHILOSOPHICAL DISCIPLINES
  • History of Philosophy
  • Contemporary Philosophy
  • Ethics
  • Aesthetics
  • Ontology
  • Metaphysics
  • Epistemology
  • Mind-Body (Philosophy of Mind)
  • Philosophy of Religion
  • Anthropology
  • Political Philosophy
  • Social Philosophy
  • Sociology
  • Philosophy of Culture
  • Literary Criticism
  • Philosophy of Values
  1. POSITIONS AND DOCTRINES
  • Materialism/Naturalism
  • Rationalism
  • Realism
  • Scepticism
  • Relativism
  • Epifenomenalism
  1. PROBLEMS AND ISSUES
  1. DIALOGUES AND DISPUTES
  • Santayana vs. Dewey
  • Santayana vs. James
  • Santayana vs. Royce
  • Santayana vs. Berenson
  1. MEANING, RECEPTION, CONTINUATORS
  • Savater
  • Rorty
  • Lachs
  • Danto
  • B. Singer
  • I. Singer
  • Saatkamp
  • Sprigge
  • Kerr-Lawson
  • Moreno
  1. PLACES
  • Avila
  • Berlin
  • Oxford
  • Cambridge
  • Cambridge (Harvard)
  • Boston
  • Rome
  • Paris
  • London
  1. AESTHETICS, ARTS, AND LITERARY FIGURES
  • Dante
  • Shakespeare
  • Whitman
  • Browning
  • Avant-garde
  • Classic art
  • Barbarian Art
  • Generation’98

11. MISCELLANEA

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