Santayana: A Philosophical Guide

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.

The present project has no definite aim if we understand by it a text or a manuscript that is going to be completed according to a well organized plan, and ready for publication some day; rather studying philosophy understood as a continuous process that gives intellectual satisfaction and brings more insight is at stake here. I will also study those philosophers who studied Santayana, some of them being his critics, some others his commentators, and still others the devoted continuators of his thought.

Although I have already written a book about Santayana (Santayana and America:Values, Liberties, Responsibility), co-edited another book (Under Any Sky: Contemporary Readings of George Santayana), and published chapters and papers in English, Spanish, and Polish on various aspects of his thought, I will not use any of these materials here. Nor is this place a platform for providing information about recent publications or for organizing events dedicated to Santayana, although I have organized some international meetings on Santayana in the past, and hope to do more in future.

I start with the philosophy of love, which does not mean that it was the main topic for Santayana’s reflection. I simply think that this is a good topic to start with because it is very universal, important, and, I hope, interesting to the readers, some of whom, perhaps, would like to send me their comments.

The Structure of the Project:

1. Philosophy
2. Philosophers
3. Schools and Movements
4. Philosophical Disciplines
5. Positions and Doctrines
6. Problems and Issues
7. Dialogues and Disputes
8. Meaning, Reception, and Continuators
9. Places
10. Aesthetics, Art, and Literary Figures
11. Miscellanea