More about Santayana’s thought than Russell’s
Having previously read a couple works by George Santayana and Bertrand Russell, I was interested in learning more about these two philosophers, so when I discovered that the former had written a book about the latter my interest was piqued. The content of The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell was first published as part of a 1913 book by Santayana entitled Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion. At some later date another publisher extracted these essays on Russell and published them as a separate book. This book should not be confused with a 1944 book of the same title edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp with contributions from various authors.
Santayana’s The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell is comprised of four chapters. The first of these chapters, “A New Scholasticism,” is little more than a brief introduction. Santayana writes from the perspective of a senior scholar commenting on an up-and-comer, even though Russell had published close to ten books by this time. Santayana encouragingly intimates that he admires what Russell has accomplished so far but disagrees with him on a number of matters. The overall tone of Santayana’s writing is one of a mentor offering his mentee a mixture of faint praise and mildly reproachful but constructive criticism.
In the second chapter, “The Study of Essence,” Santayana begins by explaining how philosophers since Plato have made a distinction between the ideal world and the world that man is capable of perceiving with his senses. Santayana describes Russell’s contribution to this continuum as a sort of oxymoronic logical idealism in which mathematics is seen as the underlying truth of the universe. The elder scholar then goes on to critique what he sees as the fallacies in this line of reasoning.
At some point prior to the writing of this book, Russell must have published some essay criticizing the philosophy of pragmatism, because chapter 3, “The Critique of Pragmatism,” reads like a response to such a statement. Santayana, who studied under William James, is closer to a pragmatist than Russell, but that doesn’t stop him from finding fault in pragmatic doctrine. In fact, this chapter is really about Santayana’s views on pragmatism and yields little insight into the philosophy of Russell, who’s name is only mentioned a few times in the entire chapter.
The final chapter, “Hypostatic Ethics,” is a more pointed critique of Russell, focusing on his conception of ethics. Santayana chides the absolutism of Russell’s ethical philosophy, seeing it as prescribing right and wrong in terms as rigid as mathematical equations. Santayana advocates a more relativistic ethics, not as relativist as the pragmatists, perhaps, but at least a happy middle ground.
If you are looking for an introductory or blanket overview of Russell’s philosophy, this is not that book. Despite what its title indicates, this book really reveals more about Santayana’s thought than Russell’s. A very brief book as far as philosophy texts go, it won’t take up too much of your time, and Santayana’s prose is more accessible and less cryptic here than in The Life of Reason, though he still has a tendency to say with a hundred words what he could have said in ten. Those interested in Russell will likely be disappointed by this book. Those interested in Santayana, however, might find it a satisfying read.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R1VGETA9KMT7AT/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm
Anything but accessible
 |
| George Santayana |
Spanish-born American philosopher George Santayana enjoyed an immense popularity in the early 20th century (at least as far as philosophers go in the consciousness of the general public). From 1905 to 1906 he published a comprehensive five-volume encapsulation of his philosophical thought entitled The Life of Reason. In the first volume, Reason in Common Sense, Santayana lays out his theory of epistemology, or the philosophy of knowledge. He traces the evolution of human intelligence, both in the species as a whole and in the individual human being, explaining the progression from sensory data to the formation of thoughts and ideas to the development of consciousness. I was interested in reading Santayana because of his fame and acclaim a century ago, but I made the mistake of equating popularity with accessibility. After reading Volume I of The Life of Reason I find it hard to believe anyone outside of philosophical academia could understand Santayana’s writing, much less enjoy it.
Santayana is easiest to comprehend when he’s commenting on other philosophers, whether he’s praising Aristotle and Spinoza or criticizing Plato, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Like Aristotle, he is a staunch proponent of empiricism over idealism, and has little patience for mysticism, superstition, or religion, at least when it comes to philosophical reasoning. Nor will he stand for skeptics who assert that empirical thought is unreliable because the limitations of our senses prohibit us from a totally accurate perception of reality. His metaphysics seem to be quite similar to Spinoza’s brand of deterministic materialism, yet he backs off from embracing Spinoza’s pantheism because he doesn’t like its emphasis on man’s insignificance in the universe.
As a layman reading this work a century later, it’s difficult for me to tell what new contributions Santayana brings to the discipline of philosophy above and beyond those who preceded him. I agree with just about everything Santayana has to say, but I don’t agree with the way he says it. Though I’m not a philosophical scholar, I’m far from a novice in the reading of philosophy; yet I found Santayana’s writing to be among the most vague and confusing that I’ve ever encountered. He seems more concerned with crafting lyrical prose than with building a philosophical argument. Most philosophers establish a consistent vocabulary and stick with it, proceeding in a logical manner to build a case towards what they’re trying to say. Santayana eschews a consistent vocabulary because the constant repetition would interrupt the graceful flow of his poetic writing. Each sentence he writes is like an aphorism that can be pulled out of context and admired for its elegance and eloquence, yet this diminishes the coherence of the text as a whole. Rather than a logically structured argument, Volume I reads more like a disconnected series of observations. Even Spinoza’s Ethics is easier to decipher than the convoluted syntax in this book, and Santayana’s prose is more obscure than other overly poetic literary philosophers (or philosophical men of letters) like Ralph Waldo Emerson or Maurice Maeterlinck.
To be fair, of the five branches of philosophy, epistemology is my least favorite, though I did enjoy Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy. I chose to read Reason in Common Sense for the obvious reason that it is Volume I of Santayana’s treatise. Perhaps I would find more satisfaction in Volumes II through V, which deal more with ethics, metaphysics, and esthetics—subjects of more personal interest to me. After my tiring slog through Reason in Common Sense, however, I’m unlikely to pursue The Life of Reason any further.
If you liked this review, please follow the link below to Amazon.com and give me a “helpful” vote. Thank you.
https://www.amazon.com/review/RORHXVOELJB3U/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
