Santayana, George
For Santayana (1863-), one of the most eminent of contemporary naturalists, consciousness, instead of distorting the nature of Reality immediately reveals it. So revealed, Reality proclaims itself an infinity of essences (Platonic Ideas) subsisting in and by themselves, some of which are entertained by minds, and some of which are also enacted in and by a non-mental substratum, substance or matter, which adds concrete existence to their subsistence. The presence of this substratum, though incapable of rational proof, is assumed in action as a matter of animal faith. Furthermore, without it a selective principle, the concrete enactment of some essences but not of others is inexplicable.
Matter, among other things, is external to and independent of consciousness, spatially extended, unequally distributed (corporeal), subject to locomotion and perhaps to intrinsic alteration in its parts, and capable of becoming conscious. Its selective and progressive enactment of essences is not teleological or intelligent, but is actuated by efficient causation and predetermined by antecedent situations.
In organic bodies matter may become conscious. Mind, being an activity of the body, and unsubstantial, is not causally effective, but simply entertains and contemplates essences both enacted and unenacted. Its registration of the natural functions and drives of the body of which it is the aura, is desire, which gives values like truth, goodness, and beauty to the essences entertained. The desire to know, satisfied by intelligibility, creates science, which is investigation of the world of enacted essences, where alone the explanation of things is to be found.The natural desire to experience social harmony and to contemplate beauty creates morality, art, poetry and religion, which entertain in imagination and seek to make concrete by action, combinations of essences, often unenacted and purely ideal.
These desires and drives, however, tend to stray beyond their proper provinces and to become intermingled and confused in attempts to identify truth, goodness, and beauty, to turn justifications into explanations, to regard subsistent ideals as concretely existent facts, and to distort facts into accordance with desired ideals. It is the business of reason and philosophy to clear up this confusion by distinguishing human drives and interests from one another, indicating to each its proper province and value, and confining each to the field in which it is valid and in which its appropriate satisfaction may be found. By so doing, they dispel the suspicion and antagonism, with which the scientist, the moralist, the artist, and the theologian are wont to view one another, and enable a mind at harmony with itself to contemplate a world in which subsistent and the existent form a harmonious whole. —
Main works
Sense and Beauty, 1896;
Interpret. of Poetry and Religion, 1900;
Life of Reason, 5 vols , 1905-6 (Reason in Common Sense, Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, Reason in Science);
Winds of Doctrine, 1913;
Egotism in German Philosophy, 1915;
Character and Opinion in the U. S., 1920;
Skepticism and Animal Faith, 1923;
Realms of Being, 4 vols., 1927-40 (Realm of Essence, Realm of Matter, Realm of Truth, Realm of Spirit).
— B.A.G.F.