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Title: The Life of Reason (Great Books in Philosophy) by George Santayana ISBN: 1-57392-210-2 Publisher: Prometheus Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Masterpiece from the 20th century's wisest philosopher
Comment: In a century in which philosophy has been taken over by pedants eager to "analyze" every technical problem ever devised by the perverted ingenuity of the mind of man--technical problems, moreover, which, as Santayana himself once put it, are "solved best by not raising them"--it is comforting to know that at least one major philosopher never forgot what philosophy is really all about: namely, wisdom and love of knowledge. Whereas other philosophers seek to impress by being original or controversial or obscure, Santayana merely attempts to describe things as they are. Santayana is above all a realist, not merely in the philosophical sense of believing that external objects exist outside of man's consciousness, but also in the more general sense of accepting the world as it really is and not as we might wish it could be. So many philosophers seem motivated primarily by a desire to rationalize away the disagreeable aspects of reality. Santayana's approach is different. While recognizing that reality has its disagreeable elements (Santayana was certainly no optimist), he seeks to distinguish, as he once put it, the part of this disagreeable or mixed reality "that could be loved and chosen from the reminder."
In "The Life of Reason," Santayana sought to explain how reason emerges in five separate areas of human existence: thought, society, religion, art and science. Originally, Santayana devoted one book to each subject. In this present edition, all five books have been abridged by the author and made into a single volume. The unabridged version is superior to this one. The abridged version is more difficult to follow, because in the process of condensing five books into one, gaps have been created in the exposition of Santayana's thought. Unfortunately, the original five volume edition is no longer in print.
The best two volumes of the unabridged version were "Reason in Common Sense" and "Reason in Religion." The first of these books shows how men came to discover the external reality of nature and the independent existence of other minds. There are chapters on how thought is practical, on the "malicious psychology" of philosophers like Kant, Hume and Berkeley, on how thought is practical, and on Santayana's contention that ideas are not abstractions. "Reason in Religion" is one of the most interesting books on religion ever published and ought to be read by every atheist and agonistic who regards religion as a mere tissue of delusion and irrationality. Santayana, while denying the literal truth of religion, contends that religion nonetheless represents a sort of poetic and moral truth expressed in symbols that can be grasped on a very human level. "Religion remains an imaginative achievement, a symbolic representation of moral reality which may have a most important function in vitalising the mind and in transmitting, by way of parables, the lessons of experience."
The over-riding theme of "The Life of Reason" is Santayana's conviction that only by recognizing the material world and the "conditions of existence," can the spirit become enlightened concerning the source of its troubles and the means of its happiness or deliverance. There is, I would contend, no philosophical work of the twentieth century that is more sane, that expresses better judgment on the main issues of philosophy, or that demonstrates a deeper wisdom about the nature of things than this classic work.
Rating: 5
Summary: This is philosophy as Apollonian dancing.
Comment: Santayana was not a stupid man. His only problem was that he was better learned in the tradition of philosophy and could write better than most philosophers. While he shared the intellectual accomplishments of many philosophers of the century--equal to any in the so-called "analaytic" tradition--he did not share their spiritual pursuits. Philosophy for him was a search for a kind of enlightenment that could not be found in the dustbins of "epistemology." If you think "knowing that" is the end of human life, you needn't bother reading this wonderful work.
Rating: 5
Summary: seminal work from a very important philosopher
Comment: The Life of Reason is a marvelously executed, exceptionally elegant philosophical tour de force. Santayana refuses to be blinded by prejudicial notions and founds his philosophical hermeneutic on common-sense, logic, and probability. One reviewer here has noted that Santayana takes a myopic perspective on religion. Frankly, this is baffling. Santayana believes that religion is a kind of species of literature and that we should not look to it for scientific insights. In contrast, he believes that religion, in the abstract, has, as all belief systems do, a rational framework, so to speak. In addition to this, Santayana finds much about theology and religious ritual, more aesthetically speaking, intriguing. This is hardly a one-sided view. The Life of Reason will not interest those attracted to the turgid obfuscatory mutterings of Heidegger, postmodernist critics, and other related thinkers. It will appeal though to those interested in analytic philosophy, logic, and scientific skepticism. A wonderful book.
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Title: Skepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy by George Santayana ISBN: 0486202364 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 February, 1955 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory by George Santayana ISBN: 0486202380 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 June, 1955 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel by George Santayana ISBN: 0262691787 Publisher: Bradford Book Pub. Date: 04 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Man and Crisis by Jose Ortega Y Gasset ISBN: 0393001210 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 April, 1922 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Three philosophical poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe (Harvard studies in comparative literature) by George Santayana ISBN: 0815403615 Publisher: Cooper Square Publishers Pub. Date: 1970 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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