Abstract
Moreno shows that Santayana believed he had found an ally regarding his doctrine of essence in the philosophy of Husserl. He then reveals the parallels and differences between Santayana’s and Husserl’s philosophies, bringing each thinker’s ideas into sharper relief.
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Notes
- 1.
Max H. Fisch included Santayana in Classic American Philosophers: Peirce, James, Royce, Santayana, Dewey, Whitehead (1951), and Alfonso López Quintás included him in Filosofía española contemporánea (1970). These pioneers were joined by John J. Stuhr, who included Santayana alongside Charles S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey, and Herbert Mead in Classical American Philosophy: Essential Readings and Interpretative Essays (1987), and José Luis Abellán, who included Santayana in the monumental Historia crítica del pensamiento español (1989). More recently, Professor Manuel Garrido gave him a place of honor in El legado filosófico y científico del siglo XX (2007) and, together with Miguel de Unamuno and José Ortega y Gasset, in El legado filosófico español e hispanoamericano del siglo XX (2009).
- 2.
Cf. The Philosophy of M. Henri Bergson and The Philosophy of Mr. Bertrand Russell (WD, 58–109, 110–154); Postscript (Santayana 1927, 171–174).
- 3.
See also Beltrán Llavador (2002), 178–180.
- 4.
“If anyone reading our statements objects that they mean changing all the world into a subjective illusion and committing onself to a ‘Berkeleyan idealism,’ we can only answer that he has not seized upon the sense of those statements. They take nothing away from the fully valid being of the world as the all of realities, just as nothing is taken away from the fully valid geometrical being of the square by denying that the square is round (a denial admittedly based, in this case, on what is immediately obvious)” (Husserl 1983, 129).
- 5.
Cf. Flamm (2021).
- 6.
The congress was attended by three hundred philosophers, among them: W. Windelband, J. Royce, Xavier Léon, B. Croce, É. Boutroux, and H. Münsterberg. Germany was the most represented country and the main topics were logic, epistemology, history of philosophy, ethics, and politics; less coverage was given to aesthetics and the philosophy of religion (cf. Fullerton 1908). Compare this with today’s world congresses.
- 7.
Cf. Moreno (2017).
- 8.
These four meditations were not published until 1931, in the French translation, Méditations cartésiennes. For this edition, the famous, and lengthy, “Fifth Meditation” was added, where Husserl defends himself against solipsistic criticism by explaining—rightly, in my opinion—that only a cursory reader could have taken his transcendental idealism to be Berkeleyan idealism.
- 9.
A comparison of Husserl’s Ideen and later Cartesianische Meditationen reveals two reformulations: (1) In CM phenomenology is no longer defined as the science of essences, since Husserl uses essence in its Aristotelian sense; hence the terms eidos (pure eidetic phenomenology, eidetic analysis), cogitationes, and cogitatum qua cogitatum come to the fore; (2) CM constantly alludes to the correlate between the transcendental-eidetic sphere and the empirical-factual sphere both in the mind and in the world, including therein the human being as a psycho-physical, social, and cultural entity, which is never called into question. In this way, CM insists on distancing itself from Berkeleyan idealism by never overlooking the empirical-factual sphere.
- 10.
For the different meanings of the important word “is,” see Santayana (1924).
- 11.
Furthermore, in the “Author’s Preface to the English Edition” of Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, Husserl referred to those who had fallen into the same trap by alluding, without naming names, to his favourite but already wayward pupil, Martin Heidegger, and describing him as an anthropologist (Husserl 1931, 16). Indeed, in his similarly incomplete Being and Time (1927), Heidegger had applied the phenomenological method to describe the existential structures of his life as an example of a human being in the world, of his own space and time; whereas Husserl sought to describe the general structures of the human mind, those that make humanity as a whole distinctive in the universe. Husserl had aspirations for a general science, while Heidegger devoted his efforts to knowledge that was merely regional—and with an expiry date.
Abbreviations
- CM:
-
(Cartesian Meditations)
- Ideen:
-
(Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie)
- SAF:
-
(Scepticism and Animal Faith)
References
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Flamm, M. 2021. Santayana’s Ambassador. Limbo. Boletín internacional de estudios sobre Santayana 41: 131–139.
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———. 1915. Philosophical Heresy. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 12 (21, Oct. 14): 561–568.
———. 1923. Scepticism and Animal Faith. Introduction to a System of Philosophy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
———. 1924. Some Meanings of the Word ‘is’. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 21 (14, Jul. 3): 365–377.
———. 1927. The Realm of Essence. Book First of Realms of Being. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
———. 1942. Realms of Being. One-Volume Edition, with a New Introduction by the Author. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
———. 2002. The Letters of George Santayana. Book Three (1921–1927). Edited by William G. Holzberger. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
———. 2021. Recently Discovered Letters of George Santayana/ Cartas recién descubiertas de George Santayana, bilingual edition by Daniel Pinkas, with a Presentation by José Beltrán, and translated by Daniel Moreno. Valencia, Spain: PUV, Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans.
Spiegelberg, H. 1960. Excursus: Santayana’s Ultimate Scepticism Compared With Husserl’s Phenomenological Reduction. In The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, 2 vols., Springer-Science, vol. I, 138–139.
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Moreno, D. (2024). G. Santayana (Scepticism and Animal Faith, 1923) and E. Husserl (Cartesianische Meditationen, 1929), Readers of R. Descartes. In: Coleman, M.A., Tiller, G. (eds) The Palgrave Companion to George Santayana’s Scepticism and Animal Faith. Palgrave Companions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46367-9_19
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