Winds of Doctrine

by George Santayana

George Santayana was a Spanish philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. He was educated in the United States and wrote in English. He is remembered for the quote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Santayana was committed to a naturalist metaphysics, in which human cognition, cultural practices, and social institutions have evolved so as to harmonize with the conditions present in their environment. Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion was published in 1913. The Table of Contents includes The intellectual temper of the age, Modernism and Christianity, The philosophy of M. Henri Bergson, The philosophy of Mr. Bertrand Russell--, Shelley: or the poetic value of revolutionary principles, and The genteel tradition in American philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1913

About the author

Philosopher, poet, literary and cultural critic, George Santayana is a principal figure in Classical American Philosophy. His naturalism and emphasis on creative imagination were harbingers of important intellectual turns on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a naturalist before naturalism grew popular; he appreciated multiple perfections before multiculturalism became an issue; he thought of philosophy as literature before it became a theme in American and European scholarly circles; and he managed to naturalize Platonism, update Aristotle, fight off idealisms, and provide a striking and sensitive account of the spiritual life without being a religious believer. His Hispanic heritage, shaded by his sense of being an outsider in America, captures many qualities of American life missed by insiders, and presents views equal to Tocqueville in quality and importance. Beyond philosophy, only Emerson may match his literary production. As a public figure, he appeared on the front cover of Time (3 February 1936), and his autobiography (Persons and Places, 1944) and only novel (The Last Puritan, 1936) were the best-selling books in the United States as Book-of-the-Month Club selections. The novel was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Edmund Wilson ranked Persons and Places among the few first-rate autobiographies, comparing it favorably to Yeats's memoirs, The Education of Henry Adams, and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Remarkably, Santayana achieved this stature in American thought without being an American citizen. He proudly retained his Spanish citizenship throughout his life. Yet, as he readily admitted, it is as an American that his philosophical and literary corpuses are to be judged. Using contemporary classifications, Santayana is the first and foremost Hispanic-American philosopher.

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Studies of thinkers, movements. Solid philosophical criticism. Little historical explanation. No attempt to draw them together.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love those philosophers who, like Dewey and Santayana, sketch out their thought in a leisurely, discursive rhapsody that enable one to experience the pleasure of a text unencumbered by the weight of knowledge that nuclear warheads are at any time poised to be launched at a word of command by the Masters of War.