 Upon my discovering the philosophy of George Santiana, I was immediately struck with a familiar feeling. I had felt it before when, unknowingly, I opened the ethics of Spinoza for the first time. It was that feeling of unforeseen discovery, like the poor prospector who finds gold where he had expected there to be only sand. Here was the poetic eloquence of Plato, combined with the calm candor of Spinoza. Here was prose if prose there ever was. So let us light the candles again and illuminate one of the 20th century's greatest philosophic minds. He was born in Madrid on December 16th, 1863, and by the time our philosopher had reached the age of 10, he had traveled to America, where he would remain for 40 years thereafter. Eventually he would come to settle in Boston, where he would teach at Harvard, the greatest university of its day. One of his students there describes him vividly. With a solemn spirit, sweet and withdrawn, whose Johannine face, by a renaissance painter, held an abstract eye in a hieratic smile, half mischief, half content, whose rich voice flowed evenly, and cadences smooth and balanced as liturgy, whose periods had the intricate perfection of a poem and the import of a prophecy, who spoke somehow for his hearers and not to them, stirring the depths of their natures and troubling their minds, as an oracle might. Santiana never quite felt at home in America. He longed to escape the busy atmosphere of the American city, and around his fiftieth year he would return to the continent to which his soul had always belonged. It was there that Santiana would quietly and contentedly spend the remainder of his 89 years. He published his first work of philosophic prose in 1896, called The Sense of Beauty, followed by interpretations of poetry and religion in 1901. After this publication, he would release in 1905 his masterpiece, The Life of Reason. There was in this work five volumes, Reason in Common Sense, Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, and Reason in Science, each of which played their part in elevating our philosophy to prominence. All of this wood, in and of itself, provide more than enough evidence for his greatness. But Santiana wouldn't stop here, and in 1923, at the age of 60, he published a work on skepticism and animal faith, which he announced was only an introduction to his final prominent work called Realms of Being. There is a refreshing modesty about Santiana. He said candidly, I do not ask anyone to think in my terms if he prefers others. Let him clean better, if he can, the windows of his soul, that the variety and beauty of the prospect spread more brightly before him. This is a rare quality among philosophers, but surely a welcomed one. In a like manner, he thought doubt should be a universal quality if we were to avoid that which so plagued the Middle Ages, this being the obstinate following of accepted traditional beliefs. He thinks idealism to be correct, but of no great consequence, since we can be confident that our shared experience has, and will continue to be true to the extent that we can know. He thinks realism to be our best course of thought in everyday life. I should be ashamed, he said, to count in its opinions which, when not arguing, I did not believe. It would seem to me dishonest and cowardly to militate under other colors than those under which I live. Regardless of speculation, we are to accept and live by our animal faith, taking these perceptions which we experience from day to day as our guide. The life of reason, as said by Santiana, is a name for all practical thought and action justified by its fruits and consciousness. And in regards to reason, Santiana describes it as the happy marriage of two elements, impulse and ideation, which, if wholly divorced, would reduce man to a brute or maniac. It is man's imitation of divinity. He does not profess to create anything new here, but only to renew what those great sages of antiquity discovered, applying it magnificently to contemporary life. While Santiana understands the shortcomings of the modern scientific method, he accepts it as our best and most trustworthy avenue to knowledge. I do not profess to know what matter is in itself, he said. I wait for the men of science to tell me. But whatever matter may be, I call it matter boldly, as I call my acquaintances Smith and Jones without knowing their secrets. This may be the reason he expressed such veneration for that scholarly Aristotle and cheerful Democritus. He is a decided materialist and likes to think mechanism prevails through and through. He does, however, believe, like Spinoza, that the spirit and energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave, but it passes through us and cry out as we may, it will move on. Our privilege is to have perceived it as it moved. Unlike Spinoza, Santiana rejects pantheism, thinking it arbitrary. The word nature is poetical enough. Calling it God is simply unnecessary. It can be said that throughout his life, Santiana maintained an eccentric relationship with Catholicism. This was no relationship of devotion to an omnipotent being, but rather a relationship of cultural reverence and respect. He thinks there is nothing so beautiful as Catholicism, if not taken literally, that is. He said the idea that religion contains a literal, not a symbolic representation of truth and life is simply an impossible idea, and whoever entertains it has not come within the region of profitable philosophizing on the subject. Equally, he could not understand those who profess to see the ineptitude of religion. He understands the importance of it in society and why, without fail, it rears its head in every civilization. As to its origins, it is clear to him that fear was responsible for the numerous deities that populate history. That faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes. If we could see back 2500 years, he believes we would witness a completely different Christianity than we do here in contemporary life. It would be less literal and more imaginative. It would be as the ancients, before the rise of the Tutans, intended it to be. So in short, Santiana has ceased to be a Christian, but remains a Catholic. I do believe her, though I know she lies, he said regrettably. There is, in Santiana's societal ideal, something reminiscent of Plato's Republic. This is to say that he sees more sense in a non-hereditary aristocracy than in a free for all democracy. He knows the evils of democracy, not only its propensity to elect demagogues to lead it, but also the stigma that's placed on advocates of change by the patriotic majority. There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar anonymous tyranny, he said. It is all permeating, all thwarting. It blasts everybody novelty in Spirg of Genius with its omnipresent and fierce stupidity. What appeals to him in this platonic aristocracy is the equality of opportunity based on merit alone. The son of a king would be given no advantage over the daughter of a blacksmith. A quality of outcome has shown to be practically ineffective and destructive, so we must settle for a fair race in which the wisest and the best are permitted to rule. Where in government fails, as it often does, revolution is all but inevitable, but Santiana points out that revolution ends almost always in disappointment, since the private citizen in any event continues in such countries to pay maximum of taxes and to suffer in all his private interest a maximum of vexation and neglect. Is it not true that a thousand reforms have left the world as corrupt as ever? For each successful reform has founded a new institution, and this institution has bred its new and congenial abuses. To avoid such a fate, the government and society as a whole must put in place a moral code capable of capturing and holding the attention of the masses. This code typically begins in the individual homes and communities when the state is still young, but as it ages and grows larger, the state itself becomes the arbiter of morality, usually through religious doctrine. He is in favor of a universal empire, and while it may come with its particular form of tyranny, its centralized tyranny has the virtue of abolishing the miscellaneous and innumerable petty tyrannies by which life was evolved, pestered and confined. It is clear to the reader that there is an undertone of regret in these passages. Here is a man who has dashed his own hopes, but moves forward, contentedly and unafraid. His fearless questioning of established beliefs, even those held so close to his own heart, is something admirable in any philosopher. He addresses the difficult questions, and gives us those hard truths which we don't want to hear, but secretly desire. I hope to release a continuation of this video, addressing more in-depth his final work, Realms of Being, but for now I hope I was able to contribute to your understanding of this incredibly sincere philosophy. If you enjoyed this video, consider subscribing to the channel. I would be incredibly grateful for your support, and as always, thank you for talking philosophy with me. Until next time.