Editor’s Blog

The critical edition of George Santayana’s Winds of Doctrine has been published by The MIT Press. Winds of Doctrine presents six essays on modern philosophy and culture. The essays address a broad sweep of intellectual trends of the Spanish-born American thinker’s time. Topics include the secularization of American culture, the rise of religious modernism, major literary …

Katarzyna Kremplewska’s George Santayana’s Political Hermeneutics (Brill, 2022) is a comprehensive study of Santayana’s political philosophy as found in Dominations and Powers (1951) and dispersed throughout his other works. Managing necessity and harmonizing diversity, negative anthropology, an Apollonian individualism and naturalistic humanism, are only a few of the interpretative categories used to elucidate the dense, …

by Adrienne Harris Thomas The Santayana Edition has introduced a new web resource! Select “Map of Travels” under the “About Santayana” tab, and view and interact with a map tracking Santayana’s travels from his retirement in 1912 until his death in 1952 (see Figure 1). The map allows you to toggle between years and select …

Daniel Pinkas, Daniel Moreno, and José Beltrán have published Recently Discovered Letters of George Santayana/Cartas recién descubiertas de George Santayana, which includes letters to Charles A. Loeser and to Albert von Westenholz. This edition gives both the original English language letters and Moreno’s Spanish translations. The letters, spanning fifty years in two centuries, document two …

Ruth Derham’s Bertrand’s Brother: The Marriages, Morals and Misdemeanours of Frank, 2nd Earl Russell (Amberley Publishing, 2021) recounts the life of the close friend of Santayana’s youth Frank Russell. Santayana’s autobiography, Persons and Places (1944, 1945, and 1953) PDF EPUB, was an important source for understanding the life of Frank; and Derham’s engaging book, in turn, …

Herman J. Saatkamp’s A Life of Scholarship with Santayana: Essays and Reflections (Brill, 2021) collects nearly fifty years of research by the eminent Santayana scholar and founder of the Santayana Edition. Saatkamp’s work contributes to an understanding of Santayana and applies the sensibilities gained from that scholarship to a broader range of significant topics. The …

Read the searchable PDF of George Santayana’s Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, Goethe (1910).

The critical edition of Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe, Vol. VIII of The Works of George Santayana (The MIT Press, 2019) is now available. George Santayana’s Three Philosophical Poets was first published in 1910 as the inaugural volume in the still-active Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature series and presents Santayana’s case for the unity …

The Annual Meeting of the George Santayana Society will be held at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division meeting at 11:15 AM, Saturday 11 January 2020, Philadelphia 201 Hotel, Philadelphia, PA. A George Santayana Society-sponsored session entitled “Harmony & Well-Being: Santayana on the Good Life ” will be held at the American Philosophical Association Pacific …

This translation of Santayana’s 1904 essay, “What is Aesthetics?” summarizes his classic The Sense of Beauty (1896). On Santayana’s view, aesthetics grows out of the whole of experience giving it a priority in understanding human life. Art and beauty, therefore, have their proper place in concrete human life. Guisppe Patella (Professor in the Department of …