Life as Insinuation

Katarzyna Kremplewska

Description

In this book, Katarzyna Kremplewska offers a thorough analysis of Santayana's conception of human self, viewed as part of his larger philosophy of life. Santayana emerges as an author of a provocative philosophy of drama, in which human life is acted out. Kremplewska demonstrates how his thought addresses the dynamics of human self in this context and the possibility of sustaining self-integrity while coping with the limitations of finite life. Focusing on particular aspects of Santayana's thought such as his conception of the tragic aspect of existence, and the role of the doctrine of spirit in his philosophical anthropology and critique of culture, this book also sets Santayana's thought in substantial dialogue with other thinkers, such as Heidegger, Bergson, and Nietzsche. Like Santayana's philosophy, this book seeks to build passages between theoretical reflection and practical life with the possibility of a good life in view.
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Guises of the Self

2. The Conception of the Self and Some Basic Concepts of Santayana’s Philosophy

3. The Hermeneutics of Human Self

4. Life as Insinuation

5. Coping with Finitude: Santayana Reading Heidegger

6. The Tragic Aspect of Existence

7. Beyond the Self (into the Political Realm): The Essential Negativity of Human Being and Rational (Self-)Government

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 16 avril 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438473956
• Langue: English

Extrait

Life as Insinuation
SUNY series in American Philosophy and Cultural Thought

Randall E. Auxier and John R. Shook, editors
Life as Insinuation
George Santayana’s Hermeneutics of Finite Life and Human Self
KATARZYNA KREMPLEWSKA
Cover image courtesy of dreamstime.com
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
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Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kremplewska, Katarzyna, 1973– author.
Title: Life as insinuation : George Santayana’s hermeneutics of finite life and human self / Katarzyna Kremplewska.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019] | Series: SUNY series in American philosophy and cultural thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018021843 | ISBN 9781438473932 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438473956 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Santayana, George, 1863–1952. | Self (Philosophy)
Classification: LCC B945.S24 K74 2019 | DDC 126—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018021843
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Guises of the Self
Chapter 2. The Conception of the Self and Some Basic Concepts of Santayana’s Philosophy
Chapter 3. The Hermeneutics of Human Self
Chapter 4. Life as Insinuation
Chapter 5. Coping with Finitude: Santayana Reading Heidegger
Chapter 6. The Tragic Aspect of Existence
Chapter 7. Beyond the Self (into the Political Realm): The Essential Negativity of Human Being and Rational (Self-)Government
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Abbreviations
Works by George Santayana APS Apologia pro Mente Sua DL Dialogues in Limbo DP Dominations and Powers HA “Hamlet” in: Selected Critical Writings of George Santayana IPR Interpretations of Poetry and Religion LR The Life of Reason: Or, The Phases of Human Progress OS Obiter Scripta: Lectures, Essays and Reviews POML Physical Order and Moral Liberty: Previously Unpublished Essays of George Santayana RB Realms of Being , one-volume edition SAF Scepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy SiELS Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies STTMP Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy: Five Essays
Works by Other Authors BCAP Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy (M. Heidegger) BPP Basic Problems of Phenomenology (M. Heidegger) BT Being and Time (M. Heidegger) CPR Critique of Pure Reason (I. Kant) MM Matter and Memory (H. Bergson) OAA Oneself as Another (P. Ricoeur) RSTV “Reflections on Santayana and Tragic Value” (C. Padron) SSIFPP Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective (D. Zahavi) SSMMI The Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Ch. Taylor) SZ Sein und Zeit (M. Heidegger, the copy with Santayana’s marginal notes)
Acknowledgments
This book originates, partially, from my PhD dissertation devoted to George Santayana’s conception of aporetic self ( Mask and Thought: The Conception of the Aporetic Self in George Santayana’s Philosophy ) written and defended in 2015 under the supervision of professor Agata Bielik-Robson (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences), whom I wish to thank for an ongoing philosophical inspiration.
During the years of my scholarship leading to the emergence of this book I was supported by the members of Santayana Society in many ways and I would like to express my sincere gratitude for that. In particular I would like to thank John Lachs and Charles Padron. My acquaintance with John Lachs’s work and conversations with the author have been invaluable for my scholarship. Charles Padron provided me with editorial and linguistic support when preparing the article: “Coping with Finitude: Santayana Reading Heidegger,” which was published in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society in 2015. An enlarged and revised version of this article appears, with the consent by Indiana University Press, as chapter 5 in this book. I have also had an opportunity to confront my own reflections on the idea of the tragic in Santayana with those of Charles Padron as contained in his dissertation on Santayana and the tragic value.
Moreover, as a participant of international conferences (SAAP, New Jersey 2013; APA, Philadelphia 2014; 5th Conference on George Santayana, Berlin 2016) and during my research stay in the United States in 2013 (sponsored by Kościuszko Foundation, New York) I had an opportunity to talk to a number of outstanding international scholars of Santayana, among them Michael Brodrick, Martin Coleman, who was also my guide at Santayana Edition (IUPUI), Edward Lovely, Daniel Moreno, Richard Rubin, Herman Saatkamp, Krzysztof Skowroński, and Glenn Tiller. Furthermore, I would like to emphasize that the possibility of publishing the fragments of my ongoing work in Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society has been a rewarding and encouraging experience. Two subchapters of this book—3.3 “ Narrative and dramatic strategies of sustaining self-integrity ” and 6.3 “ Between spiritual dissolution and the invention of the human ”—are revised versions of the texts that appeared earlier in the Bulletin in 2015 and 2017, respectively.
The results of my research have also been published in Polish journals such as Przegląd Religioznawczy , Analiza i Egzystencja , and Diametros. Chapter 4 “ Life as Insinuation ” is a translation of a revised version of my article in Polish that appeared in Diametros in 2017.
I would like to thank National Science Center in Poland (Narodowe Centrum Nauki), which finances my current research on Santayana’s philosophy of politics and culture: project no. 2016/23/D/HS1/02274. The seventh and final chapter of this book entitled “ Beyond the Self (into the Political Realm): The Essential Negativity of Human Being and Rational (Self-)Government ” has been written as part of this research project.
Finally, I thank my family and friends for their priceless presence in my life.
Introduction
In this book I am undertaking the challenge of reconstructing George Santayana’s conception of human self as embedded in a larger project of philosophy of life. Meanwhile, I am tracing the connections in-between different areas of Santayana’s philosophical engagement—from his ontology through literary criticism to his critique of culture—while striving to bring to light its hermeneutic coherence, corresponding to the idea of hermeneutic unity of life, which I find constitutive of an overarching project inherent in Santayana’s philosophical endeavor. I choose the metaphor of life as insinuation—borrowing it from Henri Bergson—to emphasize the dramatic, theatrical style of the hermeneia in question. By setting the thinker from Avila in dialogue with selected twentieth-century representatives of the so-called continental philosophy, I hope to enrich the interpretive potential developed in the course of Santayana studies so far and stimulate further discussion of his legacy. 1
The delayed reception of Santayana’s work and his status of a philosophical outcast in early twentieth-century America was related to the fact that both his idea of philosophy and his philosophical method were at odds with the trends reigning at the American intellectual scene, where actors oscillated in-between Darwinism, radical empiricism of William James, social constructivism of John Dewey, Charles S. Peirce’s commitment to panpsychism, and the idealism of Josiah Royce. When his contemporaries started to reduce the role of philosophy to the philosophy of science or “a procedure of linguistic sanitation,” Santayana was devoted to creating a “synoptic vision” of conditio humana 2 and a corresponding philosophy of self-procured salvation , as I call it in reference to the ancient, therapeutic meaning of philosophy. In other words, a few different but convergent and intertwining streams in Santayana’s eclectic thought—from his idiosyncratic, nonreductive naturalism through a sort of ancient and to an extent sapiential style of philosophical engagement to astute criticism of culture—stood in stark contrast to the increasing professionalization of philosophy at that time.
Among the alienating factors there were also Santayana’s intellectual sympathies and cultural identifications like the advocacy of a cosmopolitan, Epicurean individualism, which was viewed by his contemporaries as verging on a decadent nihilism. “To subordinate the soul fundamentally to society or the individual to the state is sheer barbarism,” 3 Santayana would declare in the age when this sort of personal autonomy was rather unpopular in America. Particularly harsh critique came from the side of pragmatists on account of the alleged “uselessness” of Santayana’s “anti-social” doctrine for any constructivist project. 4 This misreading of the idea of disinterestedness implicit in Santayana’s vision of spiritual life is an example of some common misunderstandings of his thought. 5 “I care very little whether, at any moment, academic tendencies favour one unnecessary opinion or another” 6 wrote the thinker many years after he moved to Europe, giving an explicit expression of his detachment from the mainstream academic culture, which in time became deliberate and cultivated.
A serious overlooking in the early reception of his oeuvre , as noted one of the scholars in the 1980s, rested in the underestimation of “the special signature of his genius”—a synthesis of materiali