Read the searchable PDF of George Santayana’s Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, Goethe (1910).
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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 of philosophy and poetry. He characterized the work as a “piece of literary criticism, together with a first broad lesson in the history of philosophy.”
The critical edition of Three Philosophical Poets includes a text established in accord with critical editing theories and procedure and comes as close to the author’s original intention as possible. The critical edition also includes an introduction by James Seaton, a textual commentary, a listing of all variants among different editions, rationales for emendations, notes to the text, and an index.
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 Division meeting at 6:00 PM, Thursday 9 April 2020, Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco, CA.
Details are available on the Society Meetings page.
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 Literature, Philosophy, and Art History, University of Rome Tor Vergata) provides an introduction and afterword that gives account of Santayana’s thought and situates the piece in the context of Santayana’s work.
Katarzyna Kremplewska’s new book Life as Insinuation: George Santayana’s Hermeneutics of Finite Life and Human Self (SUNY Press, 2019) presents Santayana’s understanding of the self in the context of a philosophy of life. The work examines the tension between the possibility of self-integrity and the tragic character of human life. Kremplewska demonstrates a keen knowledge of Santayana’s written works that is impressive in its depth and breadth, and she is extremely conversant with the secondary literature. She places Santayana in a European context by considering his work in relation to that of Nietzsche, Bergson, and Heidegger. The book is a major contribution to Santayana scholarship.