Platonism and the Spiritual Life by George Santayana
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Uninspiring Aspirations

The essence of spirit is to aspire. Aspire to what? This is the question Santayana sets himself to answer in Platonism and the Spiritual Life.

Santayana approves of Platonic philosophy, mainly because it provides for the existence of ideals that can motivate human behaviour. He quotes Dean Inge approvingly: “Values are for the Platonist not only ideals but creative powers.”

I too find idealistic philosophy inspiring and satisfying; perhaps the latter because of the former. But I find Santayana’s presentation of Plato somewhat confusing, and a little less than inspiring.

On the one hand, Santayana seems a sort of budding proto-constructivist when he says, “Harmony itself is a good only because the spirit which it creates so regards it.” I take this as a clearly self-referential statement in which he recognises that the human ability to perceive order in the universe, creates such order.

He goes on to say, “The distinction between true goods and false goods can never be established by ignorant feeling...”, thus implying a critical relation between the intellect and the emotions, as well as the possibility of emotional development. One might be justified in expecting, therefore, an aspiration to progress in just this direction.

But Santayana takes an unexpected tack. “For felt values,” he says, “... are all equally genuine in their excellence and equally momentary in their existence.” In other words whatever emotion pops up at the moment is definitive as the basis for action. This sounds more like a philosophical rationale for the behaviour of Donald Trump than a programme for idealistic striving.

My consternation increases when he subsumes even ideals within his concept of emotionally driven values: “The Ideals of Plato were really nothing but values... forms of the good.” If my logic is correct, this means that these ideals have no external reality at all; they are, rather, subjective emotional instincts. Perhaps some of these instincts are more or less common among human beings; but not necessarily. They are essentially personal.

Santayana’s primary concern seems to be the ideological threat of ideals which are considered as more than completely subjective: “Idealism, as it moves away from its origins, easily becomes idolatrous.” Since those origins are personal and emotional, one presumes, any attempt to generalize, or impose them on others, is unjustified.

It’s easy to see the individualistic point that Santayana is making. But it seems evident that he started from this point and worked backwards in order to justify it. In other words it could well be that his interpretation of Plato is a tendentious rationalisation of what is a political position, perhaps an intellectual opposition to the socialist theory of the day.

On the other hand, Santayana appears to want to displace ideals and their emotional effects. “Spiritual life,” he says, “is not a worship of values... it is the exact opposite: it is the disintoxication from their influence.” So apparently these personal, emotionally sovereign ideals make us drunk. Good judgment demands we sober up before making any decisions.

In this part of his argument Santayana seems to be directing his ire not toward political ideology but toward religion as ideology. “It is the world’s business to call down the spirit to dwell in it, not the spirit to create a world in which to dwell.” Evangelical fundamentalism was on the rise as he wrote and it therefore seems like he intended to counter this popular trend. ‘The spirit itself is not afraid of being stamped out here, or kindled there.”

So the spirit is in a sense our most personal possession. Yet the spirit is not something that can be touched by prayer or the rituals of religion. Neither is it subject to intellectual control. It is a sort of basic instinct, an unconscious, unwieldy Id, that, although central to our personalities must be resisted and even feared lest it be released into the world.

Can such a conclusion inspire anyone’s spirit to aspire, much less to create? It seems to be more nihilistic and gnostic than Platonic. I find it an absurd interpretation, a sort of polemic against the times in which Santayana found himself, apparently unwillingly.

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