Scepticism And Animal Faith: Introduction To A System Of Philosophy [Paperback]

George Santayana (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2005

1923. From the Preface: Here is one more system of philosophy. If the reader is tempted to smile, I can assure him that I smile with him, and that my system-to which this volume is a critical introduction-differs widely in spirit and pretensions from what usually goes by that name. In the first place, my system is not mine, nor new. I am merely attempting to express for the reader the principles to which he appeals when he smiles. There are convictions in the depths of his soul, beneath all his overt parrot beliefs, on which I would build our friendship. I have a great respect for orthodoxy; not for those orthodoxies which prevail in particular schools or nations, and which vary from age to age, but for a certain shrewd orthodoxy which the sentiment and practice of laymen maintain everywhere. I think that common sense, in a rough dogged way, is technically sounder than the special schools of philosophy, each of which squints and overlooks half the facts and half the difficulties in its eagerness to find in some detail the key to the whole. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing, LLC (May 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1417902221
• ISBN-13: 978-1417902224
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,916,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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This review is from: Scepticism And Animal Faith: Introduction To A System Of Philosophy (Paperback)

Santayana will probably never be popular among people who make their living as epistemologists, because he offers a devastating and ultimately unanswerable critique of their enterprise. The problem is that they do not take their own skepticism seriously, and so end up in "incidental sophistries," an endless, pointless verbal parlor game. His answer to Hume's backgammon comment is that one "should be ashamed to countenance opinons which, when not arguing, I did not believe." Doing that renders the whole enterprise unserious, a "limping skepticism." A worthy theory of knowledge must treat "of what I believe in my active moments, as a living animal, when I am really believing something." In other words, when it matters.

Descartes could not bring himself to be profoundly skeptical, which would have meant doubting his own principles of explanation. For example, he suggested that a malign demon might be the causing him to be deluded. "He thus assumed the principle of sufficient reason, for which there is no reason at all. If any idea or axiom were really a priori or spontaneous in the human mind, it would be infinitely improbable that it should apply to the facts of nature. Every genius, in this respect, is his own malign demon." The rest of Descartes is similarly exploded, after which Hume and Kant are taken to the woodshed for similar demolition.

What does Santayana himself offer? Starting from a truly profound skepticism in which nothing is given, he offers a sort of Platonic Darwinism in which all we have access to are intuitions of fleeting appearances, less than shadows on the wall, because no wall is given. In our struggle to survive, we learn to take some of those appearances ("essences") to signify things and events in a real world of substantial, enduring objects. This inference to existence can have no justification other than pure animal faith, without which we cannot trust our senses, discourse becomes absurd, and life cannot be lived.

This is a hugely impressive work, especially for anyone who has grown frustrated with the irrelevant cleverness of much of epistemology. That it seems to be largely ignored among epistemologists is no surprise; Santayana is out to ruin the whole party. One can easily object to his Platonism, but the fundamental aspects of his critique do not depend on that.

Something has to be said about Santayana's literary style. To say the writing is good is to convey nothing of what it's like. I started to copy out striking passages, but gave up because I would have copied out about thirty per cent of the text. Nobody in philosophy, and maybe nowhere else either, writes like this. With most writers it is possible to imagine, if only barely and only by giving yourself a huge benefit of the doubt, that with enough effort you might be able to write like they do. I was completely unable to imagine any such thing when reading Santayana. He's on a different verbal plane.