The Journal of Speculative Philosophy

The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17.4 (2003) 316-318

The Letters of George Santayana, Book One, [1868]-1909. Ed. William Holzberger. The Works of George Santayana, vol. 5. Ed. William G. Holzberger and H. J. Saatkamp Jr. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. lxiv + 582 pp. $58.00 h.c., 0-262-19457-0.

If it is true that books are nourishment for the soul, Book One of The Letters of George Santayana is a scholar's feast. This is only the first of what will ultimately be eight books of letters making up Volume 5 of The Works of George Santayana, but it alone contains more than enough to satisfy biographically and philosophically interested readers alike. A selected collection of Santayana's letters was previously produced by the executor of Santayana's literary estate, Daniel Cory, and the current project does not attempt simply to reproduce his efforts. This volume of the Santayana Edition will contain all of Santayana's letters that are known to exist and that could be located by the editors (an appendix lists the known letters that could not be located). The first book itself begins with a postcard that Santayana wrote to his sisters when he was only about six, and goes on to cover the first forty-one years of Santayana's life, encompassing his Harvard education, his graduate work in Germany, and the majority of his career as a professional academic philosopher. By December 1909, the date of the [End Page 316] last letter in this particular text, he has published and is responding to commentary on all the books of his first major philosophical work, The Life Of Reason.

However, it is not merely the inclusiveness of the letters that makes a banquet of this work. More particularly, it is the thoroughness and exacting detail of the editors who—at the risk of overworking the food metaphor—make the work both rich and highly digestible. A wealth of reference pages assists the reader in locating significant themes within the letters as well as placing the letters themselves in the context of Santayana's life. In addition to the index, there are 133 pages of editorial appendices, including textual commentary, notes, a general chronology of Santayana's life, locations of the manuscripts of the letters, and an alphabetical list of letter recipients. In addition to these references, William Holzberger provides the reader with a preface and substantive introduction, offering a considered appreciation of Santayana's life and philosophy. Holzberger equably addresses even the more controversial issues, including Santayana's purported anti-Semitism, his views on women, and questions of his sexual orientation. In this way, Holzberger provides the reader with a both intimate and respectful perspective on the life of a private and dignified individual.

To anyone looking to explore the depths of Santayana's philosophical perspective, the most interesting aspect of these letters—one that Holzberger addresses in his introduction (xxx)—is the extent to which Santayana's philosophy is embedded in his personal correspondence, suggesting the thorough entwining of his life with his theoretical ideals. Indications of the philosopher's mature ontology and epistemology can be found in even his earliest correspondence with various friends from Harvard College, and even at this stage in his discourse we find him stressing the importance of maintaining two distinct approaches to truth, the literary and the scientific. We see that, from the beginning, he commits philosophy to the former practice. We read of his related feeling of oppression by German philosophy during his graduate study abroad, specifically by its "scholasticism . . . and by the absurd pretension to be scientific" (96). His various castigating remarks made during this period (1886-1888) about the philosophies of Kant and especially Hegel indicate that his almost polemical opposition to German transcendental philosophy well preceded any political concerns wrought by World War I. Finally, of particular interest is the early presence of Santayana's notion of the spiritual life. Even at twenty-six years of age, in a letter...