Abstract

The purpose of this work is to critically examine the meaning and scope of philosophic naturalism, specifically in the ontology of George Santayana. We do this by identifying and analyzing three systematic trends or philosophic commitments resident in Santayana's work: Materialism, Cosmic Naturism and Naturalism, which are defined cumulatively in the dissertation. Briefly, Materialism is a defense of the priority of matter and mechanism in defining what is real and how it is determinate ; Cosmic Naturism is a commitment to the notions of material power, radical contingency and the primacy of sheer existence; Naturalism is both a rejection of the super- and non-natural and a commitment to the notion of relative determinateness, meaning determination through a community and continuity of pertinent factors. ;The metaphysical or categorical consequences of these philosophic positions are developed through a detailed treatment of leading metaphysical ideas, such as the concepts of determinateness and possibility. We argue that, while Naturalism is Santayana's dominant or most compelling theoretical stance, its development is compromised by the not wholly compatible aims and implications of his other systematic or theoretical commitments. We conclude that metaphysically, as a categorical structure, his ontology is plagued with irresolvable difficulties. That is, his explicit categories are conceptual cul-de-sacs: they engender problems and inconsistencies which are not resolved, but only perpetuated, by the categorial structure. Our treatment of Santayana's conception of philosophy indicates that an absence of a certain kind of methodological self-awareness on Santayana's part may be partially responsible for some of the difficulties in his formal categorical system. Nevertheless, we argue that, even though this system of general ontology is as such problematic, Santayana achieves considerable success in the development of philosophic naturalism in his moral philosophy