The Genteel Tradition: Nine Essays by George Santayana

by George Santayana, Robert Dawidoff (Introduction), Douglas L. Wilson (Editor)

George Santayana probably did more than anyone except Alexis de Tocqueville to shape the critical view of American culture. The great philosopher and writer coined the phrase “genteel tradition,” introducing it to a California audience in 1911. The phrase caught fire, giving a name to the culture of the republic. Santayana’s address appears in this collection of influential essays about the country he lived in from 1872 to 1912. Because he remained European in spirit, the Spaniard brought a sharp detachment to his observations. He points out the American split between thought and action, theory and practice, the traditional and the modern, the arts and business, the high-brow and the popular. He also examines the excessive moralism in national life, which baffles Europeans. These nine essays touch on American idealism and materialism and American endeavor, sacred and profane.

Genres: Philosophy, 20th Century, Essays

201 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Philosopher, poet, literary and cultural critic, George Santayana is a principal figure in Classical American Philosophy. His naturalism and emphasis on creative imagination were harbingers of important intellectual turns on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a naturalist before naturalism grew popular; he appreciated multiple perfections before multiculturalism became an issue; he thought of philosophy as literature before it became a theme in American and European scholarly circles; and he managed to naturalize Platonism, update Aristotle, fight off idealisms, and provide a striking and sensitive account of the spiritual life without being a religious believer. His Hispanic heritage, shaded by his sense of being an outsider in America, captures many qualities of American life missed by insiders, and presents views equal to Tocqueville in quality and importance. Beyond philosophy, only Emerson may match his literary production. As a public figure, he appeared on the front cover of Time (3 February 1936), and his autobiography (Persons and Places, 1944) and only novel (The Last Puritan, 1936) were the best-selling books in the United States as Book-of-the-Month Club selections. The novel was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Edmund Wilson ranked Persons and Places among the few first-rate autobiographies, comparing it favorably to Yeats's memoirs, The Education of Henry Adams, and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Remarkably, Santayana achieved this stature in American thought without being an American citizen. He proudly retained his Spanish citizenship throughout his life. Yet, as he readily admitted, it is as an American that his philosophical and literary corpuses are to be judged. Using contemporary classifications, Santayana is the first and foremost Hispanic-American philosopher.

Reviews

[Stephen Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was introduced to the writings of George Santayana via Russel Kirk's "The Conservative Mind", so my expectations were quite steep considering the high regard I have for Kirk's work. Santayana unfortunately wrote above my head in a number of these essays (specifically his engagements with differing schools of philosophy at the time). I found his writing extremely contextual and found myself doing an equal amount of research just to understand who he was talking about. This isn't necessarily a mark against the book. Just reader beware. There were two or three essays in here that I enjoyed tremendously (Shakespeare: Made in America was very funny and clever), but overall Santayana came across as a bitter, annoyed, condescending old man which I suppose can be fairly common traits among conservative intellectuals. I had a hard time grasping his repulsion toward American culture yet his complete infatuation with it.

Santayana is often compared to Tocqueville in his analysis of America, but I found Santayana much more pessimistic and cutting in his critiques. The people he praised for escaping the Genteel Tradition (which I'm still not confident I have a grasp of despite reading nine essays about it - probably because I have an American education according to Santayana) he then went on to heckled for doing something else that was rather stupid. At least that was my impression.

I appreciate his discussion and skepticism about the idea of unlimited progress that America has held for so long and his description of a split Old World/New World dichotomy in the American identity that has plagued the nation since its founding, but I felt that his purposeful disdain toward American culture distracted me from really engaging with him as a reader.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final third of the pamphlet on the genteel tradition contains some of Santayana's best writing: elegant and wise. And it ends in a startling way, because of a change in meaning of the final word. Pity, that.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all his books, this three-part essay will probably strike the general reader as “most contemporary,” in that, nine decades later, it addresses intellectual culture in ways that remain politically relevant.

History may have accelerated, but civilization turns slowly.