A George Santayana Home Page

A George Santayana Home Page was introduced in 1996 to honor the work of philosopher and critic, George Santayana. The editor of this site wished in particular to demonstrate the clarity and consistency of definition and doctrine found in Santayana's philosophical writings. As the quotations gathered here tend to show, this level of consistency is remarkable, especially in light of the facts that Santayana published technical philosophical essays and books over a period of almost sixty years, and that his point of vantage varied over time between a frank humanism, a foundational naturalism, and an all-enveloping ontological vision. In the year of his death, Santayana remarked that " . . . I have . . . been surprised to find 'The Life of Reason' so much like my later views . " Letters 8:421 (To John Hall Wheelock, February 23, 1952).

A George Santayana Home Page offers quotations falling under five broad categories: (1) definitions; (2) nature of philosophy; (3) mind / body; (4) moral philosophy; and (5) criticism. These categories are explored in twenty-four web pages. Most of these pages organize quotations by date of first publication and thus attempt to show consistency of theme between earlier and later writings. Seven pages, though, are organized by subject: Terminology, Isms, Reason and Spirit, False Steps in Philosophy, British Philosophy, Law & Government, and Americanism. A twenty-fifth page presents miscellaneous quotations by subject.

Each quotation is followed by a citation which consists of an abbreviation, page number, and chapter. The abbreviation is explained in the bibliography of editions used, which is accessible from the main page of the web site or by selecting any citation. While the indicated page number ties to the edition used, the parenthetically indicated chapter will assist the reader to locate quotations where I have erred in providing page numbers or where an unusual edition (e.g., Triton) is in the reader's possession.

A George Santayana Home Page is developed under WAMPServer 2.0 using PSPad 4.5.4 to script and style pages for viewing and navigating under Firefox 3.6.x. Visual effects are accomplished through the JavaScript libraries of script.aculo.us 1.9.0 and Prototype 1.7.

Recent Developments
During 2010 the site moved to the domain, www.george-santayana.org, and the database which generates the pages was extensively re-designed and re-programmed. The new site provides the editor with more control over formatting of content, permits the re-opening of the guestbook for Comments, and includes "find" and "search" features on the page entitled, Custom Quotations.

Five pages are added to the site:

• Essence and Existenceis added to the category "Philosophy";
• Metaphysicsis added to the category "Mind / Body";
• Spirit Incarnateis added to the category "Mind / Body";
• Superficial "will"is added to the category "Moral philosophy"; and
• Americanismis added to the category "Criticism . "

Additionally, hundreds of newly-added quotations are scattered among the pre-existing pages.

More detailed bibliographic records for each chapter of published works allows for better sorting by chronology. For example, many chapters of Soliloquies in England had been published first as articles and are sorted accordingly where cited on this web site. The same phenomenon occurs with frequency for citations to chapters found in certain posthumous compilations.

This drive to improve bibliographic integrity has induced two more changes. First, where a critical edition exists, it is now cited. Second, the editor now cites the first American edition where that volume is in his possession or available to him electronically. Therefore, the user will notice that:

• the one-volume, compact edition of Realms of Being is not cited except for its Introduction;
• the one-volume edition of The Life of Reason is not cited except for its Preface;
• the second edition of Reason in Common Sense is not cited except for its Preface to the Second Edition;
• the second edition of Dialogues in Limbo is not cited except for one of its new dialogues, The Vortex of Dialectic;
• the new edition of Winds of Doctrine is not cited except for its new Preface; and
• the new edition of Egotism in German Philosophy is not cited except for its Postscript: The Nature of Egotism and of the Moral Conflicts That Disturb the World.

Prior Developments

• In 2009, the site was moved to www.awardspace.com.. Pages on "human nature" and "mind as index" were posted for the first time. More than 70 quotations were added to the database since 17 April 2007. The editor for the first time distinguished at the bottom of each page of quotations the number originally published before 1925 from the number of quotations originally published after 1924. As is done each year, the list of external links was updated in 2009.
• In 2008, the site was moved from A O L to Road Runner. By Septermber 2008, A O L no longer supported any personal homepages. Due to changes in support of personal homepages at Road Runner in late 2008, the site was without a home for a few weeks.
• For 2007, the editor posted pages of "New Quotations," and "All Citations," and revised the page of "External Links . " He also added quotations, expanded some introductions, removed a number of typographical errors, added entries to the bibliography, attempted to normalize citation practices across the site, and cleaned up style sheets. Letters were sorted by the date each was written, rather than the date published in book form.
  
• At the ten-year anniversary of the posting of this site to the World Wide Web, the main page was redesigned, this detailed description of the site and its history was added, some additional quotations were provided, and various "Editor's Introduction" pages were expanded. Additonally, the guest book was closed due to abuse by spammers.