George Santayana, "Character and Opinion in the United States"

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George Santayana, "Character and Opinion in the United States" (1920)

(1967 Norton Library edition)

 

 

책에는 모두 일곱 에세이가 실려 있다:

 

I. The Moral Background

II. The Academic Environment

III. William James

IV. Josiah Royce

V. Later Speculations

VI. Materialism and Idealism in America

VII. English Liberty in America

 

 

이 책의 온라인판 -- George Braziller edition(1955)의 pdf 파일 -- 이

눈에 띈다. 내 책은 본문과 서문이 거의 240쪽인데 이 온라인판은

130쪽이다. 한 세기 이전에 쓰인 에세이들이지만 산타야나가 본

미국을, 특히 우리에 비추어 보며, 읽어보고 싶은 이는 우선

이 온라인판에서 한두 에세이를 골라 읽을 수 있겠다.

 

 

"I agree with Spinoza where he says that other people's idea of a man is apt be a better expression of their nature than of his. i accept this principle in the present instance"라고 저자는 서문에서 쓰고 있다. 다음은  George Santayana에 대해 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy에서:

 

"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."

 

"[H]e thought of philosophy as literature."

 

"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."

 

"Edmund Wilson ranked [Santayana's] 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."

 

[덧붙임:5/25/2024]  George Santayana가 “the best philosophical work by an American” 이라고 했다는, Anita Loos의 중편 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (2026)를  우연히 만날 수 있을지 모르겠다.

 

 

아래는 본문에서:

 

"There are materialists by instinct in every age and country; there are always private gentlemen whom the clergy and the professors cannot deceive.... Furthermore, in America the materialistic school is without that support from popular passions which it draws in many European countries from its association with anticlericalism or with revolutionary politics; and it also lacks the maturity, self-confidence, and refinement proper in older societies to the great body of Epicurean and disenchanted opinion, where for centuries wits, critics, minor philosophers, and men of the world have chuckled together over their Horace, their Voltaire, and their Gibbon. The horror which the theologians have of infidelity passes therefore into the average American mind unmitigated by the suspicion that anything pleasant could lie in that quarter, much less the open way to nature and truth and a secure happiness." (pp. 23-24, in Chapter I. The Moral Background)

 

"The optimism of pioneer is not limited to his view of himself and his own future: it starts from that; but feeling assured, safe, and cheery within, he looks with smiling and most kindly eyes on everything and everybody about him. Individualism, roughness, and self-trust are supposed to go with selfishness and a cold heart; but I suspect that is a prejudice. It is rather dependence, insecurity, and mutual jostling that poison our placid gregarious brotherhood; and fanciful passionate demands upon people's affections, when they are disappointed, as they soon must be, breed ill will and a final meanness. If it were given me to look into the depths of a man's heart, and I did not find goodwill at the bottom, I should say without any hesitation, You are not an American. But as the American is an individualist his goodwill is not officious. His instinct is to think well of everybody, and to wish everybody well, but in a spirit of rough comradesship, expecting every man to stand on his own legs and to be helpful in his turn. When he has given his neighbour a chance he thinks he has done enough for him; but he feels it is an absolute duty to do that. It will take some hammering to drive a coddling socialism into America." (pp. 170-171, in Chapter VI. Materialism and Idealism in American Life)

 

"In the United States ... the scale and speed of life have made everything strangely un-English. There is cheeriness instead of doggedness, confidence instead of circumspection; there is a desire to quizz and to dazzle rather than a fear of being mistaken or of being shocked; there is a pervasive cordiality, exaggeration, and farcical humour....

 

Nevertheless there is one gift or habit, native to England, that has not only been preserved in America unchanged, but has found there a more favourable atmosphere in which to manifest its true nature -- I mean the spirit of free co-operation. The root of it is free individuality, which is deeply seated in the English inner man.... But this free individuality in the Englishman is crossed and biased by a large resudue of social servitude....

 

In America social servitude is reduced to a minimum; in fact wew may almost say that it is reduced to subjecting children to their mothers and to a common public education.... Where individuality is so free, co-operation, when it is justified, can be all the more quick and hearty. Everywhere co-operation is taken for granted, as something that no one would be so mean or so short-sighted as to refuse. Together with the will to work and to prosper, it is of the essence of Americanism." (pp. 193-196, in Chapter VII. English Liberty in America)