The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States

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Reviews

The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States was reviewed by Thomas Meaney in the 12/11/09 Wall Street Journal, page W10. The reviewer, Thomas Meaney, writes that the book is “a brief, thought-provoking volume that allows us to revisit Santayana’s elegant prose and re-engage his thoughts about American culture.” Here’s a link to the entire review:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704240504574585981912442384.html

One misunderstands Santayana’s critique of the “genteel tradition” if one assumes, as many who picked up the phrase did assume, that Santayana’s main target was Puritanism or Calvinism.  In Santayana’s view Calvinism has logical and emotional integrity, while the genteel tradition does not, as this passage makes clear: “Serious poetry, profound religion (Calvinism for instance) are the joys of an unhappiness that confesses itself; but when a genteel tradition forbids people to confess that they are unhappy, serious poetry and profound religion are closed to them by that” (11). (All quotations from “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” are taken from The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States by George Santayana, ed. James Seaton (New Haven: Yale UP, 2009).

“To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation;  to elude oneself the romantic”  (11), according to George Santayana in “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy.”

This distinction between classic and romantic not only underlies the contrast Santayana makes between William and Henry James discussed in the previous post but can be taken as the basis of Santayana’s own general point of view. (All quotations from “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” are taken from The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States by George Santayana, ed. James Seaton (New Haven: Yale UP, 2009).

George Santayana seems to have  believed that the fiction of Henry James was ultimately more philosophical than the works of his brother William.

In “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” George Santayana famously argues that while the “American Will” is “all aggressive enterprise,” the “American Intellect” is “all genteel tradition” (4). Santayana nevertheless notes that a few Americans have managed to do important work outside the confines of the “genteel tradition.” Walt Whitman “left the genteel tradition entirely behind” (12), but he did so at considerable cost; Santayana acknowledges that Whitman was a genius but just barely: “his poetic genius fell back to the lowest level, perhaps, to which it is possible for poetic genius to fall” (13). The philosopher William James, on the other hand, “eluded the genteel tradition in the romantic way, by continuing it into its opposite” (13).  It seems faint praise to commend a philosopher for “eluding” a tradition.  It is  only William’s brother Henry who receives Santayana’s unqualified endorsement. Henry James, Santayana asserts, “has overcome the genteel tradition in the classic way, by understanding it” (13).  Henry James has succeeded in “turning the genteel American tradition, as he turns everything else, into a subject-matter for analysis. For him it is a curious habit of mind, intimately comprehended, to be compared with other habits of mind, also well known to him” (13).

Thus Santayana argues that it is Henry James the novelist and short-story writer rather than William, Santayana’s colleague in Harvard’s Department of Philosophy, who has fulfilled the traditional role of the philosopher. Three works of Henry James to which Santayana’s argument seems especially applicable are The Europeans, The Bostonians, and The Ambassadors. I’ll discuss them in future posts. (All quotations from “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” are taken from The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States by George Santayana, ed. James Seaton (New Haven: Yale UP, 2009).