Abstract

The article explores Santayana's views on Greek philosophy and his evaluation of the Greek thinkers that best represent the classical mind: Heraclitus, Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. His early views on Greek philosophy, traceable in the 1889 Dissertation on Lotze, were revised and formalized in "The Life of Reason", and finalized in his "Apologia pro mente sua" (1951). The principles that figure dominantly in Santayana's philosophy, materialism, scepticism, and the theory of essences, also pervade his interpretation and critical treatment of Greek philosophy. For all his admiration and love of Greek philosophy, Santayana's naturalistic approach remained close to James' pragmatism