Abstract

Philosophy has become trapped by the belief that precision is our surest path to knowledge. It is my aim to challenge this assumption and to affirm in its place a wide variety of means by which we may “speak” philosophically. Drawing on George Santayana’s ontological realm of truth and his concept of literary psychology, I will argue that the varieties of human expression, in their relationship to truth, are not fundamental differences in kind but exist on a continuum of expression, where the referent ranges from descriptions closest to the material facts to those closest to the human relationship to those facts.