Religion as Illusion in the Thought of Santayana

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE oF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. 20017 VoL. XXXIV OCTOBER, 1970 No.4 RELIGION AS ILLUSION IN THE THOUGHT OF SANTAYANA MOST OF THE critics of Santayana consider his early series of five books entitled The Life of Reason to be his finest work, and of these certainly the most beautifully written and most poetically persuasive is Reason in Religion, first published in 1905.1 This book is an expansion and elaboration of some of the ideas in his earlier book entitled Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900) .2 Although Santayana later claimed to have outgrown some of the ideas in these early books-for example, his conviction that the classical Greek civilization was the model for all times-still his fundamental ideas on religion never changed, even in his last book (hailed by some as revealing a more nearly orthodox view) entitled The Idea of Christ in the Gospels or God in Man (1946) .3 These views are basically very similar to those 1 (New York: Scribner's, 1936, first published in 190.5). 2 (New York: Harper, 1957, first published in 1900). • The Idea of Christ in the Gospels or God in l'rlan (New York: Scribner's, 1946). 533 534 HARRY M. CAMPBELL of Vaihinger in his The Philosophy of 'As If ' 4 and of Arnold in his books on religion,5 although Santayana never mentions either of his predecessors, and his "pious scepticism" (a phrase applied by him to recent Protestantism but equally characteristic of his own view) is elaborated in a more rhetorically eloquent fashion than that of either the dry philosophical argument of Vaihinger or the literary presentation of Arnold. I Like Arnold, Santayana would preserve the essence of true religion, which is the highest expression of the Life of Reason and which in no way depends on a consideration of religious language as having an objective referent. In fact, he usually considers such a " factual " attitude toward religious language as an "abuse" of truly spiritual religion.5a The suprarational 4 Hans Vaihinger, The Philosophy of 'As If' (London: Routledge & Kcgan Paul, 1924, first published in 1R75 in Germany). His thesis (p. II et passim) is that "hypotheses which are Lnown to be false " such as, in religion, the ideas of God, immortality, and all dogma may and should be " employed because of their utility." 5 See especially St. Paul and Protestantism (London: Macmillan, 1903-1904, first published in 1870); Literature and Dogma (New York: Macmillan, 1906, first published in 1873); and God and the Bible (New York: Macmillan, 1903, first published in 1875). See also my article entitled "Arnold's Religion and the Theory of Fictions," Religion in Life, XXXVI (Summer, 1967), 21?3-231?. ••In my argument against the fictional religion of Santayana, as in my arguments against the similar views of Vaihinger and Arnold, I am not upholding the literalism of the Fundamentalists but rather the " analogous literalism " first formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas, which is, as Gustave Weigel has said, neither the " univocal literalism " of the Fundamentalists nor the " unliteral symbolism " of Bultmann and his follows. This latter reduces !he truth of the Scriptures to " existential " or subjective experience. Of " analogous lileralism " Weigel adds that the symbolist need not fear that the "utter otherness " of God is denied by an analogous understanding of the formulas which speak to us of God. In a proportion we do not say that the half of an orange is in any way equal to the half of a melon. We only say that in the ratio of whole and half they are equivalent. When the Scriptures call God our King, they are not saying that God is our Nero. It is only affirmed that ~ero's proper power in his limited field of direction is relatively equivalent on his side of the equation to the absolute dominion of God over us on the other side. There is no univocity; no equality. . . . Nor does this give us only formal knowledge. When I am told that the boy before me looks like his father, I know...