American Heritage as a Source of Values

Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski American Heritage as a Source of Values Introduction More often than not George Santayana was very critical of America; he had reservations about American democracy, a disputation over American pragmatism, some warnings against commercialization and the uniformization of social life in the US, and many other issues. Many of his judgments have been appreciatively taken on by some commentators, others have been flatly rejected by his philosophical opponents.1 Predominantly, however, the tone of his output is claimed to be the one of negativity and opposition. Characteristically, Robert Dawidoff, in his interesting book entitled The Genteel Tradition and the Sacred Rage: High Culture vs. Democracy in Adams, James, and Santayana, puts forward the opinion that Santayana's "own writing suffers from his incapacity for glorious assertion."2 Without being polemical to this at all, I should like to look, in the present paper, at Santayana's America from a positive viewpoint and also a constructive one, that is to say, from the perspective of acceptance rather than refutation, from the point of view of her intellectual fecundity rather than her limitations, of her axiological diversity instead of standarization, and of her moral resourcefulness rather than barrenness. What I want to show is that, besides his criticism of America — so copiously commented by Santayana scholars on various occasions —, he did not fail to see the variety of the concepts of values that somehow materialized, or took shape, in the course of American history. In the present paper I have endeavored to look at the fertility of American heritage, as presented in Santayana's books and papers, in the light of a typology of values approach, one that was recognized by Santayana. At the beginning, I am going to propose a typology of values that can, in my assessment, be applied to value inquiries at large and, next, I use it as a map or a theoretical pattern to distinguish those strands of American heritage that can be seen as axiologically distinct and specific.3 I am using Santayana's texts on America here for different reasons; first, he was a shrewd and influential Americanist — "the genteel tradition" being amongst the terms coined by him and introduced into the cultural consciousness of Americans. Second, he paid Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Spring, 2005, Vol. XLI, No. 2 368 Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski special attention to the significance of the clash of values in the process of shaping America's intellectual history. Third, he understood the huge role of tradition as a source of values, norms, and standards for the life of each and every American in particular, as well as for the life of each and every human being in general. Fourth, it is according to his philosophy that, although there is room for just a few hierarchies of values to be actualized and cultivated in the realm of matter — it is very many of them, if taken ideally, with their beauties and moral truths, that deserve at least some attention and appreciation: we may sometimes wish that all beauties had but one form, that we might behold them together. But in the nature of things beauties are incompatible. The spring cannot coexist with the autumn, nor day with night; what is beautiful in a child is hideous in a man, and vice versa; every age, every country, each sex, has a peculiar beauty, finite and incommunicable; the better it is attained the more completely it excludes every other. The same is evidently true of schools of art, of styles and languages, and of every effect whatsoever. It exists by its finitude and is great in proportion to its determination.4 Let me just add to clarify my intentions that I want to avoid a discussion on Santayana's own philosophy of values, nor do I want to compare him to other thinkers; such a discussion is important but deserves a separate paper, one devoted to the specific distinctions and categories made by him, as well as with reference to the eloquent elaborations on this topic.5 Rather, I want to focus upon the picture of American heritage that can be found in the pages of his works...