Well, I am back at it with Santayana. I want to focus on some different aspects of his writing other than oneness, continuity, and the interplay between the material and insubstantial, or surreal, rather, though I think my discussion will probably bleed into the latter of those three.
As Sexson has apportioned part of the class title to "the Lucretian Sublime", that will consume this portion of my analysis and ramblings on Santayana.
To discover substance, then, is a great step in the life of reason, even if substance be conceived quite negatively as a term that serves merely to mark, by contrast, the unsubstantiality, the vanity, of all particular moments and things. That is the way in which Indian poetry and philosophy conceived substance. But the step taken by Greek physics, and by the poetry of Lucretius, passes beyond. Lucretius and the Greeks, in observing universal mutation and the vanity of life, conceived behind appearance a great intelligible process, an evolution in nature. The reality became interesting, as well as the illusion. Physics became scientific, which had previously been merely spectacular.
Here is the first marked shift from a divided physical/immaterial to physics becoming science, "an evolution in nature", "the unsubstantiality, the vanity, of all particular moments and things." There is something more, something transcendent. When I took Lit. Crit. from Bennet, he explained the sublime as something beyond explanation or reason, and how one's experience of the sublime is not a fixed thing, but a fluid comprehension, or "incomprehension", based upon the totality of one's experience and understanding of things. I can encounter a painting or poetry or music or scenery that is beautiful, but those which transcend beauty are sublime. To be clear, though, the sublime does not always merit a positivistic experience. The sublime is, in many ways, simply outside of an individual comprehension. However, this again is too simplistic, for the fact that I do not understand or comprehend astrophysics, or even civil engineering, does not classify these things as "sublime". The sublime seems to almost be restricted to the artistic and natural. If it has not become apparent, I will state it: the sublime is extremely difficult to define and explain on the very basis that it transcends language. The best description might be to understand the sublime as God. This is not to limit the sublime to a specific faith or religious persuasion, but to say it is that which you hold in the place of "I am content to experience this without fully comprehending it." The difference, however, is that if I begin in the middle of a circle, and the sublime, for me, exists outside of that circle, it is not impossible for me to move into that outer ring. However, beyond that first ring is another ring, and so forth. The reason I say God, then, is that the only idea ever conceived of beyond every ring is God Himself. And not merely an idea, not merely a being, but some essence transcendent, again, of all human comprehension. Sublime.
Now, a materialist or atheist will not ascribe to that view, thus establishing nature as the paramount idea only makes sense for Lucretius and his fellow Epicureans. For those who ascribe to such views, nature is god. The idea of nature, then, is the greatest idea ever conceived of. It captures both material and immaterial, the physical life and the life force itself. And the totality of these things, the oneness, is sublime.
Continuing on, we find a brief explanation of the progression of this materialist idea, beginning with Democritus, passing into Epicurus, and landing in the mind of Lucretius. The notion rejects the supernatural, and adopts the motion of the atoms, the eternal movement and occasional change, as the penultimate truths. These truths help man to maintain his free will, his freedom to operate within a world that acknowledges the contrary and terrifying possibility of fate, a decide, predestined pattern and movement to the universe.
It fascinates me that people are not disconcerted by the fact that Epicurus adopted this ideal for such menial reasons. He found "Democritus the most helpful and edifying", "The system of Democritus was adopted by Epicurus, but not because Epicurus had any keenness of scientific vision", and "he gathered his scientific miscellany with an eye fixed not on nature, but on the exigencies of an inward faith,—a faith accepted on moral grounds, deemed necessary to salvation, and defended at all costs, with any available weapon. It is instructive that materialism should have been adopted at that juncture on the same irrelevant moral grounds on which it has usually been rejected." It is compelling that Santayana seems to acknowledge the hypocrisy of Epicurus, that everyone takes something on faith. This is an undeniable truth, that undeniable truth Santayana talks of, that "wishes to pursue a possible, not impossible, happiness." This begs the question, "What is possible?" To a materialist we have only look towards the finite and comprehensible and testable and "scientific" and tangible. This is possibility manifest in "real" form. However, even their great philosopher Epicurus cannot escape the fact that his adoption of a naturalistic, materialistic ideology centers on feeling, faith, fear, many things accused towards the religious, the pious, and the faithful. Epicurus, if Satayana is to be believed, invented his own religion.
Materialism, like any system of natural philosophy, carries with it no commandments and no advice. It merely describes the world, including the aspirations and consciences of mortals, and refers all to a material ground. The materialist, being a man, will not fail to have preferences, and even a conscience, of his own; but his precepts and policy will express, not the logical implications of his science, but his human instincts, as inheritance and experience may have shaped them. Any system of ethics might accordingly coexist with materialism; for if materialism declares certain things (like immortality) to be impossible, it cannot declare them to be undesirable. Nevertheless, it is not likely that a man so constituted as to embrace materialism will be so constituted as to pursue things which he considers unattainable. There is therefore a psychological, though no logical, bond between materialism and a homely morality.
It would be unfair to address materialism as a merely surface level experience of the world, as well as with naturalism. From what I gather, Santayana claims there is a depth and a sublime and Naturalism is a philosophy of observation, and of an imagination that extends the observable; all the sights and sounds of nature enter into it, and lend it their directness, pungency, and coercive stress. At the same time, naturalism is an intellectual philosophy; it divines substance behind appearance, continuity behind change, law behind fortune. It therefore attaches all those sights and sounds to a hidden background that connects and explains them. So understood, nature has depth as well as surface, force and necessity as well as sensuous variety.
It seems that entire experience of nature is at once informed by, and equally informs, our understanding of that force, the force of nature itself, behind the physical. However, it seems that this fore i bound up in and centered upon the energy within nature, the law of thermodynamics, that energy be neither created nor destroyed, but merely transferred. This is where the materialist seems to come about their idea for how things are carried forward. I cannot take credit for the energies I employ, for they are transferred, almost imparted, maybe even willed to me, by the forces of nature: atoms, DNA, psyche, etc.
Here we come upon an interesting point (and hopefully I have not made to great a leap). The materialist discerns that the presence of man is unessential to the progression, or at the very least, the procession, of nature. I do not think I disagree. However, this experience, "the sublime" as we have come to call it, this experience is something almost entirely transcendent of conscience, yet not quite. And the issue is that that particular "thing", if we can call it that, depends upon a consciousness. We are left with two options: the force of nature, energy, natural energy, or whatever you may please to call. The other option is grounded in the myths, a God. Here is an interesting question that is more important than we have let it become: If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Before we can answer that, we must define sound. Wikipedia defines it as such:
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing
Now, if this definition proves insufficient to the scholarly mind due to its source, I say fair enough. The references merit credibility to my only mildly comprehensive mind.
However, this definition necessitates a "range of hearing". Hearing is done by people and animals (so far as I know). If atoms or molecules or cells are known to hear, my argument ends here. I recently noticed a book titled Singing to the Plants, but my existing stack of books prevents me from adding yet another. From what I gather, this idea has more to do with the transfer of gases and less to do with the sounds themselves, and this book seems less concerned with that idea than a variety of mysticisms.
I digress, and the point is this: if sound in fact necessitates a "range of hearing", then the tree does not make a sound. It does not if there is no consciousness to hear. But is there? Again, behind this we either have a god or God, and we have energy. My dissatisfaction with energy as the source should seem logical and fair enough. Energy powers a computer, a lamp, it apparently even causes my energy bill to increase when all I have done is leave my power source for my computer plugged in.
You see, energy is without control. It swerves, it changes, Epicurus declares the atoms as malleable not in form, but in action. Any reasoning man will here say, "Yes, but a god or God, too, may be without control." I do not deny this fact. So why argue? Energy is not simply without control, but it is without self control. Energy has and always will simply continue. Given the example of my computer power source, energy does not develop or evolve or naturally select an intelligence that tells itself to stop wasting. The materialist will say it has not been wasted, merely transferred. From what I gather, it is not stored in the power source to provide a sudden jolt of enormous power to my battery, no, instead it has been limited by such factors as voltage, but the point is that this energy is transferred for nothing. The transfer of ideas as energies makes sense. The transfer of a constant flow of constrained power into...what?...makes no sense in light of evolutionary theory or what little I know of atomic theory. It seems that atoms organize themselves into more complex forms. Though the electron proves chaotic, there is a level of order in the electron cloud.
To think in terms of evolutionary theory, do not the simple forms arrange themselves into more complex, better developed, more fit forms? And energy is the driving force behind all of that, correct? Why has the most base of all these forms, the mere constituent of all things, the source of life for nature, not evolved itself into a more complex better form? Energy is uncontained and uncontrolled, and yet the complexity and improvements of nature are founded in the harnessing and controlling of energy. Beings and societies advance as they better harness energy. But left to its own devices, what is the inherent value of energy? Does energy exist? Absolutely. Does energy matter? I would say yes, but for a far different reason than the naturalist.
I think a fatal flaw of humanity is the assumption that my consciousness of something is what makes it important, makes it exist. If there is no one to be conscious of energy, does it exist? If there is no matter to harness energy, does energy matter, does it have a purpose? I have given myself away here in insisting that purpose matters, has weight. As I reflect upon that sentence, I am aware that I use material terms to describe abstract things. However, "matter" has become an equally material and abstract word, words themselves abstractions.
I think human existence, and all existence, is not predicated upon human consciousness, but the consciousness of God. I exist because God knows all and he therefore knows me and not just me, but the matters and energies that compose me.
These are merely thoughts and ideas and reflections upon what Santayana has introduced me to, and I do not doubt that I err at certain points. I am not unwelcoming of correction or opposition.
These ideas, wherever they might take me, exist in a kind of philosophical, nebulous realm, and I have to remind myself to be careful before I reduce everything to mere abstractions. I think there is serious value to the material, but I also think it is not difficult for man to quickly arrive at a conclusion based on those feelings and emotions and convictions that are so obviously present. I include myself here and I include, though not as my equal, Epicurus.
The value of these ideas, if for nothing else, is also present in analyzing and thinking about Wallace Stevens. Well, it's 3 am, so I think I will call it a night. If my errors are obvious, it is because I have written at an absurd hour. I feel that my mind was clear, but if not, that will suffice as an excuse. Good night.
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