George Santayana's Theory of Religion

Abstract

Santayana offers a new appreciation of the value of religion as poetry. He is a naturalistic philosopher, treating religious ideas as compensatory constructions, as objectified aspirations and ideals. The ideal values presented by religion in allegorical form are not to be mistaken for natural existences. To the wise they portray the pathos and nobility of life, the necessity of discipline, the possibility of sanctity, the transcendence and the humanity of the divine. The article presents and criticizes Santayana's theory of the origin of the religious experience in fear: his treatment of the rise of ideas of God, sacrifice, prayer; his estimate of the superior value of ritual. For Santayana ritual is of primary importance. By emphasizing belief and minimizing ritual and symbolism, Protestantism, in his opinion, put back religion ten centuries. On the great traditional questions, such as God and immortality, Santayana has definite opinions. God has no existential reality; he is the embodiment of our highest human aspirations. Personal immortality is a foolish figment of the brain. True immortality is the immortality of life's values. Evil is imperfect adjustment and not an essential aspect of the nature of being. The task of religion is to give man another world to live in, an imaginative world of beauty, harmony, and perfection, that the soul of man may be strengthened and deepened by contemplating it, and its beauty and serenity fill the mind.