George Santayana on Liberalism and the Spiritual Life (Conservative Minds Revisited) (American Philosopher and Poet) (Critical Essay‪)‬

ANYONE WHO CONSULTS THE ARCHIVES of the late philosopher Eric Voegelin can read the surprising, and to some minds frustrating, letter that Voegelin wrote to the historian George H. Nash. Nash, who had just completed work on The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, had written to Voegelin for a photograph to include in the book. The letter Nash received in reply could not have been anticipated: "Just because I am not stupid enough to be a liberal," Voegelin responded tersely, "does not mean that I am stupid enough to be a conservative." And so the attempt to label this great contemporary defender of ordered liberty a "conservative" was frustrated. Nash nevertheless included Voegelin in his book--appropriately, it seems to me--but the use of the label had to be dropped. The situation is similar with another important figure in the history of conservatism: the philosopher and man of letters George Santayana (1863-1952), whom Russell Kirk includes in The Conservative Mind. While in later editions Kirk's work was subtitled "From Burke to Eliot," in its first edition the subtitle read, "From Burke to Santayana." Santayana was in many ways a profoundly important American conservative, even though he was neither wholly American nor perfectly conservative. Indeed, this Spanish-born writer once described himself as "a Mephistopheles masquerading as a conservative." He defended the past because "once it had been victorious and had brought something beautiful to light;" but he was in no way wedded to the past. (1) Writing to Sidney Hook in the 1930s, Santayana claimed that