European Journal of Pragmatism and

American Philosophy
XI-1 | 2019
European Pragmatism

PADRÓN Charles & Krzysztof Piotr SKOWROŃSKI (eds),

The Life of Reason in an Age of Terrorism
Brill/Rodopi, Leiden-Boston, 2018, 266 pages

María Aurelia Di Berardino

Translator: Leonardo de Rose

Electronic version
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1562
ISSN: 2036-4091

Publisher
Associazione Pragma

Electronic reference
María Aurelia Di Berardino, « PADRÓN Charles & Krzysztof Piotr SKOWROŃSKI (eds), The Life of Reason in
an Age of Terrorism », European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy [Online], XI-1 | 2019,
Online since 19 July 2019, connection on 21 July 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/
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 Padrón Charles & Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński (eds), The Life of Reason in an A... 1

PADRÓN Charles & Krzysztof Piotr

SKOWROŃSKI (eds), The Life of Reason in
an Age of Terrorism
Brill/Rodopi, Leiden-Boston, 2018, 266 pages

María Aurelia Di Berardino

Translation : Leonardo de Rose

REFERENCES
PADRÓN Charles & Krzysztof Piotr SKOWROŃSKI (eds), The Life of Reason in an Age of Terrorism,
Brill/Rodopi, Leiden-Boston, 2018, 266 pages

AUTHOR'S NOTE
This work is developed within the framework of the ffi2017-84781-p research project,
which is co-funded by the AEI (Spain) and the FEDER (European Union).

1 More than one reader of George Santayana will approach the pages of this book with the
same anxiety that led me to go through them: Could it be even possible to give account of
a current burning problem, terrorism, with elements of the philosophy of that “detached”
thinker? A problem, the one of terrorism, that as the editors of the book note, presents
itself with an uncommon visceral intensity whose media coverage surpasses by far the
one of other urgent topics (global warming, immigration, etc.)
2 This book joins in its pages two indefinable potentials: reason (such as it is conceived by
Santayana) and terrorism. What this ordered display that buries its roots into chaos and
instinct may exactly refer to, and how the kaleidoscopic reality of terrorism can be
dissected, seem to meet here in a raw dialogue that refuses to take distance from the
circumstances, at the same time that it prudently steps away in order to gain perspective.

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It is a strategy worthy of Santayana that we find in these pages: sometimes producing

ironies from the grave and, some others, generating strategies to help us understand
(understanding ourselves) some passage of this maze.
3 The territory of this dialogic meeting (reason and terrorism) is run through by this
tension that is a vague ghostly reflection of what the very reading of Santayana
generates. We have seen him detached but not overwhelmed; we know him ironic and, at
the same time, joyful of the unusual moments of lucidity in the history of the human
animal; we think him deaf, but still with wide open eyes. This ambivalence will probably
be better understood if we resort to an analogy: let us imagine that the multiple
interpretations contained in the book represent an effort similar to the one made by a gr
oup of athletes who are ordered to keep jumping two steps away from an abyss. Only two
rules that the organizer of this strange competence might have dreamed are suspected
(Santayana): 1) not getting too close to the edge, and 2) not getting too far away from the
edge. Violating rule number 1 constitutes “the” rule of some philosophies (those I call
“philosophies of the urgency”). On the contrary, violating rule number 2 seems to be the
recurring strategy of what could be called “philosophies of the distancing.” As a spectator
of the tournament, I think that Santayana, the organizer, has always chosen to violate
rule number 2). That is to say, he has chosen the ironic retreat to his own citadel:
The philosophers and the nations cannot be happy unless they are separated; then
they can only have a single purpose in their house and be tolerant in the street. If
they possess a spirit worthy of being cultivated – which is not always the case –,
they need to entrench it in some established citadel, in which it can reach its
perfect expression. (Santayana, 2006, The Realms of Being, 17)
4 Nevertheless, someone might say that the game mentioned in the analogy presents a
problem in the very formulation of its rules, which would disable any binary exclusive
reading such as the one I have just offered: near/distant. After all, how many steps imply
an “approach” and how many represent a “distancing”? Could it be that the
interpretation of these rules depends, as in the case of dominations and powers, on who
evaluates them? Is it thinkable that, being Santayana a philosopher of the distancing, he
offers, in spite of himself, discursive strategies to face urgencies? Because, let me remind
you, the issue (terrorism) is urgent, but our thinker seems not to be in a hurry, and to
prefer the flight of the freed soul to the scream of the shipwrecked sailor.
5 In this light, the territory itself is a whole provocation that leads us to think that at times
the tension is precisely that, a tension and, in that case, Santayana turns out to be a
philosopher of the balance: he can calculate the steps in such a way that, as he mentions
something interesting to understand terrorism – the urgent –, he sits back in his Poltrona
armchair to see the sad show of the world – the invariant.
6 Going through these pages, I have got closer to the game containing the abyss of
interpretations of this book. In that key, I think that some of them meet a balanced view
of Santayana’s thinking; others insist on the distancing, but even then, they find reasons
to reflect on the background of his philosophy; and others, why not, challenge the
analogy, the view and the categories with which I read this happy provocation.
7 Jaquelyn Ann Kegley (“Forgetting and Remembering History: Memory and Self Identity”)
takes us closer to the phenomenon of terrorism from the memory/oblivion dynamic. This
way, from her perspective, a good part of the terrorist’s task lies in the destruction of
history with the purpose of proposing new narrations and generating other identities.
Two concerns lead Kegley’s proposal, namely: 1) why would terrorism deliberately try to

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“erase” memory and, consequently, to destroy history? And 2) which are the conditions
of possibility for terrorism to be able to perform this task? The answers to what terrorism
is will arise from Santayana’s work, as long as it allows us to ask ourselves: what are those
things that prevent us from being morally free and from being exposed to an attack,
which might well “erase” our history without having even started babbling about what
this all has been about?
8 Herman Saatkamp Jr. (“The Life of Reason and Terrorism: Strategies”) sketches for us a
Santayana that more than a “philosopher of the distancing” turns out to be a perfect
sceptic. Saatkamp will pose out two questions regarding terrorism: What can we do? and
what should we do? The author’s strategy will be to rebuild four movements of
Santayana’s thinking to answer these questions (life of reason as an art, the possibility of
a government that encourages it, the unpredictability of governments, and the monastic
model). Santayana’s answer is individualistic, and, what is more, reason is ineffective.
9 Katarzyna Kremplewska (“Managing Necessity: Santayana on Forms of Power and the
Human Condition”) offers an analysis of Santayana’s policy highlighting a hermeneutic
tool which, for the authoress, constitutes Santayana’s legacy to understand some current
political phenomena, namely management of necessity. It is a tool that, on the other hand,
implies a class of anthropological, naturalistic hermeneutic of self-governance. This is a
significantly methodological reading which places necessity between dominations and
powers.
10 Charles Padrón (“Santayanan Reason, Terror and Terrorism, and the Everyday World”)
wonders about the reach of Santayana’s distrust in the potentiality of reason. The answer
he offers advances in the following direction: it supposes the evolution and the
recalibration of that concept throughout Santayana’s life and work, which begins as an
almost ubiquitous presence, to end as a brief perception of a murmur of nature. This
fading away of the role of reason seems to render it quite ineffective against terrorism.
11 Eduardo Mendieta (“Assassination Nation: The Drone as Thanatological Dispositif”)
inspires a philosophic taxonomy to shine a light on his reading of Santayana. He points
out that there would be a way of writing the history of philosophy by making a
distinction between pacifist philosophers and proponents of war. Stantayana is
characterised here as a philosopher of war who, paradoxically, did not even thematise the
real wars.
12 Luka Nicolić (“Santayana and the (Postmodern) Spirit of Terrorism”) explores the
modifications that terrorism has generated in the societies threatened by it. He
specifically focuses on the substantial change that the idea of “death” has suffered. While,
for Santayana, death is conceived from the perspective of temporality, terrorism makes
us think about the contingency of the moment of death.
13 Till Kinzel (“Santayana, Self-Knowledge and the Limits of Politics”) analyses a peculiarity
of the political life of the 21st century: the one of being the result of a deep
disappointment about political organization in many countries. This state of affairs is a
fertile ground to think about politics and its limits. In this text, Santayana will act as
Cicerone in the attempt to rebuild a thought framed in a tradition of philosophical
modesty: a thought that is far from concrete political circumstances even though it stops
to consider concepts such as those of freedom, democracy, and authority.
14 Daniel Moreno (“Santayana on Americanism”) will return to a problematic relationship
between philosophy and politics in Santayana, namely philosophic distancing which is

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not – and cannot be understood as – political indifference. Leaving aside the fact that
Santayana did not answer to the events he witnessed, Moreno understands that his
philosophy does indeed belong to this world inasmuch as it can be set as a conceptual
frame to delineate some solutions to the here and now. It is the essay Americanism that
will guide Moreno’s reflections to give an account of this pretension of bringing
Santayana’s flight down to earth
15 Matthew Caleb Flamm (“Liberalism and the Vertigo of Spirit: Santayana’s Political
Theodicy”) develops Santayana’s political theodicy. According to Flamm, this author’s
power lies in its interesting proposals about the origin and destiny of societies. This
destiny conceals a paradox: having conquered matter, human beings feel more miserable
every time.
16 Matteo Santarelli (“Dewey, Santayana, and ‘Ndrangheta: Understanding a Complex
Phenomenon”) invites George Santayana and John Dewey to dine with the Calabrian
mafia: the ‘Ndrangheta. Two things will appear as relevant here: on the one hand, the
need to think organised crime philosophically; and on the other hand, the need to think it
multifocally. Santayana’s contribution is related to his conception of the activistic order,
specifically, in his characterization of what a faction is. The point that makes the direct
association between the mafia and the activistic order difficult is that the mafia has
updated (aggiornato) as an enterprise. However, behind the corporate shine, there remain
aftertastes of both the old wars between clans and the existence of codes of honour –
chivalry – which would allow for Santayanan reading.
17 Nóra Horváth’s interest (in “‘A Happy Snow-Flake Dancing in the Flaw’: Reflections on
Santayanan Alternatives and Surviving a New Dark Age”) lies in giving an account, from
Santayana, of a state of anxiety: that of the current changes in international politics.
Some of the questions the authoress intends to answer are about the nature of what kind
of political position to take and what to do at an individual and collective level;
ultimately, how to face radicalism. Santayana will be understood here as a social critical
philosopher, since he understands that political conditions originate in human ambitions.
The political use of these ambitions may be prevented partly by resorting to self-
knowledge and, partly, by promoting a political system ensuring the opportunities to take
genuinely free decisions.
18 Giuseppe Patella (“Barbarism Begins at Home: Santayana and Barbarism in Art and Life”)
reflects on barbarism and its place in history. From Walter Benjamin to George
Santayana, through Giambattista Vico, the author proposes that we understand the
phenomenon of barbarism as a central component of any civilization. But he also
proposes to understand barbarism in local terms; this means that every well understood
barbarism begins at home. Patella will analyse Santayana’s conception of barbarism,
which is closely linked to this author’s conception of art. In contrast to the barbaric idea
of art for art’s sake (which exalts vehemence and abundance without questioning the
consequences), his notion of art incorporates him into life and, by doing so, he is given
back intelligence. Associating art with life becomes an antidote against barbarism.
19 Daniel Pinkas (“Egotism, Violence and the Devil: On Santayana’s Use of the Concept of
Egotism”) gives us a reading of egotism in Santayana, relating it to the resurgence of this
topic in current psychology, and to its links with violence and aggression. In this way, he
recovers those considerations that Santayana placed in his analysis of the German
philosophy and egotism. This approach of Santayana to the transcendental philosophy
also implies a possible relationship between egotism and Teutonic bellicosity.

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20 José Beltrán Llavador (“A Religion without Fanaticism: Little Lessons of Wisdom from
Santayana”) journeys through the history of Santayana’s education through his
intellectual autobiography. This journey is the complete expression of an initial idea:
behind any theory, there is a biography. From Persons and Places to The Realms of Being,
Santayana displays his philosophical credo: spiritual materialism. Santayana’s actuality
consists, in the author’s opinion, in leaving us a foldable manifest throughout all his
work, or even, some materials to attain a state of utopia. The acknowledgement of
barbaric elements in the existence is precisely the reason for dreaming of a possible
better world.
21 Andrés Tutor (“Santayana on Pluralism, Relativism and Rationality”) intends to analyse
the problem of the pluralism of values in Santayana’s socio-political writings. This
becomes an indispensable procedure once Tutor defines terrorism as a conflict of values.
In Santayana’s opinion, pluralism belongs to the realm of matter, and not to the one of
essences. If the latter were the case, there would be no conflict of values, because
essences do not admit contradiction among themselves. Therefore, Tutor will wonder if
Santayana is even a relativist, and will offer, as part of his answer, a strategy that changes
the axis of the discussion: he will propose the notion of “relationism” to state explicitly
its values and plurality, according to Santayana.
22 Cayetano Estébanez (“Santayana’s Idea of Madness and Normal Madness in a Troubled
Age”) will refer to the loss of the humanistic sense of life in the current world. This is a
real loss of which Santayana has a lot to say from his philosophy. Especially, regarding
(Nietzschean and contemporary) nihilism, Santayana represents a philosophical/poetic
effort to explore the weight madness and normal madness have in our lives without
sacrificing reason. Estébanez reminds us that, far from sinking into the egotism that he
criticises so much, Santayana makes of this one an open approach – such as life itself –,
towards which all his worries are directed.
23 Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński (“Santayana’s Philosophy of Education against Fanaticism and
Barbarity”) approaches the reflections about education in Santayana’s work. The progress
through philosophy, liberal arts, and humanities possibly constitutes the means to
prevent or limit barbarism and fanaticism. It is true, Skowroński says, that there is no
systematised corpus on education in Santayana. However, it is a research we owe
ourselves and which can shed light on current events. Skowroński points out the fact that
schooling becomes part of a broader humanistic project (the one of boosting individuals
by encouraging creativity, harmonization of interests in conflict, imagination, and self-
expression) which makes sense especially when we want to think about social and
political matters seriously. That all-inclusive and humanistic project represents an
alternative way to say that the possibility of thinking freely blocks, in principle, any
domination.

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AUTHORS
MARÍA AURELIA DI BERARDINO
Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina
aure.diberardino[at]gmail.com

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, XI-1 | 2019