Three Philosophical Poets; Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe
George 1863-1952 Santayana, "Three Philosophical Poets; Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe"
English | 2009 | ISBN: 1373209992, 0331470985 | EPUB | pages: 234 | 0.4 mb
English | 2009 | ISBN: 1373209992, 0331470985 | EPUB | pages: 234 | 0.4 mb
The modesty exhibited in the above disclaimer—from Santayana’s preface to Three Philosophical Poets—should be viewed in the context of the author’s extraordinary impact as a philosopher and teacher. The Sense of Beauty has claim to being the first major work on aesthetics written in the United States; the multivolume The Life of Reason is arguably the first extended analysis of pragmatism anywhere. Among Santayana’s many well-known Harvard students, Wallace Stevens has acknowledged a clear debt to his work.
Based on a course Santayana taught at Harvard, Three Philosophical Poets was first delivered to the public as a series of lectures at Columbia University in 1910. Santayana’s lifelong, learned meditation on the relationship between philosophy and art is apparent. (Santayana’s own prose style has long been considered among the most eloquent in all of philosophy.) Here, he discusses the chief phases of European philosophy—naturalism, supernaturalism, and romanticism—as they are set forth and epitomized by the works of Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe, respectively.
Praise for Three Philosophical Poets and its author