The Vital Philosophies of George Santayana and William James

Understanding the differences between Santayana and James requires a historical approach that explores each one’s unique temperament and historical circumstances, for these resulted in each spontaneously adopting highly incompatible ideals that guided each one’s overall thinking, even as their official philosophies continued to develop over time. Following Santayana, I refer to this central ideal as a “vital philosophy,” which I emphasize, in his case, involves his often understated Spanish background. According to his autobiography, this helped him to establish a strong, personal link, to the history of philosophy. I argue that Santayana’s “vital philosophy” is best characterized as a “phenomenological intuitionism,” while James’s vital philosophy is best described as a “positivistic Existentialism,” given his reliance on a unique interpretation of “reflex action,” one that emphasizes volition and which arguably is tacitly assumed throughout his writings. Finally, the issue that most clearly serves to explore the nature of these two radically opposed views is that of transcendence.