Martin A. Coleman is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Associate Editor of the Santayana Edition at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

Acknowledgments

Chronology of the Life and Work of George Santayana

List of Bibliographical Abbreviations

Introduction: The Essential Santayana

Part 1. Autobiography

A General Confession

My Place, Time, and Ancestry

Epilogue on My Host, the World

Part 2. Skepticism and Ontology

Philosophical Heresy

Preface [Scepticism and Animal Faith]

There Is No First Principle of Criticism

Dogma and Doubt

Wayward Scepticism

Ultimate Scepticism

Nothing Given Exists

The Discovery of Essence

The Watershed of Criticism

Knowledge Is Faith Mediated by Symbols

Belief in Substance

Literary Psychology

The Implied Being of Truth

Comparison with Other Criticisms of Knowledge

Normal Madness

Some Meanings of the Word "Is"

Preface to Realms of Being

Various Approaches to Essence

The Being Proper to Essences

The Scope of Natural Philosophy

Indispensable Properties of Substance

Teleology

The Psyche

There Are No Necessary Truths

Facts Arbitrary, Logic Ideal

Interplay between Truth and Logic

Dramatic Truth

Moral Truth

Love and Hatred of Truth

Denials of Truth

Part 3. Rational Life in Art, Religion, and Spirituality

The Elements and Function of Poetry

Introduction

The Birth of Reason

How Religion May Be an Embodiment of Reason

Justification of Art

The Criterion of Taste

Art and Happiness

Ultimate Religion

The Nature of Spirit

Liberation

Union

Part 4. Ethics and Politics

Prerational Morality

Rational Ethics

Post-rational Morality

Hypostatic Ethics

Public Opinion

Government of the People

Who Are "The People"?

The United States as Leader

Conclusion [Dominations and Powers]

Part 5. Literature, Culture, and Criticism

Sonnet III

To W. P.

Prologue [The Last Puritan]

Epilogue [The Last Puritan]

The Poetry of Barbarism

Emerson

The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy

English Liberty in America

The Genteel Tradition at Bay

The Ethics of Nietzsche

William James

Josiah Royce

Dewey's Naturalistic Metaphysics

Index