The Life of Reason is a five-volume philosophical work by George Santayana. It explores how reason operates in common sense, society, religion, art, and science, tracing the phases of human progress. It is worth listening to for its clear, reflective prose and its wide-ranging inquiry into human experience.
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Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
THE LIFE OF REASON The Phases of Human Progress Volumes One Through Five GEORGE SANTAYANA hê gar noy enhergeia zôhê In Five Volumes Introduction to Life of Reason Volume One Volume Two Volume Three Volume Four Volume Five
REASON IN COMMON SENSE
Volume One of “The Life of Reason”
GEORGE SANTAYANA
hê gar noy enhergeia zôhê
CONTENTS
Introduction
THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK, ITS METHOD AND ANTECEDENTS
Progress is relative to an ideal which reflection creates.—Efficacious reflection is reason.—The Life of Reason a name for all practical thought and all action justified by its fruits in consciousness.—It is the sum of Art.—It has a natural basis which makes it definable.—Modern philosophy not helpful.—Positivism no positive ideal.—Christian philosophy mythical: it misrepresents facts and conditions.—Liberal theology a superstitious attitude toward a natural world.—The Greeks thought straight in both physics and morals.—Heraclitus and the immediate.—Democritus and the naturally intelligible.—Socrates and the autonomy of mind.—Plato gave the ideal its full expression.—
Aristotle supplied its natural basis.—Philosophy thus complete, yet in need of restatement.—Plato’s myths in lieu of physics.—Aristotle’s final causes.—Modern science can avoid such expedients.—
Transcendentalism true but inconsequential.—Verbal ethics.—Spinoza and the Life of Reason.—Modern and classic sources of inspiration.
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