Reviews for The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States

The average rating for The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-09-04 00:00:00 Steven Moneysmith I was introduced to the writings of George Santayana via Russel Kirk's "The Conservative Mind", so my expectations were quite steep considering the high regard I have for Kirk's work. Santayana unfortunately wrote above my head in a number of these essays (specifically his engagements with differing schools of philosophy at the time). I found his writing extremely contextual and found myself doing an equal amount of research just to understand who he was talking about. This isn't necessarily a mark against the book. Just reader beware. There were two or three essays in here that I enjoyed tremendously (Shakespeare: Made in America was very funny and clever), but overall Santayana came across as a bitter, annoyed, condescending old man which I suppose can be fairly common traits among conservative intellectuals. I had a hard time grasping his repulsion toward American culture yet his complete infatuation with it. Santayana is often compared to Tocqueville in his analysis of America, but I found Santayana much more pessimistic and cutting in his critiques. The people he praised for escaping the Genteel Tradition (which I'm still not confident I have a grasp of despite reading nine essays about it - probably because I have an American education according to Santayana) he then went on to heckled for doing something else that was rather stupid. At least that was my impression. I appreciate his discussion and skepticism about the idea of unlimited progress that America has held for so long and his description of a split Old World/New World dichotomy in the American identity that has plagued the nation since its founding, but I felt that his purposeful disdain toward American culture distracted me from really engaging with him as a reader.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-14 00:00:00 Brian Colon The final third of the pamphlet on the genteel tradition contains some of Santayana's best writing: elegant and wise. And it ends in a startling way, because of a change in meaning of the final word. Pity, that.