PLEASE NOTE: This is a manuscript of the officially published version in Overheard In Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society, Volume 36, Fall 2018, 99-114 (find a link at http://georgesantayanasociety.org/). Please only cite the published version, not this manuscript. Liberating Spirit from Santayana’s Spectatorial Spirituality eorge Santayana’s conception of spirituality—which John Lachs has called the “spectator” view of spirituality (Lachs 1988, 12)—points to contemplation of the eternal as the ideal of a spiritual life. What we contemplate is understood to be eternal, not because anything lasts for- ever, but because, for whatever happens, it is forever true that it has happened, and to appreciate that is to view things under the aspect of eternity. 1 Within his materialist metaphysics, such contemplation of the eternal is the only transcend- ence available to us, since we are ultimately subject to the eventual death of our animal vehicle and there is no supernatural world beyond this one. But then Santayana rejects the idea that continued life, in this world or in a world beyond it, is even a spiritual ideal, tracing this need instead to animal instinct. The ani- mal desire to live is “unspiritual” precisely in that it fails to appreciate the spir- itual ideal of transcendence of the world. For Santayana, the spiritual life is one of renouncing 2 one’s attachments in relation to any world, a detachment from one’s contingent circumstances performed through the repose of disinterested contemplation, attainable in Stoic fashion even while enduring action (AFSL 294-5). Such is Santayana’s expression of a transcendent conception of spiritual- ity reconciled with a Darwinian sense of reality, spirituality as the savoring of one’s own spectatorship. Santayana’s account can be seen as an instructive experiment in philosophiz- ing about spirituality which, however, misses the opportunity to articulate a form of secular spirituality 3 that is more immanent, or this-worldly, in orientation. While I acknowledge with many others that Santayana abounds with eloquent spiritual insight, in this essay I target Santayana’s theoretical distinction between psyche and spirit, indicating why it should be abandoned in favor of a view that identifies spirit with at least some part of psyche (discussed in the next section). Without rejecting the role that a transcendent orientation and renunciation of the world can play in the spiritual life, this theoretical move expands what we can understand the spiritual life to be, enabling the incorporation of a genuine com- mitment to life into spirituality. Santayana asserts that the desire to live is un- 1 We can also appreciate our own existence in this way in order to achieve ‘ideal’ immor- tality: “By becoming the spectator and confessor of his own death and universal mutation, he will have identified himself with what is spiritual in all spirits and masterful in all ap- prehension; and so conceiving himself, he may truly feel and know that he is eternal” (LR1 161). 2 Santayana reflects on renunciation as a spiritual theme at (PSL Ch. XXV) and (RB 823). 3 I say more about secular spirituality before the end of this introductory section. G