Materialism in Limbo: Democritus, Santayana, and the ethics of Metaphysics

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that the mark of a viable metaphysics is as much practical and ethical as it is logical and systematic. To do this, I analyze George Santayana’s Dialogues in Limbo, where he affirms his support of the atomistic materialism of Democritus on pragmatic grounds. A metaphysics, he suggests, is a worldview that accommodates a person—viewed as a particular kind of psychological organism—wisely to the forces of nature and best enables that person to lead a flourishing life. At the same time, Santayana puts his own stamp on materialism by challenging the possibility that Democritus’s geometric characterization of atoms can be a literal account of material substance. He reinterprets Democritean metaphysics as a poetic and mythological position that discounts subjective experience and instead turns our attention to the substrative origins of our being.