The Works of George Santayana

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Please Help Save the National Endowment for the Humanities!

Dear Friend of Santayana,

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is facing the possibility of elimination by the new presidential administration. 

The NEH has been extremely supportive of the Santayana Edition. Please contact the president and your members of congress to let them know that you support the NEH. 

You can learn about the proposed elimination and plans to stop it here.

Since Herman Saatkamp first began working in 1976 to establish the critical edition of Santayana’s works, the NEH has provided funding for research, equipment, and editorial salaries. Presently the NEH is providing $225,000 (and funds to match gifts) primarily for salaries for an editor and student interns through 2018. This is the sixteenth grant the Edition has received from the NEH. Please help ensure it is not the last. 

You can call and email today to oppose elimination of the NEH.

Cordially,

The Santayana Edition

Santayana in China

Dear Friends of the George Santayana Society,

This is the last post in this series of news from the GSS for the start of 2017. We shall continue to keep you informed over the next few months.

Santayana in China

The George Santayana Society has the opportunity to participate in the World Congress of Philosophy in Beijing, China from August 13-20, 2018. The theme of the conference is “Learning to Be Human.” Santayana certainly had much to say about that topic, so it would be great to have several papers addressing that topic, especially those that might address ideas about human liberty. To confirm a place, we need to have at three speakers. So far, we have two tentative speakers. If you have any inkling that you might be interested, please let me know.

Clarification: membership dues are not required to be on this mailing list

The notice at the bottom of this list says you receive it because of your membership in the George Santayana Society. Nevertheless, dues are not required in order to receive these letters and other notifications. Nor are they required to view and download copies of Overhead in Seville: The Bulletin of the George Santayana Society. You can have access to the latest issue at https://santayana.iupui.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/2016-Bulletin-1.pdf. Dues need to be paid to receive the printed version of the Bulletin and to vote at the annual business meeting, which will be next held in January in Savannah, Georgia in conjunction with the 2018 Eastern APA meeting. We shall notify you when the website is set up to receive payments.

Richard M Rubin
President, George Santayana Society

GSS & The Santayana Edition

Dear Friends of the George Santayana Society,


The George Santayana Society and the Santayana Edition have always been and will remain closely intertwined. The Edition is the publisher of Overheard in Seville, it provides staff for preparing the Bulletin for publication, and the Director of the Santayana Edition serves as the Managing Editor of Overheard in Seville. The Society strongly supports the work of the Edition.


The Santayana Edition is part of the Institute for American Thought at Indiana University in Indianapolis. It began publishing critical editions of Santayana’s work under Herman Saatkamp’s direction in1977. Dr Saatkamp brought it to Indianapolis in 1998 from Texas A&M. It is funded by the University and by matching grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.


Martin Coleman is the Santayana Edition’s current director. He sends us the following report:


The Santayana Edition website plans to publish electronically the letters of George Santayana’s father, Agustín, to his son. The Edition also will receive from Columbia University Libraries Archival Collection copies of over 300 of pages of recently discovered documents including letters from Santayana to his friend Baron Albert von Westenholz, whom Santayana described as one of “best-educated persons I have known” (PP, 442). The letters to Westenholz were written between 1903 and 1937. An inventory of the documents may be viewed here: http://go.iu.edu/1tpY The Edition has permission to publish the Westenholz letters on the Edition website.


Santayana’s five-volume work The Life of Reason, a seminal text in American philosophical naturalism was originally published in 1905–06. In 2016, the Santayana Edition completed work on the critical edition of The Life of Reason. All five books are now available as Volume VII of The Works of George Santayana from The MIT Press. You may see the catalog listings here: http://go.iu.edu/1tq0.


Richard M Rubin
President, George Santayana Society

In memoriam: Angus Kerr-Lawson and Shirley Lachs

Dear Friends of the George Santayana Society,

Angus Kerr-Lawson and the prize in his honor

The Angus Kerr-Lawson Prize is offered in tribute to Kerr-Lawson’s outstanding contributions to Santayana scholarship both as longtime editor of Overheard in Seville and as the author of many articles that appeared in our Bulletin and in other publications. Kerr-Lawson was a co-founder of the George Santayana Society. The prize is available to a scholar not more than five years out of graduate school for an essay engaging or rooted in the thought of George Santayana. We encourage you to promote the Angus Kerr-Lawson Prize among graduate students and junior faculty members. Any aspect of Santayana’s thinking may be addressed by authors, including essays that relate his thinking to other figures in the American tradition (and beyond) and to contemporary social, cultural and philosophic concerns. Relevant themes include materialism and naturalism, realism and Platonism, metaphysics and morals, and issues connected to American culture and intellectual history. The winner will receive $300 and be invited to present the winning paper at the Society’s annual Eastern APA meeting in early January. The winning essay will be published in the edition of Overheard in Seville that follows that meeting. This year the winner will be notified in September, 2017. Authors should prepare submissions for blind review (no exposing references to the author within the composition) and send electronically in Word, ODT, or PDF format to: rmrubin@acm.org. The subject line of the email should read: *Kerr-Lawson Prize Submission, [author’s name]*. The deadline for submissions is May 21, 2017.

Shirley Marie Lachs

The first letter in this series, which described the annual meeting, reported that John Lachs was unable to participate in his planned joint session with Herman Saatkamp. Part of the reason is that Shirley Lachs, his wife of nearly five decades and longtime collaborator, died last fall. We wish Professor Lachs well in his time of loss.

Richard M Rubin
President, George Santayana Society

George Santayana Society Membership Dues and Donations

Dear Friends of the George Santayana Society,

At the George Santayana Society’s annual meeting on January 6, 2017 in Baltimore, the members approved annual dues of $15 for a basic members and $30 for a printed version of Overheard in Seville. We are glad to call attention to our recently acquired status as a non-profit (501c3) corporation, which makes dues and donations tax deductible. We have a variety of exciting plans that include bringing speakers from overseas. Donations and dues will be used to support plans and projects that ensure that Santayana will enjoy a prominent place in the profession for years to come. A principal purpose of Society dues and donations is to continue funding the Angus Kerr-Lawson prize (discussed in the third letter in this series), which was started with seed money from the estate of Professor Kerr-Lawson.

The primary means of donating will be through an Internet PayPal connection, where you can use either a credit card or your own PayPal account. We are planning several revisions to the web pages of the Society currently hosted by the Santayana Edition. The donation page will be available there. The new pages should be available in several weeks and we’ll send out a notice when they are ready. Electronic payments will be preferred, but checks may be made to the George Santayana Society and mailed to Diana Heney at Department of Philosophy, Fordham University, 441 E. Fordham Road, Bronx, NY 10458. If you have been accustomed to sending payment to the Santayana Edition in order to receive a printed copy of Overheard in Seville, the Society and the Edition will continue to accept such payments at least for the coming year.

The co-ordination of George Santayana Society fundraising with that of the Santayana Edition is under discussion.

Richard M Rubin
President, George Santayana Society

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