Abstract

In the history of religious naturalism, Santayana’s 1905 Reason in Religion, the third book of The Life of Reason, stands as a foundational text and is also among the most important texts that Santayana ever wrote. In it he lays out his highly unique conception of the religious life on the other side of traditional religious belief and creates an agnostic, even atheistic, perspective that yet finds a key place for the sheer poetry and transforming power of religion in personal life. His own history made him deeply attuned to the ritual and poetry of the Roman Catholic traditions, and he had an almost inverse hostility to or at least distain for the Northern Protestant traditions.Some of his most delicious and...