The Realms of Being
book by George Santayana
Realms of Being (1942) is the last major work by Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana. Along with Scepticism and Animal Faith and The Life of Reason, it is his most notable work; the first two works concentrate primarily on epistemology and ethics respectively, whereas Realms of Being is mainly a work in the field of ontology.
Santayana builds on his Skepticism and Animal Faith, which he described as a sort of precursor to "a new system of philosophy", that would be developed fully in the present work. He defines four realms of being; The Realm of Essence, The Realm of Matter, The Realm of Truth, and The Realm of Spirit.
Realms
The Realm of Essence
The Realm of Essence, in Santayana's view, has a type of primacy over the other realms. To him, essence is anything that is or has a character—this includes thoughts, imaginings, derivations of logic, and material objects. Nothing can be experienced but through these essences, and they "are the only things people ever see, and the last they notice." Essence is awareness, it is different from knowledge or from faith, which he defines later.
The Realm of Matter
Matter is the objective, material stuff of the universe. Staying true to his materialism, Santayana holds matter as the "primordial existential flux" and believes it can be, at least in some sense, known. His conception of matter is similar to Spinoza's substance; matter has no purpose, but constitutes the limitations of what can be.
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