Many of our number have read or even assign George Santayana’s luminously written essay in intellectual history, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” (1911). It was partly an act of mourning for William James, who had died the previous year. No doubt Santayana bears some of the blame for the widespread tendency of historians in the decades that followed to treat James’ thinking as somehow the most sophisticated expression of the American “mind” or “character.” In a larger section about how James’ tolerance and curiosity–his excess of democratic sentiment–helped Americans cope with the modern world, these lines have always struck Read more