George Santayana appears emotionally distant and personally uncommitted in many of his writings. In what may have been a related phenomenon, he does not seem to have committed to any school of philosophy, but rather to draw from many of the available schools when it suited him. In this article, we assess his constantly changing use of different philosophies and its implications for both philosophy and politics.

In the present paper, the author looks at the political dimension of some trends in the visual arts within twentieth-century avant-garde groups (cubism, expressionism, fauvism, Dada, abstractionism, surrealism) through George Santayana’s idea of vital liberty. Santayana accused the avant-gardists of social and political escapism, and of becoming unintentionally involved in secondary issues. In his view, the emphasis they placed on the medium (or diverse media) and on treating it as an aim in itself, not, as it should be, as a (...) transmitter through which a stimulating relationship with the environment can be had, was accompanied by a focus on fragments of life and on parts of existence, and, on the other hand, by a de facto rejection of ontology and cosmology as being crucial to understanding life and the place of human beings in the universe. The avant-gardists became involved in political life by responding excessively to the events of the time, instead of to the everlasting problems that are the human lot. (shrink)

The paper reveals view point of G. Santayana on avant-garde, which has been created at the same time as his philosophical and aesthetic conceptions came into existence. Although he was poet and many papers devoted to studying of poetry he has been interested in all kinds of art. When creating his own philosophical-aesthetic conception he paid attention to Ancient art – especially Greek art. However, he was able to make contribution to contemporary art as well. His opinion was interesting as (...) usually, full of unanswered questions, but at the same time he offered answers, which has an impact on contemporary art, aesthetics, and theory of art. He tried to apply the theory of poetic of work of art on a visual work of art, especially works of avant-garde. He made anattempt to explain the avant-garde works of art according to language of poetry. At the same time he offered opinion on avant-garde as a movement. (shrink)