Title: George Santayana’s Literary Practice of Platonism

Abstract: George Santayana was one of the most renowned and reputable intellectuals during the 20th century. He had multiple personas as a philosopher, novelist, and poet, which made his ideological system rich and diverse. Taking Santayana’s poems and the novel The Last Puritan as the text, this paper analyzes how Santayana expressed his understanding, absorption, and criticism of Platonism from three aspects: imagination of the ideal word, Platonic love, and rational morality, thus revealing the social significance of his literary method and the unique value of his philosophy and literary thought.

Keywords: Santayana, ideal, platonic love, reason, morality

Author: Minmin Xie, Ph.D. Candidate, Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, China.