Dominations And Powers

In what must be ranked as a foremost classic of twentieth-century political philosophy, George Santayana, in the preface to his last major work prior to his death, makes plain the limits as well as the aims of Dominations and Powers: All that it professes to contain is glimpses of tragedy and comedy played unawares by governments, and a continual intuitive reduction of political maxims and institutions to the intimate spiritual fruits that they are capable of bearing. This astonishing volume shows how the potential beauty latent in all sorts of worldly artifacts and events are rooted in differing forms of power and dominion. The work is divided into three major parts: the generative order of society, which covers growth in the jungle, economic arts, and the liberal arts, the militant order of society, which examines factions and enterprise, and the rational order of society, which contains one of the most sustained critiques of democratic systems and liberal ideologies...