Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe was published by Harvard University Press in 1910, based on Santayana’s Harvard lectures, and it is one of the most brilliant works of literary criticism produced by a philosopher. The book examines three poets who embodied complete philosophical systems in their verse: Lucretius (whose De Rerum Natura gives poetic form to Epicurean materialism), Dante (whose Divine Comedy gives poetic form to Christian supernaturalism), and Goethe (whose Faust gives poetic form to Romantic idealism).
Santayana’s thesis is that the greatest poetry is philosophical poetry — poetry that does not merely describe experience but interprets it within a comprehensive vision of reality. Each of his three poets achieved this comprehensiveness: Lucretius saw the universe as atoms in motion, governed by natural law, with no gods and no purpose beyond the satisfaction of natural desire; Dante saw it as a moral order, created by God, organized hierarchically from Hell to Paradise, with every soul in its appointed place; Goethe saw it as an infinite becoming, a process of self-realization in which the human spirit perpetually transcends its own limitations.
None of these visions is adequate by itself — Lucretius lacks spiritual depth, Dante lacks freedom, Goethe lacks form — but each is complete within its own terms. Modern poetry, Santayana argues, has lost this comprehensiveness: it offers fragments, moods, sensations, but never a whole picture of reality. The philosophical poets give us something that fragmentary modern poetry cannot: the sense that life makes sense, that experience is intelligible, that the world is a place where human values have a home.
Collecting Three Philosophical Poets
First edition (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1910): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition: $60–$150
- Later editions: $10–$25