The Santayana Edition, part of the Institute for American Thought (IAT), produces The Works of George Santayana, an unmodernized, critical edition of George Santayana’s published and unpublished writings. The critical editing process aims to produce texts that accurately represent Santayana’s final intentions regarding his works, and to present all evidence on which editorial decisions have been based. The critical editing process often relies on archival materials including manuscripts, notes, and letters. The digital texts presented here are the result of archival research, critical editing, and good luck, and are supported by the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts, Indianapolis and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Metaphysics
The above link leads to a separate site presenting a scan and a transcription of Santayana’s holograph manuscript of his partial translation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, written out while he was tutoring a couple of philosophy students. You can also read an introduction to Santayana’s translation by the transcriber of the manuscript: Introduction to Santayana’s translation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
The above link leads to a separate site presenting a scan and a transcription of the notebook of Horatius Bonar Hastings, a student who attended Santayana’s 1892–93 aesthetics lectures (offered as Phil 8). These lectures formed the basis for Santayana’s The Sense of Beauty (1896), which has become a classic in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. For more information, see this brief history of the notebook or consult the article “Santayana’s Lectures on Aesthetics,” Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the George Santayana Society, 22, 2004, 23–28.
The above link leads to a separate site presenting a scan and a transcription of 60 letters (dating from 1903 to 1937) from George Santayana to his friend Baron Albert Wilhelm Freiherrn von Westenholz (1879–1939)—in addition to assorted manuscripts, photographs, and drawings. Westenholz, whom Sanatayana identified as “one of my truest friends” (Santayana, Persons and Places, 261), studied at Harvard when Santayana was a professor. Santayana and Westenholz later met several times in Europe, including visits by Santayana to Westenholz’s home in Hamburg. Eventually their personal meetings ceased, but they maintained a correspondence that allowed the “friendship to become intellectually closer in later years, without seeming to require personal contacts” (Santayana, Persons and Places, 262). In 2001, the “Textual Commentary” to The Letters of George Santayana, Book One [1868]–1909 (The MIT Press, 2001) noted that “[n]one of the letters that Santayana wrote to his friend Baron Albert von Westenholz have been located” (Letters 1, 422). In 2016, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University noted the addition of the letters Santayana wrote to Westenholz to their archival collection of George Santayana Papers. The Santayana Edition is grateful to Columbia University for permission to reproduce the letters here. See the transcriber’s notes for the methodology applied to the transcriptions.