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Purpose. The purpose of the article is to analyze George Santayana's socio-anthropological ideas, which are presented in his works The Life of Reason: or The Phases of Human Progress and Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society and Government. Realization of the purpose will provide fresh insight into the problem of finding the value basis of modern human existence, ways of improving self-knowledge with the aim of further self-realization and development of the latent potential. Methodology. The methodological basis of the investigation is a pluralistic strategy that combines historical-philosophical analysis and the socio- anthropological approach. Originality. Santayana's ideas about the human and society may seem utopian in the context of the realities of modern life. On the other hand, his concept that the vital mission of humans is to live the way they were destined to remains topical. Acceptance of one's fate leads not to inaction and self-denial but to self-knowledge and action, to self-expression in science, poetry, religion and art, to realization of one's true mission, which is of a culture creator. His idea about the primary role of the USA in establishing a rational and fair world order is also topical. Conclusions. The way to self-realization of the human being is through the self-knowledge in the Socratic sense and the scientific knowledge of the world around. The objective of the scientific cognition does not imply that reason should guide life, but that it may help to achieve a certain harmony between the conflicting desires, passions and ambitions of the human being, and the vital «impulses» of different people or countries by means of a compromise. Reason may help to rationalize life, at least partially, so that it could become more stable and safe to ensure happiness and freedom, which are the greatest desires of every human being.

Klappentext des Nachdrucks: It is remarkably appropriate that this work on aesthetics should have been written by George Santayana, who is probably the most brilliant philosophic writer and the philosopher with the strongest sense of beauty since Plato. It is not a dry metaphysical treatise, as works on aesthetics so often are, but is itself a fascinating document: as much a revelation of the beauty of language as of the concept of beauty. This 1896 edition of lectures delivered at Harvard College is a study of "why, when, and how beauty appears, what conditions an object must fulfill to be beautiful, what elements of our nature make us sensible of beauty, and what the relation is between the constitution of the object and the excitement of our susceptibility." Santayana first analyzes the nature of beauty, finding it irrational, "pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing." He then proceeds to the materials of beauty, showing what all human functions can contribute: love, social instincts, senses, etc. Beauty of form is then analyzed, and finally the author discusses the expression of beauty. Literature, religion, values, evil, wit, humor, and the possibility of finite perfection are all examined. Presentation throughout the work is concrete and easy to follow, with examples drawn from art, history, anthropology, psychology, and similar areas.

A selection of Santayana's notes in the margins of other authors' works that sheds light on his thought, art, and life. In his essay "Imagination," George Santayana writes, "There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margins, may be more interesting than the text." Santayana himself was an inveterate maker of notes in the margins of his books, writing (although neatly, never scrawling) comments that illuminate, contest, or interestingly expand the author's thought. These volumes offer a selection of Santayana's marginalia, transcribed from books in his personal library. These notes give the reader an unusual perspective on Santayana's life and work. He is by turns critical (often), approving (seldom), literary slangy, frivolous, and even spiteful. The notes show his humor, his occasional outcry at a writer's folly, his concern for the niceties of English prose and the placing of Greek accent marks. These two volumes list alphabetically by author all the books extant that belonged to Santayana, reproducing a selection of his annotations intended to be of use to the reader or student of Santayana's thought, his art, and his life. Santayana, often living in solitude, spent a great deal of his time talking to, and talking back to, a wonderful miscellany of writers, from Spinoza to Kant to J.S. Mill to Bertrand Russell. These notes document those conversations.

A selection of Santayana's notes in the margins of other authors' works that sheds light on his thought, art, and life. In his essay "Imagination," George Santayana writes, "There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margins, may be more interesting than the text." Santayana himself was an inveterate maker of notes in the margins of his books, writing (although neatly, never scrawling) comments that illuminate, contest, or interestingly expand the author's thought. These volumes offer a selection of Santayana's marginalia, transcribed from books in his personal library. These notes give the reader an unusual perspective on Santayana's life and work. He is by turns critical (often), approving (seldom), literary slangy, frivolous, and even spiteful. The notes show his humor, his occasional outcry at a writer's folly, his concern for the niceties of English prose and the placing of Greek accent marks.These two volumes list alphabetically by author all the books extant that belonged to Santayana, reproducing a selection of his annotations intended to be of use to the reader or student of Santayana's thought, his art, and his life.Santayana, often living in solitude, spent a great deal of his time talking to, and talking back to, a wonderful miscellany of writers, from Spinoza to Kant to J. S. Mill to Bertrand Russell. These notes document those conversations.

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.

George Santayana (1863-1952), a Spanish-American philosopher, is an influential personage on the cultural stage in English- and Spanish-speaking countries. His numerous books and papers on topics as varied as epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, ethics, anthropology, value theory, and American studies, along with his best-selling novel, his sophisticated poetry, and his famous autobiography, make him a vivid and profound source of reflection on the history of American and European thought, as

Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro's Shakespeare in a Divided America, a study of Shakespeare's impact in the U.S. since the 1830s, issues in Shapiro's sympathetic account of a 2017 production of Julius Caesar in New York. That production staged the play in terms of up-to-date conflict between Trump-allied Republicans and Clinton-allied Democrats. Shapiro's attachment of Shakespeare to current events is a sterling example of a prevailing mode of literary criticism, which ties the worth and relevance of literary art to its historical contexts, whether those contexts be present-day or historically past. But an alternative to the dominant critical mode is discoverable in meditations on Shakespeare by Henry James, George Santayana, H. D., and W. H. Auden. Although each author solicits contextual and historical dimensions of Shakespeare, each foregrounds Shakespeare's withdrawal from those dimensions. Perhaps these writers' emphasis on a de-contextualizing, de-historicizing component in Shakespeare – amounting to a retreat to what James calls "the blessed fictive world" – ought not to be overlooked or undervalued by literary and cultural criticism.