Remarks on Santayana’s Influence on the Development of the Barnes Foundation’s Aesthetics Theories

Abstract

Although recent work has been done on the Barnes Foundation and its philosophical and pedagogical background, almost all the research effort has been focused on the friendship and intellectual link between John Dewey and Albert C. Barnes. Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, the impact of George Santayana’s philosophy on the Foundation has not been systematically examined. The hypothesis that we present and develop in this article is that Santayana’s thought is essential for the aesthetic theories elaborated within the framework of the Barnes Foundation: Barnes’ theory of art criticism; Dewey’s aesthetic theory, and even Lawrence Buermeyer’s aesthetic theory. This article is a first approximation with the purpose of clarifying these philosophical, theoretical and historical relationships so as to start to fill the existing gap in contemporary literature on the topic.