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Some Thoughts about Santayana's "Natural and Ultimate Religion"

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Thus, in my view, in contrast to Sanayana's, it is not really "the animal soul" that appeals to heaven for help; it is the human soul, or in his own term, "the spirit." By the same token, it is not really "the enterprise of life" itself and simply as such that is "utter irreligious," and so "precisely that from which a veritable religion would come to redeem us"; what is utterly irreligious and what a veritable religion would come to redeem us from is a certain way of (mis-) understanding ourselves and leading our lives---that lives—that way, namely, in which we each understand ourselves and lead our life as though it itself were, or were, somehow essential to, the final end for which we do so.

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1. If, as I hold, an "ultimate religion" is distinct from a "natural religion" because it locates the human malady in human beings' self-misunderstanding, the decisive revelation constitutive of an ultimate religion presupposes this universally human self-misunderstanding and offers itself as the remedy for it---explicitly it—explicitly calling all to whom it addresses itself (in principle, every human being) both to accept and make us of it as a remedy for themselves and then to throw in with them mission of administering it as a remedy for others to make use of as well.

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