George Santayana and the "Pathetic Fallacy"

In The Life Of Reason (Ch 6), Santayana talks about the “pathetic fallacy.” Though this term might sound familiar to rhetoricians, he means something different from the use of pathos as a means of persuasion. For Santayana, the pathetic fallacy is the tendency to attribute to objects the emotions we feel when we observe those objects. For instance, an angry God in a dangerous world, or a loving God in a peaceful world; lambs as innocent, wolves as evil. (Note that this pathetic attribution to wolves is Medieval, while the modern pathetic attribution to wolves sees them as free spirits.

Santayana goes on to argue that there are limited moments when the pathetic fallacy is not a fallacy at all. His first example is that of cattle, one of which might start in fear, causing the heard to share that emotion. The result is a stamped. It matters not to the pathetic if there is an actual danger, simply that all share similar emotions. The response of the herd is to the first animal who started, not to the danger. 

The herd example may be all too apt, since Santayana goes on to argue that “leaders” (quotation marks are mine; the reason will soon be evident) are those who have learned to read the emotions of others and thus lead them, or control their actions. It is evident that the leader may not necessarily share those emotions, which leads to the possibility of the demagogue, the individual who has learned to sway the heard to his own ends, ends that may not necessarily benefit the heard. 

According to Santayana, the leader/demagogue, may control the actions of his followers without changing their consciousness.. As yet, I’m unsure what "consciousness" means to Santayana, though the term is in some ways, akin to Socrates's ideas of the soul. There is a synergy between Santayana's complaints about "leaders" and Socrates’s complaint about the great orators of Athens. Though Pericles is held up as an example of a great orator by others in the dialogues, Socrates asks whether he left the Athenian people any better than he found them. This is the Socratic test of politicians, orators, and sophists: did they leave the people better than he found them? To put this question in Santayana’s terms, did they change the people’s consciousness, or only their actions?

As I mull this question I am reminded of Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” I’ve asked students in theory classes to read this essay, and they’ve invariably had positive reactions. Yet, it’s always left me troubled. Looking at it now I see Kant's defense of the use of pathetic by leader/demagogues. Note Kant’s praise of Frederick, who he admires for say, “Argue as much as you like, and about what you like, but obey!" In Kant’s enlightened age, we see a leader who has no wish to have anything to do
with his people’s consciousness, but only their actions.

I have to admit, I dislike the idea of a modern state playing with the consciousness of a people, trying to leave them better through legislating morality. My dislike simply leads me back to Socrates, who continually shied away from a public (political) life. However, seeing his life solely as a contemplative life simply ignores the evidence provided by the dialogues—that Socrates was in constant interaction with others. Might we go as far as to identify dialectic as dialogue that explicitly seeks to connect to the consciousness of another?

Kant's ideal state assumes that there is no relation between consciousness and action, that argument can remain out of the public domain. Socrates's argument implies that if the two are not intertwined, one will become stunted.