The protagonist of my study, George Santayana, by idealizing love and sublimating sexual desires, has become the author of an aesthetics of existence elevated to literature and philosophy. He made self-cultivation and a life of satisfying desires a philosophical problem. His life's work is based on aesthetics, but it cannot be clearly placed within either Pragmatism or Platonism. My interpretation of Santayana from the perspective of the philosophy of desire takes the philosopher out of the conservative interpretative framework. His philosophy was centred on sensory perception, and although he sought spiritualism through his Platonism, his The Sense of Beauty is based on pleasure. His personal life and individual motivations are a vague background to his poetry and theoretical writings, and it is therefore necessary to view his creative world as a whole.