By Copy of Silanion, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7831217.
I went to a U3A meeting yesterday at St Neots, they had a number of different displays around the room from different interest groups one was by the Philosophy Group.
Although there are a number of definitions of Philosophy they seem to distil down to what I understand Philosophy to be, the study of wisdom. I have felt for some time that along with History it should be a core subject within the education system. Philosophy should replace Religious Education in my view. Teaching people how to think, would help them make sounder judgements, rationalise and avoid knee jerk reactions to untested statements. It would make us all more questioning and rational less willing to take statements of fact at face value.
Stanford University online also provides an outstanding and much more detailed background on this important and profound philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist.
Santayana's quotation, in turn, was a slight modification of an Edmund Burke (1729-1797) statement, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." Burke was a British Statesman and Philosopher who is generally viewed as the philosophical founder of modern political conservatism.
I was talking to a history teacher of a secondary school a few years ago, when I said I thought history was a very important subject she asked me why I thought it was important?
I replied, that "History teaches us not only about the past but informs us about the present and helps predict the future".
If we do not know history we have no option than to continue to repeat it as we have nothing to learn from.