Santayana, was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. He is
perhaps best known for his oft-quoted "Those who cannot remember
the past are condemned to repeat it" from Reason in Common
Sense, the first volume of his The Life of Reason.
familial situation was unusual. Born Jorge Agustín Nicolás
Ruiz de Santayana, he spent his childhood in Ávila. His
father was a diplomat, painter, and minor intellectual. Jorge
was the only child of his mother's second marriage. She was the
widow of a Sturgis from Boston, by whom she had three children,
Santayana's cherished half siblings. In order to marry Jorge's
father, she left those children in Boston in the care of others
and moved to Spain, where she resided until returning to her Boston
children in 1869.
and his father followed her in 1872 but his father, not finding
Boston to his liking, soon returned to Ávila for good,
so that from age six his parents almost always lived apart. Around
this time, he americanized his name to George, the English variant
of Jorge. He did not see his father again until summer vacations
while at Harvard.
attended Boston Latin School and Harvard University, studying
James and Josiah Royce, whose colleague he subsequently
became. After graduating from Harvard in 1886, he studied for
two years in Berlin, then returned to Harvard to write a thesis
on Rudolf Hermann Lotze and teach philosophy, thus becoming part
of the Golden Age of Harvard philosophy. Some of his Harvard students
became famous in their own right, including T. S. Eliot, Wallace
Stevens, Walter Lippmann, and Harry Austryn Wolfson.
1912, an inheritance from his mother allowed him to retire from
Harvard and spend the rest of his life in Europe. After some years
in Paris and Oxford, he began to winter in Rome starting in 1920,
eventually living there year-round until his death in 1952. During
his 40 years in Europe, he wrote 19 books and declined several
prestigious academic positions.
of his friends and correspondents were Americans, including his
valuable assistant and eventual literary executor, Daniel Cory.
The aged Santayana was comfortable, in part because The Last Puritan
sold well. In turn, he assisted financially a number of writers
including Bertrand Russell, with whom he was in fundamental disagreement,
philosophically and politically. Santayana never married. For
a biography, see McCormick (1987).
Santayana's main philosophical work consists of his first book,
The Sense of Beauty, perhaps the first major work on aesthetics
written in the USA, the five volume The Life of Reason, the high
point of his Harvard career, and the four volume The Realms of
Being. Although Santayana is not deemed a canonical pragmatist
in the mold of James, Charles Peirce, Royce, or John Dewey, The
Life of Reason arguably forms the first extended treatment of
pragmatism. Like many classical pragmatists, and because he was
also well-versed in evolutionary theory, Santayana was committed
to a naturalist metaphysics, in which human cognition, cultural
practices, and institutions evolved so as to harmonize with their
value was the extent to which they facilitated human happiness.
He was an early adherent of epiphenomenalism, but also admired
the classical materialism of Democritus and Lucretius. He held
Spinoza's writings in high regard, without subscribing to Spinoza's
rationalism or pantheism. Although an atheist, he described himself
as an "aesthetic Catholic", and spent the last decade
of his life in a Roman convent, attended to by nuns.
Man of Letters
Santayana's one novel, The Last Puritan, is perhaps the greatest
Bildungsroman in American letters. Among American autobiographies,
his Persons and Places deserves to be put on the same plane as
The Education of Henry Adams. These masterworks of his also contain
many of his tarter opinions and bon mots. He wrote books and essays
on a wide range of subjects, including philosophy of a less technical
sort, literary criticism, the history of ideas, politics, human
nature, morals, the subtle influence of religion on culture and
social psychology, all with considerable wit and humor, and pervaded
with a good feel for the subtlety and richness of the English
language. While his writings on technical philosophy can be difficult,
his other writings are far more readable, and all of his books
contain quotable passages. He wrote poems and a few plays, and
left an ample correspondence, much of it published only since
his many value judgements and prejudices, many of which do not
sit well with present-day fashion, Santayana was aristocratic
and elitist, a curious blend of Mediterranean conservative (similar
to Paul Valery), cultivated American, Olympian aloofness, and
ironic detachment. Russell Kirk discussed Santayana in his The
Conservative Mind from Edmund Burke to T. S. Eliot.
those writing about American culture and character from a foreign
point of view, Alexis de Tocqueville is perhaps his only peer.
Among American writers combining philosophy and letters, Ralph
Waldo Emerson is his only rival. Even though he declined American
citizenship and resided in fascist Italy for two decades, he is
a major American writer. Even so, the Hispanic world is gradually
recognizing him as one of its own, with Spanish translations of
his work proceeding apace.