George Santayana

George Santayana
Portrait published in 1936
Born	(1863-12-16)December 16, 1863 Madrid (Spain)
Died	September 26, 1952(1952-09-26) (aged 88) Rome (Italy)
Resting place	Campo Verano Cemetery
Occupations	Poet, essayist and novelist

Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, better known as George Santayana (Madrid, December 16, 1863 – Rome, September 26, 1952), was a Spanish philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist.

Santayana, who grew up and was educated in the United States, wrote much of his work in English, and he is considered a prominent American man of letters, although he always declared that he did not feel attached to that culture.

Probably his best-known quotation is "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", which appeared in Reason in Common Sense, the first of the five volumes of his work The Life of Reason.

At the age of forty-eight he stopped teaching at Harvard University and returned to Europe, where he remained until the end of his days. His last wish was to be buried in the Pantheon of the Spaniards in Rome.

Biography

His father, Agustín Ruiz de Santayana (1812–1893), was a diplomat born in Zamora, an intellectual and Latinist (he translated the tragedies of Seneca), as well as an amateur painter. His mother, Josefina Borrás (c. 1826–1912), daughter of a Spanish officer and diplomat, José Borrás y Bofarull, had been born in London and educated in Glasgow (Scotland).

Jorge was the only child of his mother's second marriage; when she married Agustín, she was the widow of George Sturgis (1817–1857), a Boston merchant with whom she had had five children, three of whom had survived: Susana, Josefina and Roberto Sturgis.

She continued living in Boston after the death of her first husband in 1857, but in 1861 she took her three surviving children to Madrid, and it was there that she married Agustín in 1862, whom she already knew from her youth in the Philippines, where Josefina's father had served as governor of Batan Island.

The family lived in Madrid and in Ávila, where young Jorge spent his childhood. In 1869, his mother decided to return alone to Boston with the children of her first marriage, leaving Jorge, then five years old, in the care of his father in Ávila, a city to which he was always attached and to which he returned every summer, since his half-sister Susana Sturgis lived there, married to Celedonio Sastre, a lawyer and estate administrator with properties in Zorita de los Molinos (municipality of Mingorría). About his summer stays in Ávila he wrote recollections of Ávila society and of its urban landscape.

Jorge and his father followed her in 1872; but, not finding the city and American life to his liking, his father soon decided to return alone to Spain, where he remained for the rest of his life, so that Jorge stayed with his mother in Boston and did not see his father again until the summer vacations of his time as a student at Harvard. His parents thus lived apart, though married, from the time he was five years old. At some point during this period Jorge Americanized his name to George, its English equivalent.

From the age of eight he was educated in Boston and learned English like a native, which allowed him to stand out in the American academic and literary world, although he never fully assimilated this new world, living so alien to and detached from everything North American in general that in his autobiography Persons and Places one can read the following: "I have tried to write in English as many un-English things as I could."

Hollis Hall, where Santayana lived during his studies at Harvard.

Santayana attended the Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in the United States, reserved for the so-called "Boston Brahmins" or upper class of the city, and then Harvard University, where he was under the tutelage of William James and Josiah Royce. The latter would also be his thesis advisor. Little inclined to sports, as an alternative he joined no fewer than eleven clubs, among them the O. K. literary society, and he founded and presided over the Philosophy Club.

He was also editor and cartoonist of The Harvard Lampoon, and co-founder of the literary magazine The Harvard Monthly. In December 1885 he played the role of Lady Elfrida in the play Robin Hood and took part in the production of Papillonetta in the spring of his senior year.

After graduating in the Phi Beta Kappa society in 1886, he studied for two years in Berlin and returned once again to Harvard, where, supervised by William James, he wrote a thesis on Rudolf Hermann Lotze and taught philosophy as his mentor's assistant professor. In 1907 he became a full professor. He was thus part of the so-called Golden Age of Philosophy at Harvard.

In addition to his regular summer trips to Spain, he traveled around Europe (Cambridge, where he became friends with Bertrand Russell; Oxford, the Sorbonne and Rome). From 1896 to 1897 Santayana studied at King's College of the University of Cambridge, where he deepened his study of Plato and his disciples.

Some of his students at Harvard went on to become famous in their own right: the poets Conrad Aiken, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens, the last as a friend, not a student; the journalists and writers Max Eastman, Van Wyck Brooks, Gertrude Stein and Walter Lippmann; the professors Samuel Eliot Morison, Harry Austryn Wolfson and Horace Kallen; a member of the Supreme Court (Felix Frankfurter), various diplomats (including his friend Bronson Cutting), a university president (James B. Conant) and the first Black person to earn a doctorate in Philosophy in the United States, W. E. B. Du Bois.

In 1912, an inheritance from his mother allowed him to retire from Harvard and spend the rest of his life comfortably in Europe. After living for some years in Paris and Oxford, he took up residence in Rome, in the convent of the Blue Nuns, around 1920; there he received numerous visitors, among them Edmund Wilson, Robert Lowell and Gore Vidal, to the point that he joked that, like the Pope, he received "visits that he was not obliged to return." That does not mean he remained isolated: he maintained a colossal correspondence, of which 3,000 letters sent to some 300 correspondents have been recovered, published in eight volumes between 2001 and 2008.

In one of his poems, "The Poet's Testament", Santayana set out the meaning of his life:

To the earth I return all that the earth gave me, / all back to the furrow, nothing for the grave. / Once the flame and the watchful spirit are extinguished, / sooner than the vision, the gaze reaches no more. / I leave only the sound of a few words, / whose mocking echoes faintly resound. / I have sung to the heavens: "My exile made me free" / and from one world to another, it carried me through all. / The Furies respectful and the Fates benign, / I walked the firm cloisters of the intellect. / Any time my time, any place my place, / my face saw no envy, hope or fear. / Whatever the wind, I made the ancient / truth my own, and ripened my friendship in wine / while smiling skies spread with their wings / wisps of light and weeping over mortal things. / To the faint harmony of the meadow with the cloud, / of the body with the soul, I consecrated my worship. / May form, music and the air we breathe / fill my imperfect prayer with their beauty!

He rejected both modern progress and the supernatural, and championed Greco-Latin humanism and liberalism. During his forty years in Europe he wrote nineteen books and turned down important academic posts. Most of his friends and correspondents were Americans, including his assistant and eventual literary executor, Daniel Cory.

In old age, Santayana found himself in the limelight once again, partly because his novelized memoir, The Last Puritan (1935), was very well received, generating a new source of income for him, such that he was able to support other philosophers such as Bertrand Russell (although he did not agree with him either philosophically or politically). Santayana never married and lived his homosexuality very discreetly, which the radical Max Eastman ridiculized by hinting at it in public.

Philosophy

Santayana at the beginning of his career.

The Sense of Beauty (1896), with a foreword by Arthur Danto, was his first book on aesthetics written in the United States. The Life of Reason (5 vols., 1905–1906) was the high point of his career at Harvard, and it recounts the "imaginative" path by which cultures and societies have taken shape.

Although Santayana was not a pragmatist in the manner of William James, Charles Peirce, Josiah Royce or John Dewey, The Life of Reason can be considered the first extensive work on pragmatism. The philosopher also had a broad knowledge of the Theory of Evolution. He was a committed metaphysical naturalist, in whose view cognition, cultural practices and institutions evolved until they harmonized with their environment, whose value extends to facilitating happiness in the human being.

The great philosophical work in which he sets out his ontology and his epistemology is The Realms of Being (1927–1940, 4 vols.), which establishes four "regions" or realms of reality. The first is "The Realm of Essence", where essence is similar to the Platonic eidos, but is distinguished by the ontological status it possesses. Essence is a pure datum, and all possible essences form the "realm of essence", which curiously is also an essence. Essence was the key concept in the critical realists' response to the naive realists.

Although almost everything belongs to the realm of essence, it must be remembered that it is only one more realm. The second realm is the "Realm of Matter": matter, the foundation of his philosophy, because above all it is the first thing that exists and what always has existed, exists and will exist. This force is comparable to a matrix. The book contains chapters such as "sentimental space and time" and "trope", a concept that would be the specific essence of an event.

The next realm is that of truth: the "Realm of Truth", the intersection between "Essence" and "Matter"; this book is a response to the pragmatists and their epistemological conception of truth, whereas Santayana's is ontological in the Platonic sense that there is an eternal reality that is discovered.

The last book within The Realms of Being is "The Realm of Spirit", the realm of spirit; it is the most complete of the books, with chapters such as "intuition" or "cosmic animism". Spirit, according to Santayana, is the "pure actuality" that allows the "molding" of reality; here freedom acquires an ontological and not merely practical dimension. Santayana retains his idealist side inherited from Hegel when he speaks of nature and spirit as manifestations of the idea, and from Rudolf Hermann Lotze, studying not precisely what there is, but what there can be.

He was one of the pioneers in adhering to epiphenomenalism, but he also admired the classical works of the materialism of Democritus and Lucretius. Santayana also held the thought of Baruch Spinoza in very high esteem, though without becoming too attached to the rationalism or pantheism characteristic of Spinoza.

His naturalism is outlined in his book Scepticism and Animal Faith; in this sense, the only natural way of approaching nature is through animal faith. Knowledge would be an abstraction of animal faith.

Although an atheist, Santayana considered himself an "aesthetic Catholic", and he spent the last ten years of his life in a Roman residence under the care of Catholic nuns. In 1941, he entered a retirement home run by nuns, the Clinica della Piccola Compagnia di Maria, where he remained until his death in September 1952. Since he did not wish to be buried in consecrated ground, his burial in Italy became a problem. Finally, the Spanish consulate in Rome agreed that his remains should rest in the Pantheon of the Obra Pía Española, in the Campo Verano cemetery.

Literature

File:Reason in Common Sense (1920).djvu Santayana was one of the finest stylists of the American classical tradition, together with Ralph Waldo Emerson. The dominant theme of his writings is the relationship between literature, art, religion and philosophy.

His lengthy novel The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel, London: Constable eds., 1935, is perhaps the greatest Bildungsroman of American literature. Among American autobiographies, his work Persons and Places would perhaps deserve to be placed on a level with The Education of Henry Adams, the autobiography of that famous author. Divided into five carefully named parts, "Ancestry", "Boyhood", "First Pilgrimage", "In the Home Orbit" and "Last Pilgrimage", it narrates the vicissitudes that contribute to the formation of an alter ego of the author, named Oliver Alden, who, despite having crossed the Atlantic several times and having once traveled around the world, always realized

How inevitably concentrated and enclosed he was within himself; not only psychologically, in his spirit and person, but also socially and morally in his home world, p. 693.

It was a critical and popular success. The author had devoted forty-seven years of his life to the construction of this, his only novel, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, not winning it because its author did not hold American nationality (he always wished to keep his Spanish nationality). He was also a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Santayana's works contain personal opinions and bons mots ('memorable sententious sayings'). His essays and books deal with a great variety of subjects, including philosophy, literary criticism, politics, the history of ideas, studies of human nature, morality, and an allusion to the influence of religion on culture and the sociability of psychology, all written with wit and humor, giving the English language a nuance different from the usual.

While some of his specifically philosophical books may seem difficult, most of his literary writings are more accessible to the general public and display a polish and elegance far superior to those of the other stylists of his time. Santayana also wrote some poems and plays. And at his death he left several volumes of correspondence, which have only been published since the year 2000.

Santayana represented a certain Bostonian aristocracy, supposedly elitist but very accessible and not entirely free of prejudices. He could be described as an elegant conservative, Mediterranean but not at all passionate, in the style of Paul Valéry, maintaining an "Olympian detachment", especially from everything North American, and sharpened by an ironic and impartial objectivism: "We live dramatically in a world that is not dramatic."

Bibliography

In English

• 2009. The Essential Santayana. Selected Writings Edited by the Santayana Edition, Compiled and with an introduction by Martin A. Coleman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

THE SANTAYANA EDITION.

• 1979. The Complete Poems of George Santayana: A Critical Edition. Edited, with an introduction, by W. G. Holzberger. Bucknell University Press.

The remaining volumes of this edition are published by MIT Press.

• 1986. Persons and Places Santayana's autobiography, incorporating Persons and Places, 1944; The Middle Span, 1945; and My Host the World, 1953.
• 1988 (1896). The Sense of Beauty.
• 1990 (1900). Interpretations of Poetry and Religion.
• 1994 (1935). The Last Puritan: a memoir in the form of a novel.
• The Letters of George Santayana. Contains more than 3,000 letters, many of them discovered posthumously, to more than 350 recipients.
  • 2001. Book One, 1868–1909.
  • 2001. Book Two, 1910–1920.
  • 2002. Book Three, 1921–1927.
  • 2003. Book Four, 1928–1932.
  • 2003. Book Five, 1933–1936.
  • 2004. Book Six, 1937–1940.
  • 2005. Book Seven, 1941–1947.
  • 2006. Book Eight, 1948–1952.
• The Life of Reason (1905–6) Five books on philosophy, society, religion, art and science.
  • 2011. Introduction and Reason in Common Sense.
  • 2013. Reason in Society.
  • 2014. Reason in Religion.
  • 2015. Reason in Art.
  • 2016. Reason in Science.

• 2019 (1910). Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe

OTHER works by Santayana:

• 1899. Lucifer. A theological tragedy. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley and Sons.
• 1905–1906. The Life of Reason: Or, The Phases of Human Progress, 5 vols. Available gratis online from Project Gutenberg. 1998. 1 vol. abridgement by the author and Daniel Cory. Prometheus Books.
• 1910. Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe.
• 1913. Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion.
• 1915. Egotism in German Philosophy.
• 1920. Character and Opinion in the United States: With Reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America.
• 1920. Little Essays, Drawn From the Writings of George Santayana by Logan Pearsall Smith, With the Collaboration of the Author.
• 1922. Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies.
• 1923. Scepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy.
• 1927. Platonism and the Spiritual Life.
• 1927–40. Realms of Being, 4 vols. 1942. 1 vol. abridgement.
• 1931. The Genteel Tradition at Bay.
• 1933. Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy: Five Essays.
• 1936. Obiter Scripta: Lectures, Essays and Reviews. Justus Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz, eds.
• 1946. The Idea of Christ in the Gospels; or, God in Man: A Critical Essay.
• 1948. Dialogues in Limbo, With Three New Dialogues.
• 1951. Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government.
• 1956. Essays in Literary Criticism of George Santayana. Irving Singer, ed.
• 1957. The Idler and His Works, and Other Essays. Daniel Cory, ed.
• 1967. The Genteel Tradition: Nine Essays by George Santayana. Douglas L. Wilson, ed.
• 1967. George Santayana's America: Essays on Literature and Culture. James Ballowe, ed.
• 1967. Animal Faith and Spiritual Life: Previously Unpublished and Uncollected Writings by George Santayana With Critical Essays on His Thought. John Lachs, ed.
• 1968. Santayana on America: Essays, Notes, and Letters on American Life, Literature, and Philosophy. Richard Colton Lyon, ed.
• 1968. Selected Critical Writings of George Santayana, 2 vols. Norman Henfrey, ed.
• 1969. Physical Order and Moral Liberty: Previously Unpublished Essays of George Santayana. John and Shirley Lachs, eds.
• 1995. The Birth of Reason and Other Essays. Daniel Cory, ed., with an Introduction by Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. Columbia Uni. Press.

In Spanish

• — (2022). El nacimiento de la razón y otros ensayos. Translated by Nuria Parés. Foreword by Vicente Cervea Salinas. Oviedo: KrK.
• — (2022). El intelecto no está de moda. Selection and translation by Santiago Sanz and Misael Ruiz. Barcelona: Animal sospechoso.
• — (2021). Ensayos filosóficos. Selection and translation by Daniel Moreno. Foreword by José Beltrán. Oviedo: KrK.
• — (2020). El carácter y la opinión en Estados Unidos. Translated by Fernando García Lida. Introduction by José Beltrán and Daniel Moreno. Oviedo: KrK.
• — (2018). La tradición gentil en la filosofía americana. Translated by Pedro García. Foreword by José Beltrán and Daniel Moreno. Oviedo: KrK.
• — (2016). Sonetos. Translated by Alberto Zazo Esteban. Foreword by David Pujante. Madrid: Salto de Página. ISBN 978-84-16148-42-4
• — (2015). Pequeños ensayos sobre religión. Edited by José Beltrán and Daniel Moreno. Madrid: Trotta.
• — (2014). Diálogos en el limbo. Con tres diálogos nuevos (in español). Translated by Carmen García Trevijano and Daniel Moreno. Foreword by Manuel Garrido Jiménez. Madrid: Tecnos. ISBN 978-84-309-6090-3. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)
• — (2014). El egotismo en la filosofía alemana (in español). Edited by Daniel Moreno. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. ISBN 978-84-9940-572-8. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)
• — (2011). Escepticismo y fe animal (in español). Translated by Ángel Manuel Faerna. Madrid: Antonio Machado. ISBN 978-84-7774-659-1. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)
• — (2010). Dominaciones y potestades (in español). Translated by José Antonio Fontanilla. Introduction by Manuel Garrido. Oviedo: KRK. ISBN 978-84-8367-253-2. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)
• — (2009). Soliloquios en Inglaterra y soliloquios posteriores (in español). Translated by Daniel Moreno. Madrid: Trotta. ISBN 978-84-9879-075-7. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)
• — (2009). Ejercicios de autobiografía intelectual (in español). Edited by Manuel Ruiz Zamora. Seville: Renacimiento. ISBN 978-84-15177-33-3. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)
• — (2008). La razón en el arte y otros escritos de estética (in español). Edited by R. Miguel Alfonso. Epilogue by Fernando Savater. Madrid: Verbum. ISBN 978-84-7962-422-4. {{cite book}}: |last= has numeric name (help)
• — (2006). Platonismo y vida espiritual (in español). Translation and presentation by Daniel Moreno Moreno. Madrid: Trotta. ISBN 978-84-8164-848-5. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)
• — (2006). Los reinos del ser (in español). Translated by Francisco González Aramburo. Mexico: FCE. ISBN 978-84-8367-253-2. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)
• — (2005). La vida de la razón (in español). Selection by José Beltrán Llavador. Madrid: Tecnos. ISBN 978-96-8161-905-3. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)
• — (2002). El sentido de la belleza (in español). Translated by Carmen García Trevijano. Madrid: Tecnos. ISBN 978-84-309-3299-2. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help); Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• — (2002). Personas y lugares. Fragmentos de autobiografía (in español). Translated by Pedro García Martín. Madrid: Trotta. ISBN 978-84-8164-536-1. {{cite book}}: |author= has numeric name (help)

• — (1958). La vida de la Razón, Editorial Nova. Buenos Aires, Argentina. Direct translation from the first complete edition of the work, by Aída A. de Kogan. Book in five volumes: includes La razón en el sentido común, La razón en la sociedad, La razón en la religión, La razón en el arte and La razón en la ciencia.
• — (1913) Aires de doctrina
• — (1933) Largo rodeo hacia el Nirvana. Madrid: Cruz y Raya.
• — (1945) El espacio medio
• — (1946) En la mitad del camino Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana.
• — (1953) Mi anfitrión el mundo, posthumous. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1955.

About Santayana

• Savater, Fernando (2012). Acerca de Santayana. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia.
• Miguel Alfonso, Ricardo (2010). La estética de George Santayana. Madrid: Verbum.
• Moreno Moreno, Daniel (2007). Santayana, filósofo. La filosofía como forma de vida (in español). Madrid: Editorial Trotta. ISBN 978-84-8164-898-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
• Beltrán Llavador, José (2008). Celebrar el mundo. Introducción al pensar nómada de George Santayana. Valencia: PUV. ISBN 978-84-370-7025-4
• McCormick, John (1987). George Santayana: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Jeffers, Thomas L. (2005). Apprenticeships: The Bildungsroman from Goethe to Santayana. New York: Palgrave: 159–84.
• Estébanez Estébanez, Cayetano (2000). La obra literaria de George Santayana. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid. ISBN 978-84-8448-047-X
• Singer, Irving (2000). George Santayana, Literary Philosopher. Yale University Press.
• Lida, Raimundo (1943). Belleza, arte y poesía en la estética de Santayana. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras.

Miscellanea

Santayana's most famous aphorism

Black plaque at the Auschwitz concentration camp with the text in Polish: "KTO NIE PAMIẸTA HISTORII SKAZANY / JEST NA JEJ PONOWNE PRZEŻYCIE" / GEORGE SANTAYANA /: "He who does not remember history is condemned to relive it" / George Santayana

Plaque in a Berlin metro station with the same text, in German: "Wer die Vergangenheit nicht kennt, / ist dazu verurteilt, sie zu wiederholden." / (G. Santayana 1863–1953, Philosoph)

• The title of Wallace Stevens's To an Old Philosopher in Rome refers to George Santayana.
• The phrase "Only the dead have seen the end of war" is by George Santayana, although it was attributed to Plato by Douglas MacArthur, as well as in the credits of the American films Black Hawk Down, Platoon and some other war films, as well as in the book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges (New York: Anchor Books, 2003).
• The phrase "Santayana goodbye" in the song We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel refers to the death of Jorge Santayana.
• The title of the film Waking Life by director Richard Linklater refers to Jorge Santayana's maxim: "Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled." In Spanish this would be rendered as: "La cordura es una locura que se usa para bien; la vida despierta es un sueño controlado".
• In the series Babylon 5 (season 1, episode 4), Commander Susan Ivanova quotes the phrase "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it", although, due to a translation error, she pronounces his name as Santillana. In fact she merges it with Karl Marx's phrase that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce.

External links

• Commentary on Diálogos en el Limbo, in the Noguer encyclopedia
• On George Santayana, bilingual blog with news about Santayana.
• Limbo. Boletín internacional de estudios sobre Santayana.
• Overheard in Seville. Bulletin of the Santayana Society.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "George Santayana", by Herman Saatkamp, Jr. Includes a complete bibliography of his work in English.
• Fernando Savater, «El discreto encanto de George Santayana», Limbo, 1, 1996.
• The text of the critical edition on Intelex CD-ROM. With links to Web-based search & reference tools.
• “Espectros del idealismo: Santayana y Dewey”, in Santayana: un pensador universal, Beltrán, J., Garrido M. and Sevilla, S. (eds.), Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans, Universitat de València, 2011, pp. 139–166. ISBN: 978-84-370-8029-1.