George Santayana | |
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![]() Santayana on the cover of a 1936 issue of Time magazine. | |
Born | Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás December 16, 1863 Madrid, Spain |
Died | September 26, 1952 Rome, Italy | (aged 88)
Nationality | Spanish |
Education | |
Era | 20th-century philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | |
Doctoral advisor | Josiah Royce |
Notable students | Jacob Loewenberg,[1] Conrad Aiken, T. S. Eliot, Horace Kallen, Walter Lippmann, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edward Rand, Alain Locke, Van Wyck Brooks, Learned Hand, Felix Frankfurter, Max Eastman, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens |
Main interests | |
Notable ideas | |
Signature | |
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George Santayana (b. Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), was a Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist.[2] Born in Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States from the age of eight and identified as an American, yet always retained a valid Spanish passport.[3] At the age of 48, he left his academic position at Harvard University and permanently returned to Europe; his last will was to be buried in the Spanish Pantheon in the Campo di Verano, Rome.
As a philosopher, Santayana is known for aphorisms, such as "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it",[4] and "Only the dead have seen the end of war",[5] and his definition of beauty as "Pleasure objectified".[6] Although an atheist, Santayana valued the culture of the Spanish Catholic values, practices, and worldview, in which he was raised.[7] As an intellectual, George Santayana was a broad-range cultural critic in several academic disciplines.