George Santayana

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

Santayana is known for his sayings,
- "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it",
- "[O]nly the dead have seen the end of war."

## Early life

Santayana was born on December 16, 1863 in Madrid. He spent his early childhood in Ávila.

He attended Harvard University, where he studied with William James and Josiah Royce.

He earned a Ph.D. at Harvard in 1889. He also studied in Berlin and Cambridge.

## Career

Santayana taught philosophy at Harvard.  Some of his students were T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein, Walter Lippmann, and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Santayana influenced many others, including Bertrand Russell.

## Selected works

In a summary based on writings by and about Santayana, OCLC/WorldCat lists roughly 1,040+ works in 2,980+ publications in 22 languages and 90,830+ library holdings.
- _This list is not finished; you can help Wikipedia by adding to it._
- 1905–1906. _The Life of Reason: Or, The Phases of Human Progress_, 5 vols. Available free 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. _The Realms of Being_, 4 vols. 1942. 1 vol.
- 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_.
- 1955. _The Letters of George Santayana_. Daniel Cory, ed. Charles Scribner's Sons. New York. (296 letters)
- 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.
- 1979. _The Complete Poems of George Santayana: A Critical Edition_. Edited, with an introduction, by W. G. Holzberger. Bucknell University Press.
- 1995. _The Birth of Reason and Other Essays_. Daniel Cory, ed., with an Introduction by Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. Columbia Univ. Press.
- 2009. _The Essential Santayana. Selected Writings_ Edited by the Santayana Edition, Compiled and with an introduction by Martin A. Coleman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

## Related pages

- List of poets from North America

## Infobox (philosopher)

- **region**: Western Philosophy
- **era**: 20th century philosophy
- **image**: George Santayana.jpg
- **name**: Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás
- **other name**: George Santayana
- **birth date**: 16 December 1863
- **birth place**: Madrid, Spain
- **death date**: 26 September 1952
- **death place**: Rome, Italy
- **school tradition**: Pragmatism, Naturalism (philosophy), Naturalism
- **main interests**: moral philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of religion
- **notable ideas**: Lucretius, Lucretian materialism, skepticism, natural aristocracy, The Realms of Being
- **influences**: Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Baruch Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, Hippolyte Taine, Ernest Renan, William James, Ralph Waldo Emerson
- **influenced**: Naturalism (philosophy), Naturalism, William James, Bertrand Russell, Wallace Stevens, John Lachs