Ask the Editors: Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is Santayana considered an American philosopher even though he was a Spanish citizen?
At a young age Santayana traveled, with his father, from Spain to the United States to join his mother and half siblings in Boston. Santayana was educated in the U.S. at the Boston Latin School and Harvard University and later became a professor of philosophy at Harvard. He wrote all of his philosophical works in English and the majority of his correspondence in English. His Spanish letters were to relatives in Spain who did not know English.
“He also makes an important statement in this letter regarding his ‘American-ness’: although he has always traveled with a Spanish passport and was never legally an American, he says that ‘socially and as a writer, I am an American in practice, and almost all my friends have been Americans.’” (William Holzberger’s “Preface” The Letters of George Santayana, Book 8)
2. Where does Santayana write "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"?
The oft-quoted and commonly misunderstood line appears in Reason in Common Sense, the first volume of the five-volume Life of Reason. In the 1905 Charles Scribner's Sons edition, it is found on page 284. In context, he is making a psychological point, that is, he is observing something about the development of human intelligence. But it is often employed (in various paraphrased forms) for sociological or political purposes, quite possibly in ways that are not consistent with Santayana's views. In other words, he was often skeptical that a social or political group could learn or progress in the way implied or advocated by those who appropriate the quotation.
3. Did Santayana write “Only the dead have seen the end of war”?
See http://plato-dialogues.org/faq/faq008.htm.
4. Was Santayana a practicing Roman Catholic?
Different variations of this question, pertaining to his religious beliefs, preoccupied people when he was alive; but Catholics particularly seem to be interested in it, and he is still referred to occasionally as a “Catholic philosopher.” Santayana suggested to Lind that he wanted to avoid “replacing Aristotle as the accepted pagan philosopher for Catholics” (3 October 1951). In 1930 Santayana wrote “Like my parents, I have always set myself down officially as a Catholic: but this is a matter of sympathy and traditional allegiance, not of philosophy” (“A Brief History of My Opinions” in Lyon 1968, Santayana on America, 7). He continues, “I have never had any unquestioning faith in any dogma, and have never been what is called a practicing Catholic.”
5. Was Santayana gay?
“As in the cases of Henry James and A. E. Housman there is no evidence that Santayana was an active or practicing homosexual or that his youthful relationship with Russell (or anyone else, for that matter) was homosexual in a physical sense. Indeed, the Hamlet echo of his warning to Abbot not to construe his attachment to Russell as involving “country matters” might indicate that Santayana regarded his devotion as transcending the merely physical.” (William Holzberger’s “Introduction” The Letters of George Santayana)
“There is no evidence that Santayana ever had a physical sexual relationship with either a man or a woman. This suggests perhaps that whatever sexual promptings he may have experienced were sublimated to his thought and art and found expression in his writings. It is also possible that Santayana deliberately embraced the tradition of celibacy advocated by the Roman Catholic Church for members of the clergy (and by the religions of India and China for holy-men and wisemen). He had a great respect for the traditions of the Church and frequently refers to himself in the letters as monk-like, saying that he could live happily in a monastery.”