Santayana, George(1863–1952)
George Santayana, the philosopher and man of letters, was born in Madrid. His parents separated within a few years of his birth, and his mother went to live in Boston, Massachusetts, with the children of a previous marriage. Santayana grew up in Ávila under his father's care, but at the age of eight he joined his mother in Boston. He was educated at the Boston Latin School and at Harvard College. After graduating from Harvard in 1886, he studied in Germany for two years and then returned to take his doctorate at Harvard, for which he wrote a thesis on Rudolf Lotze. He subsequently joined the department of philosophy and remained a member of the Harvard faculty until 1912, when a small inheritance permitted him to retire. He lived in England for a number of years and then in Paris, but in 1925 he finally settled in Rome. During World War II, he took refuge in the convent of an order of English nuns in Rome, and he continued to live there until his death.
Cultural Background
Both Santayana's personal life and his philosophical development were decisively influenced by his peculiar position as a Spanish Catholic living and teaching in a predominantly Protestant society with a philosophical and cultural tradition that he felt to be in many respects deeply alien to his own personality.
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