George Santayana, a leading figure in classical American Philosophy, was born in 1863 in Madrid, Spain. His father studied law and eventually became governor of Batang Island in the Philippines, and his mother was the daughter of a Spanish diplomat. When Santayana was eight, his father sent him to live with his mother, who had relocated to Boston to raise children from a previous marriage. He entered Harvard College in 1882, and after completing his doctorate there, was appointed an instructor of philosophy at Harvard, a position he held until 1912. While at Harvard, the American philosopher William James was among his teachers, and his notable students included T.S. Eliot , Wallace Stevens , Robert Frost , and Conrad Aiken, all of whose work reflects his influence. He was a popular teacher, yet resigned despite the protests of the college, feeling that American academia had become offensively business-oriented, and that philosophy as a discipline had lost its sense of the “good life” …