Forgetting The Past

Typical of the status of Philosophy in America these days is the general appreciation of the saying, 'Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it': pithy, vaguely familiar, and seemingly profound, a suitable candidate for a Thought For The Day item in newspapers or on bulletin boards. Hence, a telling assessment of that status can be inferred from understanding how misplaced that appreciation is. First, it is likely that many who have heard or even uttered the phrase do not know that its source is George Santayana, or that he was was such a lively writer that he wrote prolifically, not only Philosophy, but fiction as well. So, second, it is likely that many are unaware that this expression is not only one of the most superficial sentences in his oeuvre, but one that they are most usually mis-applying. It is often taken as a meditation on the cycles of History, e. g. the recent economic downturn is a repetition of that of the Depression Era, an effect of forgetting how a period of unfettered laissez-faire capitalism led to the latter. However, where the phrase actually appears is in a modest discussion of Education, in which Santayana is merely trying to point out that a school lesson not learned the first time will have to be repeated. In contrast, perhaps his most provocative assertions regarding the nature of the past come elsewhere, as part of a theory that holds that memory is fundamentally fictitious, and, to fully understand that requires more than a pithy appropriation of his complex system of human existence. But it is not so much that Philosophy is ill-suited as a bite-sized snack for thought that the general American public seems to demand. Two very terse phrases that are exemplary of the main ideas of their authors, 'Religion is the opiate of the masses', and 'God is dead', are also reminders of one of the fundamental missions of Philosophy, to challenge, as Socrates fatally did, the prevailing mythology of a culture. Today's public would prefer to romanticize the past than to apply such lessons, especially that can be accomplished in only a few minutes out of a busy daily schedule. Those who sugarcoat the past are trying to make it more palatable.