William James Durant was a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for the 11-volume The Story of Civilization, written in collaboration with his wife Ariel and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for his book, The Story of Philosophy, written in 1926, which was considered "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy."
They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1967 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.
I never knew that his this book gonna be that much classic, his story of philosophy is a Gem, but pleasure of Philosophy is no less than a Gem.
The pleasure of Philosophy talks literally about everything, it takes about all about the inside of a human, as well as what is outside of the human, it eloquent discusses every metaphoric things as well as Every thing from religion, to science, to Philosophy, to reason, to sensation to life to death, to virtues, to good, to evil.
The book has everything in it, you can all is a Philosphical book, you can easily categories it into, history, economy, evolution, science, wisdom. It talks about everything that the earth has ever seen, You will find in the book from Confucius, to Buddha, to Christ, it will then shifts from theology to Philosophy and the you will be meeting Socrate, Plato, Aristotle, Francis bacon, Voltaire, Spinoza, Frederick Nietzsche then from the philosophy you will be reading everything about economics, from Hegel to karl Marx, to Adam Smith then you will be reading historians Such as Anatole France, you will also get a touch of classic writers such as Dostoevsky, Goethe , Tolstoy .. you name it, everything on the plate there will be served to you...
The book is as versatile as its author, the book traces everything from the beginning of humanity, it traces the evolution of human, it dig deep upon the differences between societies, civilization, it takes you into a journey of marriage, why nature given marriage to human, and it rightly say that the gift of marriage from the nature wasn't given to us because of the mating or for the parents, but it was for the children, it was for preserving the race..
This is one of the best book I have ever read, I don't think there is any topic that book has missed, it gives us an eloquent view of how evolution has made woman into woman and man into man. It is all those instincts and choices in our genes that our grand grand grand grand grand parents have taken, which made us what we are today, like in the hunting age it was good for the woman to stay at home and care for children's, and at that times it was good for the race to raise as many children as possible, and then man was responsible for the food, he was the one who takes all those risk of getting out of his home, and look for the food, and in his journey for getting the food he has confront with every challenge that comes his way, so our evolution made us man physically stronger, and woman become lazy non masculine at home.. this distinguishion is in everything, and this was the old ages that the author ponder on, in the book Will Durant candidly enlighten the recent change that is going on in our civilization, will said that the greatest change in the first quarter of 20th Century wasn't the Great world war, neither it was Russian revolution, rather it was the change in status of women.. now our markets demands women to work as well as, they are making women independent, they are providing with the jobs , the economic stability, and hence what was then in the hunting age, it was feasible for the race to grow and marriage happened as soon as they reached the age of puberty, whereas now the marriage are getting delayed, more and more people are preferring to live single, and the age of marriage has being prolonged for many years, now market demands both individual to be single, and marriage is considered to be as hindrance for market.
I will give full 猸愨瓙猸愨瓙猸�, this is a masterpiece book, which talks about everything that it is there to be talked.
Durant writes well about history (The Story of Civilization) and about his favorite philosophers (The Story of Philosophy). In one of the dialogues in this book, Durant muses with enthusiasm that philosophers should write about history and historians should write about philosophy. That might not be such a good idea. In the former case, you get Hegel. In the latter case, you get Durant, at least in this book.
Durant's intent in this book is laudable. In this day of specialization and analysis, Durant sees the need to integrate and synthesize, drawing from diverse disciplines including physics and biology, to develop a comprehensive worldview. Yet, for the most part, this book is a disappointment. He makes too many sweeping generalizations that miss the mark and in so many ways, seem to reflect the prejudices of a dated age. "The Roman citizen, we are told, was filled with horror at the prospect of a learned wife,.." he writes, and "so is every man; he is unhappy in the company of a woman whose mind is the equal of his own; he can love only what is weaker than himself, as the woman can love only what is stronger." With the use of the present tense, "is," this might be passed off as some sort of historical truth, as opposed to any innateness about man and woman, but there's much more of the same that is written as if he speaks about our biological nature. The woman, he says, "does not look for beauty in the male, and need not imagine it in the man she loves; it is strength which she craves in him, ability to protect her and her children, and to bring to her feet as much as possible of the treasures of the world." This is a fairly old school statement that does not reflect who we, woman and man, by our distinctive human trait, choice, can be. Yet, Durant goes on: If a woman "wanders about aimless and dissatisfied, moving from one place, one man, or one amusement to antoher, and finding no interest anywhere, it is because she has turned her back on the natural purpose of love. A woman, as Nietzsche said, is a riddle, whose solution is a child."
Durant continues like an old uncle who utters one crazy platitude after another: "The instinct to get food becomes the general instinct of acquisition, eager for anything of value. The instinct to fight for food or mates spreads into a general instinct of pugnacity, in which fighting is its own reward. So the estehetic emotion (part of that 'tender emotion' which accompanies the instinct of love) may overflow from the person desired to the objects attached to her...[and] all the world comes to partake of the fair one's splendor." There are causal linkages in this statement that are tenuous. Yet, he goes on: It is, he states, the "subterranean river of erotic energy that feeds the creative passion of the artist" but "in other artists, the flood of sex is dammed, and channeled almost wholly into creation. Love loses its power, emotion is controlled, reason flourishes, and intellect dominates everything. Out of this immense sublimation comes the classic genius...."
This is the Durant we get in this book. Durant has this great flair for using words well, but whose statements are just batty. "We are anarchist by nature, and citizens by suggestion." That sounds good but on what basis does he state that we by nature are anarchist and how might our that match up with Darwin's perspective that we are tribal by nature, with well-developed social instincts that pertain at least to our own group? In this statement, Durant is laying the groundwork for his political philosophy. Here, and despite the great insights in The Story of Civilization about the ebb and flow of human-inflicted evil throughout history and his statement that the past is the best predictor of the future, Durant gets off the wagon and becomes utopian. The problem with civilization is not our inherent nature but our "politicians." How such politicians are distinct from the people they represent is not clear. How society might differ from the "mob rule" concerns of Plato are not clear either. Durant probably had a sense for this problem when he advocated the training in our universities of public servants schooled in the objective science of public administration. Well, that presumes that such individuals and universities are immune to the problems of subjectivity and that "theories about governance" are the same thing as the actual experience of managing inherently conflicting interests. Durant says that the "highest function of government" is not to legislate but to educate, to make not laws but schools." Well, perhaps Durant is catering too much to populistic thinking (people are good; politicians are bad people), but education depends on order and order depends on law.
I did enjoy the front part of the book where Durant uses biology and physics to inform his philosophy. For example, I think he captures well how to bring closure to the mind versus matter debate when he writes that "We bridge the gap between matter and mind not by reducing mind but by raising matter." In the introduction, Durant says this book is an attempt at a "consistent philosophy of life" and that reading it will be "a tour of the infinite." The latter is a lofty thought but I have no idea what he means, unless he believes this book touches significantly on Big History, which I don't think it does.
I will have to confess in not finding great pleasure in this book. But it is apparent that Durant took great pleasure in the writing, which flows on page after page. In The Story of Philosophy and The Story of Civilization, this seems to work well, but not here. At times it seems "clever", and at times, frankly, bleak, despite his attempts at optimism.
What Durant attempts is a synthesis of the various categories of philosophy into a meaningful, consistent philosophy of life. That philosophy in the end seems to anticipate critical realism in epistemology, a materialist metaphysic, a surprisingly family-centric ethic while rejecting traditional sexual ethics, an epicurean esthetic, a qualified belief in progress, a favoring of aristocracy in political philosophy, and a reduction of religion to Golden Rule ethics with perhaps some sense of God as life force. In his final chapter on death, his concluding comment is that "life wins", meaning the life of the human race, and indeed the cosmos.
The chapters where he creates fictional dialogues are perhaps the most interesting. However, I would suggest that much that is said in this lengthy treatment is touched upon with far greater brevity and insight in Ecclesiastes. Given that this book is not longer in print and Ecclesiastes is, that would be my reading recommendation!
Finishing up tonight. It took many years with chunks here and chunks there taken from this masterpiece. Hard to be unaffected by Will Durant. He makes all these great thinkers and ideas so easy to comprehend, and adds his own brilliant wisdom. This is a book that I will refer to over and over again, and reread it all.
if you want to know philosophy you should start with this athor(like me)
his label is that he made complex philosophy understandable for almost every educated person
this book is about many feilds of philosophy not just one! and you get to see the ideological battle between many of well-known philosophers and even historiographs and ....
i recommend it for you it literally changed my life! :)