The Story of Philosophy is Will Durant's account of the Western philosophical tradition, published in 1926 and revised in a second edition of 1933. Durant organizes the book around biographies rather than problems: each chapter introduces a thinker's life and times, sets out his central ideas with long extracts from his writings, and ends with a brief appraisal of strengths and weaknesses.
Will Durant (1885-1981) · CatalogWill DurantWill Durant (1885-1981) · CatalogAmerican historian and popular writer on philosophy, author with Ariel Durant of The Story of Civilization.The Story of Philosophy Our Oriental Heritage The Life of Greece Caesar and Christ The Age of Faith The Renaissance The Reformation
Author
Will Durant
· American historian and popular writer on philosophy, author with Ariel Durant of The Story of Civilization
Short biography: Will Durant in Great Lives
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Our Oriental Heritage is the first volume of Will Durant's Story of Civilization, published by Simon & Schuster in 1935 after Durant's success with The Story of Philosophy had given him the means and the audience for a far larger project. Its title states the thesis that governs the whole series: Western civilization did not begin in Greece but inherited agriculture, writing, mathematics, astronomy, law, monotheism and much else from the older peoples of the Near East, and the civilizations of India, China and Japan deserve a place in any honest account of human achievement.
The Life of Greece, published in 1939, is the second volume of Will Durant's Story of Civilization. Its long subtitle promises a history of Greek government, industry, manners, morals, religion, philosophy, science, literature and art from the earliest times to the Roman conquest, and the book keeps that promise by refusing to separate politics from the rest of life.
Caesar and Christ is the third volume of Will Durant's Story of Civilization, subtitled A History of Roman Civilization and of Christianity from Their Beginnings to A.D. 325. Published in 1944, in the middle of the Second World War, it carries the story from the Etruscan cities that preceded Rome to the Council of Nicaea, and its title names the two forces whose meeting Durant regards as the great drama of the period.
The Age of Faith is the fourth volume of Will Durant's Story of Civilization, subtitled A History of Medieval Civilization (Christian, Islamic, and Judaic) from Constantine to Dante, A.D. 325-1300. Its range was unusual for an English-language popular history of 1950: instead of treating the Middle Ages as Latin Christendom alone, Durant sets Byzantium, the world of Islam and the Jewish communities of the diaspora beside the Catholic West and moves among them as rival, borrowing and sometimes warring civilizations.
The Renaissance, published in 1953, is the fifth volume of Will Durant's Story of Civilization and carries the subtitle A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304 to 1576 A.D. The two dates are the birth of Petrarch and the death of Titian, and the choice tells the reader what kind of history follows: an account of an age defined by its poets, scholars and painters more than by its wars. Durant opens with Petrarch and Boccaccio, the popes at Avignon, and Cola di Rienzo's brief attempt to revive the Roman republic, and he treats the recovery of classical Latin and Greek letters as the seed from which the rest grew.
The Reformation, published in 1957, is the sixth volume of Will Durant's Story of Civilization, subtitled A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564. It overlaps in time with The Renaissance but leaves Italy for the rest of Europe, and its subject is the breakup of Latin Christendom into rival churches and confessional states.