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Will Durant

Will Durant was an American writer, historian and philosopher who helped bring philosophy to a mass readership. The Story of Philosophy (1926), which grew…

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Also known as William James Durant

1885 – 1981 · North Adams (Massachusetts), New Jersey, New York, Los Angeles

Traditions: American

Will Durant was an American writer, historian and philosopher who helped bring philosophy to a mass readership. The Story of Philosophy (1926), which grew out of popular pamphlets, presented the lives and ideas of Western thinkers from Plato to Dewey and became a bestseller. With his wife Ariel he then wrote the eleven-volume Story of Civilization (1935–1975), and the couple shared the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for its tenth volume. He saw philosophy as an attempt to see life and the world as a whole.

Key ideas

  • Philosophy is 'total perspective': seeing life and the world as a whole rather than in specialised fragments.
  • The history of ideas is best taught through the lives and characters of the thinkers who shaped it.
  • History should cover culture, art, religion and daily life, not only politics and war.
  • Human nature changes slowly, so the lessons of past civilisations still apply to the present.

Major works

  • The Story of Philosophy (1926)
  • The Mansions of Philosophy (1929)
  • The Story of Civilization (1935–1975, with Ariel Durant)
  • The Lessons of History (1968, with Ariel Durant)

In the Book corner

  • The Principles of Psychology 1890 · Advanced
    A two-volume textbook, twelve years in the writing, that helped found psychology as a science in the United States while remaining a…
  • The Varieties of Religious Experience 1902 · Intermediate
    Twenty lectures given as the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh in 1901–02 and subtitled A Study in Human Nature. James sets aside churches…
  • Pragmatism 1907 · Beginner
    Eight popular lectures given in Boston and New York in 1906 and 1907. James begins by contrasting 'tender-minded' and 'tough-minded' temperaments in…
  • The Story of Philosophy 1926 · Beginner
    A popular history of Western philosophy told through the lives and opinions of a handful of major thinkers. Durant developed it from…

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