Over eleven years went into writing this classic historic chronology of our great Western thinkers. Will Durant is best known for his collaboration with his wife Arial Durant on The Story of Civilization, an eleven book series, which took them over fifty years to write. Yet here in the Story of Philosophy, with no less attention to detail and to sweeping scope of philosophical merit, Durant loads his text with biographical information of each philosopher, from the ancient Socrates to the modern Santayana. Indeed, though there are excerpts from these philosophers' original texts, Durant uses a careful treatment of the time in which these thinkers lived to elucidate and highlight the function and impact of their main tenets and most well known ideas.
This book is known as a classic that popularized philosophy, and because each era of Western philosophy's history comes alive under the lens of Durant, the contemporary audience will no doubt be left with a sense of being educated, while also broadly entertained.
Critics have remarked that his prose begs to be read aloud. In fact, his prose has been called so beautiful that it rivals poetry. Take the opportunity to hear it now by downloading this audiobook on Audiobooks.com today!
Will Durant was born in 1885. His scholarly activities are known for being exacting and scrupulous in their methodology. Durant was a prolific writer, historian and philosopher and he collaborated frequently with his wife Arial Durant. He is known for his gifts as a prose stylist and his storytelling abilities, which stand in stark contrast to other more formal academic writings. He and his wife won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non Fiction and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The product of eleven years of research, The Story of Philosophy is an endlessly inspiring and instructive chronicle of the world’s greatest thinkers, from Socrates to Santayana. Written with exacting and scrupulous scholarship, it was designed both to command the respect of educators and to capture the interest of the layman.
Durant lucidly describes the philosophical systems of such world-famous “monarchs of the mind” as Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Kant, Voltaire, and Nietzsche. Along with their ideas, he offers their flesh-and-blood biographies, placing their thoughts within their own time and place and elucidating their influence on our modern intellectual heritage. This book is packed with wisdom and wit.
The Story of Philosophy is a key book for any reader who wishes to survey the history and development of philosophical ideas in the Western world.
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