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Name: The Story of Philosophy
Rating: 4.6 (233 reviews)
Author: Will Durant

Will Durant

The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

4.6 (233 ratings)

26 mins

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The Story of Philosophy
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What’s in it for me? Take a tour of Western philosophy, from ancient Greece to the nineteenth century.

For thousands of years, philosophers have posed the great questions of human existence and the nature of the universe. What is human nature? Is there such a thing as free will? What is God? And what is the ideal form of government?

Profiling several of the greatest Western philosophers – from Plato in ancient Greece to Nietzsche in the nineteenth century – these blinks trace the lines between their personal histories, the historical context, and the formation of their ideas. You’ll learn about the development of Western philosophy and how many of history’s greatest philosophical ideas are interconnected.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

how Plato believed rulers should be chosen for governance;
why nobody attended Schopenhauer’s lectures; and
the vision that inspired Nietzsche’s philosophy.

Influenced by the death of Socrates, Plato proposed a utopia ruled by philosopher kings.

The story of Western philosophy begins in ancient Greece. In the sixth century BCE, philosophical thinkers mostly concerned themselves with questioning the nature of the physical world – until the charismatic philosopher Socrates rose to prominence in Athens. Socrates loved to mull over moral and psychological questions. Soon, other philosophers shifted their thinking to consider the nature of humankind.

Socrates posed questions about morality, justice, and knowledge through his “Socratic method.” This form of dialogue involves asking questions that challenge the assumptions of your interlocutor – urging them to precisely clarify their terms. Capable of destroying dogmas and presumptions, it’s still a widely practiced and effective teaching method today.

Though it wasn’t Socrates’s style to give answers directly, there was one topic that he did have concrete ideas about: the best form of governance for the Athenian state. At the time, Athenian democracy had been weakened by a passion-led mob rule, and it was under threat by the nearby Spartans.

Socrates believed that a state run by men with intelligence would save Athens, and this belief both killed him and earned him an immortal place in history. When the aristocratic party’s attempt to overthrow Athenian democracy failed, Socrates was considered the de facto intellectual leader of the coup. As a result, the democrats sentenced Socrates to death; he was forced to drink poisonous hemlock.

The story of Socrates's death was captured in beautiful prose by the philosopher’s most famous pupil, Plato. Blaming democracy for the death of his mentor, Plato set out to destroy it. Instead, he asserted, the city’s wisest should be its rulers.

Plato developed this idea in his best-known work The Republic, a philosophical treatise spanning ideas on ethics, theology, psychology, pedagogy, art, and politics. In it, he argues against both of the dominant opposing political philosophies: democracy and aristocracy. He finds democracy’s mob rule too unrestricted and chaotic. Aristocracy, on the other hand, drives a state to destruction because greed and luxury lead men to be competitive and ambitious.

As an alternative, Plato proposes a utopian political regime ruled by a small class of philosopher kings called guardians. This new system would be a democratic aristocracy. It would include a universal education system to identify and train suitable guardians based on talent and intelligence rather than nepotism.

Aristotle devised the new science of logic and advanced biology.

Among the pupils at Plato’s Academy was Aristotle. Aristotle was born in 384 BCE in Stagira, a Macedonian city around two hundred miles from Athens. His father was the physician to the King of Macedon. Thanks to this connection, after studying under Plato, Aristotle was called by King Philip of Macedon to tutor his 13-year-old son – now known to the world as Alexander the Great.

A few years later, when Alexander set out to conquer Asia, Aristotle returned to Athens. There, he founded his own academy: the Lyceum. Unlike Plato’s Academy, which had been devoted to mathematics and speculative and political philosophy, the Lyceum specialized in biology and the natural sciences. Aristotle’s written output includes up to a thousand volumes classified as logical, scientific, aesthetic, and philosophical works. Whether these volumes were directly authored by Aristotle or compiled by students of his lectures is unknown. But the works exhibit a stylistic unity that suggests at least partial authorship by Aristotle.

Francis Bacon was a sixteenth-century philosopher and politician who developed an empirical approach to scientific enquiry.

Ancient Greek civilization was followed by the Roman Empire, which soon gave way to the Roman Papacy. By the thirteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church owned one-third of European soil; for a thousand years, Catholicism dominated philosophical thought. But Catholic philosophy didn’t emerge in a vacuum. The Catholic Church used Aristotle’s logic to create a medieval theology known as scholasticism. Scholasticism married faith and reason, creating an intellectual philosophy that abetted the Church’s vast sovereignty and control of the population.

The most significant philosopher to challenge scholastic thought in the sixteenth century emerged from Elizabethan England. Born in London in 1561, Francis Bacon studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. Rejecting the logic of scholasticism, Bacon resolved to transform philosophy from scholastic arguments to understanding and improving humankind.

Spinoza claimed that biblical stories are allegorical and there is no such thing as free will.

Spinoza’s personal history begins with the story of Jewish mass migration. After the Romans captured Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jewish people scattered throughout the Mediterranean. During the Portuguese Inquisition in the sixteenth century, many Portuguese Jews escaped persecution and ended up in Holland. Among them was the family of Baruch Spinoza.

Born in 1632, Spinoza took an early interest in Judaism and Jewish history. He was a star student in his synagogue, but his curiosity soon led him to expand his knowledge. He began studying Latin with a Dutch scholar and became versed in ancient and medieval European thought, as well as scholastic texts and modern philosophy. The young Spinoza was particularly interested in Descartes’s idea that reality is separated into matter versus spirit – one homogeneous substance underlies all forms of matter, while another underlies all forms of the spirit, or mind.

Voltaire’s philosophy challenged political and ecclesiastical authority through a literary tradition.

Born in Paris in 1694 as François Marie Arouet, Voltaire was a seminal figure for the French Enlightenment. His prolific output included plays, novels, poems, histories, essays, and scientific expositions.

When Voltaire was just 21 years old, he was arrested for two poems which criticized the French Regent. During his eleven months of imprisonment in the Bastille, a prison in Paris famous for housing dissidents of the state, he adopted “Voltaire” as a pen name.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant shocked the world with a new metaphysical system.

While some philosophers, such as Voltaire, were shaped by their travels, others led more sedentary lives. In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant was born in Prussia, where he remained for the majority of his life. Kant was raised in a Pietist household that followed a rigorous Lutheran practice and belief. His childhood experience led him to keep a distance from the Church in adulthood – even though he continued to believe in God.

After being denied professorship at the local university, Kant was finally hired as the professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770. Beloved by his students, he wrote about physical subjects: the planets, earthquakes, and fire. Meanwhile, the timid and humble professor quietly worked to develop a new metaphysical system.

Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy was influenced by Kant and his own personal experience.

Arthur Schopenhauer’s legacy is his philosophical pessimism. Born in Danzig, Poland in the late eighteenth century, Schopenhauer was five years old when his family moved to Hamburg after the annexation of Danzig. His father died by alleged suicide, and he famously did not get along with his mother, who disliked his pessimistic outlook. Schopenhauer moved away as soon as he could and never saw her again.

Schopenhauer wasn’t just cynical – he was also extremely arrogant. When the young philosopher was invited to lecture at the university where Hegel taught, he scheduled his lectures at the same time as Hegel’s. Of course, because Hegel dominated German philosophy at the time, Schopenhauer lectured to an empty audience.

Friedrich Nietzsche proposed his philosophy of power with the allegory of a superman.

Born in 1844 in Prussia, Nietzsche was raised by the pious Puritan women of his household after the early death of his father. Nietzsche’s childhood was spent in religious fervor; he read the Bible and avoided the mischievous boys in his neighborhood. When Nietzsche was 18, however, his faith in God dissolved. His childhood experiences informed his lifelong attempt to cultivate an idealized masculinity within himself. After a period of drinking and smoking with fellow university friends, he encountered Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Idea – and discovered a mirror onto himself.

When Germany and France went to war in 1870, Nietzsche went to the fronts to volunteer. His poor eyesight and his sensitivity to the sight of blood disqualified him from service. Nevertheless, the experience had a profound impact on his development. He later claimed that the sight of cavalry passing through Frankfort had inspired the vision upon which his entire philosophy was based. Rather than Schopenhauer’s idea that the Will to Life is expressed in the miserable struggle to exist, Nietzsche realized that the Will to Life finds expression in the will to war, power, and conquer.

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What is The Story of Philosophy about?

The Story of Philosophy (1926) traces the lives and ideas of several prominent Western philosophers including Plato, Spinoza, Kant, and Nietzsche. Each philosopher was influenced by his historical context, personal history, and philosophical predecessors. Revealing the human side of some of the world’s greatest thinkers, these blinks trace the evolution of Western philosophical thought.

Who should read The Story of Philosophy?

Inquisitive minds new to philosophy
Students of philosophy, political science, or history
Anyone wondering what some of the world’s greatest minds were like as people

About the Author

Will Durant was an American writer, historian, and philosopher. He became best known for The Story of Civilization – an eleven-volume work that he cowrote with his wife, Ariel Durant. The Durants were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.

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