{"id":20978,"date":"2024-02-01T17:49:58","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T01:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=20978"},"modified":"2024-02-02T09:39:11","modified_gmt":"2024-02-02T17:39:11","slug":"will-durant-the-greatest-minds-and-ideas-of-all-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2024\/02\/01\/will-durant-the-greatest-minds-and-ideas-of-all-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Durant, THE GREATEST MINDS AND IDEAS OF ALL TIME"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve read three short books about philosophy recently; this is the second. Each is quite different from the others. If the first book (review <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2024\/01\/25\/edward-craig-philosophy-a-very-short-introduction\/\">here<\/a>) was an overview focusing on the big questions that philosophy asks \u2013 What should we do? What is there? and How do we know? \u2013 this second one is a philosophy fan-boy\u2019s collection of top ten lists. So if the interest is, who are the top 10 philosophers of all time, this is the place to come.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/durantbk.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/durantbk-236x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"236\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Simon &amp; Schuster, 2002. Compiled and edited by John Little. 127pp including index.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Will_Durant\">Durant<\/a> was in fact a well known historian and public intellectual, for decades throughout the 20th century. He was the author, along with his wife, of an 11-volume work called THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION, published over many years, from 1935 to 1975, with a final volume unfinished at the time of his death in 1981, at the age of 96. (As I recall the Durants lived in Santa Monica, or adjacent Brentwood, and Will\u2019s passing was a big deal in local news at that time. In part because there was discussion of what would happen to his enormous collection of books. If I recall correctly, the honors went to Dutton\u2019s, a once-famous, by now long-closed, bookstore on San Vincente Blvd.)<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->This little book was compiled in 2002 by an authorized expert on Durant, but there\u2019s no indication inside it of when the component essays were first published. As magazine articles, perhaps? But for audiences in the 1930s, the 1950s, the 1970s? Perhaps it doesn\u2019t matter so much, because the overwhelming impression of the book is that Durant, presumably for his entire life, was a proponent of several classic attitudes about history and philosophy:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He defends the \u201cgreat man\u201d theory of history, in which historical advancements of the entire human race were\/are due to the brilliance of a select number of key men (always men). Geniuses he calls them, defending this thesis in the first, short essay here as Chapter 1, \u201cA Shameless Worship of Heroes.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Concomitant with this is his Western-bias, which was likely excusable throughout most of his lifetime, but wouldn\u2019t be now. Of his ten greatest thinkers and ten greatest poets, only two \u2013 Confucius and Li-Po \u2013 are non-Western.<\/li>\n<li>I sense a certitude of opinion in these writings. Durant seems to have developed fixed ideas about who and what have been the most important of all time. Neglecting, in contrast, any influence of taste and changing fashion (even among poets), or knowledge that has superseded the beliefs of some of his favorite thinkers.<\/li>\n<li>His prose is florid, sometime effectively, sometimes verging into fan-boy territory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On this last point, two examples. First, in his chapter about the \u201cgreatest\u201d thinkers, he begins by imagining when the miracle of thought began. I\u2019ll quote (p8):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When did the miracle begin? Perhaps when the great surges of ice came down relentlessly from the Pole, chilling the air, destroying vegetation almost everywhere, eliminating countless species of helpless and unadaptable animals, and pushing a few survivors into a narrow tropical belt, where for generations they clung to the equator, waiting for the wrath of the North to melt. Probably it was in those critical days, when all the old and wonted ways of life were nullified by the invading ice, and inherited or traditional patterns of behavior found no success in an environment where everything was altered, that animals with comparatively complete but inflexible instinctive equipment were weeded out because they could not change within to meet the change outside; while the animal we call man, dowered with a precarious plasticity, learned and rose to an unquestioned supremacy over all the species of the forest and the field.<\/p>\n<p>It was on some such life-and-death emergency as this, presumably, that human reasoning began. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This isn\u2019t bad; Durant does not reject the lessons of geological and evolutionary history. On the other hand he\u2019s wrong; humanity was not triggered into \u201cthinking\u201d by the traumas of the end of the last ice age. Human thinking began *much* earlier, though the ice ages may have influenced the survival of Homo sapiens vs. Neanderthals in the Europe of 12,000 years ago\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Second, his fan-boy take here, p14:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Why do we love Plato? Because Plato himself was a lover: lover of comrades, lover of the intoxication of dialectical revelry, passionate seeker of the elusive reality behind thoughts and things. We love him for his unstinted energy, for the wild nomadic play of his fancy, for the joy which he found in life in all its unredeemed and adventurous complexity. We love him because he was alive every minutes of his life\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And so on. No particular concerns with whether Plato was *right* or not, in view of later thinkers. (Some later thinkers have called Plato&#8217;s <i>Republic<\/i> fascist.) But Durant is not evaluating their thinking per se, but rather their influence, as he stipulates up front. What are the criteria of genius? An enduring influence upon mankind. And he limits \u201cthinkers\u201d to philosophers and scientists.<\/p>\n<p>So then, I\u2019ll summarize his various lists, with only the occasional comment.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Ch2, The Ten \u201cGreatest\u201d Thinkers<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Confucius<\/li>\n<li>Plato<\/li>\n<li>Aristotle<\/li>\n<li>Saint Thomas Aquinas<\/li>\n<li>Copernicus<\/li>\n<li>Sir Francis Bacon<\/li>\n<li>Sir Isaac Newton<\/li>\n<li>Voltaire<\/li>\n<li>Immanuel Kant<\/li>\n<li>Charles Darwin<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Voltaire? Apparently for his influence in passing others\u2019 ideas throughout France. In passing, author mentions many others that he could not include: Lucretius, Epicurus, Leibniz, Kant, Spinoza\u2026<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Ch3, The Ten \u201cGreatest\u201d Poets<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Here author admits these aren\u2019t picked due to fame, but due to his personal prejudices, for those who evoke \u201cthat strange mixture of music, emotion, imagery, and thought.\u201d<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Homer<\/li>\n<li>David (of the Psalms)<\/li>\n<li>Euripides<\/li>\n<li>Lucretius<\/li>\n<li>Li-Po<\/li>\n<li>Dante<\/li>\n<li>Shakespeare<\/li>\n<li>John Keats<\/li>\n<li>Percy Bysshe Shelley<\/li>\n<li>Walt Whitman<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Wikipedia indicates the Chinese poet is now known as <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Li_Bai\">Li Bai<\/a>, given changes in transliteration practices over the years. (Peking became Beijing, and so on.) And from the author\u2019s description, and other things I\u2019ve read, Lucretius sounds more interesting as a thinker than as a poet.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Ch 4, The One Hundred \u201cBest\u201d Books for an Education<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is where it might have been useful to know when this list was compiled. Because the majority of particular titles on the list are now so dated as to be of historical interest only. Wells as a history of the world? John Kellogg about health? Avoid psychoanalysis and behaviorism, author advises? (Well maybe yes.)<\/p>\n<p>The list is no longer useful. I Googled around for a contemporary version, focusing on \u201cbooks for a [general] education,\u201d and couldn\u2019t find anything; people tend to compose lists of \u201cbest\u201d books, though I think a modern list of 50 or 100 books that <em>in toto<\/em> would comprise a general education would be a really good idea. (The Harvard Classics? No, since they&#8217;re about <em>classics,<\/em> and don\u2019t address modern science at all.)<\/p>\n<p>Author mentions that his 27 starred, most-recommended, books should run only $90 at second-hand bookshops. Again, when was this written?<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Ch 5, The Ten \u201cPeaks\u201d of Human Progress<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>He begins by recalling Condorcet, who wrote the rare book optimistic about the progress of the human spirit\u2026 we encountered him in E.O. Wilson, review <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2016\/01\/16\/eo-wilson-consilience-2\/\">here<\/a>. And he defines progress as \u201cincreasing control of the environment by life.\u201d Which isn\u2019t bad. (My go-to definition is \u201cthe expansion of options.\u201d)<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Speech<\/li>\n<li>Fire<\/li>\n<li>The conquest of the animals<\/li>\n<li>Agriculture<\/li>\n<li>Social organization<\/li>\n<li>Morality<\/li>\n<li>Tools<\/li>\n<li>Science<\/li>\n<li>Education<\/li>\n<li>Writing and print<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Is this list chronological? Well he does describe the list as \u201cstages of growth, from the savage to the scientist,\u201d in which case I\u2019d say that evidence about when these various stages occurred has changed substantially since the author composed this list. For decades, I\u2019ve gathered, the use of tools was defined as the essential difference between humans and animals. Indeed, the novel and film <em><strong>2001: A Space Odyssey<\/strong><\/em> depicts how the discovery of tools \u2013 even if indirectly by extraterrestrial inspiration \u2013 was the key that gave our primitive ancestors domination over the other animals, long before speech or fire.<\/p>\n<p>My take on the thinking of recent decades is that social cooperation, and morality (what I\u2019ve been calling Savannah morality, very tribally based), preceded everything else, even fire. While tools nevertheless must have preceded agriculture and perhaps even the \u201cconquest\u201d (how very Western, this idea, like the \u201cconquest\u201d of the Americas, and the supposed \u201cconquest\u201d of space, a phrase current in the 1950s and 1960s) of the animals. Though domestication of a few species, maybe a couple dozen around the world, hardly constitutes a \u201cconquest.\u201d And did science and education really precede writing and print? Perhaps.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, his discussion of the progress of morality echoes the themes of Steven Pinker, in that he observes the reduction of superstition, how we\u2019ve become a gentler and more generous species, considering how serfs were once treated, how there were debtor prisons, torture, slaves, and so on. And: we think there\u2019s more violence in the world than before, but in truth there are only more newspapers, 98.2, a very contemporary insight. (And now there&#8217;s TV and social media, of course.) Modern marriage is an improvement on the practices of capture or purchase. There is less brutality, women have become emancipated, the idea of love has flourished. (It came to Pinker to explain why these changes occurred. Because the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution.)<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Ch6, Twelve Vital Dates in World History<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>This strikes me as the weakest list.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>424bc, introduction of the Egyptian calendar<\/li>\n<li>543bc, the death of Buddha<\/li>\n<li>478bc, the death of Confucius<\/li>\n<li>399bc, the death of Socrates<\/li>\n<li>44bc, the death of Caesar, with the subsequent Golden Age of Rome<\/li>\n<li>?bc, the birth of Christ<\/li>\n<li>AD 632, the death of Mohammed<\/li>\n<li>1294, the death of Roger Bacon<\/li>\n<li>1454, Gutenberg\u2019s printing press<\/li>\n<li>1492, Columbus discovers America, and revolutionizes European culture<\/li>\n<li>1769, James Watt perfects the steam engine, beginning the Industrial Revolution, and the beginning of the modern age<\/li>\n<li>1789, the French Revolution; author considers the French Enlightenment the peak of human history<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>An odd list for various reasons. Did particular deaths, or births, really mark history in some vital way? Surely it was those extended lives that had a lasting impact. This sort of undermines the notion of their being specific \u201cvital\u201d dates. And the James Watt item recalls the notion of <a href=\"https:\/\/fancyclopedia.org\/Steam_Engine_Time_(concept)\">Steam Engine Time<\/a> (which perhaps is only a science fiction concept), the idea that when historical circumstances allow a particular invention to be built, it will be built, and it doesn\u2019t matter who builds it; if James Watt hadn\u2019t perfected the steam engine, someone else would have sooner rather than later. Granted, Durant doesn\u2019t celebrate Watt as a hero himself; but I think a more correct statement would be to say \u201csteam engine perfected\u201d with Watt not given full credit.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p>I won\u2019t dwell on this little book any further. And I am unlikely to read anything more by Will Durant. But his Wikipedia page does provide this long quote about his conclusions \u201con the decline and rebuilding of civilizations,\u201d echoing Spengler.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Hence a certain tension between religion and society marks the higher stages of every civilization. Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals and belief which seems so favorable to statesmanship and art; it ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause of the past. For as knowledge grows or alters continually, it clashes with mythology and theology, which change with geological leisureliness. Priestly control of arts and letters is then felt as a galling shackle or hateful barrier, and intellectual history takes on the character of a &#8220;conflict between science and religion.&#8221; Institutions which were at first in the hands of the clergy, like law and punishment, education and morals, marriage and divorce, tend to escape from ecclesiastical control, and become secular, perhaps profane. The intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and\u2014after some hesitation\u2014the moral code allied with it; literature and philosophy become <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anticlericalism\">anticlerical<\/a>. The movement of liberation rises to an exuberant worship of reason, and falls to a paralyzing disillusionment with every dogma and every idea. Conduct, deprived of its religious supports, deteriorates into <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Epicurean\">epicurean<\/a> chaos; and life itself, shorn of consoling faith, becomes a burden alike to conscious poverty and to weary wealth. In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like body and soul, in a harmonious death. Meanwhile, among the oppressed another myth arises, gives new form to human hope, new courage to human effort, and after centuries of chaos builds another civilization.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We think of the modern world as being the one that, in its great expansion of science and technology, has undermined traditional religious and moral values. But Durant suggests here, it\u2019s happened over and over again. Well, OK, that\u2019s certainly plausible\u2026 I will think more on this, and be attentive to other examples.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve read three short books about philosophy recently; this is the second. Each is quite different from the others. If the first book (review here) was an overview focusing on the big questions that philosophy asks \u2013 What should we &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2024\/02\/01\/will-durant-the-greatest-minds-and-ideas-of-all-time\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,86,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-notes","category-history","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20978"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20983,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20978\/revisions\/20983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}