Great quote. Of course Durant's volumes of history and civilization as well as his ground breaking book "The Story of Philosophy" should be known to everyone. In equal measure his racist beliefs and commitment to eugenics makes him hardly worthy of unqualified praise. In a word, much of his work is now considered toxic. To me, he was much more than those failings and he certainly distanced himself greatly from his youthful flirtation with Anarchism and Eugenics. His later praise of religion and dictatorship hardly balances it out though. Perhaps, its best to realize how great he was considering how flawed his thinking was in some areas. We should take as warning that like him we can get sucked into a dream of historical events, missing what lies beneath surface realities. I would suggest everyone read him and do what he did, which was to take a critical understanding of history. If we draw different and better conclusions and lessons from history, then we are worthy heirs to Durant's work.
Quite right. In fact, Durant's use of history to draw grand, supposedly immutable lessons, as if they were laws of physics is, I think, deeply misguided. I've never been a member of the fan club. But those two paragraphs are beautiful.
Great quote. Of course Durant's volumes of history and civilization as well as his ground breaking book "The Story of Philosophy" should be known to everyone. In equal measure his racist beliefs and commitment to eugenics makes him hardly worthy of unqualified praise. In a word, much of his work is now considered toxic. To me, he was much more than those failings and he certainly distanced himself greatly from his youthful flirtation with Anarchism and Eugenics. His later praise of religion and dictatorship hardly balances it out though. Perhaps, its best to realize how great he was considering how flawed his thinking was in some areas. We should take as warning that like him we can get sucked into a dream of historical events, missing what lies beneath surface realities. I would suggest everyone read him and do what he did, which was to take a critical understanding of history. If we draw different and better conclusions and lessons from history, then we are worthy heirs to Durant's work.
Quite right. In fact, Durant's use of history to draw grand, supposedly immutable lessons, as if they were laws of physics is, I think, deeply misguided. I've never been a member of the fan club. But those two paragraphs are beautiful.
Exactly right Dan.