The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers

According to Durant, philosophy begins with an investigation into the nature of things, both in terms of human nature and their interaction with the world around them. The Story of Philosophy traces how various Western philosophers grappled with these issues in different ways over the centuries.

Plato and Aristotle set in motion thousands of years’ worth of debate when Plato located the essence of reality in abstract forms, of which material objects were only a representation. Reality had to be universal, and no physical object could be universal because it was bound by its physical dimensions: Just as it had been created, it was bound to decay. Aristotle, by contrast, argues that while objects may all have a specific existence, they are more real than universal archetypes, which have no existence outside the imagination. A logical process like a syllogism can establish generalities based on the combination of particulars (e.g., men are rational, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is rational [70-71]).

The moderns assume the basic framework of this debate, while reframing it as a contest between science and idealism. Bacon, Spinoza, and Russell were empiricists who each had great confidence in the ability of human beings to gain knowledge through sensory perception and scientific inquiry, even if they disagreed about the precise possibilities and limits of such inquiry. Kant, Schopenhauer, and Bergson located the essence of reality beyond human perception for various reasons: Kant out of a refusal to justify morality on the grounds of reason (301); Schopenhauer out of a desire to define life itself on an irrational basis; and Bergson’s urge to stem the tide of 20th-century hyper-rationalism.

Another major debate to echo across the ages is the possibility of human connection. Even as Plato and Aristotle located the heart of human existence within the city, they found the possibilities for connection limited inside it, as different classes, interests, and abilities could never form a harmonious whole. Any connections beyond the artificial ties of the city were utterly impossible. Bacon veers in the exact opposite direction, with his New Atlantis envisioning a cosmopolitan utopia hard at work at “enlarging the bounds of the human empire” (151) through the collection and diffusion of scientific knowledge. Voltaire is comparatively more sanguine about the possibilities of connection once humanity has overthrown the superstitions and tyrannies that artificially keep them apart, while Nietzsche despises any large association as sinking to its lowest common denominator.

Final answers on such questions are impossible to achieve, and the answers that arise invariably reflect the prejudices of time, place, and ongoing philosophical debate. Nevertheless, Durant presents the very effort to seek answers as a major driving force of civilization itself.