The Story of Philosophy

"The Story of Philosophy: the Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers" is a book by Will Durant that profiles several prominent Western philosophers and their ideas, beginning with Plato and on through Friedrich Nietzsche. Durant attempts to show the interconnection of their ideas and how one philosopher's ideas informed the next.

There are nine chapters each focused on one philosopher, and two more chapters each containing briefer profiles of three early 20th century philosophers. The book was published in 1926, with a revised second edition released in 1933. The work was originally published as a number of pamphlets in the Little Blue Books series of inexpensive worker education pamphlets. [ [http://ktwu.wuacc.edu/journeys/scripts/412b.html "Little Blue Books"] ] They proved so popular they were assembled into a single book and published in hardcover form by Simon & Schuster in 1926.

Philosophers profiled are, in order: Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Baruch Spinoza, Voltaire (with a section on Rousseau), Immanuel Kant (with a section on Hegel), Arthur Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

The final two chapters are devoted to European and then American philosophers. Henri Bergson, Benedetto Croce, and Bertrand Russell are covered in the tenth, and George Santayana, William James, and John Dewey are covered in the eleventh.

Publication data

*Will Durant, "The Story of Philosophy: the Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers" (1926) New York: Simon & Schuster, revised edition 1933
**1967 Touchstone paperback: ISBN 0-671-20159-X
**1983 Simon and Schuster paperback (out of print): ISBN 0-671-69500-2
**1991 Pocketbooks mass market paperback: ISBN 0-671-73916-6
**1999 Tandem Library binding: ISBN 0-80857769-7

Notes