The Story Of Philosophy: From Plato To Voltaire And The French Enlightenment [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Will Durant (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 20, 2004

The first volume of this engaging survey covers Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Voltaire, and Rousseau. As well as offering historical context and a cogent explanation for each school of thought, Durant provides biographical information, a gentle reminder that philosophers are people as well as thinkers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Companion and guide, the golden-voiced Grover Gardener gives a bravura performance. He never drops a line, nor overplays one." -- AudioFile 2005, winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award

From AudioFile

[Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY: From Kant to William James and the American Pragmatists.]--"Most of us have known some golden days in the June of life when philosophy was, in fact, what Plato calls it, 'that dear delight.'" So writes Durant in the introduction to this immensely entertaining history of thought. The book is larded with savory bits of information. Aristotle thought the brain "an organ for cooling the blood." The German clergy so hated Kant for the blows he struck at God that they named their dogs after him. Plus, we learn an enormous amount and--perhaps more importantly--we sense again that learning matters. Companion and guide, the golden-voiced Grover Gardener gives a bravura performance. He never drops a line, nor overplays one. It's June again. B.H.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America; Unabridged edition (September 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572704195
• ISBN-13: 978-1572704190
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,651,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Philosophy 101, July 30, 2006

By 

George R Dekle "Bob Dekle" (Lake City, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Story Of Philosophy: From Plato To Voltaire And The French Enlightenment (Audio CD)

This Audio CD is the first half of Durant's 1947 revised edition of "The Story of Philosophy" a book originally published in 1927. Not only has the text aged well, the narrator reads it well. Durant waxes a trifle poetical at times, but he delivers the goods.

The book works chronologically through the history of philosophy, summarizing much, but stopping to give the biographies (and synopses of the thought) of all whom Durant considers major philosophers. Along the way the auditor learns some interesting tidbits: E.g. Darwin wasn't the first to conceive of evolution by natural selection. That honor belongs to the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Empedocles.

The philosophers whom Durant profiles are a who's who in the pantheon of thinkers:
Chapter I: Plato
Chapter II: Aristotle
Chapter III: Bacon
Chapter IV: Spinoza
Chapter V: Voltaire

Chapters VI-X are set forth in Volume II of this audiobook, "The Story of Philosophy: From Kant to William James and the American Pragmatists." If you have a CD with MP3 capacity, you might rather buy the entire book in that format.

Durant later, in "The Lessons of History," lamented the fact that he overlooked the scholastics, and his omission of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas constitutes the greatest weakness of the work. Durant atoned for slighting Aquinas in "The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time" by ranking him as one of history's 10 most influential thinkers.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Readable and Insightful, October 23, 2008

By 

CJA "CJA" (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Story Of Philosophy: From Plato To Voltaire And The French Enlightenment (Audio CD)

Durant has a gift for explaining complex philosophical ideas simply and for writing in an entertaining fashion. He also has an intriguing approach to the field. Instead of writing encyclopedically, he picks a half dozen philosophers as representative of 2000 years of philosophy.

The jump from Plato and Aristotle to Francis Bacon, however, hardly does justice to the philosophical life of man during the 1000 years of the "Dark Ages." Durant too easily falls into the conceit of writing off the Middle Ages as a time of barbarism and backwardness. I'm more inclined to write off Rome as barbaric and to view the rise of a Christian Europe as having a far more salutary and civilizing effect on man. How is it possible to write the story of Western philosophy without acknowledging the indispensable role of Christ and the scholastics?

Durant should have jumped from Aristotle to Christ and then to Aquinas and Ockham.

Durant does spend a few passages on the Middle Ages, characterizing the theocracy of the day as a realization of the philosopher kings of Plato's republic. It's a striking thesis, though it reveals what is perhaps the ulimate fallacy of Durant's approach -- that ideas determine social structure as opposed to the other way around. The faith-based intelligentsia of the Middles Ages was particularly well suited to the secular hierarchies and power structures of the day.

I was skeptical of Durant's choice of Spinoza as such a pivotal philosopher, but Durant's argument is ultimately persuasive. Spinoza does square the circle of religion and science by reconciling the two and Durant is probably right to conclude that Spinoza defined modern thinking on this issue. Equating God with nature and with Newton's laws is a thoroughly modern approach, as is the tendency toward determinism and a healthy skepticism for organized religion.

I'm not convinced by the primacy he gives Bacon. Although not strictly a philosopher, Isaac Newton was the great mind of his day and had more influence on shaping modern notions of science than did Bacon. Also, Durant's decision to write off the British empiricists and the study of epistemology as not being "real" philosophy is hard to justify.

His choice of Voltaire as the embodiment of the Enlightenment and the shift to modern thinking about religion and society, and his contrasting of Voltaire with Rousseau, is excellent.

This is a worthwhile and interesting book.