Customer Reviews

The Story Of Philosophy: From Kant To William James And The American Pragmatists

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This Audio CD is the second 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. Creationists weren't the first to conceive of Intelligent Design. That honor belongs to the French philospher Henri Bergson (b. 1859). In his heavily-researched book "Creative Evolution" Bergson rejects both natural selection and an omnipotent God as the creative force behind evolution, opting for a pantheistic creative force in all life.

The philosophers whom Durant profiles are a who's who in the pantheon of thinkers:
Chapter VI: Kant
Chapter VII:Schopenhauer
Chapter VIII: Spencer
Chapter IX: Nietzsche (Nietzsche?)
Chapter X: Contemporary European Philosphers (Bergson, Croce, & Russell)
Chapter XI: Contemporary American Philosophers (Santayana, James, & Dewey)

Chapters I-V are set forth in Volume I of this audiobook, "The Story of Philosophy: From Plato to Voltaire and the French Enlightenment." If you have a CD with MP3 capacity, you might rather buy the entire book in that format.

There is certainly much to be learned from this book, but there are parts that might have been trimmed, such as the coverage of Spencer (yawn), and there are parts that are quite unimaginative, such as Durant's typically postwar take on Nietzsche. I appreciate Durant's Hegelian vision of men as products of their age, but I think Durant overdoes it a trifle. The book is worth reading, but the reader should keep a salt shaker handy. Durant, too, was a product of his time.