John Carter
08-17-2005, 01:40 AM
I've mentioned WIll and Ariel Durant's monumental 11 volume history a couple of times, but nobody responded, and I get the feeling that this work is not very well known by the members here. If so, this is a real shame. It was 50 years in the writing, and from a purely literary perspective it is well worth the read.
Durant was a true renaissance man; he taught Latin, French, English and Geometry at Seton hall before attending Columbia in Ph.D. programs in Biology, Psycology and Philosophy. He eventually graduated with a doctorate in Philosophy.
His approach is what Durant called "integral" history. From the preface to the first volume:
I have tried in this book to accomplish the first part of a pleasant assignment which I rashly laid upon myself some 20 years ago, to write a history of civilization. I wish to tell as much as I can, in as little space as I can, of the contributions that genius and labor have made to the cultural heritage of mankind - to chronicle and contemplate, in their causes, character and effects, the advances of invention, the varieties of economic organization, the experiments in government, the aspirations of religion, the mutations of morals and manners, the masterpieces of literature, the development of science, the wisdom of philosophy and the achievements of art. I do not need to be told how absurd this enterprise is, or how immodest is its very conception, for many years of effort have brought it to but a fifth of its completion and have made it clear that no one mind, and no single lifetime, can adequately compass this task. Nevertheless I have dreamed that, despite the many errors inevitable in this undertaking, it may be of some use to those upon whom the passion for philosophy has laid the compulsion to try and see things whole, to pursue perspective, unity and understanding through history in time, as well as to seek them through science in space.
I have long felt that our usual method of writing history in separate longitudinal sections -- economic history, political history, religious history, the history of philosophy, the history of literature, the history of science, the history of music, the history of art -- does injustice to the unity of human life; that history should be written collaterally as well as lineally, synthetically as well as analytically; and that the ideal historiography would seek to portray in each period the total complex of a nation's culture, institutions, adventures and ways. But the accumulation of knowledge has divided history, like science, into a thousand isolated specialties, and prudent scholars have refrained from attempting any view of the whole -- whether of the material or of the living past of our race. For the probability of error increases with the scope of the undertaking, and any man who sells his soul to synthesis will be a tragic target for a myriad merry darts of specialist critique. "Consider," said Ptah-hotep 5,000 years ago, "how thou mayest be opposed by an expert in council. It is foolish to speak on every kind of work." A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: It offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole. Like philosophy, such a venture has no rational excuse and is at best but a brave stupidity, but let us hope that, like philosophy, it will always lure some rash spirits into its fatal depths.
This first volume is called Our Oriental Heritage and covers Asia from the beginnings (as known at the time) to Gandhi and Chiang Kai-Shek. Also from the preface to this volume (published in 1935):
At this historic moment -- when the ascendancy of Europe is so rapidly coming to an end, when Asia is swelling with resurrected life, and the theme of the 20th century seems destined to be an all-embracing conflict between the East and the West -- the provincialism of our traditional histories, which began with Greece and summed up Asia in a line, has become no merely academic error, but a possibly fatal failure of perspective and intelligence. The future faces into the Pacific, and understanding must follow it there.
The next volume called The Life of Greece continues Durant's integral method. He explains:
I wish to see and feel this complex culture not only in the subtle and impersonal rhythm of its rise and fall, but in the rich variety of its vital elements: its ways of drawing a living from the land and of organizing industry and trade; its experiments with monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, dictatorship and revolution; its manners and morals; its religious practices and beliefs; its education of children and its regulation of the sexes and the family; its poems and temples, markets and theaters and athletic fields; its poetry and drama; its painting, sculpture, architecture and music; its sciences and inventions; its superstitions and philosophy. I wish to see and feel these elements, not in their theoretical and scholastic isolation, but in their living interplay as the simultaneous movement of one great cultural organism, with a hundred organs and a hundred million cells, but with one body and one soul.
Durant originally envisioned a work of 5 volumes, but it soon became apparent that it would take more, much more. He continued to apply his integral approach to each succeding period. The volume on the Middle Ages, called The Age of Faith includes over 200 pages of Islamic culture, and 3 chapters on Jewish experience.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
Durant was a true renaissance man; he taught Latin, French, English and Geometry at Seton hall before attending Columbia in Ph.D. programs in Biology, Psycology and Philosophy. He eventually graduated with a doctorate in Philosophy.
His approach is what Durant called "integral" history. From the preface to the first volume:
I have tried in this book to accomplish the first part of a pleasant assignment which I rashly laid upon myself some 20 years ago, to write a history of civilization. I wish to tell as much as I can, in as little space as I can, of the contributions that genius and labor have made to the cultural heritage of mankind - to chronicle and contemplate, in their causes, character and effects, the advances of invention, the varieties of economic organization, the experiments in government, the aspirations of religion, the mutations of morals and manners, the masterpieces of literature, the development of science, the wisdom of philosophy and the achievements of art. I do not need to be told how absurd this enterprise is, or how immodest is its very conception, for many years of effort have brought it to but a fifth of its completion and have made it clear that no one mind, and no single lifetime, can adequately compass this task. Nevertheless I have dreamed that, despite the many errors inevitable in this undertaking, it may be of some use to those upon whom the passion for philosophy has laid the compulsion to try and see things whole, to pursue perspective, unity and understanding through history in time, as well as to seek them through science in space.
I have long felt that our usual method of writing history in separate longitudinal sections -- economic history, political history, religious history, the history of philosophy, the history of literature, the history of science, the history of music, the history of art -- does injustice to the unity of human life; that history should be written collaterally as well as lineally, synthetically as well as analytically; and that the ideal historiography would seek to portray in each period the total complex of a nation's culture, institutions, adventures and ways. But the accumulation of knowledge has divided history, like science, into a thousand isolated specialties, and prudent scholars have refrained from attempting any view of the whole -- whether of the material or of the living past of our race. For the probability of error increases with the scope of the undertaking, and any man who sells his soul to synthesis will be a tragic target for a myriad merry darts of specialist critique. "Consider," said Ptah-hotep 5,000 years ago, "how thou mayest be opposed by an expert in council. It is foolish to speak on every kind of work." A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: It offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole. Like philosophy, such a venture has no rational excuse and is at best but a brave stupidity, but let us hope that, like philosophy, it will always lure some rash spirits into its fatal depths.
This first volume is called Our Oriental Heritage and covers Asia from the beginnings (as known at the time) to Gandhi and Chiang Kai-Shek. Also from the preface to this volume (published in 1935):
At this historic moment -- when the ascendancy of Europe is so rapidly coming to an end, when Asia is swelling with resurrected life, and the theme of the 20th century seems destined to be an all-embracing conflict between the East and the West -- the provincialism of our traditional histories, which began with Greece and summed up Asia in a line, has become no merely academic error, but a possibly fatal failure of perspective and intelligence. The future faces into the Pacific, and understanding must follow it there.
The next volume called The Life of Greece continues Durant's integral method. He explains:
I wish to see and feel this complex culture not only in the subtle and impersonal rhythm of its rise and fall, but in the rich variety of its vital elements: its ways of drawing a living from the land and of organizing industry and trade; its experiments with monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, dictatorship and revolution; its manners and morals; its religious practices and beliefs; its education of children and its regulation of the sexes and the family; its poems and temples, markets and theaters and athletic fields; its poetry and drama; its painting, sculpture, architecture and music; its sciences and inventions; its superstitions and philosophy. I wish to see and feel these elements, not in their theoretical and scholastic isolation, but in their living interplay as the simultaneous movement of one great cultural organism, with a hundred organs and a hundred million cells, but with one body and one soul.
Durant originally envisioned a work of 5 volumes, but it soon became apparent that it would take more, much more. He continued to apply his integral approach to each succeding period. The volume on the Middle Ages, called The Age of Faith includes over 200 pages of Islamic culture, and 3 chapters on Jewish experience.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.