Will Durant

Will Durant (November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981) was an American historian and philosopher. He is most famous for *The Story of Civilization*, an eleven-volume history of both Eastern and Western societies that he co-wrote with his wife, Ariel Durant, from 1935 to 1975. Earlier, his 1926 book *The Story of Philosophy* was hailed as a groundbreaking work that made philosophy accessible to a wide audience.

Durant saw philosophy as a total perspective—viewing things *sub specie totius* ("from the perspective of the whole"), a phrase he adapted from Spinoza’s *sub specie aeternitatis* ("from the perspective of the eternal"). He aimed to unify and humanize the vast, fragmented body of historical knowledge, which had become divided into specialized fields, and to make it relevant for contemporary life. For their success, he and Ariel Durant jointly received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.

Born in North Adams, Massachusetts, to French-Canadian Catholic parents Joseph Durant and Mary Allard, who had emigrated from Quebec, Durant graduated from St. Peter's Preparatory School in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1903. He then attended Saint Peter's College (now Saint Peter's University) in Jersey City, graduating in 1907. Historian Joan Rubin notes that during this period, despite some adolescent doubts, Durant prepared for the priesthood, a path that promised the cultural authority his mother hoped for. In 1905, he began exploring socialist philosophy, but after World War I, he concluded that a "lust for power" drives all political behavior. Even before the war, Rubin observes, his radical leanings competed with a strong interest in philosophy. He focused on Baruch Spinoza rather than the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, and his belief in self-discipline made him unsympathetic to anarchist calls to "be yourself." He argued that being one's "deliberate self" meant rising above passions and acting with "courageous devotion" to a moral cause.

From 1907 to 1911, Durant taught Latin and French at Seton Hall College in South Orange, New Jersey. He then taught at the Ferrer Modern School from 1911 to 1913, a school described as "an experiment in libertarian education." A supporter, Alden Freeman, sponsored his tour of Europe. In 1913, Durant resigned his teaching post and married 15-year-old Ariel Kaufman. They had one daughter, Ethel, and a foster son, Louis, whose mother was Ariel’s sister Flora. To support his family, Durant began lecturing at a Presbyterian church for $5 to $10 per talk; these lectures later became the foundation for *The Story of Civilization*. By 1914, Rubin notes, Durant began rejecting ideas of human evil and retreating from radical social change. He served as director and lecturer at the Labor Temple School in New York City from 1914 to 1927, while earning a PhD from Columbia University in 1917, the same year he taught philosophy there.

Durant’s writing career began in 1908 as a reporter for Arthur Brisbane’s *New York Evening Journal*, where he wrote articles on sexual criminals. In 1917, while completing his doctorate, he published his first book, *Philosophy and the Social Problem*, arguing that philosophy had stagnated by avoiding society’s real issues. *The Story of Philosophy* started as a series of Little Blue Books—educational pamphlets for workers—and became so popular that Simon & Schuster released it as a hardcover bestseller in 1926. This financial independence allowed the Durants to travel the world and spend four decades writing *The Story of Civilization*. Will left teaching to focus on the eleven-volume project.

Throughout *The Story of Civilization*, the Durants aimed for "integral history," resisting a specialized approach. They sought to write a biography of Western civilization, covering not only wars, politics, and biographies of great and villainous figures, but also culture, art, philosophy, religion, and the rise of mass communication. Much of the work examines the living conditions of ordinary people over 2,500 years, applying an unabashed moral framework that emphasizes "the dominance of the strong over the weak."