Will Durant

William James Durant (1885-1981) was an American philosopher, historian and writer, best known for The Story of Civilization, an eleven-volume history of Eastern and Western civilizations that he wrote with his wife, Ariel. His importance lies in bringing philosophy and history to a broad readership in clear, unpretentious prose, at a time when both disciplines were increasingly split into narrow specialties.

Born in North Adams, Massachusetts, to French-Canadian Catholic parents who had emigrated from Quebec, he was educated by Jesuits and graduated from Saint Peter's College in Jersey City in 1907. For a time he considered becoming a priest, but he soon moved away from that path. He flirted with socialism around 1905, a commitment he later abandoned. He worked as a reporter for the New York Evening Journal, taught languages and mathematics at Seton Hall, and from 1911 to 1913 taught at the Ferrer Modern School, a libertarian institution, where he met Ariel Kaufman, whom he married in 1913. That same year he began giving lectures on world history in a church, and those talks became the seed of his major work. He earned his doctorate in philosophy at Columbia University in 1917, the year he published his first book, which examined the relationship between philosophy and social problems.

The Story of Philosophy began as a series of cheap pamphlets aimed at workers. Published as a book in 1926, it became a bestseller, and its earnings gave the couple the freedom to travel and, eventually, to leave teaching and write full time. Durant argued that philosophy should engage with ordinary life rather than retreat into abstraction. His approach to history, which he called integral history, looked beyond wars, rulers and great men to include culture, art, religion and everyday living conditions. It also carried an openly moral purpose: he believed understanding the past could help people tolerate one another's frailties. In Our Oriental Heritage he challenged the Western-centred view of history, and in the 1940s he promoted The Declaration of Interdependence, a statement against racial intolerance that was read into the Congressional Record in 1945. He also supported fair wages, women's suffrage and better working conditions.

The Story of Civilization appeared between 1935 and 1975. The tenth volume, Rousseau and Revolution, won the couple the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and in 1977 they received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Ariel died on 25 October 1981, and Will died two weeks later, on 7 November 1981, in Los Angeles.

Durant's lasting influence lies mainly in popular education. His accessible way of writing about history and philosophy for non-specialists has reached many readers, although professional historians have often criticised his broad generalisations and moralising tone.