The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers is a 1926 book by Will Durant, in which he profiles several prominent Western philosophers and their ideas, beginning with Socrates and Plato and on through Friedrich Nietzsche. Durant attempts to show the interconnection of their ideas and how one philosopher's ideas informed the next.
There are nine chapters each focused on one philosopher, and two more chapters each containing briefer profiles of three early 20th century philosophers.
The book was published in 1926, with a revised second edition released in 1933. The work was preceded by a number of pamphlets in the Little Blue Books series of inexpensive worker education pamphlets.[1][2] They proved so popular they were assembled into a single book and published in hardcover form by Simon & Schuster in 1926.[3]
In a foreword to the readers in the second edition of the book, Durant expresses his acknowledgement for the criticism that the book received as to how it does not include philosophers from the Asian continent, most notably Confucius, Buddha and Adi Shankara.[4]
This work is the source of the popular quote, typically misattributed to Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” The phrase was originated by Durant when discussing Aristotle's work.[citation needed]
Publication data
Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: the Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers (1926) New York: Simon & Schuster, revised edition 1933
1962 Time Reading Program Special Edition (Time, Inc., New York)
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In philosophy and specifically metaphysics, the theory of Forms, theory of Ideas, Platonic idealism, or Platonic realism is a theory widely credited to the Classical Greek philosopher Plato. The theory suggests that the physical world is not as real or true as "Forms". According to this theory, Forms—conventionally capitalized and also commonly translated as "Ideas"—are the non-physical, timeless, absolute, and unchangeable essences of all things, of which objects and matter in the physical world are merely imitations. Plato speaks of these entities only through the characters in his dialogues who sometimes suggest that these Forms are the only objects of study that can provide knowledge.
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