The Pleasures of Philosophy [antikvár]

ConfessionThis book, despite its gay new title, is a revised edition of The Mansions of Philosophy, which was published in 1929. That volume has been out of print for ten years; and the inquiries for it have mounted to the point where a new edition seems forgivable. Some pages betray their composition a quarter of a century ago, and the reader will smile at several bad guesses that they contain; I have since found it safer to write about the past than about the future. Certain pages are heavily sentimental, but they still express me faithfully. Others are cynical or unduly pessimistic, especially in Chapter XVIII; having discovered my own fallibility, I should be more lenient now with my fellow men, and with governments. Despite these sins the book has, I like to believe, some redeeming qualities; and I send it forth again on the seas of ink to find here and there a kindred soul in the Country of the Mind.Will DurantLake Hill, N. Y. November 15, 1952InvitationThis book is an attempt at a consistent philosophy of life. It tries to do for the problems of philosophy what The Story of Philosophy sought to do for the personalities and systems of the major philosophersto make them intelligible by transparent speech, and to vitalize them by contemporary application. We shall miss here the anecdotes, and the strokes of quoted genius, that there lightened the burden of our theme; but perhaps we shall be repaid by coming closer to the concerns of our own life in our own day. For the subject here is ourselves.Human conduct and belief are now undergoing transformations pro-founder and more disturbing than any since the appearance of wealth and philosophy put an end to the traditional religion of the Greeks. It is the age of Socrates again: our moral life is threatened, and our intellectual life is quickened and enlarged, by the disintegration of ancient customs and beliefs. Everything is new and experimental in our ideas and our actions; nothing is established or certain any more. The rate, complexity, and variety of change in our time are without precedent, even in Periclean days; all forms about us are altered, from the tools that complicate our toil, and the wheels that whirl us restlessly about the earth, to the innovations in our sexual relationships, and the hard disillusionment of our souls. The passage from agriculture to industry, from the village to the town, and from the town to the city, has elevated science, debased art, liberated thought,ixPART ONEINTRODUCTIONCHAPTER IThe Lure of PhilosophyI. preludeWhy is philosophy no longer loved to-day? Why have her children, the sciences, divided her inheritance, and turned her out of doors, like another Lear, with ingratitude unkinder than the winter's wind?Once the strongest men were willing to die for her: Socrates chose to be her martyr rather than live in flight before her enemies; Plato risked himself twice to win a kingdom for her; Marcus Aurelius loved her more passionately than his throne; and Bruno burned at the stake for loyalty to her. Once thrones and papacies feared philosophy and imprisoned her votaries lest dynasties should fall. Athens exiled Protagoras, and Alexandria trembled before Hypatia; a great pope courted timidly the friendship of Erasmus; regents and kings hounded Voltaire from their lands, and fretted in jealousy when at last all the civilized world bowed before the sceptre of his pen. Dionysius and Dionysius' son offered Plato the mastery of Syracuse; Alexander's royal aid made Aristotle the most learned man in history; a scholar-king lifted Francis Bacon almost to the leadership of England, and protected him from his enemies; and the great Frederick, at midnight when all his pompous generals had gone to sleep, held high revelry with poets and philosophers, envious of their boundless realms and their timeless sway.Those were great days for philosophy when bravely she took all knowledge for her province, and threw herself at every turn into the forefront of the mind's advance. Men honored her then; nothing was held nobler than the love of truth. Alexander rated Diogenes second only to Alexander, and1