Already in 1934, this great historian wrote the following about China: "The magnificent Chinese civilization, which has a three-thousand-year history, will rise from the ruins it is in, and the 21st century will be a Chinese century."
Young Will, who was born in 1884 and gave up the seminary where he was sent to become a Jesuit priest, became a socialist. Just like Stalin went to seminary in his youth! The Durants, who created an exemplary relationship with their wife Ariel, wrote their magnificent 10 thousand-page work, "The Story of Civilization", after 40 years of effort. They won the Pulitzer Prize with this book.
I find the great success of Will Durant's historian and philosopher in his upbringing with the socialist tendency in his youth. Because, without a "dialectical materialist" philosophical approach, it would not be possible to analyze and make a meaningful interpretation of billions of events, phenomena, wars, peace, economy, culture, state, empires, in short, everything that concerns humanity, that have happened in the 50 thousand years of human existence.
William James Durant (November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981) was an American historian and philosopher, best known for his 11-volume work, The Story of Civilization, which contains and details the history of Eastern and Western civilizations. It was written in collaboration with his wife, Ariel Durant, and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy (1926), described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy".
In this book, the historical prediction that impressed me the most was the analysis made on China in 1934: "The magnificent Chinese civilization, which has a three-thousand-year history, will rise from the ruins it is in, and the 21st century will be a Chinese century," said the great thinker Will Durant. And at that time, the People's Republic of China didn't even exist yet. Even the elements that made China China, such as Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party, the Great March, and the Red Army, were just at the beginning and in the middle of a long Civil War.
Will Durant, an exemplary scientist in terms of having a vision, was able to see 70-80 years before this phenomenon occurred that one day the Chinese people would wake up and take a leading role on the stage of civilization.
He and his wife Ariel returned from the Soviet Union, where they went as socialists in 1933, in "disappointment" and "liberalized". But years later, they would state that they "made this decision very inexperienced and hasty" and reaffirm their faith.
Will Durant passed away at the age of 96, after a long and very fruitful life.
The most striking parts of his story
Historian and philosopher William James Durant and his wife, researcher and writer Ariel Durant, were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for the tenth book of the eleven-volume The Story of Civilization series.
Again, the husband and wife were awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom for their joint work in 1977.
Will Durant's book The Story of Philosophy has a significant impact on the meeting of philosophy with society in the USA, and his other works include Foundations of Civilization, Islamic Civilization, Heroes of History, The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time, Adventures in Genius, The Pleasures of Philosophy. and An Invitation to Philosophy.
After his graduation in 1907, he worked as a reporter for various magazines in New York for a while; He became a lecturer in Latin, French, English, and Geometry at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. Durant, who became the director of the Ferrer Modern School, which was founded in 1911 to provide education to workers' children, married his student Chaya (Ida) Kaufman ("Ariel"), with whom he would write his works in the following years.
During his doctoral studies at Columbia University, where he was an assistant in 1917, he wrote his first book, Philosophy, and Social Problem, in which he attributed the lack of development of philosophy to the fact that it ignored the current problems of society. Published in 1926, The Story of Philosophy was greatly appreciated as the first work that endeared philosophy to large audiences, and it sold well. That book was followed by Tragedy of Russia: Impressions from a Brief Visit and The Lesson of Russia in 1933.
His studies on the spread of cultures and the new forms they created by being influenced by each other, starting from 1913, formed the core of The Story of Civilization, which consists of eleven volumes, each containing more than a thousand pages. Using the financial opportunities provided to the family by the Story of Philosophy, the young couple, confined to their home, began working on their monumental work for forty years (1935-1975). During this process, Will Durant wrote the Declaration of Interdependence, based on the Americans' famous Declaration of Independence. This declaration, which was included in the minutes of the US Congress in 1945, is one of the first texts pointing out the vital importance of international solidarity in ensuring the well-being of humanity.
The life of Will and Ariel Durant is as extraordinary as their works. Ariel Durant stopped eating after her husband was hospitalized in 1981; They died fifteen days apart.
Last word: A wise one-sentence epilogue from Will Durant: "Great civilizations cannot be destroyed by an attack from outside unless they themselves are rotten from within."