{"id":912,"date":"2024-10-05T14:58:31","date_gmt":"2024-10-05T12:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/editionsdupleix.com\/?p=912"},"modified":"2024-10-05T15:29:40","modified_gmt":"2024-10-05T13:29:40","slug":"review-by-h-w-wright-of-philosophy-and-the-social-problem-by-will-durant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/editionsdupleix.com\/en\/2024\/10\/05\/review-by-h-w-wright-of-philosophy-and-the-social-problem-by-will-durant\/","title":{"rendered":"(Review) by H. W. Wright of \u00ab\u00a0Philosophy and the Social Problem\u00a0\u00bb by Will Durant."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Will Durant, Philosophy and the Social Problem, socially engaged philosophy, philosophy and social change, philosophers of social action, philosophy and inequality, philosophy and justice, philosophical activism, Will Durant social philosophy, philosophy and human welfare<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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The ethical theory on which the argument of this book is based is that virtue is intelligence because intelligence gives foresight and makes possible the coordination of human desires. This is a well-known and perfectly respectable view, as old as Socrates, whom the author accepts as the fount of all wisdom in matters ethical. A good deal may be said for this view and the author says it with vigor and pungency. It is perhaps a pity that he accompanies his excellent defense of the Socratic principle with so much self-conscious swagger of extreme modernity and the inevitable contemptuous flings at benighted mid-Victorians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proper business of philosophy, according to the author, is social reconstruction: it should act as the mediator between pure science and social and political administration, formulating in the light of scientific discoveries, new ends and purposes which shall guide the process of social and political reconstructions. He selects for exposition five philosophers whose ideas seem to him to agree as a whole or in part with this conception of philosophy\u2019s mission, considering in succession \u201cthe Socratic plea for intelligence, the Platonic hope for philosopher-Kings, Bacon\u2019s dream of knowledge organized and ruling the world, Spinoza\u2019s gentle insistence on democracy as the avenue of development, and Nietzsche\u2019s passionate defense of aristocracy and power.\u201d This thesis also has its merits and the author argues them with spirit and vivacity, giving many an interesting turn to his discussion of familiar philosophical systems. But here again it is regrettable that he spoils the effect of his own argumentation by much foolish ranting against the philosophies and philosophers of the past, against \u201cepistemologs,\u201d \u201cCartesian nonsense,\u201d etc. A writer who says that Hegel would have been surprised if he had found that anyone was able to understand him and adds in explanation that \u201cobscurity can cover a multitude of sins\u201d makes a melancholy exhibition of his own philosophical scholarship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the arguments offered by Dr. Durant in support of the Socratic conception of virtue, the same absolute lack of historic perspective is revealed. The belief that virtue involves the subordination of selfish will to a universal ideal he denounces as a relic of theological superstition. Self-sacrifice he brands as a pious fraud; the conception of virtue it suggests as negative and feminine. The fact never seems to have come to his knowledge that intelligence must frequently wait for its data upon the results of actions which are in the fullest sense ventures, inasmuch as they are undertaken in response to demands as yet inarticulate and ideals whose practicability is yet to be demonstrated by the successful outcome of effort and struggle. He has still to learn the lesson of the Enlightenment, that when in our understanding of man and his social relations we limit ourselves to such facts as have already been established and can be clearly formulated, we condemn our moral and social philosophy to superficiality and early oblivion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

H. W. Wright, The Philosophical Review<\/em>, Vol. 27, No. 3 (May, 1918), pp. 324-325.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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