key: cord-0059866-t4o871w9
authors: Di Leo, Jeffrey R.
title: Little Blue Books
date: 2020-12-12
journal: Catastrophe and Higher Education
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-62479-8_3
sha: 97e936fea514f138d0e6eb35b2f8c2ead1621638
doc_id: 59866
cord_uid: t4o871w9

This chapter examines some educational efforts in the aftermath of the Great War to win its race with catastrophe. The fear that humankind would destroy itself if there were to be another great war motivated a number of writers and publishers to contribute to what came to be regarded as the humanization of knowledge. Mass education of this kind aimed to arm humankind against the prospect of further catastrophe, and it required both a capacity for mass publishing and experts willing to write in a style that would appeal to a general audience. This chapter concerns a leading effort in this regard: the ubiquitous publication, dissemination, and legacy of what are known as the Little Blue Books.

Berger, the first socialist elected to the US House of Representatives. At the Milwaukee Leader, Emanuel wrote "five to seven columns daily" for $18 a week. 9 The poet Carl Sandburg, still unknown and in his thirties, worked at the desk next to Emanuel. From there, Emanuel moved on to work in turn for the socialist newspapers, the Chicago World and the Los Angeles Citizen. Then, he became editor of the Social Democrat and the Western Democrat , but soon left both to return in early August 1914 to New York to work again for the Call. His journalistic odyssey around the country would end when Louis Kopelin, the editor who first hired him to work for the Call, who was now in Washington, D.C. as national correspondent for the National Socialist Press, invited him in October of 1915 to become assistant editor for the Appeal to Reason, the world's largest socialist newspaper with a circulation of over 750,000, which was located in Girard, Kansas.

In Girard, he met Marcet Haldeman, the daughter of a prominent local banker. Marcet, who was very independent and progressive, and regarded Jane Addams as her "aunt," got on well with Emanuel, and they married in July of 1916. Marcet had left Girard, but returned about the same time that Emanuel had arrived because her parent's will stipulated that upon their death, she was required to move back to Girard and live there for one year if she wished to receive her inheritance.

At the end of the First World War, subscriptions to the New Appeal started to go down. So, as a measure to increase publishing revenue, Emanuel published the first two numbers of the New Appeal 's "Pocket Series" in February of 1919. By some accounts, the 1920s would be first time in US history where nearly the entire population could read and write, so the New Appeal 's series took off in part because of both a greatly expanding readership base and its relatively low price. "I thought it might be possible to put books in the reach of everyone rich or poor, though mostly poor-books that they would want, and which they could choose for the sake of the books alone," said Emanuel. "By that I mean that I dreamed of publishing in such quantities that I could sell them at a price which would put all books at the same cost level." 10 He regarded his mission in life now to be educating the masses through cheap classics. After he had published over two hundred titles, he changed the name from the "Appeal Pocket Series" to "Little Blue Books." Sixtyfour pages or so in length with a trim size of 3 ½ inches by 5 inches, they were printed on poor quality, thin wove paper, which was stapled twice in the center to a soft blue paper cover with black print.

According to R. Alton Lee, these Little Blue Books would come to "revolutionize the book-publishing industry." 11 Moreover, Lee contends that Haldeman-Julius "became the greatest publisher in world history" because he sold 500 million copies of the 2580 titles that his press published. 12 According to Lee, this "was second only to the U.S. Government Printing Office" in terms of quantity of publications. 13 In addition to the Little Blue Books, Emanuel also published at different points in his publishing career in Girard a weekly, a quarterly, and a monthly, and often used them to raise funds for his little books. In 1923, he was already looking to print 80,000 books per day in his southeastern Kansas facilities, and relished being called "The Henry Ford of Literature." 14 The books, which sold for as little as a nickel, were aimed at "Mr. Average Man." While some were simply reprints of the shorter classics of world literature including the plays of Shakespeare, many others, as was said of one of Emanuel's most famous authors, Bertrand Russell, were considered by some to be a "violation of the public health, safety, and the morals of the people." 15 16 But in addition to the sex, religion, marriage, and love books, there were also "How to" Little Blue Books on just about anything one could imagine, e.g., How to Play Golf (17,000), How to Psycho-Analyze Yourself (43, 000) , and How to Write Book Reviews (8000), as well as titles on many areas of common knowledge, e.g., Facts about Music (37,000), Latin Self -Taught (10,500), and Facts about Cancer (15, 000) . And many of these sold well too.

But as the titles of some of these books indicate, there is another way too to measure the impact of these Little Blue Books aside from sales figures. Namely, the commitment of Haldeman-Julius's publishing company to the publication of progressive, provocative, and controversial writing. One good example of this is his commitment to the publication of the writings of Bertrand Russell, particularly his more socially and politically controversial work such as What Can a Free Man Worship? (Little Blue Book, No. 677, 1925) and Why I Am Not a Christian (Little Blue Book, No. 1372 , 1929 . 17 Of the former title, a decade after its publication in his series, Haldeman-Julius said, It's one of the finest things I've ever read. This short masterpiece is an intellectual adventure that every intelligent person should want to experience by reading and studying it. I was so pleased with it when I first came on it some 10 years ago that I decided to give it a place in my library of Little Blue Books, where it has held an honored place ever since. It hasn't been a very popular number, but that doesn't hinder me from keeping the essay in print. Such a great, beautiful, profound study should always be available for minds capable of assimilating liberating ideas. 18 But, in spite of his admiration for his writing style, it was not Russell, one of the most progressive and well-known philosophers in the world that Haldeman-Julius asked to pen a series of introductions to the some of the classic philosophers in the Western tradition. 19 Rather, it was a relatively unknown young philosopher just a few years out of graduate school: William James Durant. 20

Before he completed his doctorate in philosophy at Columbia University in 1917 and published it as his first book the same year, Durant attended seminary and taught at the Modern School in New York and lectured at other Modern Schools. After his PhD, he also taught extension courses at Columbia University, and became Director of the Labor Temple School in New York City.

In his doctoral dissertation, entitled Philosophy and the Social Problem, Durant argued that philosophy had not grown because it avoided the actual problems of society. Durant describes its thesis as double-edged: (1) "Philosophy was ailing, and had forfeited public influence, because it had lost itself in the esoteric abstractions of logic and epistemology, and had turned, fainthearted, away from those problems of origin and destiny, nature and civilization, morality and government, religion and death" that had occupied philosophers from Plato to Nietzsche; (2) "the social problem-of narrowing the gap between our moral ideals of humanity and justice and the biological realities of human nature, economic greed, political corruption, and aggressive war-had elicited only superficial or impracticable proposals because it had been approached without a scientific study of needs and means, and without a philosophical grasp and reconciliation of desires and ends." 21 Comments on the book were described by Durant as generally "merciful," but there were also those like M. C. Otto who described it as a "get-rich-quick-philosophy" and Felix Adler who said of Durant, "This young man thinks he has discovered everything." 22 The book sold only one-hundred copies and the remaining nine-hundred were given back to Durant by the publisher. Needless to say, it was not his first book that caught the attention of Haldeman-Julius, but rather his public lectures in a New York City church.

The first time Emanuel Haldeman-Julius heard Will Durant lecture was in 1922. Durant's wife, Ariel, knew Haldeman-Julius from Greenwich Village, when he was "an impoverished, ambitious, book-loving youth called Emanuel Julius," and had spoken with him at some point about Durant's lectures at the Labor Temple. 23 The Labor Temple was a Presbyterian church at Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue on the East Side of New York. In 1910, the church lost most of its congregation to immigration, and as a result became a community church "theoretically dedicated to converting the immigrants to Presbyterian Christianity, but actually serving as a social and educational center for the pullulating neighborhood." 24 In the fall of 1913, Durant was asked by Dr. Jonathan C. Day to give his first lecture at the Labor Temple. The topic he chose was the philosophy of Spinoza. His audience consisted of "five hundred new Americans plus a handful of surviving Presbyterian church members." 25 When he finished the lecture, a man in the audience complained to Dr. Day saying, "What do you mean by letting this young radical preach an anti-Christian philosophy in this Christian church?" Dr. Day replied "that as long as he remained in charge of Labor Temple it would be open for the study of any philosophy that did not preach violence against the government of the United States." 26 The following year, Durant gave twelve lectures at Labor Temple from January 3 to March 21, 1914, "on the history of philosophy from Socrates to Bergson." 27 Thus began his lecture career at the Labor Temple, where from the fall of 1914 to February of 1927, Durant gave lectures on thirty or forty Sundays and Wednesdays a season "on almost every major subject: forty lectures on biology, forty on psychology, forty on the history of art, forty on music in the nineteenth century, forty on the history of science, forty on sociology, and probably 160 on political and economic history." 28 During the 1917-1918 season, for example, he delivered eighty lectures: forty on "Supermen: An Interpretation of History" and forty on psychology. 29 All of these lectures were designed by Durant to be "intelligible" to audiences of four-to seven-hundred people, mostly immigrants, "with little formal education." 30 Having heard about Durant's lectures from his old neighborhood friend, Ariel, and seeing a sign for an imminent lecture on Plato at the Labor Temple one Sunday afternoon in 1922, Haldeman-Julius dropped in to listen. He liked what he heard and was impressed by the size and composition of the audience, but had to "hurry away without making himself known." 31 Instead, he wrote Durant a letter offering to publish his lecture on Plato. Durant responded that his schedule was too busy for him to write up the lecture for publication. Haldeman-Julius responded to Durant's refusal by sending him a check for $150 as prepayment for the lecture, and by the close of 1922 his lecture was published as Little Blue Book No. 159.

Then, in May of 1923, Haldeman-Julius heard that Durant would be in Kansas City, 32 so decided to drive there from his home in Girard, Kansas to meet up with him. Haldeman-Julius liked Durant's book on Plato and non-technical approach to philosophy, which he knew as a publisher would appeal to his audience, so traveled to Kansas City intent on signing the philosopher to write for the Haldeman-Julius Weekly. It was a progressive newspaper he had just launched on December 9, 1922 with a blistering attack on the Ku Klux Klan, which he described as "something slimy which had crept out of the gutter. It represents organized hatred, bigotry, maliciousness, jealousy, and cruelty. It is living proof that America is not a civilized country." 33 Haldeman-Julius prevailed, and Durant went on for the next three years to write a series of essays on philosophy for the progressive publisher located in America's heartland. 34 These essays were published by Haldeman-Julius as Little Blue Books. They found in Durant an author that sold surprisingly well: as of 1928, Durant's Little Blue Book on the philosophy of Henri Bergson had sold 8000 copies; Herbert Spencer, 19,000 copies; Voltaire, 24,000; Immanuel Kant, 24,000; Francis Bacon, 25,500; Arthur Schopenhauer, 26,500; Aristotle, 27,000, and Plato, 39,000. The best-selling one though was his essay on Nietzsche, which as of 1928, had sold 45,000 copies. 35 In July of 1925, Haldeman-Julius was in New York City for a vacation with his wife, Marcet. While there he met with M. Lincoln Schuster of the publishing house, Simon and Schuster. Like Haldeman-Julius, who became notorious and successful for publishing books on topics such as sex, birth control, prostitution, and freethinking, Schuster too gained notoriety and success in the early 1920s albeit for taking advantage of the country's cross-word puzzle craze by founding a company in 1924 with Richard Simon to publish them. 36 Over lunch, Schuster told Haldeman-Julius that unlike the publisher of the Little Blue Books, he was not interested in the mass production of books. Rather, Schuster just wanted to produce a few quality books and picked Haldeman-Julius's brain for book ideas. "How about a good, wellwritten history of philosophy," suggested Haldeman-Julius. "But who would write it?" asked Schuster. "There are not many Will Durant's," responded Haldeman-Julius. 37 The more he thought about Schuster's question the more he became convinced that Will Durant should be the author. So he pitched the idea of publishing Durant's fifteen Little Blue Books on philosophy in one volume. Schuster thought this was a good idea, and a year later, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers (1926) came out.

Initially though Durant was hesitant to publish his book with Simon and Schuster. Earlier, just after the publication Durant's final Little Blue Book on the history of philosophy, Haldeman-Julius told Durant "he intended to buy a large press and a bindery, and to issue clothbound books of which one would be The Story of Philosophy." 38 But Haldeman-Julius abandoned the idea and said that they should both "seek a publisher, and divide the royalty." 39 While Durant was talking with Simon and Schuster, he had worked out a deal to publish the book with The Macmillan Company, who had published his dissertation some years earlier. 40 When Haldeman-Julius suggested publishing with Simon and Schuster, Durant balked, saying "who were Simon and Schuster?" Continues Durant, I had heard of them, but only in connection with crossword-puzzle books. Why shouldn't I enjoy the prestigious imprint of the most highly regarded publishing firm in America, perhaps in the world? 41 To that, Haldeman-Julius, sagely countered, but that "was just the rub: it was an old firm, grown cautious and stodgy; our book would be lost in the hundreds or so volumes Macmillan would issue in 1926." 42 Simon and Schuster, continued Haldeman-Julius, "constituted a young enterprising duo; [the] volume would be their first serious publication; their own fortune would in some measure be bound up with [yours]; they would push the book with a youthful initiative and energy that could not be expected of an established firm." 43 And he was right.

The Story of Philosophy proved to be both a ground-breaking and bestselling book that made Durant financially independent. 44 This allowed him to leave teaching and lecturing to focus on writing the eleven-volume work, The Story of Civilization , 45 of which the first six volumes would carry only his name, while the final five would carry the name of his wife, Ariel, as co-author. The writing on this multivolume project would go on for the next four decades. The tenth volume, Rousseau and Revolution (1967), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and the Durant's received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 from US President Gerald Ford for their work on the multivolume series.

Durant later expressed his appreciation to both Simon and Schuster ("Happy the day they came into our lives" 46 ), and Haldeman-Julius, writing to the latter, "I owe you two great debts: first, you took the initial chance on me and had the unprecedented courage of putting philosophy into a magazine and into your booklets and second that you secured Simon and Schuster as publishers." 47 Moreover, if Haldeman-Julius had not introduced Durant to Schuster, who knows if either of these beloved "stories" would have ever been published: one that helped to popularize philosophy in the United States, and the other that became the most successful historiographical series in history-and put Simon and Schuster on the publishing map. 48 In fact, Ariel Durant said "Will had no intention of writing a Story of Philosophy; indeed, such a book would be only another example of what he was to call 'shredded history,' treating a single strand of the complex web called civilization." 49 But he did-and it opened the door that allowed him to explore in print the "complex web" of civilization for the next forty years.

Unlike Philosophy and the Social Problem, which only sold one-hundred copies and was not well advertised by The Macmillan Company, The Story of Philosophy was an immediate best-seller largely through heavy advertising. Publishing in May of 1926, by November it "was heading best-seller lists of non-fiction throughout the country from Boston to Los Angeles." 50 "My book," says Durant, "became a social necessity; every proper family felt obliged to display it on the table or the shelf." 51 By October of 1927, the New York Times reported that The Story of Philosophy had sold close to 200,000 copies. But it also took a jab at Durant reporting that though Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica had probably sold about one-hundred and twenty copies since its publication in the early 1910s, "Mr. Russell believes in the common people and Mr. Durant does not." 52 And so too did many others in many different ways take jabs at the book.

In fact, in spite of their financial success, neither Durant "story" is without its critics and controversies. And Durant was well aware of this from the beginning. He entitled both of these projects "stories" to differentiate them from the work published by specialists in philosophy and history, but it was not enough to spare him from their wrath and scorn. In his opening address, "To the Reader," in the 1926 edition of The Story of Philosophy, Durant acknowledges the idiosyncratic nature of his project: "This book is not a complete history of philosophy. It is an attempt to humanize knowledge by centering the story of speculative thought around certain dominant personalities." 53 The philosophers he focuses on are Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Spinoza, Voltaire, Kant, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Nietzsche, Bergson, Croce, Russell, Santayana, James, and Dewey-albeit the latter six in much less detail than the others. He continues:

Certain lesser figures have been omitted in order that those selected might have the space required to make them live. Hence the inadequate treatment of the half-legendary pre-Socratics, the Stoics and Epicureans, the Scholastics, and the epistemologists. The author believes that epistemology has kidnapped modern philosophy, and well nigh ruined it; he hopes for the time when the study of the knowledge-process will be recognized as the business of the science of psychology, and when philosophy will again be understood as the synthetic interpretation of all experience rather than the analytic description of the mode and process of experience itself. 54

Another reason for some of the omissions is that Durant does not regard them as thinkers in the history of philosophy. So, for example, he says that Karl Marx is not in the book because Durant sees him as belonging to the history of economics and politics; Christ is not in the volume because he belongs to the history of religion; and the Scholastics are not in the volume because they belong to the history of theology. 55 Moreover, Durant continues in his opening address his assault on analytic and professional philosophy by refusing to acknowledge the importance of the "parts of philosophy" to its study. 56 For him the practice of philosophy as logic, aesthetics, ethics, social and political philosophy, and metaphysics (which includes ontology, philosophical psychology, and epistemology) "dismembered it" and led it to lose "its beauty and its joy." 57 "We shall seek it," continues Durant, "not in its shrivelled [sic] abstractness and formality, but clothed in the living form of genius; we shall study not merely philosophies, but philosophers; we shall spend our time with the saints and martyrs of thought, letting their radiant spirit play about us until perhaps we too, in some measure, shall partake of what Leonardo called 'the noblest pleasure, the joy of understanding.'" 58 In short, Durant summarizes the four major criticisms of The Story of Philosophy as follows: that the book had unforgivable omissions, that it paid too little attention to metaphysics and epistemology, … that its effect would be to make the reader think that he had now sufficient acquaintance with the philosophers. … [and that] [i]t was disgracefully and unforgivably popular. 59 Many of these criticisms came from established professional philosophers such as Paul Weiss and Morris Cohen. Even John Dewey, who is well covered in Durant's volume and overall praises it, still attempts to "forgive" its popular aspects:

While the book is one of popularization, it is also much more than that as popularization is usually conceived. The work is thoroughly scholarly. Dr. Durant has gone to the original writings and not to second-hand sources. He has selected the thinkers who are expounded with good judgment; his expositions are accurate as well as clear; his personal comments are always intelligent and useful. He has shown remarkable skill in selecting quotations that are typical, that give the flavor of the author, and that are readable. In fine he has humanized rather than merely popularized the story of philosophy. 60 Of this last line, Dewey seems to propose that it is more acceptable to "humanize" the story of philosophy than it is to merely "popularize" it.

The distinction is an interesting one though probably would not stand up well to closer scrutiny. But Dewey's point is clear and well taken: we need to be suspicious of popular philosophy.

When I first encountered Durant's "story" about philosophy, it was as someone who had never taken a college course in philosophy but had read works from a number of the philosophers discussed in his book. His style of writing was engaging and his outlines of the opinions of these philosophers were clear and easy to understand. So aside from the sin of omission, what was not to like about it?

Over the years, as I came to take more and more university courses in philosophy, both as an undergraduate and a graduate student, Durant's "story" became an increasingly inadequate one. I cannot recall any of my philosophy professors at any level speaking-well of this book. In fact, I learned that it is best to dismiss it as mere "popular" philosophy that pales compared to the work of specialists in the various areas of philosophy.

Recently, a friend of mine, who had just "discovered" Durant's book, shared his excitement about it to me and asked me my opinion of it. While I gave him the obligatory professional philosopher dismissal of it, I found myself dissatisfied with the response. It was not that the book had changed in terms of its content (the version found in every Barnes & Noble philosophy section in America is still basically the same text as found in the first edition and the Little Blue Books). But rather it was that the market for "popular" philosophy has changed.

Whereas in 1926, philosophy in America had not yet become "popularized," today it is. Academic and trade publishers alike now have many options available for learning about philosophy short of plowing through primary philosophical writings. They include a wide variety of dictionaries, handbooks, glossaries, textbooks, and anthologies. Major philosophy publishers like Oxford University Press and Routledge now even put out book series' of "very short" introductions to major philosophers and ideas in philosophy, some of which like Peter Singer's Hegel : A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001) are written by major contemporary philosophers.

There are also a variety of "illustrated" introductions to philosophy such as Introducing Hegel -A Graphic Guide (Icon Books, 2012) written by Lloyd Spenser and illustrated by Andrzej Krauze, a book that was formally published under the title, Hegel for Beginners (Icon Books, 1992) . Think too of books like Star Trek and Philosophy (Open Court, 2008) where twenty-one professional philosophers address philosophical issues in the television and movie series. 61 There is even another book called The Story of Philosophy that is now in its second edition (DK 2016) written by Bryan Magee who has taught philosophy at Oxford University (though even today, it does not sell as well as Durant's original). The list here is endless as is the market for these books. And many of these books like the ones above are written by professional philosophers-folks from the same group that today still sneers at Durant's "story."

Given the plethora of options for "popular" philosophy today, it seems untimely to dismiss summarily Durant's story-even if one is a professional philosopher. Why? Because to take it down is also to take down the immense market for and range of popular philosophy books today. Many of which, like my own book, From Socrates to Cinema (McGraw-Hill, 2007) , are aimed at college students and general readers who are interested in philosophy but find many of its primary texts too daunting and much of its contemporary professional writing completely inaccessible. In From Socrates to Cinema, I address this challenge directly by using both short stories and films in conjunction with more traditional philosophical writing, to introduce the reader to philosophy. 62 In 1953, over twenty-five years after the publication of the first edition of The Story of Philosophy, the 68-year-old Durant was asked by his publishers to write a new preface to the second edition. Taking his title from John Henry Newman's famous defense of his religious opinions, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Defense of One's Own Life, 1864), Durant defended his philosophical opinions with the tongue-in-cheek title, "Apologia Pro Libro Suo," which literally means "a defense of one's own book."

He begins by reminding us that in the first quarter of the twentieth century, "outlines" like his were all the rage. 63 "Human knowledge had become unmanageably vast; every science had begotten a dozen more, each subtler than the rest," and "millions of voices called for" help from writers and publishers to navigate it. 64 Durant ridicules "specialists" in science and philosophy saying "the scientific specialist [was one] who knew 'more and more about less and less,' and the philosophical speculator [was one] who knew less and less about more and more." "The specialist," snarks Durant, "put on blinders in order to shut out from his vision all the world but one little spot, to which he glued his nose." 65 Much like today, where understanding science and philosophy involves mastery of a discipline-specific vocabulary, Durant bemoaned that in the mid-1920s, "Every science, and every branch of philosophy, developed a technical terminology intelligible only to its exclusive devotees." 66 He saw a situation in science and philosophy where people educated in these areas "found themselves ever less capable of expressing to their educated fellow-men what it was that they had learned." 67 For Durant, the problem with this communication gap between specialists and non-specialists is a political one. Without teachers to bridge this gap, he feared a rise of authoritarianism. Writes Durant, "if knowledge became too great for communication, it would degenerate into scholasticism, and the weak acceptance of authority; mankind would slip into a new age of faith, worshipping at a respectful distance its new priests; and civilization, which had hoped to raise itself upon education disseminated far and wide, would be left precariously based upon technical erudition that had become the monopoly of an esoteric class monastically isolated from the world by the high birth rate of terminology." 68 In a way, his project in The Story of Philosophy is much like the one Wells set out to achieve in The Outline of History (1919-1920), which was written (as we say in the previous chapter) to educate the masses about history in order to avoid catastrophe-or more simply put, to save the world. Also, Durant rightly sees his own book as comparable to Well's book, which he says was criticized for its "errors" and which historians "did not quite know what to do with." "History became popular" with the publication of The Outline of History writes Durant, "and historians became alarmed." "Now it would be necessary for them to write as interestingly as H. G. Wells." 69 Durant points out that his book was written at a time when there was a "flood" of "story" and "outline" books: "Outline followed outline, 'story' followed 'story'; science and art, religion and law, had their storiographers." 70 But the market for these "story" and "outline" books was soon saturated, and the public appetite was quickly satiated; critics and professors complained of superficiality and haste, and an undertow of resentment set in, which reached every outline [and story] from the last to the first. As quickly as it had come, the fashion changed; no one dared any longer say a word for the humanization of knowledge; the denunciation of outlines was now the easy road to critical repute; it became the style to speak with a delicate superiority of any non-fiction book that could be understood. The snob movement in literature began. 71 Twenty-five years after the publication of his book, Durant does not shy away from the conditions of its production, nor does he deny that many of the criticisms of it are warranted. "The worst sin of all-though the critics do not seem to have noticed it-was the omission of Chinese and Hindu philosophy," or what we today might call "world" philosophy. "Even a 'story' of philosophy that begins with Socrates, and has nothing to say about Lao-tze and Confucius, Mencius and Chwang-tze, Buddha and Shankara, is provincially incomplete," he continues. He claims that his attempt to atone for the omission of Eastern philosophy was the publication in 1935 of Our Oriental Heritage, the first volume of his The Story of Civilization. 72 "As for the word 'Story,' which has since been so abused with use," writes Durant, "it was chosen partly to indicate that the record would concern itself chiefly with the more vital philosophers, partly to convey the sense that the development of thought was a romance as stirring as any in history." 73 But in spite of all its flaws and critics, the book allegedly raised interest in the philosophical classics. According to Durant, "sales of the philosophical classics increased some two hundred per cent.

[sic] after the publication of the Story." He continues:

Many publishers have issued new editions, particularly of Plato, Spinoza, Voltaire, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. A high official of the New York Public Library, who asked to be unnamed, reports that: ever since the publication of The Story of Philosophy we have had a wide and increasing demand from the public for the philosophical classics, and our stock of them in branch libraries has been gradually increased … Formerly, current books about philosophy were purchased in small quantities for the system; but in the last two or three years a readable new book about philosophy is purchased very generally at the outset, in anticipation of a demand which eventually does develop, and quickly at that. 74 Durant adds too that as of 1953, the book was already translated into German, French, Swedish, Danish, Jugo-Slavian, Chinese, Japanese, and Hungarian. Today, many other languages have been added to the list, and it still has a global readership. One can easily find, for example, online comments about it from enthusiastic lay readers from across the world in Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and a host of other languages.

In 1925, Durant published Little Blue Book No. 813, "Contemporary American Philosophers: Santayana, James, and Dewey." Of Santayana, Durant writes, "he represents an older and foreign school; and the subtlety of his thought, and the fragrance of his style, are like perfume that lingers in a room from which the flowers have been taken away." 75 This kind of statement is typical of Durant's romantic style. For those who have read Santayana and know his philosophical style, it is hard to argue with Durant's characterization, but few would express it in these words to an audience of professional philosophers. "We shall have, very probably," concludes Durant, "no more Santayanas; for hereafter it is America, not Europe, that will write America's philosophies." 76 While Durant's latter claim is debatable, as all of the major American philosophical movements after the death of Santayana arguably have strong roots in European philosophy, 77 he was correct that America would not see another Santayana though in ways he could not have known for certain in 1925.

Santayana retired from the Harvard University philosophy department in 1912 at the age of forty-eight and moved back to Europe, where he was born. However, he never worked again for the academy despite many offers by major universities in America and Europe. He continued to write philosophy, poetry, and literary and cultural criticism up until his death in 1952. One of the most famous lines he gave us was written in 1905 and speaks well to our theme of catastrophic education. Fifteen years before Wells composed An Outline of History, Santayana famously wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." 78 This line would become a standard refrain in reference to the importance of educating oneself in history after the catastrophe of the First World War of 1914-1918. Santayana, like Wells, was an advocate of "human progress," but saw it more in Platonic terms rather than Darwinian ones. "Progress," wrote Santayana, "is relative to an ideal which reflection creates." For Santayana, who was a colleague of William James at Harvard, progress was the topic of a five-volume study, the Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress . Each volume of his "biography of the human intellect" 79 took up in turn one particular aspect of the life of reason: reason in common sense, society, religion, art, and science. His famous line about the importance of remembering the past comes from the end of the first volume in the context of a discussion of progress.

However, while everyone remembers his line about the danger of forgetting the past, what precedes this line is just as important. "Progress," writes Santayana, "far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness." 80 I take him to mean by this that progress requires us to not just learn about the past, but also to retain this knowledge. It is here that a memorable style becomes important to retention.

In the preface to the second edition of The Life of Reason, published in 1922, almost twenty years later, Santayana speaks about being "branded by a great war." Like Wells, Santayana was on the continent during the Great War. He makes the remarkable statement in this preface that he can no longer now "take every phase of art or religion or philosophy seriously, simply because it takes itself so." 81 In 1922, "these things seem to me less tragic than they did [in 1905], and more comic," writes Santayana. "When our architecture is too pretentious, before we have set the cross on the spire, the foundations are apt to give way." 82 These warnings about self-importance and pretentiousness are a fitting given the kind of approach to philosophical writing and publishing championed by Haldeman-Julius and Durant.

Durant reminds us that we should not be "ashamed of teaching the people" even if we are "imperfect" at it by some standards. "We are all imperfect teachers, but we may be forgiven if we have advanced the matter a little, and have done our best." 83 He did his best spending eleven years researching the material in his book, and three years writing it first as a series of Little Blue Books aimed at lay readers, and then publishing it as one volume at the request of M. Lincoln Schuster. Like his estimation of Santayana, there will very probably never be another Durant. Today, close to one-hundred years after Durant offered us a "story" about philosophy complete with humor, and colorful language and characters, the book continues to be widely-read by non-specialists-and disparaged by specialists. However, the story of philosophy today does not end with Santayana, and if anything, philosophy has become even more specialized and complex over the past century. Moreover, if the "humanization" of knowledge was already suspect in the 1950s as noted by Durant above, then twenty-first-century posthumanism presents a whole new set of challenges for the general dissemination of knowledge. But the world today is not unlike the world of Wells and Durant in that it flirts daily with catastrophe and has seen a rise in authoritarianism. This has been particularly apparent in the wake of the global Coronavirus and our response to it. Educated opinion seems to be in short supply, and the world stage is now open to bullies, tyrants, and dictators. In brief, our inhumanity is threatening to eliminate its opposite, humanity.

In fact, one of the most popular philosophers on the planet today, Slavoj Žižek, is even arguing that we must reject humanism and embrace our inhumanity. 84 Moreover, in spite of the plethora of popular options to learn about philosophy, its popularity seems to be waning. Philosophy departments are being closed and the major struggles to attract students compared to vocational ones such as business, nursing, and engineering. Some might find it naïve today to believe, along with Durant, Wells, and Haldeman-Julius, that the publication of accessible and popular books aimed at a mass audience can keep us from moving down the path of catastrophe and inhumanity. However, I am not one of them.

Philosophy needs a "story" now more than ever. Durant's "enduring" "romance" served its audience well, but it is time for a new one-a story that transitions philosophy from the twentieth century to the twenty-first, and not the nineteenth century to the twentieth like the original. Why not hope too that it is a "story" or a series of "short stories" that saves academic philosophy from obsolescence in the age of authoritarianism and vocational training? This would be an ironic and bittersweet victory for Durant after a century of dismissal of his own "story" by academic philosophers.

As for Haldeman-Julius, who died a year before Santayana, his Little Blue Books were published under the management of his son, Henry J. Haldeman, until the plant that produced them was destroyed by fire in 1978. In the next chapter, his publishing revolution and legacy with be connected to a more recent and radical one: self-publishing.

Publisher for the Masses, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius

According to him, the CUNY Board "in effect established a chair of indecency," and "acted arbitrarily, capriciously, and in direct violation of the public health, safety, and the morals of the people and of the petitioner's rights" (ibid., 221). Russell's appointment to CUNY was announced on

Publisher for the Masses

For an excellent survey of Russell's publishing relationship with Haldeman-Julius, see

Questions and Answers, 6th series

History of Western Philosophy: And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day was published in 1945 in the United States by Simon and Schuster and in the United Kingdom in 1946 by George Allen & Unwin. It began as a series of lectures he gave at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia during 1941 and 1942. He received a 3000 advance from his publishers and wrote the book between 1943 and 1944 while living at Bryn Mawr College. Like H. G. Wells and Will Durant before him, his survey would provide him with financial security for the rest of his life

spite of its popularity, it has been highly criticized in academic circles for its errors and overgeneralization

As if to prove the lack of connection between America's foremost philosopher and his own name, Durant writes that his father "received no schooling, and never learned to read or write

Debates by prominent public figures as a way to promote philosophical ideas as well as profit from them have a long history that is an important aspect of the popularization of philosophy. Recently, for example, Slavoj Žižek had a sold out debate with the psychologist Jordan Peterson on the topic of happiness that was dubbed the "duel of the century

Publisher for the Masses, 109. 35. Ibid., 219. 36. Ibid., 122. 37. Ibid

A Dual Autobiography, 101. 39. Ibid

It only sold 100 copies, and Macmillan "burdened with nine hundred unsold copies, appealed to [Durant] to come take them away

101. 42. Ibid

At the time of deal, Max Schuster was twenty-eight, and Richard Schuster was twenty-six

The contract with Simon and Schuster granted Durant half of the twelve-and-one-half percent royalty, and Haldeman-Julius, the other half. Schuster suggested to Durant that he offer Haldeman-Julius five-hundred dollars for his share, and Haldeman-Julius accepted. When the book became a financial success, Durant reports that Haldeman-Julius "never complained of this somewhat selfish transaction," but rather "rejoiced in the success of the book which owed its existence to him, and he entertained me with fraternal hospitality when, a year later

It is his ambition … to lay aside enough money so that when he reaches the age of forty he may dispense with giving lectures, … and go on extended trips to France and England to engage in research work in preparation for a book that would show the interdependence, in history, of politics, economics, art, literature, and science

A Dual Autobiography, 101. 47. Ibid

Durant says that Macmillan seemed "relieved" to not have to publish the book (Will and Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiography

A Dual Autobiography, 95. 50. Ibid., 103. 51. Ibid

To which Durant responded, "I believe in the equal right of common people to access to the education that may make them uncommonly fit for uncommon tasks

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers

A Dual Autobiography, 103. It should be noted that the government publishing office of Soviet Russia rejected The Story of Philosophy because there was no chapter on Marx

Moore and logical atomism (and logical-analytic pluralism) of Bertrand Russell a methodology that could mirror the exactitude and certainty of the sciences. Logical empiricism rejected metaphysics as unverifiable and focused instead on perfecting conceptual analysis. Moreover, analytic philosophers had a "linguistic turn

Durant's work set itself in opposition to this approach to philosophy. Nevertheless, Durant also says "I doubt philosophy when it is metaphysics" (Will and Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiography, 404), describing his own philosophical position to be "agnostic, with pantheistic overtones" (403) as well as "socialist

The Story of Philosophy

A Dual Autobiography, 103. 60. Ibid

As of 2019, it has published 125 titles, the latest of which are Rick and Morty and Philosophy

I do something similar in Morality Matters: Race

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers

The Story of Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy

which argues that American philosophers while "mindful of the dead ends of [European] analytical modes of philosophizing … yet unwilling to move into the frightening wilderness of [American] pragmatism and historicism with the concomitant concerns in social theory, cultural criticism, and historiography

However, for a work that supports the idea that there is a robust distinctively "American" philosophy today, see Carlin Romano's America the Philosophical

The Life of Reason, or the Phases of Human Progress: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense

The Story of Philosophy

This direction for ethics is part of his critique of the "humanist" ethics of the Western philosophical tradition predicated on its use of "Man" and "human person