Introduction

The establishment of civilization

Chapter 1: The Conditions of Civilization
Chapter 2: Economic Elements of Civilization
Chapter 3: The Political Elements of Civilization
Chapter 4: Ethical Elements of Civilization
Chapter 5: The Spiritual Elements of Civilization
Chapter 6: The Beginning of Prehistoric Civilization
Chapter 7 Sumer
Chapter 8 Egypt
Chapter 9 Babylonia
Chapter 10 Assyria
Chapter 11: The Many Nations
Chapter 12 Judea
Chapter 13 Persia

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Timeline

… … These onomatopoeias are still used as a last resort in emergency situations where communication is impossible.
Once, an Englishman went to China and had his first meal, and he wondered what kind of meat he was eating.
So, without losing his Anglo-Saxon dignity and taciturnity, he asked:
“Quack quack?” Then the Chinese man who saw this shook his head and answered loudly.
“Woof, woof!” - From Chapter 5, “The Mental Elements of Civilization”

After introducing the above episode, Will Durant says:
“We humans have a duty to respect each other’s illusions.” He has long believed that the conventional way of dividing history into sections, as if drawing lines, fails to properly reveal the totality of human life, and he expresses the view that history should be described both diachronically and synchronicly, and both analytically and comprehensively.
As a result of the accumulation of knowledge, history, like science, has become divided into numerous separate specializations, and self-sacrificing scholars no longer seek to take a holistic view, whether of the material universe or of our own living history.
Durant concludes his introduction by saying that he hopes that there will be a few impatient souls who will fall for his somewhat "shameless" attempt to recreate the entirety of human civilization.
I think the episode introduced above also shows the historical view that the author has been continuously refining.
There is no difference between “quack quack” and “meong meong”, but rather a misunderstanding, and this is interpreted to mean that the history of human civilization should be written from a holistic perspective, not from a regional perspective.

A thinker who dedicated his life to exploring the history of human civilization for 50 years.
Will Durant
Will Durant (1885-1981) is a well-known name to people born in the 1930s to 1950s.
He was one of the important teachers who guided the generation that advocated the so-called Dekansho philosophy and literature, history, and philosophy into the world of intellect.
After the publication of the best-selling book, The Story of Philosophy, which led people around the world to the path of philosophy (1926), he stopped all writing activities except for a few critiques, and over the next 50 years, he produced eleven large-scale works that provided insight into the history of human civilization.
This is the 『The Story of Civilization』 series.
Durant, who had planned to write a book covering the history of the 19th century, realized that the history of the 19th century could only be properly understood if one knew the story of the previous century, and he became determined to write a history book that encompassed all civilizations, ancient and modern, Western and Eastern.
In order to prepare more thoroughly, he visited Europe several times, and explored and studied Egypt, the Near East, India, China, Japan, Manchuria, Siberia, and Russia (he showed a particular passion for the history of the Far East). From the publication of the first volume, “Oriental Civilization,” in 1935 until the publication of the eleventh volume, “The Age of Napoleon,” in 1975, he devoted a total of 50 years, including the preparation period, to exploring the history of human civilization.
The tenth volume, Rousseau and Revolution, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968, and the New York Times praised it, saying, “He presents a splendid and vast panorama of our inherited culture in language and images that even the layman, not the specialist, can fully understand.”


The 『Civilization Stories』 series primarily observes Western history.
However, as can be seen from the subtitles of Volume 1, such as "The East is the West" and "The Oriental Heritage We Have Inherited," Durant displays a balanced sense of history while displaying his erudition that transcends both the East and the West.
Although it is a bit long, let me quote his words:

Our Western story begins in the East.
It's not just that Asia is famous for being home to the most ancient civilizations.
This is because those Eastern civilizations formed the background and foundation of Greek and Roman culture.
Sir Henry Maine thought that all sources of modern intelligence lay in Greece and Rome, but it turns out that this was not the case.
It is astonishing to learn that many of the inventions that are absolutely essential to our Western civilization—our political and economic institutions, our science and literature, our philosophy and religion—have their roots in Egypt and the Orient.
We are now at a historical moment, with European hegemony rapidly coming to an end and Asia enjoying a resurgence of life, when the general conflict between East and West seems destined to become a major theme of the 20th century.
In this context, the regionalism of traditional history, which begins with the story of Greece and ends with a single line summarizing Asia, is not simply an academic error, but rather a miserable failure of proper perspective and intellect.
The future now looks towards the Pacific Ocean.
So it is natural that an understanding of that should follow.

Isn't Durant's outlook on human history still valid today?
As we witness Europe uniting to consolidate its power as the European Union, the future of the superpower America's hegemony drawing attention, and China's rapid rise, once called the "Tiger of the World," it becomes clear that the themes of history cannot emerge from any one party.
In particular, China is rapidly reorganizing the world order, which was a unipolar system centered on the United States after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, into a bipolar structure.
Where does China's power, which is reshaping human civilization, come from?
This is a solid 'civilization' with 5,000 years of history.
We will have to keep an eye on how China will create a new paradigm for civilization.

In Volume 1, Oriental Civilization, Durant first discusses the origins and conditions of civilization.
He lists labor, family, law, morality, religion, science, philosophy, literature, and art as elements of civilization, and weaves the story of human civilization based on these pillars.
Afterwards, it passes through the Middle East, India and its surrounding countries, China, and Japan (stories about Joseon are often mentioned, and the expression referring to Admiral Yi Sun-sin as “a terrible Joseon general” is interesting). In particular, the stories of India, China, and Japan unfold up to the 1930s when he was active.
Accordingly, the contemporary history of India, China, and Japan can be said to be a living, breathing history written while directly observing world-historical events.


The calm coolness of an observer, beyond vague hopes or despair for humanity
Volume II, "Greek Civilization," covers the entire history of Greece, from the vast Aegean Empire in Crete to the destruction of Greece's last remaining shred of freedom by the merciless advancing Roman armies.
The prototype of modern Western civilization is Greek civilization.
The vortex of history swirls around the prehistoric civilization of Crete, the Homeric era, the rise of Sparta and Athens, the Great Migration, the golden age under Pericles, and the defeat in the Peloponnesian War, and the brilliant figures of geniuses such as Plato, Aristotle, Apelles, Praxiteles, Demosthenes, and Diogenes appear.
The process by which Greece, once again rejuvenated, expanded into Asia, Africa, and Italy, enriching trade and art, and developing geometry and philosophy is also reenacted.
But in the end, we see the fate of Greek civilization, which fell deep into the chaos of civil war and class struggle, succumbing to Eastern despotism and mysticism, and leading to the new conqueror, Rome.
Durant lists at length that there is little in our contemporary secular culture that does not originate in Greece.


'Except for machinery, schools and gymnasiums, arithmetic, geometry, history, rhetoric, physics, biology, anatomy, hygiene, therapy, cosmetics, poetry, music, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, theology, skepticism, asceticism, hedonism, ethics, politics, etc.'

He also summarizes that the problems that plague us today - the conservatism of the privileged and the experimentalism of the marginalized, political corruption and moral decline, the conflict between religion and science, the weakening of the transcendent authority of morality, wars between nations, the revolution of the poor against the economically wealthy and the counter-revolution of the rich against the politically powerful poor, democracy and dictatorship, individualism and communism, the conflict between the East and the West - all of these shook up the splendid and rough life of ancient Greece as if they were meant to teach us a lesson.
As the somewhat exaggerated expression goes, “All civilized nations of the present day are colonies of Hellas in every field of intellectual activity,” every element of Greek civilization reflects our own image in our own time.

Volume 5, "The Renaissance," presents a portrait of the fascinating and vibrant Italy of the Renaissance, at its zenith of splendor, from the birth of Petrarch in 1304 to the death of Titian in 1576.
After a preliminary exploration of the economic foundations and background—the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, and the conflict between workers and capitalists—Durant explores why Italy, and Florence in particular, was the first to feel the awakening of the modern spirit.
Later, we see the shining cities of Renaissance Italy—Florence, Pisa, Venice, Mantua, Milan, Genoa, Verona—as independent city-states competing for the brilliance of commerce and the arts. We witness a colorful procession of kings and queens, dukes and doges, but also a procession of industry, education, customs and morals, crime, costumes, women, love and marriage, plague, famine and death.
In these cities we also meet the people who had the greatest influence on the formation of modern civilization.
They include Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander VI, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, Machiavelli, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.


Durant ends with a picture of Italy's power fading away at the hands of northern Europe and the challenge of the Reformation, a spirit that ultimately prepared the way for Erasmus, Icon, Descartes, Spinoza, Voltaire, Gibbon, Goethe, and the masters of our own time who still breathe the spirit of the Renaissance.


Literature, art, and thought appropriately placed between historical observation and philosophical reflection.
'The pinnacle of civilization'
“He who says, 'I know nothing,' is the most cunning man in the world.”, “War is ugly, and the Iliad is beautiful.”, “... This is like Westerners thinking it is their duty to enjoy opera, yet not understanding the lyrics.”, “Flowers are religion to the Japanese.”, “If you think about it, modernity is just a hat put on the culture of the Middle Ages, which will never disappear.”

Durant delivers small shocks throughout the book.
It captures the great flow of human civilization in powerful, concise, witty, and thoughtful language.
By recreating the complex development process, it follows the not-so-short course of human civilization's development, taking big strides and sharply piercing the core of each era with a few words.
This gaze, which has observed countless ups and downs in history, shows the cool-headedness of a calm observer, beyond vague hopes or despair for humanity.
This is the vivid voice of a thinker who dedicated his life to exploring the history of human civilization, passing on to future generations the resonance and wisdom of the history he explored.

This time, Minumsa has translated and published the first volume of the 11-volume 『Story of Civilization』 series, 『Our Oriental Heritage』, the second volume 『The Life of Greece』, and the fifth volume 『The Renaissance』.
We plan to publish the remaining volumes in the series as soon as they are ready.