Philosophical Biography 101
Durant wrote "The Story of Philosophy" in 1927, and the current audiobook (so far as I can tell) is almost identical to the 1947 second edition that my father studied as a freshman in college. Not only has the text aged well, the narrator reads it well. Durant waxes a trifle poetical at times, but he delivers the goods.
The book works chronologically through the history of philosophy, summarizing much, but stopping to give the biographies (and synopses of the thought) of all whom Durant considers major philosophers. Along the way the auditor learns some interesting tidbits: E.g. Darwin wasn't the first to conceive of evolution by natural selection. That honor belongs to the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Empedocles. Creationists weren't the first to conceive of Intelligent Design. That honor belongs to the French philospher Henri Bergson (b. 1859). In his heavily-researched book "Creative Evolution" Bergson rejects both natural selection and an omnipotent God as the creative force behind evolution, opting for a pantheistic creative force in all life.
The philosophers whom Durant profiles are a who's who in the pantheon of thinkers:
Chapter I: Plato
Chapter II: Aristotle
Chapter III: Bacon
Chapter IV: Spinoza
Chapter V: Voltaire
Chapter VI: Kant
Chapter VII:Schopenhauer
Chapter VIII: Spencer
Chapter IX: Nietzsche (Nietzsche?)
Chapter X: Contemporary European Philosphers (Bergson, Croce, & Russell)
Chapter XI: Contemporary American Philosophers (Santayana, James, & Dewey)
Durant later, in "The Lessons of History," lamented the fact that he overlooked the scholastics, and his omission of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas constitutes the greatest weakness of the work. Counting Nietzsche as a great philosopher was the work's second greatest weakness.
