From his book: History of World Civilization;
Most of history is speculation, and the rest is prejudice.
19 17 received a doctorate from Columbia university. 1926 published The Story of Philosophy, which achieved unexpected success. Subsequently, it took him more than 50 years to complete the 1 1 volume History of World Civilization.
Will durant was born in 1885 and died in 198 1. /kloc-When he was 0/2 years old, he was sent to a missionary school by his mother, hoping to make "this naughty child become an excellent missionary". As a result, Durant not only failed to become a missionary, but was also excommunicated for writing an article that disrespected religion (The Origin of Religion). As he clearly recognized Christianity at the age of 19, "it is only one of hundreds of religious beliefs, which all claim to save mankind and popularize the truth."
It took Will Duran more than 50 years to complete the 1 1 volume History of World Civilization.
He has been engaged in a research work that can bring benefits to most people all his life, that is, popularizing profound philosophy. The commentary after the book said that he was "enthusiastically committed to liberating philosophy from the academic ivory tower and letting it enter the lives of more ordinary people". Philosophy asks about the ultimate essence of the world and life. Everyone who lives has a life, and everyone should take responsibility for it, pay the price and get the rights. Therefore, philosophy should become the wisdom of the masses. However, as we all know, for various reasons, philosophy has actually become the reservation and decoration of a few philosophers, and philosophy has been monopolized by experts and forgotten by the public, forming a pattern of "people don't understand philosophy, and philosophy doesn't care about people". Therefore, Durant's research is particularly important. It "makes readers all over the world enjoy and learn constantly, enriches the lives of millions of people and makes people more tolerant." He also maintained his respect and objectivity for history.
Previous calendar revisers and so-called picky researchers often don't scrutinize history repeatedly. Field visits lead to many wrong narratives, and sometimes government intervention will affect the authenticity of history.
This sentence is a wake-up call for those who study history. Every historical figure is complicated. There are no pure good people and no pure bad people. What we should especially warn here are those who record history without in-depth research or even directly draw materials from novels and operas to mislead future generations. At the same time, we should put ourselves in the position of studying history and conduct on-the-spot investigation and exploration in many aspects, so we can't generalize.
Typical example: Sima Qian's Records of the Five Emperors describes each pair of Huangdi. Later, a group of people turned Chiyou into a glutton and changed Chiyou into the "Yellow Emperor". I don't know how hard it is for posterity to rehabilitate Chiyou.
Gao has quoted this sentence before. He said, "One kind of distortion of history is to directly obliterate the facts, and the other is that the facts are here, but the motives are fabricated. The same thing has different motives and the description is far from perfect. "
References:
History of World Civilization, China Youth Network, People's Economic Forum. For the example of Chiyou, refer to Lu's Chunqiu, Shui Jing Zhu and Shan Hai Jing.