Philosophy and the Social Problem Author:Will Durant Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I THE PBESENT SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SOCRATIC ETHIC History as Rebarbarization History is a process of rebarbarization. A people made vigorous by a... more »rduous physical conditions of life, and driven by the increasing exigencies of survival, leaves its native habitat, moves down upon a less vigorous people, conquers, displaces, or absorbs it. Habits of resolution and activity developed in a less merciful environment now rapidly produce an economic surplus; and part of the resources so accumulated serve as capital in a campaign of imperialist conquest. The growing surplus generates a leisure class, scornful of physical activity and adept in the arts of luxury. Leisure begets speculation; speculation dissolves dogma and corrodes custom, develops sensitivity of perception and destroys decision of action. Thought, adventuring in a labyrinth of analysis, discovers behind society the individual; divested of its normal social function it turns inward and discovers the chapter{Section 4self. The sense of common interest, of commonwealth, wanes; there are no citizens now, there are only individuals. From afar another people, struggling against the forces of an obdurate environment, sees here the cleared forests, the liberating roads, the harvest of plenty, the luxury of leisure. It dreams, aspires, dares, unites, invades. The rest is as before. Rebarbarization is rejuvenation. The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization. Philosophy as Disintegrator The rise of philosophy, then, often heralds the decay of a civilization. Speculation begins with nature and begets naturalism; it passes to man — first as a psychological mystery and then as a member of society — and begets individualism. Philosophers do not always desire thes...« less