Overview and Context
Philosophy and the Social Problem is a book by Will Durant (1885–1981), the American historian and philosopher best known as co-author, with his wife Ariel Durant, of The Story of Civilization. Published in 1917, it belongs to the early phase of Durant’s career, when he was a young intellectual shaped by the Progressive Era, by his work as a teacher and lecturer, and by his enthusiasm for socialism and for the idea that philosophy should address the practical problems of ordinary human life. The book is a collection of essays and lectures on social questions, written in a direct and humanistic style, and it reflects the reformist spirit of its time.
The central conviction of the book is that philosophy is not a remote academic exercise but a living instrument for understanding and improving society. Durant argues that the great social problems of his day, including poverty, industrial exploitation, the unequal distribution of wealth, the condition of workers, and the confusion of moral values in a rapidly changing world, cannot be solved by economics or politics alone. They require a philosophical framework that asks what human beings are for, what constitutes a good life, and what kind of social order best allows people to realize their capacities.
Purpose and Method
Durant approaches his subject from the standpoint of a moralist who is also a historian. He is not primarily interested in technical systems of philosophy, though he draws generously on the thinkers of the past. Instead he treats the history of philosophy as a storehouse of answers to recurring human questions, and he tries to show how these answers bear on contemporary social conditions. The method is essentially expository and persuasive: he surveys positions, weighs their strengths, draws out their implications for social life, and then offers his own judgment.
The tone is earnest and idealistic. Durant writes as someone who believes that intelligence, sympathy, and education can progressively reform society, and that the philosopher has a responsibility to take part in that work rather than stand aside. The book is therefore as much an appeal as an argument. It asks the reader to recognize that the social question is a philosophical question, and that the way we think about the individual, the community, and the purpose of life shapes the institutions we build.
Main Arguments and Ideas
A recurring theme is the relation between the individual and society. Durant rejects the view that society is merely an aggregate of isolated selves competing for advantage, and he equally rejects any scheme that would absorb individuals entirely into the collective. He argues instead that human personality develops through social relations, and that a healthy society is one in which the conditions for the growth of each person’s powers are widely shared. The social problem, in this sense, is the problem of arranging common life so that it enlarges rather than diminishes the people who live it.
Closely related is his critique of the economic order of his time. Durant draws attention to the poverty of the working class, the insecurity of employment, and the way industrial organization can reduce workers to instruments of production. He is sympathetic to socialist criticisms of private ownership and competitive capitalism, though his position is less a doctrinaire program than a moral insistence that economic arrangements must be judged by their effects on human well-being. Wealth, he suggests, is justified only insofar as it serves the common good and the development of people, and a society that tolerates extreme deprivation alongside extreme luxury has failed a basic philosophical test.
The book also engages with questions of ethics and value. Durant argues that modern society has lost a coherent sense of purpose, partly because traditional religious and moral frameworks have weakened without being replaced by an adequate secular alternative. He is interested in how philosophy can supply a rational foundation for moral judgment, one that does not depend on dogma yet still gives people a reason to care for one another. In developing this, he draws on classical and modern thinkers to suggest that the good life involves knowledge, creative activity, and fellow feeling, and that a just society is one that makes these goods accessible to all rather than only to a privileged few.
Education appears as another central concern. Durant sees intellectual and moral education as the key to social progress, and he argues that a democratic society requires citizens capable of critical reflection. Philosophy, in his view, should not be the property of specialists; it should inform public life and help people understand the forces that shape their circumstances. This conviction runs through the book and explains its accessible style, which was deliberately aimed at a general reading public as well as at students.
Structure and Development
The book is organized as a sequence of essays that move from general questions about the nature of philosophy and its relation to life toward more specific social issues. The opening sections establish the case for philosophy as a practical discipline and situate it within the history of human thought. Subsequent chapters take up the economic and political conditions of modern society, the problems facing labor and the poor, and the moral and intellectual climate needed for reform. The later sections return to the broader theme of how a reflective and humane outlook can guide collective life.
Across these movements Durant maintains a consistent line of reasoning. He begins from an observation about the suffering or confusion of his time, traces its roots in prevailing ideas and institutions, consults the philosophical tradition for insight, and ends with a constructive proposal or ideal. This pattern gives the work a cumulative force, so that each chapter deepens the case that the social problem is at bottom a problem of values and understanding as well as of material arrangements.
Reception and Significance
Philosophy and the Social Problem is significant chiefly as an early expression of the outlook that Durant would carry throughout his long career. Its combination of philosophical reflection, historical awareness, and moral urgency anticipates the approach of The Story of Civilization, in which he and Ariel Durant would later narrate the development of human culture as a whole. The book also reveals his lifelong conviction that philosophy belongs to the common life of people and that the study of the past is a resource for the reform of the present.
In its own time the book was read as part of a wider body of progressive and socialist writing that sought to connect ethics, economics, and social reform. It is not usually counted among the most technical works of philosophy, and its influence is modest compared with Durant’s later historical writing. Nevertheless it remains a valuable document for understanding the intellectual development of its author and the reformist spirit of the early twentieth century, and it shows clearly why Durant, throughout his life, regarded philosophy as inseparable from the practical question of how people should live together.
