LOS ANGELES -- Historian and philosopher Will Durant, who shared a Pulitzer Prize with his wife for their epic 'Story of Civilization,' died during the weekend at age 96. Doctors never told him his wife had died just 13 days earlier.
Durant was primarily a historian, but so erudite were his observations of the past and so astute his applications of the past to the present that he was regarded as a major philosopher of this century.
Cedars-Sinai Hospital confirmed Sunday that Durant died Saturday of heart failure, unaware that his wife, Ariel, had died at home Oct. 25 at the age of 83.
News of her death was kept from Durant because he had been under intensive care for three weeks following surgery.
Durant's 11-volume 'Story of Civilization,' written partly with his wife and finished only at age 90, was his major work. The 10th volume, 'Rousseau and the Revolution,' earned him a Pulitzer Prize for History in 1968.
His first book, however, 'The Story of Philosophy,' published in 1926, was possibly his most popular. It became an immediate bestseller and sold more than 4 million copies over the years.
In his 94th year, Durant made one of his rare appearances and talked about death and dying, and how close it seemed to him.
'Life might be unforgiveable if it were not for death. Suppose you live forever,' he said. 'Not only would you be useless to everyone around you but you'd be sick and tired of being what you are. The thought you'd not be allowed to die would be a horrible thought.
'Has it ever occurred to you that death is a blessing?'
Durant married his wife, Ariel, in 1913. She was 15 and he was 28. She roller-skated from her home in Harlem to New York's City Hall for the wedding.
Theirs was a remarkable partnership of creativity and mutual devotion. She joined him 1961 in his writing. During the 'Civilization' series, they jointly wrote a philosophical survey of contemporary literature.
Four years ago -- months after announcing they were through writing - they published 'Will & Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiography' as a celebration of ideas, friendships, shared experiences as lovers, mates and co-authors.
If Durant had a particular advocacy, it was 'civilization' and civilized man. His work was not just history, but its meaning and how historical mandates applied to the present.
'We're in the stage in which Greece was when the gods ceased to exist and became mere poetry and, therefore, exercised no element of order or command upon human behavior,' Durant said.
He said our own time was similar to the period 200 B.C. to 100 A.D., 'in which morals floundered in an ocean of competing religions, just as you have a flotsam and jetsam of religions today.'
Once a Catholic seminarian, Durant became an atheist, and later an agnostic. But his once-angry views on religion and God softened through the years.
'Any man who has the same ideas at the age of 92 that he had at the age of 22, or 32, or 62, hasnot been thinking,' he said. 'Change is a sign of growth, not despair.'
He also deplored the loss of an aristocracy, which once upheld standards. 'We have a permissive society,' he said. 'Everything's all right if it's not going to kill you. 'I'm sure the situation may get morally worse, and culturally worse.'
