Our Oriental Heritage

Nossa Herança Oriental (A História da Civilização #1) — ✲ 5.0/5.0
A velha mãe Àsia
1047 pp.

Quase cinco meses de leitura e por volta de novecentos e oitenta densas páginas (a última centena é "apenas" a extensa catalogação de notas, referências e bibliografia do autor), mas que de forma alguma me cansaram. Tanto que já vou emendar no próximo: Nossa Herança Clássica (Grécia)

Nossa Herança Oriental é um livro que todo mundo deveria ler, seja seu interesse pelas artes, literatura, política, guerras ou história. O fato de ter sido escrito em 1935 não incomoda, o Will é lúcido e pungente a todo tempo, principalmente quando o assunto é o contraste entre Ocidente e Oriente, mas também em muitos outros aspectos; chega show more um momento que você consegue sentir a ironia exalando de certos apontamentos e muitos excertos beiram o cômico (intencionalmente), brincando com a visão ocidental e americanizada da história com H maiúsculo.

Além disso, o fato de ter sido escrito antes da Segunda Guerra, torna certos apontamentos do Will ainda mais interessantes. Não sei se foi era a aura do momento ou se esse era o pensamento geral da época, mas no capítulo sobre o Japão, desde o início, da sua forçada modernização por parte de exigências (explícitas e implícitas) do Ocidente, Will praticamente crava que o que se seguiria seria algum tipo de guerra, retaliação, entre Japão, Estados Unidos e Rússia.

A prosa e a seleção do autor sobre o que mostrar das antiquíssimas sociedades é um deleite, desde Elam até a China, e vossas respectivas letras, guerras e artes. Eu aposto: é impossível você terminar de ler esse livro sem ter feito, no mínimo, umas cinquenta anotações ou destaques. É de longe o melhor e mais interessante livro de “história” — na verdade, é muito mais que só um livro de história — que já li.

A única ressalva é quanto aos primeiros capítulos, ainda sim interessantes, mas que tateiam sobre as Fundações da Civilização, o que o faz ficar muito nas suposições. Mas conforme avança e mais fatos e informações temos, o livro tende a melhorar. O interesse próprio do leitor tornará certos capítulos melhores e mais interessantes que outros, mas todos os capítulos, e a tentativa de apreender e passear por milhares de anos da civilização é louvável: Suméria, Egito, Babilônia, Assíria, com um Interlúdio (Hititas, Fenícios, Frígios e outros Semitas), e então Judéia, Pérsia, Índia, China e Japão. É em tamanho, escopo e em qualidade, um livrasso.

Tenho quase umas duzentas anotações nesses livro, mas é melhor concluir com uma parte da própria conclusão do Will e da Ariel:

"A Europa e a América são as filhas, muito estragadas de mimos, da velha Ásia, e nunca perceberam a riqueza de sua herança pré-clássica. Mas se fizermos a conta das artes e processos que o Ocidente tomou do Oriente ou que apareceram primeiro no Oriente, ver-nos-ermos, sem o perceber, desenhando um esboço da [nossa] civilização"

show less

When I began my quest to learn about the history of philosophy and its many famous thinkers, I was introduced to Will Durant and his fantastic writing style in his wonderful work The Story of Philosophy. I found his writing to be passionate and sincere; as one reads his words one can sense his excitement as it exudes from the pages; we see it as he explains Plato's Republic or how he responds with witty erudition to the many aphorisms of Schopenhauer.

And so with Our Oriental Heritage, the first volume of eleven of Durants’ Story of Civilization series, we see that enthusiasm pour out as he gushes about the cultural achievements of the ancient Near East and the rest of Asia -- specifically India, China and Japan. Durant focuses on the show more art, poetry, literature, architectural achievements, economy, religions, and social structures of these timeworn countries.

Thanks to this work I was introduced to one of the oldest stories in the world, The Epic of Gilgamesh, which originated from Mesopotamia. After visiting Judea I leapt into the verses of the King James Bible; once Durant gave a wonderful tour of China, I couldn't help but read The Analects by Confucius, and I took to heart many of the Old Teacher's maxims.

Overall, this was an awesome book and I learned so much of the history and culture of Earths’ oldest and most venerable countries. show less

Several millennia of Middle Eastern history as well as all Indian, Chinese, and Japanese history up to the early 1930s in less than 1000 pages of text might sound impossible, but it was accomplished. Our Oriental Heritage is the first volume of Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization series that focused on European (Western) history went from an expected five-volume series to 11.

The most glaring issue with Durant’s book is the Introduction in which he described the “building blocks” of culture and how humanity progressed to begin “civilization” by noting examples of “primitive” and “savage” peoples that Europeans had documented in the 19th Century of what had preceded the various Middle Eastern and Asian cultures. show more Though not surprised by the language Durant used in this section given the era he wrote this volume, it was still cringe-worthy reading that was big negative even though it covered only the first 110 pages of text. Durant’s survey of Egyptian and Middle Eastern history up to the time of Alexander the Great as well of all Indian, Chinese, and Japanese history up to the time of the 1930s is as best that could be hopeful in such a limited number of pages with the aim to show how all those “civilizations” contributed to changes in Western (European) history.

Overall, Our Oriental Heritage is a nice survey of millennia of history that Will Durant gives the reader before launching his series into European history in the next volume. show less

I started this book in July, and just finished it now, half a year later. And that's listening to it as an audio edition [which goes faster for me with this type of book than reading]. And it's the first in a series of twelve.

I'm attracted to the concept of the book, "The Story of Civilization." But it isn't a story. It's a catalog.

History is more like the future than many suspect. Just as their are an infinite number of possible futures, and the further out into future you move the larger that infinity, the same is true of the past. Take a historic event like World War II. There are a dozen different ways that it can be explained, neatly fit into the expansive timeline of history. Not all of these stories compliment each other or even show more agree on fundamentals. Sure, there are certain facts we can agree on, like the date and location of certain battles. But history isn't about numbers, it's about reasons, and these are subjective.

This being said, I find Durant's "history" as lacking a certain compelling nature to its narrative. Maybe part of the issue is that I'm reading the book almost a century after it was written.

Durant uses many generalizations when talking about history, which is an issue with a history that's so in-depth. You'd think over the course of millions of words he could get down into some details. He does quote and summarize primary sources. But I think the reader would be much better off just reading these texts for themselves and coming to their own opinions rather than relying on Durant's Spark Notes.

History's such an exciting subject. I'm not sure how Durant's managed to make it quite so boring.

This has all been talk on style. What about content?

The move developed civilizations become, the more violent they become. That's the main thing you need to know. Oh, and there were likely advanced civilizations in prehistory, but by definition [they predate recovered written records], they're generally obscured from the modern perspective.

Soon I'll be listening to Durant's "Lesson's of History." I'll be interested to see if the shorter medium better suits his style. show less

I wanted to own this series for years. I was delighted when I found it complete, all 11 volumes, in my libary book sale. I am reviewing this volume after having read only 290 pages. Normally I would not make a judgment based on such a miniscule part of a such a lengthy work, but this is just so bad, I can't help myself.
Mr. Durant's scholarship is undeniable, as is shown by the lengthy and varied bibliography. But his writing is appalling. This is not an historical account, this is a diatribe combined with completely unsubstantiated personal judgment, editorial comment, egregious conclusions and wild speculation. Rarely have I read anything so bad.
One of my marginal notes says, "this guy [Durant] has a high opinion of himself, his show more opinion and his erudition." Since I own these copies, I am disagreeing vehemently with Mr. Durant via marginalia, though it mostly all says the same thing, to wit: "opinion...unsubstantiated ... editorial comment...."
Here is an example, from page 134 of my copy, in which he is discussing Sumeria:
"The ruins...indicate a refinement of life and manners disturbing to our naiëve conception of progress as a continuous rise of man through the unfortunate cultures of the past to the unrivaled zenith of today."
Others of my notes say, "unsubstantiated maunderings," and "very loaded phraseology."
I plan to keep going because he does include some facts in all his posturing, and, quite frankly, this is so amazingly bad I want to see if it gets any worse. show less

OK for a first introduction, but his seductive prose often leaves the reader no indication of when he's glossing over important information that doesn't fit his story arc.

Let me first say that I really enjoyed the History of Civilization series. That being said, parts of this volume are so dated (which translates to 'wrong' and 'offensive'), that it was a somewhat frustrating read. I knew so little about the subject matter that, when I recognized some bit of information as outdated, I had no basis for judging whether the rest of what I was reading was also considered outdated (was I wasting my time or worse, filling my head with inaccurate 'facts'?). The other volumes in this series did not present these problems for me. If you like how this series is written, including all the opinions and imaginative conclusions, then I wouldn't let this volume put you off. You can just skip it and come back to it show more later (preferably with some kind of guide to the outdated parts). show less