Arnold J. Toynbee
Overview
 
This page is about the universal historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee; for his uncle, the economic historian Arnold Toynbee, see Arnold Toynbee
Arnold Toynbee
Arnold Toynbee was a British economic historian also noted for his social commitment and desire to improve the living conditions of the working classes.-Biography:...

. For further Toynbees and related topics see the disambiguation page Toynbee
Toynbee
Toynbee is a surname, and can refer to :* Joseph Toynbee, British physician, pioneer of otolaryngology,* Arnold Toynbee, British economist, son of Joseph Toynbee* Paget Toynbee, British Dante scholar...

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Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH
Order of the Companions of Honour
The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V in June 1917, as a reward for outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry or religion....

 (14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was a British historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History
A Study of History
A Study of History is the 12-volume magnum opus of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, finished in 1961, in which the author traces the development and decay of all of the major world civilizations in the historical record...

, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history
World History
World History, Global History or Transnational history is a field of historical study that emerged as a distinct academic field in the 1980s. It examines history from a global perspective...

, a metahistory
Metahistory
Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe is a historiography book by Hayden White first published in 1973.On the second page of his Introduction Hayden White stated:...

 based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global perspective.
Quotations

The value of the goal lies in the goal itself; and therefore the goal cannot be attained unless it is pursued for its own sake.

A Study of History (1934-1961)

We shall have to share out the fruits of technology among the whole of mankind. The notion that the direct and immediate producers of the fruits of technology have a proprietary right to these fruits will have to be forgotten. After all, who is the producer? Man is a social animal, and the immediate producer has been helped to produce by the whole structure of society, beginning with his own education.

Surviving the Future (1971), Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 95

Compassion is the desire that moves the individual self to widen the scope of its self-concern to embrace the whole of the universal self.

The Toynbee-Ikeda Dialogue: Man Himself Must Choose (1976)

 
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