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A History of Western Philosophy
 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Bertrand Russell |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Western philosophy |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster (US) George Allen & Unwin Ltd (UK) |
Publication date | 1945 (US) 1946 (UK) |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 0-415-32505-6 |
A History of Western Philosophy[a] is a 1945 book by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. A survey of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the early 20th century, it was criticised for Russell's over-generalization and omissions, particularly from the post-Cartesian period, but nevertheless became a popular and commercial success, and has remained in print from its first publication. When Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, A History of Western Philosophy was cited as one of the books that won him the award. Its success provided Russell with financial security for the last part of his life.
Background
The book was written during the Second World War, having its origins in a series of lectures on the history of philosophy that Russell gave at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia during 1941 and 1942.[1] Much of the historical research was done by Russell's third wife Patricia. In 1943, Russell received an advance of $3000 from the publishers, and between 1943 and 1944 he wrote the book while living at Bryn Mawr College. The book was published in 1945 in the United States and a year later in the UK. It was re-set as a 'new edition' in 1961, but no new material was added. Corrections and minor revisions were made to printings of the British first edition and for 1961's new edition; no corrections seem to have been transferred to the American edition (even Spinoza's birth year remains wrong).
Summary
The work is divided into three books, each of which is subdivided into chapters; each chapter generally deals with a single philosopher, school of philosophy, or period of time.
Ancient Philosophy
- The Pre-Socratics (including Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Democritus and Protagoras)
- Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
- Ancient Philosophy after Aristotle (including the Cynics, Sceptics, Epicureans, Stoics and Plotinus)
Catholic Philosophy
- The Fathers (including developments in Jewish philosophy, Islamic philosophy (which he calls Mohammedan throughout, after the fashion of his time), St Ambrose, St Jerome, St Augustine, St Benedict and Pope Gregory the Great)
- The Schoolmen (including John the Scot and St Thomas Aquinas)
Modern Philosophy
- From the Renaissance to Hume (including Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume)
- From Rousseau to the Present Day (including Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Byron, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, William James and John Dewey)
- The last chapter in this section, The Philosophy of Logical Analysis, is concerned with Russell's own philosophical views at the time.
Reception
A History of Western Philosophy received a mixed reception, especially from academic reviewers. Russell was somewhat dismayed at the reaction.[2] Russell himself described the text as a work of social history, asking that it be treated in such a manner.[3] Russell also stated: "I regarded the early part of my History of Western Philosophy as a history of culture, but in the later parts, where science becomes important, it is more difficult to fit into this framework. I did my best, but I am not at all sure that I succeeded. I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without bias cannot write interesting history — if, indeed, such a man exists."[3]
In the Journal of the History of Ideas, the philosopher George Boas wrote that, "A History of Western Philosophy errs consistently in this respect. Its author never seems to be able to make up his mind whether he is writing history or polemic.... [Its method] confers on philosophers who are dead and gone a kind of false contemporaneity which may make them seem important to the uninitiate. But nevertheless it is a misreading of history."[4] In Isis, Leo Roberts wrote that while Russell was a deft and witty writer, A History of Western Philosophy was perhaps the worst of Russell's books. In his view, Russell was at his best when dealing with contemporary philosophy, and that in contrast "his treatment of ancient and medieval doctrines is nearly worthless."[5] A History of Western Philosophy was praised by physicists Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger.[3][6]
The philosopher Frederick Copleston, writing in A History of Philosophy, described Russell's book as "unusually lively and entertaining", but added that Russell's "treatment of a number of important philosophers is both inadequate and misleading." He credited Russell with drawing attention to the logical side of Leibniz's philosophy, but questioned Russell's view that there is a sharp distinction between Leibniz's "popular philosophy" and his "esoteric doctrine".[7] The critic George Steiner, writing in Heidegger, described A History of Western Philosophy as "vulgar", noting that Russell omits any mention of Martin Heidegger.[8] In Jon Stewart's anthology The Hegel Myths and Legends (1996), Russell's work is listed as a book that has propagated "myths" about Hegel.[9] Stephen Houlgate writes that Russell's claim that Hegel's doctrine of the state justifies any form of tyranny is ignorant.[10] The philosopher Roger Scruton, writing in A Short History of Modern Philosophy, described A History of Western Philosophy as elegantly written and witty, but faulted it for Russell's concentration on pre-Cartesian philosophy, lack of understanding of Immanuel Kant, and over-generalization and omissions.[11] The philosopher A. C. Grayling writes of the work that, "Parts of this famous book are sketchy ... in other respects it is a marvelously readable, magnificently sweeping survey of Western thought, distinctive for placing it informatively into its historical context. Russell enjoyed writing it, and the enjoyment shows; his later remarks about it equally show that he was conscious of its shortcomings."[12]
See also
- A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston
- Lectures on the History of Philosophy by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- A New History of Western Philosophy by Anthony Kenny
Notes
- ^ Full title A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day – the indefinite article was deleted in the British editions.
References
Citations
- ^ Russell, B: "A History of Western Philosophy", page xi. Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1972
- ^ Monk p. 296
- ^ a b c Russell, B: "The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell", Routledge, 2000
- ^ Boas, G: "Review of History of Western Philosophy", Journal of the History of Ideas, 8(1947): 117–123
- ^ Roberts, L: "Review of History of Western Philosophy", Isis, 38(1948): 268–270
- ^ Erwin Schrödinger (1996). 'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism'. Cambridge University Press. p. 4. ISBN 9780521575508.
- ^ Copleston, Frederick (1994). A History of Philosophy Volume IV. Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Leibniz. New York: Doubleday. pp. 270–272, 315. ISBN 0-385-47041-X.
- ^ Steiner, George (1991). Martin Heidegger. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 4. ISBN 0-226-77232-2.
- ^ Stewart, Jon, ed. (1996). The Hegel Myths and Legends. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. p. 383. ISBN 0-8101-1301-5.
- ^ Houlgate, Stephen; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1998). The Hegel Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. p. 2. ISBN 0-631-20347-8.
- ^ Scruton, R: "Short History of Modern Philosophy ", Routledge, 2001
- ^ Grayling, A. C.: "Russell: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)", Oxford University Press, 2002
Sources
- Ray Monk (2000). Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness. London.
External links
Quotations related to A History of Western Philosophy at Wikiquote- History of Western Philosophy (1947)
Book DescriptionLet us begin by trying to be clear as to what we mean by “free thought.” This expression has two senses. In its narrower sense it means thought which does not accept the dogmas of traditional religion. In this sense a man is a “free thinker” if he is not a Christian or a Mussulman or a Buddhist or a Shintoist or a member of any of the other bodies of men who accept some inherited orthodoxy. In Christian countries a man is called a “free thinker” if he does not decidedly believe in God, though this would not suffice to make a man a “free thinker” in a Buddhist country.I do not wish to minimize the importance of free thought in this sense. I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing....Bertrand Russell
Free Thought and Official Propaganda
 | |
| Author | Bertrand Russell |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | political philosophy |
Publication date | 1922 |
| Media type | |
"Free Thought and Official Propaganda" is a speech (and subsequent publication) delivered in 1922 by Bertrand Russell on the importance of unrestricted freedom of expression in society, and the problem of the state and political class interfering in this through control of education, fines, economic leverage, and distortion of evidence.
Freedom of speech
Russell starts out by describing the more common use of the term "free thought" to mean that one does not accept unquestioning belief in the popular religion of a region, or ideally of any religion at all. But he goes on to say that a more important and global kind of free thought is the freedom of pressure to believe any specific ideas, that one be allowed to have and express any opinion without penalty.
He notes that this is not allowed in any country at all, with the possible exception of China at that time. One could not, for example, immigrate to the US without swearing they are not an anarchist or polygamous, and once inside must not be communist. In Great Britain he must not express disbelief in Christianity, in Japan of Shintoism.
Russell notes that countries like these may think of themselves as having freedom of expression, but that some ideas are so obviously "monstrous and immoral" that such tolerance does not apply to them. But, he points out, this is exactly the same view that allowed torture during the Inquisition, that all ideas must be allowed to be expressed, no matter how obviously bad.
Next, Russell describes incidents in his own life that illustrate the lack of freedom of thought.
- One is that his father was a Free Thinker (agnostic or atheist), who arranged for three year old Bertrand to be raised as a free thinker when he was dying, but that the courts had overridden this and forced him to be raised Christian.
- In 1910 Russell failed to receive Liberal Party nomination for Parliament when the party's inner circle had learned he was agnostic.[1]
- When he became a lecturer at Trinity College, Russell was not allowed to become a Fellow (like having tenure) because the establishment of the college didn't want to add an "anti-clerical" vote to the college government. When Russell subsequently expressed opposition to World War I, he was fired.
This repression by the political class, Russell notes, is not limited to religion. Believers in free love or communism are treated even worse.
Will to doubt
Next, Bertrand Russell describes importance of the will to doubt.[2] In 1896, American philosopher William James had written about the will to believe, and Russell uses this as a foil to express his own opposite position. James claimed that even without (or with conflicting) evidence, one might still simply choose' to believe in a thing — he cites Christianity — simply because one thinks the belief has beneficial outcomes.
Russell, along with Alfred Henry Lloyd and others, responds to this by describing the will to doubt, the choice to remain skeptical because it is the more logical, rational position that will lead to understanding more truth, while a "will to believe" will inevitably bind one into untruths in some way. "None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error. The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate."[3]
As an example of the benefits of this kind of actual skepticism, Russell describe's Albert Einstein's overturning of the conventional wisdom of physics at that time, comparing it to Darwin contradicting Biblical literalists of the previous century.
What, Bertrand asks, if instead of overturning physics, Einstein had proposed something equally new in the sphere of religion or politics?[2]
Assuming that the need for rational doubt or fallibilism is understood to be important, Russell then goes on to address the question of why irrational certainty is so common. He says this is largely because of three factors.
- Education — Instead of public education being used to teach children healthy learning attitudes, they are used for the opposite, to indoctrinate children with dogma, often patently false, even known to be false by the officials imposing the education.[4]
- Propaganda — After being taught to read but not weigh evidence and form original opinions, children become adults who are then subjected to dubious or obviously false claims for the rest of their lives.
- Economic pressure — The State and political class will use its control of finances and economy to impose its ideas, by restricting the choices of those who disagree.