Bertrand
Russell
History of
Western Philosophy
and its
Connection with Political and Social Circumstances
from Earliest Times to the Present
Day
George Allen
& Unwin, Paperback, 1969.
8vo. 842 pp. Preface by BR [7-8]. Index [791-842].
First published in the US
First published in the UK
Second edition (reset), 1961.
Fifth impression, 1969.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
BOOK ONE: Ancient Philosophy
PART I: The
Pre-Socratics
1. The Rise of Greek Civilisation
2. The Milesian
School
3. Pythagoras
4. Heraclitus
5. Parmenides
6. Empedocles
7. Athens
8. Anaxagoras
9. The Atomists
10. Protagoras
PART II: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
11. Socrates
12. The Influence of Sparta
13. The Sources of Plato's Opinions
14. Plato's Utopia
15. The Theory of Ideas
16. Plato's Theory of Immortality
17. Plato's Cosmogony
18. Knowledge and Perception in Plato
19. Aristotle's Metaphysics
20. Aristotle's Ethics
21. Aristotle's Politics
22. Aristotle's Logic
23. Aristotle's Physics
24. Early Greek Mathematics and Astronomy
PART III: Ancient Philosophy after Aristotle
25. The Hellenistic World
26. Cynics and Sceptics
27. The Epicureans
28. Stoicism
29. The Roman Empire in
Relation to Culture
30. Plotinus
BOOK TWO: Catholic Philosophy
Introduction
PART I: The
Fathers
1. The Religious Development of the Jews
2. Christianity During the First Four Centuries
3. Three Doctors of the Church
4. St Augustine
5. The Fifth and Sixth Centuries
6. St Benedict and Gregory the Great
PART II: The
Schoolmen
7. The Papacy in the Dark Ages
8. John the Scot
9. Ecclesiastical Reform in the Eleventh Century
10. Mohammedan Culture and Philosophy
11. The Twelfth Century
12. The Thirteenth Century
13. St Thomas Aquinas
14. Franciscan Schoolmen
15. The Eclipse of the Papacy
BOOK THREE: Modern Philosophy
PART I: From
the Renaissance to Hume
1. General Characteristics
2. The Italian Renaissance
3. Machiavelli
4. Erasmus and More
5. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation
6. The Rise of Science
7. Francis Bacon
8. Hobbes's Leviathan
9. Descartes
10. Spinoza
11. Leibniz
12. Philosophical Liberalism
13. Locke's Theory of Knowledge
14. Locke's Political Philosophy
15. Locke's Influence
16. Berkeley
17. Hume
PART II: From
Rousseau to Present Day
18. The Romantic Movement
19. Rousseau
20. Kant
21. Currents of Thought in the Nineteenth Century
22. Hegel
23. Byron
24. Schopenhauer
25. Nietzsche
26. The Utilitarians
27. Karl Marx
28. Bergson
29. William James
30. John Dewey
31. The Philosophy of Logical Analysis
Index
=====================================================
Many astute
reviewers have observed that the chapters in this book are relatively
self-sufficient and can be read independently. I have been doing just that
intermittently for years, and do you know what I have found? It is not true.
The book can be used to dip into all right, but you will gain enormously from reading
it complete, in the right order and in as short time as possible. Thus you will
appreciate the numerous cross-references, most of them subtle and suggestive,
and you will also get a much better idea of the all-important big picture. Don’t
let the size or the subject scare you. It is no heroic achievement to read the
whole thing from cover to cover. The book is beautifully written and supremely
readable.
Professional
philosophers (surely this is an oxymoron?) should be aware that this book was
not written for them. Nor is it for seasoned amateur philosophers. This book is
designed for the intelligent and curious laymen; if they are fans of Bertrand
Russell, so much the better. Of that company am I. So this is going to be one
unapologetically prejudiced review, prejudiced in favour of the author that is.
The aforementioned, and no doubt hugely knowledgeable, reviewers have claimed
countless times that Russell is biased, opinionated and irreverent. They are
right. But what they call “faults”, I prefer to call “integrity”. Being the man
he was, Bertrand Russell could not have written any other History of Western Philosophy but this one.
Biased,
opinionated and irreverent as he is, it is important to note some things
Bertrand Russell is not. He is not boring, dishonest or, except occasionally in
the purely historical chapters, superficial. He is certainly no mean master of
the English prose. Speculative non-fiction on abstruse subjects doesn’t get
better than that. Lucidity, precision, brevity, brains and wit are elevated to
their utmost heights and merged with fantastic readability. As for the book’s
shortcomings in terms selection and emphasis, no work of such sweeping scope –
from Thales to Dewey, all of them within social and historical context – could
possibly be perfect, to begin with. The author knows this all too well, and he
lets you know it in the Preface.
A
few words of apology and explanation are called for if this book is to escape
even more severe censure than it doubtless deserves.
[…]
There
are many histories of philosophy, but none of them, so far as I know, has quite
the purpose that I have set myself. Philosophers are both effects and causes:
effects of their social circumstances and of the politics and institutions of
their time; causes (if they are fortunate) of beliefs which mould the politics
and institutions of later ages. In most histories of philosophy, each
philosopher appears as in a vacuum; his opinions are set forth unrelated
except, at most, to those of earlier philosophers. I have tried, on the
contrary, to exhibit each philosopher, as far as truth permits, as an outcome
of his milieu, a man in whom were crystallized and concentrated thoughts and
feelings which, in a vague and diffused form, were common to the community of
which he was a part.
[…]
The
problem of selection, in such a book as the present, is very difficult. Without
detail, a book becomes jejune and uninteresting; with detail, it is in danger
of becoming intolerably lengthy. I have sought a compromise, by treating only
those philosophers who seem to me to have considerable importance, and
mentioning, in connection with them, such details as, even if not of
fundamental importance, have value on account of some illustrative or vivifying
quality.
Philosophy,
from the earliest times, has been not merely an affair of the schools, or of
disputation between a handful of learned men. It has been an integral part of
the life of the community, and as such I have tried to consider it. If there is
any merit in this book, it is from this point of view that it is derived.[1]
If this book
has any defect, it is the fact that it fails to justify its subtitle. Despite
the enormous effort of Bertrand and Patricia (his wife who did much of the
research as acknowledged in the Preface) to include historical background, pretty
much every thinker on these pages “appears as in a vacuum”. Philosophers often
influenced one another but seldom changed the society they, or their
grandchildren, lived in. Stimulating parallels between different philosophers,
their characters, outlooks and ideas, are legion; but very few are related,
however vaguely, to profound historical changes. There are exceptions, of
course – without Plato and Plotinus, if not without Pythagoras indeed,
Christianity would never have become what it is; Marx clearly moulded larger
part of the world than any other single man – but on the whole it seems that
Ancient Greece (and, to a much lesser extent, the Middle Ages) was not
just the cradle of philosophy, but also the last period when it had truly universal
importance. Even the greatest names from modern times are dwarfed when set
against the vast canvass of history. Kant and Hegel are supposed to have been
hugely influential. Sure they were – over other philosophers. Schopenhauer did
have a profound effect on Wagner, a phenomenon Russell rightly has no time for,
but how he changed the world, if at all, remains elusive.
In his
fascinating book An
Anatomy of Musical Criticism (1968), Alan Walker proposes his theory
that music is “autonomous”, complete in itself, entirely independent of history.
“I do not think it is sufficiently realized”, he says, “that there is no valid
theoretical concept in the entire history of music which did not first emerge
as an intuitive part of creative practice. Musical theory is always wise after
the creative event.” This is precisely how this book makes me feel about
philosophy. The only difference is that music is more emotional and less
intellectual. Otherwise philosophy seems to me just as much divorced from
history; like two rivers going their own ways without ever really crossing. While
the lovers of wisdom passionately speculate about mind and matter, unity and
plurality, knowledge and perception, the purpose of the universe and other exotic
stuff like that, the world is ruled by commerce, politics and war, all of them
decidedly unphilosophical forces.
History of philosophy, like musical criticism, is always wise after the events. It is apt
to mould the material into an illusive pattern and to make it unduly dependent on
history.
I do not know
if this impression of mine is true; Bertrand Russell certainly would not agree
with it. It may be that the links between philosophy and history have been much
closer, but I failed to appreciate them or Russell failed to do them justice in
the first place. It may also be that, ever since Antiquity, the social
importance of philosophy has been steadily decreasing, to be reduced today to a
strictly academic pursuit of no importance whatsoever – except to guarantee
distinguished careers for those who are fit for nothing else. Nowadays, few
people outside the tiny academic circles read philosophy; fewer still
understand it.
This is why
Bertrand Russell’s History of Western
Philosophy is an important, relevant and indeed great book. It is a fine starting
point and it helps you make up your mind as regards philosophy: to explore its
vast and varied horrors, or to dismiss them as idle cheating with words not
worth your time. I’m still somewhere in the middle between these extremes. So,
what is philosophy and why should we bother with it? The answers are given in
the Introduction and worth considering:
Philosophy,
as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and
science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which
definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it
appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or
that of revelation. All definite
knowledge – so I should contend – belongs to science; all dogma as to what
surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and
science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No
Man’s Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most interest to
speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers
of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. Is
the world divided into mind and matter, and, if so, what is mind and what is
matter? Is mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers?
Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards some goal? Are
there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because of our
innate love of order? Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of
impure carbon and water impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet?
Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both at once? Is there a way
of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living
merely futile? If there is a way of living that is noble, in what does it
consist, and how shall we achieve it? Must the good be eternal in order to
deserve to be valued, or is it worth seeking even if the universe is inexorably
moving towards death? Is there such a thing as wisdom, or is what seems such
merely the ultimate refinement of folly? To such questions no answer can be
found in the laboratory. Theologies have professed to give answers, all too
definite; but their very definiteness causes modern minds to view them with
suspicion. The studying of these questions, if not the answering of them, is
the business of philosophy.
Why,
then, you may ask, waste time on such insoluble problems? To this one may
answer as a historian, or as an individual facing the terror of cosmic
loneliness.
The
answer of the historian, in so far as I am capable of giving it, will appear in
the course of this work.
[…]
There
is also, however, a more personal answer. Science tells us what we can know,
but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we
become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the
other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we
have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence
towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is
painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of
comforting fairy tales. It is not good either to forget the questions that
philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable
answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being
paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our
age, can still do for those who study it.
Worth a
journey through 25 centuries, is it? You bet it is! The last sentence from the
quote above is the best reason I have ever heard why philosophy is worth
studying.
Before going on
a short sightseeing tour, two caveats – not
defects – should be mentioned: repetitions and quotations. Neither is really a
problem. Extensive quotations can be tiresome when they come from a deranged
mystic like Heraclitus, an abstruse metaphysician like Plotinus, a monster of
verbosity like Kant, a master of obscurity like Hegel, or a muddleheaded nincompoop
like Bergson, but they are important first-hand evidence that must not be
neglected. Since few writers can equal Bertrand Russell’s ability to summarize
and explain complex matters, comparisons with other philosophers often have
considerable value as light entertainment. As for repetitions, they are few and
always worth repeating.
I suppose one
doesn’t have to be terribly well-versed in philosophy to realise that Russell’s
opinions are hardly conventional. They are likely to provoke hostility and
argument. But I do think Russell is better balanced than generally recognised.
He is never dogmatic or obnoxious. However harshly he may criticise the sacred
cows, he never tries to downplay their influence, nor does he disagree without
providing his own ideas on the matters in question. He is often amused but
never angry. He seldom passes a philosopher without some appreciative words
about his merits. This is evident throughout the whole book.
Russell is
fond of the Greeks, especially if they happen to be mathematicians. I’m not
sure the Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths to be self-evident...”), still less theological
dogma, is modelled on Euclid, but I guess his foundational work in geometry may
well be regarded as one of the most lasting contributions to human knowledge. Russell
even claims
that Newton ’s Principia is “entirely dominated by Euclid peak of Greek
In
spite of the genius of Plato and Aristotle, their thought has vices which
proved infinitely harmful. After their time, there was a decay of vigour, and a
gradual recrudescence of popular superstition. A partially new outlook arose as
a result of the victory of Catholic orthodoxy; but it was not until the
Renaissance that philosophy regained the vigour and independence that
characterize the predecessors of Socrates.
This is just
the conclusion. The rest is even more merciless. Plato’s
utopia is deemed to be nothing more than a totalitarian dystopia; his theory of ideas “contains a number of obvious errors”,
his cosmogony is influential but “unimportant”. (Russell asks: what would Plato’s
Republic achieve? I ask: how long would it last? Would it last a billion years,
like Arthur Clarke’s Diaspar?) Aristotle’s metaphysical
speculations are declared to be nothing more than vague juggling with words
like “soul”, “mind” and the like; his ethics is commonplace, his politics
dated. Nevertheless, Russell is
quite aware that “Plato and Aristotle were the most influential of all
philosophers, ancient, medieval, or modern”. Furthermore, Plato is “an
imaginative writer of great genius and charm” and for Aristotle’s demerits “his
successors are more responsible than he is”. The table of contents is telling.
Aristotle and Plato alone occupy 11 (eleven) chapters! As for Socrates, well,
he isn’t immune to Russell’s criticism either, but he is regarded as a figment
of Plato’s imagination:
The
Platonic Socrates was a pattern to subsequent philosophers for many ages. What
are we to think of him ethically? (I am concerned only with the man as Plato
portrays him.) His merits are obvious. He is indifferent to worldly success, so
devoid of fear that he remains calm and urbane and humorous to the last moment,
caring more for what he believes to be truth than for anything else whatever.
He has, however, some very grave defects. He is dishonest and sophistical in
argument, and in his private thinking he uses intellect to prove conclusions
that are to him agreeable, rather than in a disinterested search for knowledge.
There is something smug and unctuous about him, which reminds one of a bad type
of cleric. His courage in the face of death would have been more remarkable if
he had not believed that he was going to enjoy eternal bliss in the company of
the gods. Unlike some of his predecessors, he was not scientific in his
thinking, but was determined to prove the universe agreeable to his ethical
standards. This is treachery to truth, and the worst of philosophic sins. As a
man, we may believe him admitted to the communion of saints; but as a
philosopher he needs a long residence in a scientific purgatory.
On the whole,
I think Russell’s words about the Milesian school may be applied to the ancient
Greeks on the whole. They are important “not for what [they] achieved, but for
what [they] attempted.” Much of what they wrote, including Plato and Aristotle,
is indeed “infantile”, but their restless curiosity is something to marvel at.
Their precocity is astonishing. This is another reason why this book should be
read systematically. It makes you realise, not without slight surprise in my
case, how much of the medieval and modern philosophy is merely derivative and
repetitious variations of what the Greeks achieved several centuries before
Christ. There is some extension and elaboration for the sake of originality, but
there is hardly anything in the Western philosophy that was not foreshadowed,
often in substantial detail, by the ancient Greeks. Small wonder that nearly one third of
the book is dedicated to them.
Considering
Russell’s notorious agnosticism, I was curious to read his treatment of
Catholic philosophy. Would he be more partial than usual? Would his anti-dogma attitude
get the better of him? Would he be caught off balance for once? Nope; not at
all. He disagrees with the most revered saints politely and respectfully. He
sticks to philosophy and never digresses into the untold misery caused by the
Church. He carefully summarises the basic writings of St Augustine
[…]
The sense of sin, which
was very strong in his [St Augustine
[…]
There was, however, one
important development, already made, to a great extent, by the Jews, and that
was the substitution of individual for communal sin. Originally, it was the
Jewish nation that sinned, and that was collectively punished; but later sin
became more personal, thus losing its political character. When the Church was
substituted for the Jewish nation, this change became essential, since the
Church, as a spiritual entity, could not sin, but the individual sinner could
cease to be in communion with the Church.
St Thomas Aquinas is duly
acknowledged to be “the greatest of scholastic philosophers”. But the author
has serious issues with him. For one thing, Aquinas extols Aristotle, and
Russell is convinced that much of what the Stagyrite wrote on logic is simply
erroneous. He is amused that Aristotle “has, among Catholics, almost the
authority of one of the Fathers; to criticize him in matters of pure philosophy
has come to be thought almost impious.” He remarks in a rueful footnote that when
he did so in a broadcast “very many protests from Catholics resulted.” He
patiently outlines in detail the contents of Summa
contra Gentiles and he graciously spends only one short paragraph on the
idiotic “proofs” of God’s existence in Summa
Theologiae. He admires Aquinas’ preference for rational argument than for
blind reference to authority, but he still considers the saint greatly
overrated as a philosopher. Russell’s conclusion on St Thomas
There is little of the
true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates,
set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an
enquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he
begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the
Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of
the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on
revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not
philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to
be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece
The defects of the
scholastic method are those that inevitably result from laying stress on
‘dialectic’. These defects are: indifference to facts and science, belief in
reasoning in matters which only observation can decide, and an undue emphasis
on verbal distinctions and subtleties. These defects we had occasion to mention
in connection with Plato, but in the scholastics they exist in a much more
extreme form.
One might say with equal justice that
these are the defects of philosophy in general. All ages and all schools fit
the description. Bertrand Russell, incidentally, was one of the very few
exceptions: a philosopher whose outlook was thoroughly conditioned by science.
To get back to the fathers and the
schoolmen, Russell’s affection is reserved, significantly, for the more
iconoclastic members. John the Scot (who was Irish, not Scottish) is “the most
astonishing person of the ninth century”. A rare case of Russellian raving! Johannes
Scotus was indeed a most remarkable man, “a Neoplatonist, an accomplished Greek
scholar, a Pelagian, a pantheist.” He valued reason more than faith, despised
ecclesiastical authorities, and wrote a good deal of philosophy which is quite
contrary to the Christian doctrines. How he came to die of natural causes is a
mystery. Perhaps we should be grateful to Charles the Bald for that. Very
similar example from the sixth century is Boethius. In 524, while he was awaiting
his execution (successfully carried out, alas), he wrote Consolations of Philosophy, a “golden volume” (Gibbon) that “does
not prove that he was not a Christian, but it does show that pagan philosophy
had a much stronger hold on him than Christian theology.” Russell praises it
hardly less lavishly than Gibbon:
The tone of the book is
more like that of Plato than that of Plotinus. There is no trace of the
superstition or morbidness of the age, no obsession with sin, no excessive
straining after the unattainable. There is perfect philosophic calm – so much
that, if the book had been written in prosperity, it might almost have been
called smug. Written when it was, in prison under sentence of death, it is as
admirable as the last moments of the Platonic Socrates.
Makes you eager to read that book,
doesn’t it? On a smaller scale, Marsiglio of Padua and William of Occam are
praised for their brave, but ultimately completely unsuccessful, attempts to
make the Church democratic. How these guys didn’t end at the stake is a
mystery. The former seriously proposed that only a General Council, elected by the
majority of people including the laity, should have the power to excommunicate
and give authoritative interpretation of Scripture, that the Church on the
whole should have no secular authority, and that the Pope should have no
special powers. Imagine that! William of Occam, though slightly less daring
than Marsiglio in terms of politics, was greatly superior as a philosopher, in
fact the most important schoolman after Tommy. He enjoys a thorough
philosophical discussion, including the famous principle that bears his name.
Occam is best known for a
maxim which is not to be found in his works, but has acquired the name of
‘Occam’s razor’. This maxim says: ‘Entities are not to be multiplied without
necessity.’ Although he did not say this, he said something which has much the
same effect, namely: ‘It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer.’
That is to say, if everything in some science can be interpreted without
assuming this or that hypothetical entity, there is no ground for assuming it.
I have myself found this a most fruitful principle in logical analysis.
The part about modern philosophy is
at once the most and the least interesting. On the one hand, the list of names
is quite a who’s who in the field. Even people like me, woefully ignorant of
philosophy, have heard something about Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche and Marx. (If nothing else, you’ve tasted the Leibniz
biscuits, haven’t you?) Some people may object to the inclusion of Machiavelli
and Byron, but everybody has heard of them, and it’s of no small consequence to
investigate how they might have influenced the course of history and the minds
of the philosophers. On the other hand, the modern times mark, for me, the
decline of philosophy. Slowly but surely, it has turned more and more into an
esoteric pursuit nobody outside its own circle cares about. Philosophers are
officially respected and lip service is paid to them, but secretly they are
regarded as a bunch of crackpots.
Modern philosophy, however, has retained, for the most part, an individualistic and subjective tendency. This is very marked in Descartes, who builds up all knowledge from the certainty of his own existence, and accepts clearness and distinctness (both subjective) as criteria of truth. It is not prominent in Spinoza, but reappears in Leibniz’s windowless monads. Locke, whose temperament is thoroughly objective, is forced reluctantly into the subjective doctrine that knowledge is of the agreement or disagreement of ideas – a view so repulsive to him that he escapes from it by violent inconsistencies.Berkeley
Modern philosophy, however, has retained, for the most part, an individualistic and subjective tendency. This is very marked in Descartes, who builds up all knowledge from the certainty of his own existence, and accepts clearness and distinctness (both subjective) as criteria of truth. It is not prominent in Spinoza, but reappears in Leibniz’s windowless monads. Locke, whose temperament is thoroughly objective, is forced reluctantly into the subjective doctrine that knowledge is of the agreement or disagreement of ideas – a view so repulsive to him that he escapes from it by violent inconsistencies.
Earlier in the book, in the
Introduction itself indeed, Russell frankly calls Fichte’s idea that everything
is an emanation of the ego “insanity”, an extreme view from which "philosophy
has been attempting, ever since, to escape into the world of everyday common
sense.” Anarchism and Romanticism, Russell contends, were among the by-products
of subjectivism. How much they were influenced by philosophy and how much
happened the other way round, that is for the reader to decide. More fruitful,
philosophically at any rate, are the different antidotes to subjectivism. They
dominated much of modern philosophy:
Against the more insane
forms of subjectivism in modern times there have been various reactions. First,
a half-way compromise philosophy, the doctrine of liberalism, which attempted
to assign the respective spheres of government and the individual. This begins,
in its modern form, with Locke, who is as much opposed to ‘enthusiasm’ – the individualism
of the Anabaptists – as to absolute authority and blind subservience to
tradition. A more thorough-going revolt leads to the doctrine of State worship,
which assigns to the State the position that Catholicism gave to the Church, or
even sometimes, to God. Hobbes, Rousseau, and Hegel represent different phases
of this theory, and their doctrines are embodied practically in Cromwell,
Napoleon, and modern Germany
There are several philosophers whose outlook,
as presented by Russell, I should like to discuss in some detail. These are
Spinoza, Locke and Hume as regards the intrinsic value of their writings; Kant
and Hegel as regards an often encountered criticism against Russell; Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as examples of what the author sharply
disagrees with. This doesn’t mean the rest of Part Three is boring. Far from
it. But it’s important to make some choices. Russell’s confrontation with
arch-Romantics like Rousseau and Byron is compelling, but not nearly as much as
the one with their philosophical successors. The ideas of Machiavelli, More,
Hobbes and Erasmus are intriguing, but not nearly as much as those of their
post-Cartesian colleagues. Last but not least, in spite of Russell’s matchless
eloquence, I do not buy the Cartesian doctrine of the two clocks, Leibniz’s “windowless
monads” or Berkeley Berkeley
Spinoza, “that tender and austere spirit” according to Somerset Maugham[2], “the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers” according to Bertrand Russell, is a very interesting creature – according to me. Unfortunately, I must agree with Russell that his Euclidean method in Ethics, full of definitions, propositions, axioms, proofs and corollaries, “makes him difficult reading”. I guess one must have a mathematically orientated mind to follow Spinoza, and I certainly don’t have it. Nevertheless, I think he is worth reading not just out of curiosity how accurate Russell’s summary is or why Maugham was filled “with just that feeling of majesty and exulting power that one has at the sight of a great mountain range” the first time he read him (“one of the signal experiences of my life”)[3], but out of the selfish motif for personal profit as well. I will not embark on one of my lame summaries riddled with quotation marks. I will give you Russell’s salient points first hand.
Spinoza (1632–77) is the
noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers. Intellectually, some others
have surpassed him, but ethically he is supreme. As a natural consequence, he
was considered, during his lifetime and for a century after his death, a man of
appalling wickedness. He was born a Jew, but the Jews excommunicated him.
Christians abhorred him equally; although his whole philosophy is dominated by
the idea of God, the orthodox accused him of atheism. Leibniz, who owed much to
him, concealed his debt, and carefully abstained from saying a word in his
praise; he even went so far as to lie about the extent of his personal
acquaintance with the heretic Jew.
[…]
Spinoza’s Ethics deals
with three distinct matters. It begins with metaphysics; it then goes on to the
psychology of the passions and the will; and finally it sets forth an ethic
based on the preceding metaphysics and psychology. The metaphysic is a
modification of Descartes, the psychology is reminiscent of Hobbes, but the
ethic is original, and is what is of most value in the book.
[…]
The metaphysical system of
Spinoza is of the type inaugurated by Parmenides. There is only one substance,
‘God or Nature’; nothing finite is self-subsistent. Descartes admitted three
substances, God and mind and matter; it is true that, even for him, God was, in
a sense, more substantial than mind and matter, since He had created them, and
could, if He chose, annihilate them. But except in relation to God’s
omnipotence, mind and matter were two independent substances, defined,
respectively, by the attributes of thought and extension. Spinoza would have
none of this. For him, thought and extension were both attributes of God. God
has also an infinite number of other attributes, since He must be in every
respect infinite; but these others are unknown to us. Individual souls and
separate pieces of matter are, for Spinoza, adjectival; they are not things,
but merely aspects of the divine Being. There can be no such personal
immortality as Christians believe in, but only that impersonal sort that
consists in becoming more and more one with God. Finite things are defined by
their boundaries, physical or logical, that is to say, by what they are not:
‘all determination is negation’. There can be only one Being who is wholly
positive, and He must be absolutely infinite. Hence Spinoza is led to a
complete and undiluted pantheism.
Everything, according to Spinoza,
is ruled by an absolute logical necessity. There is no such thing as free will
in the mental sphere or chance in the physical world. Everything that happens
is a manifestation of God’s inscrutable nature, and it is logically impossible
that events should be other than they are. This leads to difficulties in regard
to sin, which critics were not slow to point out. […] This doctrine, though, in
one form or another, it has been held by most mystics, cannot, obviously, be
reconciled with the orthodox doctrine of sin and damnation. It is bound up with
Spinoza’s complete rejection of free will. Although not at all polemical,
Spinoza was too honest to conceal his opinions, however shocking to
contemporaries; the abhorrence of his teaching is therefore not surprising.
[…]
I come now to Spinoza’s
theory of the emotions. This comes after a metaphysical discussion of the
nature and origin of the mind, which leads up to the astonishing proposition
that ‘the human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite
essence of God’. But the passions, which are discussed in the Third Book of the
Ethics, distract us and obscure our
intellectual vision of the whole. […] But even in this Book there are moments
when Spinoza abandons the appearance of mathematically demonstrated cynicism,
as when he says: ‘Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the
other hand be destroyed by love.’ Self-preservation is the fundamental motive
of the passions, according to Spinoza; but self-preservation alters its character
when we realize that what is real and positive in us is what unites us to the
whole, and not what preserves the appearance of separateness.
The last two books of the Ethics, entitled respectively ‘Of human
bondage, or the strength of the emotions’ and ‘Of the power of the
understanding, or of human freedom,’ are the most interesting. We are in
bondage in proportion as what happens to us is determined by outside causes,
and we are free in proportion as we are self-determined. […] He makes no appeal
to unselfishness; he holds that self-seeking, in some sense, and more
particularly self-preservation, govern all human behaviour. ‘No virtue can be
conceived as prior to this endeavour to preserve one’s own being.’ But his
conception of what a wise man will choose as the goal of his self-seeking is
different from that of the ordinary egoist: ‘The mind’s highest good is the
knowledge of God, and the mind’s highest virtue is to know God.’ Emotions are
called ‘passions’ when they spring from inadequate ideas; passions in different
men may conflict, but men who live in obedience to reason will agree together.
Pleasure in itself is good, but hope and fear are bad, and so are humility and
repentance: ‘he who repents of an action is doubly wretched or infirm’.
[…]
Spinoza’s outlook is
intended to liberate men from the tyranny of fear. ‘A free man thinks of
nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death, but of
life.’ Spinoza lived up to this precept very completely. On the last day of his
life he was entirely calm, not exalted, like Socrates in the Phaedo, but conversing, as he would on
any other day, about matters of interest to his interlocutor. Unlike some other
philosophers [e.g. Schopenhauer, see below], he not only believed his own doctrines, but practised them; I do
not know of any occasion, in spite of great provocation, in which he was
betrayed into the kind of heat or anger that his ethic condemned. In
controversy he was courteous and reasonable, never denouncing, but doing his
utmost to persuade.
[…]
Spinoza does not, like the
Stoics, object to all emotions; he objects only to those that are ‘passions’,
i.e. those in which we appear to ourselves to be passive in the power of
outside forces. ‘An emotion which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon
as we form a clear and distinct idea of it.’ Understanding that all things are
necessary helps the mind to acquire power over the emotions.
[…]
Spinoza’s metaphysic is
the best example of what may be called ‘logical monism’ – the doctrine, namely,
that the world as a whole is a single substance, none of whose parts are
logically capable of existing alone. The ultimate basis for this view is the
belief that every proposition has a single subject and a single predicate,
which leads us to the conclusion that relations and plurality must be illusory.
[…] The whole of this metaphysic is impossible to accept; it is incompatible
with modern logic and with scientific method. Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning; when
we successfully infer the future, we do so by means of principles which are not
logically necessary, but are suggested by empirical data. And the concept of
substance, upon which Spinoza relies, is one which neither science nor
philosophy can nowadays accept.
But when we come to Spinoza’s
ethics, we feel – or at least I feel – that something, though not everything,
can be accepted even when the metaphysical foundation has been rejected.
Broadly speaking, Spinoza is concerned to show how it is possible to live nobly
even when we recognize the limits of human power. He himself, by his doctrine
of necessity, makes these limits narrower than they are; but when they
indubitably exist, Spinoza’s maxims are probably the best possible. Take, for
instance, death: nothing that a man can do will make him immortal, and it is
therefore futile to spend time in fears and lamentations over the fact that we
must die. To be obsessed by the fear of death is a kind of slavery; Spinoza is
right in saying that ‘the free man thinks of nothing less than of death’.
[…]
But how about misfortunes
to people whom you love?
[…]
If you follow Christ’s
teaching, you will say ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’
I have known Quakers who could have said this sincerely and profoundly, and
whom I admired because they could. But before giving admiration one must be
very sure that the misfortune is felt as deeply as it should be. One cannot
accept the attitude of some among the Stoics, who said, ‘What does it matter to
me if my family suffer? I can still be virtuous.’ The Christian principle,
‘Love your enemies,’ is good, but the Stoic principle, ‘Be indifferent to your
friends,’ is bad. And the Christian principle does not inculcate calm, but an
ardent love even towards the worst of men. There is nothing to be said against
it except that it is too difficult for most of us to practise sincerely.
Spinoza would say what the
Christian says, and also something more. For him, all sin is due to ignorance;
he would ‘forgive them, for they know not what they do’. But he would have you
avoid the limited purview from which, in his opinion, sin springs, and would
urge you, even under the greatest misfortunes, to avoid being shut up in the
world of your sorrow; he would have you understand it by seeing it in relation
to its causes and as a part of the whole order of nature. As we saw, he
believes that hatred can be overcome by love: ‘Hatred is increased by being
reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is
completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater,
than if hatred had not preceded it.’ I wish I could believe this, but I cannot,
except in exceptional cases where the person hating is completely in the power
of the person who refuses to hate in return. In such cases, surprise at being
not punished may have a reforming effect. But so long as the wicked have power,
it is not much use assuring them that you do not hate them, since they will
attribute your words to the wrong motive. And you cannot deprive them of power
by non-resistance.
The problem for Spinoza is
easier than it is for one who has no belief in the ultimate goodness of the
universe. Spinoza thinks that, if you see your misfortunes as they are in
reality, as part of the concatenation of causes stretching from the beginning
of time to the end, you will see that they are only misfortunes to you, not to
the universe, to which they are merely passing discords heightening an ultimate
harmony. I cannot accept this; I think that particular events are what they
are, and do not become different by absorption into a whole. Each act of
cruelty is eternally a part of the universe; nothing that happens later can
make that act good rather than bad, or can confer perfection on the whole of
which it is a part.
Nevertheless, when it is your lot to have to endure something that is
(or seems to you) worse than the ordinary lot of mankind, Spinoza’s principle
of thinking about the whole, or at any rate about larger matters than your own
grief, is a useful one. There are even times when it is comforting to reflect
that human life, with all that it contains of evil and suffering, is an
infinitesimal part of the life of the universe. Such reflections may not
suffice to constitute a religion, but in a painful world they are a help
towards sanity and an antidote to the paralysis of utter despair.
I have deliberately omitted most references to God. They are countless. Spinoza’s philosophy is totally God-dominated, probably more so than even the most pious ramblings of the scholastics. But it’s essential to understand that his idea of God is profoundly different than that of any religion, least of all Christianity. Spinoza’s God, if I understand him correctly, is something very much like what Richard Dawkins calls “Einsteinian religion”[4]. In simple words: awe-inspiring admiration of nature and its laws. In this sense, to understand and love God – Spinoza doesn’t seem to think that love and understanding are mutually exclusive – is a curiously modern and scientific aspiration. It certainly is a noble one. It dispenses with hope, but it also gets rid of fear. It deems free will to be nothing more than illusion, but it doesn’t descend, as Schopenhauer does, in the noxious dungeons of pessimism. I can well see why Russell holds Spinoza to be “ethically supreme”.
John Locke (1632–1704) is regarded as “the apostle of the Revolution of 1688, the most moderate and the most successful of all revolutions” and “the most influential though by no means the most profound of modern philosophers.” He is also the father of both empiricism and liberalism. Stunning credentials! It is no coincidence that three full chapters are dedicated to him. Though I suspect he is in general agreement with his liberal outlook and lack of dogmatism, Russell is quite critical of Locke’s philosophy, which he finds full with all sorts of glaring contradictions. Locke seems to have been the perfect embodiment of the practical man, “contemptuous of metaphysics” and “always willing to sacrifice logic rather than become paradoxical”. I like Locke more than Russell does, but the most thought-provoking passage from all three chapters is not a quote from Locke but a casual reference to the two main types of philosophy.
No one has yet succeeded
in inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consistent. Locke aimed at
credibility, and achieved it at the expense of consistency. Most of the great
philosophers have done the opposite. A philosophy which is not self-consistent
cannot be wholly true, but a philosophy which is self-consistent can very well
be wholly false. The most fruitful philosophies have contained glaring
inconsistencies, but for that very reason have been partially true. There is no
reason to suppose that a self-consistent system contains more truth than one
which, like Locke’s, is obviously more or less wrong.
“A philosophy which is not
self-consistent cannot be wholly true, but a philosophy which is
self-consistent can very well be wholly false.” There’s wisdom here! The
passage above naturally leads to Hume who, as opposite to Locke, achieved
consistency at the expense of credibility.
Somerset Maugham once wrote about David
Hume that “it would be impossible, I think, to write philosophy with more
elegance, urbanity and clearness.“[5] If An Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding is anything to go by, I might agree entirely about
the “urbanity”, but only to some extent about the “elegance” and “clearness”. That
said, Hume is one of the very few philosophers – not to say the only one –
whose major works I would love to read complete. In this respect, Russell
mentions one charming detail. The famous Enquiry
(1748) is a shortened version of A Treatise of
Human Nature (1739-40) which Hume did “by leaving out the best parts
and most of the reasons for his conclusions”. Russell opens his chapter with another
– the usual – bang:
David
Hume (1711–76) is one of the most important among philosophers, because he
developed to its logical conclusion the empirical philosophy of Locke and
Berkeley, and by making it self-consistent made it incredible. He represents,
in a certain sense, a dead end: in his direction, it is impossible to go
further. To refute him has been, ever since he wrote, a favourite pastime among
metaphysicians. For my part, I find none of their refutations convincing;
nevertheless, I cannot but hope that something less sceptical than Hume’s
system may be discoverable.
Russell’s attitude to Hume is
exceptionally ambiguous. He clearly admires him, as he finds none of the
numerous refutations (Kant be blown!) of his ideas convincing, but at one place
he states that when Hume “achieves some degree of consistency he is wildly
paradoxical”. I am not sure how one is supposed to reconcile words like
“consistency” and “paradoxical”, but I freely admit that some of Hume’s
conclusions are very disturbing. Causation is a case in point. If I understand
him correctly, Hume claims it is non-existent. And his arguments, convincing or
not, are vastly superior to the Cartesians with their parallel clocks and
ludicrous notions like God. Russell discusses the arguments for and against
Hume’s “complete scepticism” and, for once, confesses himself puzzled:
Hume’s real argument is
that, while we sometimes perceive relations of time and place, we never
perceive causal relations, which must therefore, if admitted, be inferred from
relations that can be perceived. The controversy is thus reduced to one of
empirical fact: Do we, or do we not, sometimes perceive a relation which can be
called causal? Hume says no, his adversaries say yes, and it is not easy to see
how evidence can be produced by either side.
Hume is quoted at length – invariably
from Treatise, never from Enquiry – and he is worth re-quoting
here, keeping in mind that these are merely his conclusions; I suppose they are
accompanied by formidable argumentation. He was quite aware that the problem is
difficult to grasp and may have serious repercussions:
I am sensible, that of all
the paradoxes, which I have had, or shall hereafter have occasion to advance in
the course of this treatise, the present one is the most violent, and that ’tis
merely by dint of solid proof and reasoning I can ever hope it will have
admission, and overcome the inveterate prejudices of mankind. Before we are
reconcil’d to this doctrine, how often must we repeat to ourselves, that the
simple view of any two objects or actions, however related, can never give us
any idea of power, or of a connexion betwixt them: that this idea arises from a
repetition of their union: that the repetition neither discovers nor causes
anything in the objects, but has an influence only on the mind, by that
customary transition it produces: that this customary transition is, therefore,
the same with the power and necessity, which are consequently felt by the soul,
and not perceiv’d externally in bodies?
[Book I, part iii, sec.
xiv.]
All probable reasoning is
nothing but a species of sensation. ’Tis not solely in poetry and music, we
must follow our taste and sentiment, but likewise in philosophy. When I am
convinced of any principle, ’tis only an idea, which strikes more strongly upon
me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do
nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their
influence. Objects have no discoverable connexion together; nor is it from any
other principle but custom operating upon the imagination, that we can draw any
inference from the appearance of one to the existence of another.
[Book I, part iii, sec.
viii.]
This abolition of causation, if
accepted, has shattering consequences. It undermines the existence of knowledge
itself. It deems rationality to be an illusion. It has had, directly or
indirectly, stupendous historical significance. In Russell’s infinitely more
powerful words:
The ultimate outcome of Hume’s
investigation of what passes for knowledge is not what we must suppose him to
have desired. The sub-title of his book [Treatise]
is: ‘An attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral
subjects.’ It is evident that he started out with a belief that scientific
method yields the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; he ended,
however, with the conviction that belief is never rational, since we know
nothing.
[…]
Hume’s philosophy, whether
true or false, represents the bankruptcy of eighteenth-century reasonableness.
He starts out, like Locke, with the intention of being sensible and empirical,
taking nothing on trust, but seeking whatever instruction is to be obtained
from experience and observation. But having a better intellect than Locke’s, a
greater acuteness in analysis, and a smaller capacity for accepting comfortable
inconsistencies, he arrives at the disastrous conclusion that from experience
and observation nothing is to be learnt. There is no such thing as a rational
belief: ‘If we believe that fire warms, or water refreshes, ’tis only because
it costs us too much pains to think otherwise.’ We cannot help believing, but
no belief can be grounded in reason.
[…]
It was inevitable that
such a self-refutation of rationality should be followed by a great outburst of
irrational faith. The quarrel between Hume and Rousseau is symbolic: Rousseau
was mad but influential, Hume was sane but had no followers. Subsequent British
empiricists rejected his scepticism without refuting it; Rousseau and his
followers agreed with Hume that no belief is based on reason, but thought the
heart superior to reason, and allowed it to lead them to convictions very
different from those that Hume retained in practice. German philosophers, from
Kant to Hegel, had not assimilated Hume’s arguments. I say this deliberately,
in spite of the belief which many philosophers share with Kant, that his Critique of Pure Reason answered Hume.
In fact, these philosophers – at least Kant and Hegel – represent a pre-Humian
type of rationalism, and can be refuted by Humian arguments. The philosophers
who cannot be refuted in this way are those who do not pretend to be rational,
such as Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. The growth of unreason throughout
the nineteenth century and what has passed of the twentieth is a natural sequel
to Hume’s destruction of empiricism.
It is therefore important
to discover whether there is any answer to Hume within the framework of a
philosophy that is wholly or mainly empirical. If not, there is no intellectual
difference between sanity and insanity. The lunatic who believes that he is a
poached egg is to be condemned solely on the ground that he is in a minority,
or rather – since we must not assume democracy – on the ground that the
government does not agree with him. This is a desperate point of view, and it
must be hoped that there is some way of escaping from it.
Hume’s scepticism rests
entirely upon his rejection of the principle of induction. The principle of
induction, as applied to causation, says that, if A has been found very often
accompanied or followed by B, and no instance is known of A not being
accompanied or followed by B, then it is probable that on the next occasion on
which A is observed it will be accompanied or followed by B. If the principle
is to be adequate, a sufficient number of instances must make the probability
not far short of certainty. If this principle, or any other from which it can
be deduced, is true, then the causal inferences which Hume rejects are valid,
not indeed as giving certainty, but as giving a sufficient probability for
practical purposes. If this principle is not true, every attempt to arrive at
general scientific laws from particular observations is fallacious, and Hume’s scepticism
is inescapable for an empiricist. The principle itself cannot, of course,
without circularity, be inferred from observed uniformities, since it is
required to justify any such inference. It must therefore be, or be deduced
from, an independent principle not based upon experience. […] What these
[Hume’s] arguments prove – and I do not think the proof can be controverted – is,
that induction is an independent logical principle, incapable of being inferred
either from experience or from other logical principles, and that without this
principle science is impossible.
Quite apart from his doubts, Russell
has some acute criticisms of Hume. He boldly accuses him of inconsistency and
insincerity, not without reason in either case.
Even in his most sceptical
chapter, in which he sums up the conclusions of Book I, he says: ‘Generally
speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only
ridiculous.’ He has no right to say this. ‘Dangerous’ is a causal word, and a
sceptic as to causation cannot know that anything is ‘dangerous’.
In fact, in the later
portions of the Treatise, Hume forgets all about his fundamental doubts, and
writes much as any other enlightened moralist of his time might have written;
he applies to his doubts the remedy that he recommends, namely ‘carelessness
and inattention’. In a sense, his scepticism is insincere, since he cannot
maintain it in practice. It has, however, this awkward consequence, that it
paralyses every effort to prove one line of action better than another.
On the other hand, occasionally
Russell is quite unfair to Hume:
There is no reason for
studying philosophy – so Hume maintains – except that, to certain temperaments,
this is an agreeable way of passing the time.
I very much doubt Hume maintained
anything of the sort. In Part I of Enquiry,
he claims for philosophy much greater ambitions:
Besides, we may observe,
in every art or profession, even those which most concern life or action, that
a spirit of accuracy, however acquired, carries all of them nearer their
perfection, and renders them more subservient to the interests of society. And
though a philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of philosophy,
if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the
whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling. The
politician will acquire greater foresight and subtility, in the subdividing and
balancing of power; the lawyer more method and finer principles in his
reasonings; and the general more regularity in his discipline, and more caution
in his plans and operations. The stability of modern governments above the
ancient, and the accuracy of modern philosophy, have improved, and probably
will still improve, by similar gradations.
Noble sentiments. I don’t think
Russell would have disagreed with them and I wish the “genius of philosophy”
would be more widespread. Hume’s proposed improvement of human nature is not unlike
Russell’s attempts to spread a more rational outlook among the people at large,
to gradually free the masses from their propensity to be enslaved by
superstitions and dogma. Both thought – and, for my part, both were right –
that philosophy could help establishing critical thinking and subtlety of
reflection, or at least their approximation, among men of action not generally
burdened by mental activities. Both agreed that certain matters are best left
to unreasonable passions, but Hume summarised the issue better: “Be a
philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man."[6]
For my part, the most interesting
thing about Kant is his staggering arrogance. In the preface to the first
edition of his magnum opus, The Critique
of Pure Reason, he wrote modestly: “I venture to assert that there is not a
single metaphysical problem which has not been solved, or for the solution of
which the key at least has not been supplied.” Have you, indeed! Russell would
have none of this. For his part, the chief importance of Kant is not that he
refuted Hume (which he didn’t), but that he made possible
the philosophy of Hegel. Kant may have originated the German idealism in
philosophy, but it was Hegel who brought it to its culmination.
Those who have read Russell’s essay
“How to Read and Understand History” (1943) would not be surprised that the
chapter on Hegel is the wittiest and most devastating in the whole book. He
starts with bluntly stating his belief that “almost all Hegel’s doctrines are
false”, but he immediately admits their vast historical importance, extending
far beyond “pure philosophy”. He then embarks on a fascinating discussion of
Hegelian logic and dialectic, or the Absolute and its final conclusion, the
“Absolute Idea”, reached by thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and other really
rather obscure notions. Instead of lapsing into a diluted version of Spinoza’s
pantheism, Hegel, a mystic under cover, ventures into the slightly nonsensical hypothesis
that the whole is so much more important than its parts that we cannot truly
know anything except in relation to the entire universe. Russell argues that
these ideas, if true, effectively eliminate the existence of knowledge – it
cannot even begin – and he finally demolishes the Hegelian logic completely:
Hegel thought that, if
enough was known about a thing to distinguish it from all other things, then
all its properties could be inferred by logic. This was a mistake, and from
this mistake arose the whole imposing edifice of his system. This illustrates
an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the
consequences to which it gives rise.
As for Hegel’s relentlessly nationalistic,
militaristic and dictatorial political philosophy, it is ingeniously shown to
be inconsistent with his metaphysical fantasies. The glorification of the State, “a doctrine which, if
accepted, justifies every internal tyranny and every external aggression that
can possibly be imagined” (and which, indeed, is something of a misnomer as the
existence of other states is granted), hardly agrees with Hegel’s passion that the
whole alone can be true and real. The so-called “theory of history”, of which
the divine State is of course an indispensable part, Russell destroys with
uncompromising arguments; note his delicious sarcasm that enlivens these
passages:
World history, in fact,
has advanced through the categories, from Pure Being in China (of which Hegel knew nothing except that
it was) to the Absolute Idea, which seems to have been nearly, if not quite,
realized in the Prussian
State Mediterranean .
Nor is there any reason, if reality is timeless, why the later parts of the
process should embody higher categories than the earlier parts – unless one
were to adopt the blasphemous supposition that the Universe was gradually
learning Hegel’s philosophy.
[…]
In the historical
development of Spirit there have been three main phases: The Orientals, the
Greeks and Romans, and the Germans. ‘The history of the world is the discipline
of the uncontrolled natural will, bringing it into obedience to a universal
principle and conferring subjective freedom. The East knew, and to the present
day knows, only that One is free; the
Greek and Roman world, that some are
free; the German world knows that All
are free.’ One might have supposed that democracy would be the appropriate form
of government where all are free, but not so. Democracy and aristocracy alike
belong to the stage where some are free, despotism to that where one is free,
and monarchy to that in which all are
free. This is connected with the very odd sense in which Hegel uses the word
‘freedom’. For him (and so far we may agree) there is no freedom without law;
but he tends to convert this, and to argue that wherever there is law there is
freedom. Thus ‘freedom’, for him, means little more than the right to obey the
law.
[…]
To our mundane vision, it
may seem that the Spirit that gives laws is embodied in the monarch, and the
Spirit to which laws are given is embodied in his subjects. But from the point
of view of the Absolute the distinction between monarch and subjects, like all
other distinctions, is illusory, and when the monarch imprisons a
liberal-minded subject, that is still Spirit freely determining itself. Hegel
praises Rousseau for distinguishing between the general will and the will of
all. One gathers that the monarch embodies the general will, whereas a
parliamentary majority only embodies the will of all. A very convenient
doctrine.
German history is divided
by Hegel into three periods: the first, up to Charlemagne; the second, from
Charlemagne to the Reformation; the third, from the Reformation onwards. These
three periods are distinguished as the Kingdoms of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost, respectively. It seems a little odd that the Kingdom of the Holy
Ghost should have begun with the bloody and utterly abominable atrocities
committed in suppressing the Peasants’ War, but Hegel, naturally, does not
mention so trivial an incident. Instead, he goes off, as might be expected,
into praises of Machiavelli.
The best test for a writer’s mettle is the way he disagrees most violently with people and ideas he dislikes. For Russell, these are Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Marx. The first sunk into profound resignation and pessimism, the second developed one of the most peculiar and appallingly elitist philosophical doctrines, and the third was really no philosopher at all but a propagandist with a revolutionary agenda. Russell’s main objection, I think, is that all three were mainly inspired by fear and hate. But he disagrees calmly and thoughtfully, with clearly stated arguments instead of obscure ranting. When he resorts to ad hominem attacks, as he does in all three cases, these are put into wider philosophical context. For example, Nietzsche’s ludicrous dismissal of women is traced to his own frustrating experience (or simply inexperience) with them and “Schopenhauer’s gospel of resignation is not very consistent and not very sincere” because the great philosopher hardly practised the asceticism he preached. The latter case seems the more controversial to me, but unless we accept that philosophers exhibited the same disparity between questionable private life and sublimity in their work as great artists often did (the Schopenhauer-obsessed Richard Wagner is the classic example), I think it makes a lot of sense. It leads, in Russell’s hands, to a shrewd analysis of pessimism and optimism, both alike defective, and a not ungenerous conclusion about the importance of Schopenhauer:
Historically, two things
are important about Schopenhauer: his pessimism, and his doctrine that will is
superior to knowledge. His pessimism made it possible for men to take to
philosophy without having to persuade themselves that all evil can be explained
away, and in this way, as an antidote, it was useful. From a scientific point
of view, optimism and pessimism are alike objectionable: optimism assumes, or
attempts to prove, that the universe exists to please us, and pessimism that it
exists to displease us. Scientifically, there is no evidence that it is
concerned with us either one way or the other. The belief in either pessimism
or optimism is a matter of temperament, not of reason, but the optimistic
temperament has been much commoner among Western philosophers. A representative
of the opposite party is therefore likely to be useful in bringing forward
considerations which would otherwise be overlooked.
More important than
pessimism was the doctrine of the primacy of the will. It is obvious that this
doctrine has no necessary logical connection with pessimism, and those who held
it after Schopenhauer frequently found in it a basis for optimism. In one form
or another, the doctrine that will is paramount has been held by many modern
philosophers, notably Nietzsche, Bergson, James, and Dewey. It has, moreover,
acquired a vogue outside the circles of professional philosophers. And in
proportion as will has gone up in the scale, knowledge has gone down. This is,
I think, the most notable change that has come over the temper of philosophy in
our age. It was prepared by Rousseau and Kant, but was first proclaimed in its
purity by Schopenhauer. For this reason, in spite of inconsistency and a
certain shallowness, his philosophy has considerable importance as a stage in
historical development.
In spite of his sharp disagreement
with his philosophy, Russell freely admits that Nietzsche was not just
Schopenhauer’s successor, but “superior [to him] in many ways, particularly in
the consistency and coherence of his doctrine.” In the end, he reaches the (startling for some
people) conclusion that Nietzsche’s ethics, however repugnant, are irrefutable
by logical arguments. Like Hume’s scepticism, they can be accepted or rejected
on emotional grounds only. Even Nietzsche’s condemnation of Christianity, which
might be expected to draw both men together, fails to do so. Russell agrees
about Pascal, who “sacrificed his magnificent mathematical intellect to his God”,
and about Dostoyevsky, who “would sin in order to repent and to enjoy the
luxury of confession.” Their main arguments also seem to agree, up to a point
at least. Nietzsche thinks the greatest vice of Christianity was that “it
caused acceptance of what he calls ‘slave morality’.” Russell’s major objection
is that Christianity is untrue (for which Nietzsche cares not) and that it
promotes unreasonable submission to authority (pretty much the same as
Nietzsche’s “slave morality”). Where both great men conflict is as to what to
put in the place of religion, and it’s amusing to see Russell in such a
Christian mood, though he chooses Buddha, not Jesus, to plead his case. A
lengthy quotation is due here.
It does not occur to
Nietzsche as possible that a man should genuinely feel universal love,
obviously because he himself feels almost universal hatred and fear, which he
would fain disguise as lordly indifference. His ‘noble’ man – who is himself in
day-dreams – is a being wholly devoid of sympathy, ruthless, cunning, cruel,
concerned only with his own power. King Lear, on the verge of madness, says:
I will do such things –
What they are yet I know
not – but they shall be
The terror of the earth.
This is Nietzsche’s
philosophy in a nutshell.
[…]
The question is: If Buddha
and Nietzsche were confronted, could either produce any argument that ought to
appeal to the impartial listener? I am not thinking of political arguments. We
can imagine them appearing before the Almighty, as in the first chapter of the
Book of Job, and offering advice as to the sort of world He should create. What
could either say?
Buddha would open the
argument by speaking of the lepers, outcast and miserable; the poor, toiling
with aching limbs and barely kept alive by scanty nourishment; the wounded in
battle, dying in slow agony; the orphans, illtreated by cruel guardians; and
even the most successful haunted by the thought of failure and death. From all
this load of sorrow, he would say, a way of salvation must be found, and
salvation can only come through love.
Nietzsche, whom only
Omnipotence could restrain from interrupting, would burst out when his turn
came: ‘Good heavens, man, you must learn to be of tougher fibre. Why go about
snivelling because trivial people suffer? Or, for that matter, because great
men suffer? Trivial people suffer trivially, great men suffer greatly, and
great sufferings are not to be regretted, because they are noble. Your ideal is
a purely negative one, absence of suffering, which can be completely secured by
non-existence. I, on the other hand, have positive ideals: I admire Alcibiades,
and the Emperor Frederick II, and Napoleon. For the sake of such men, any
misery is worth while. I appeal to You, Lord, as the greatest of creative artists,
do not let Your artistic impulses be curbed by the degenerate fear-ridden
maunderings of this wretched psychopath.’
Buddha, who in the courts
of Heaven has learnt all history since his death, and has mastered science with
delight in the knowledge and sorrow at the use to which men have put it,
replies with calm urbanity: ‘You are mistaken, Professor Nietzsche, in thinking
my ideal a purely negative one. True, it includes a negative element, the
absence of suffering; but it has in addition quite as much that is positive as
is to be found in your doctrine. Though I have no special admiration for
Alcibiades and Napoleon, I, too, have my heroes: my successor Jesus, because he
told men to love their enemies; the men who discovered how to master the forces
of nature and secure food with less labour; the medical men who have shown how
to diminish disease; the poets and artists and musicians who have caught
glimpses of the Divine beatitude. Love and knowledge and delight in beauty are
not negations; they are enough to fill the lives of the greatest men that have
ever lived.’
‘All the same,’ Nietzsche
replies, ‘your world would be insipid. You should study Heraclitus, whose works
survive complete in the celestial library. Your love is compassion, which is
elicited by pain; your truth, if you are honest, is unpleasant, and only to be
known through suffering; and as to beauty, what is more beautiful than the
tiger, who owes his splendour to his fierceness? No, if the Lord should decide
for your world, I fear we should all die of boredom.’
‘You might,’ Buddha
replies, ‘because you love pain, and your love of life is a sham. But those who
really love life would be happy as no one can be happy in the world as it is.’
For my part, I agree with
Buddha as I have imagined him. But I do not know how to prove that he is right
by any arguments such as can be used in a mathematical or a scientific
question. I dislike Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain,
because he erects conceit into a duty, because the men whom he most admires are
conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die. But I think the
ultimate argument against his philosophy, as against any unpleasant but
internally self-consistent ethic, lies not in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal
to the emotions. Nietzsche despises universal love; I feel it the motive power
to all that I desire as regards the world. His followers have had their
innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end.
Russell’s philosophical discussions
have attracted a good deal of criticism, but that’s nothing compared to the historical
chapters. Oddly
enough, it is philosophers, not historians, that find them most unsatisfactory.
Browse the omniscient Wikipedia and you will find self-righteous
professors of philosophy, nowadays happily forgotten, denouncing Russell as “dreadful
historian” and his book as “misreading history”. (You will even find the shocked “he did it for the money” argument. It’s true, of course, but what it has to do with the book is
not clear. The writer’s motives are no business of the reader: he is concerned
only – I repeat: only – with the
final result.) To be sure, Russell’s historical “digressions” are full of
sweeping generalisations, inevitably so as he often has to compress whole shelves
of historical studies in a few pages, but for the most part they repay careful
reading. In his Preface, he defends the kind of book he writes:
Some,
whose scholarly austerity is unbending, will conclude that books covering a
wide field should not be written at all, or, if written, should consist of
monographs by a multitude of authors. There is, however, something lost when
many authors co-operate. If there is any unity in the movement of history, if
there is any intimate relation between what goes before and what comes later,
it is necessary, for setting this forth, that earlier and later periods should
be synthesized in a single mind. The student of Rousseau may have difficulty in
doing justice to his connection with the Sparta of Plato and Plutarch; the
historian of Sparta
Some of Russell’s parallels can be
quirky. The kind of idée fixe he had
for the far-reaching influence of Sparta Assisi
[In Athens
The
art of deductive reasoning had been lately discovered, and afforded the
excitement of new theories, both true and false, over the whole field of
knowledge. It was possible in that age, as in few others, to be both intelligent
and happy, and happy through intelligence.
[The
end of the chapter on St Augustine
It is strange that the
last men of intellectual eminence before the dark ages were concerned, not with
saving civilization or expelling the barbarians or reforming the abuses of the
administration, but with preaching the merit of virginity and the damnation of
unbaptized infants. Seeing that these were the preoccupations that the Church
handed on to the converted barbarians, it is no wonder that the succeeding age
surpassed almost all other fully historical periods in cruelty and
superstition.
Our
use of the phrase ‘the Dark Ages’ to cover the period from 600 to 1000 marks
our undue concentration on Western Europe. In China India
to Spain Western Europe would later
become dominant both in power and in culture. To us, it seems that
West-European civilization is civilization, but this is a narrow view. Most of
the cultural content of our civilization comes to us from the Eastern
Mediterranean , from Greeks and Jews.
In
the matter of saintliness, Francis has had equals; what makes him unique among
saints is his spontaneous happiness, his universal love, and his gifts as a
poet. His goodness appears always devoid of effort, as though it had no dross
to overcome. He loved all living things, not only as a Christian or a
benevolent man, but as a poet. His hymn to the sun, written shortly before his
death, might almost have been written by Ikhnaton the sun-worshipper, but not
quite – Christianity informs it, though not very obviously. He felt a duty to
lepers, for their sake, not for his; unlike most Christian saints, he was more
interested in the happiness of others than in his own salvation. He never
showed any feeling of superiority, even to the humblest or most wicked. Thomas
of Celano said of him that he was more than a saint among saints; among sinners
he was one of themselves.
If
Satan existed, the future of the order founded by St Francis would afford him
the most exquisite gratification. The saint’s immediate successor as head of
the order, Brother Elias, wallowed in luxury, and allowed a complete
abandonment of poverty. The chief work of the Franciscans in the years
immediately following the death of their founder was as recruiting sergeants in
the bitter and bloody wars of Guelfs and Ghibellines. The Inquisition, founded
seven years after his death, was, in several countries, chiefly conducted by
Franciscans. A small minority, called the Spirituals, remained true to his
teaching; many of these were burnt by the Inquisition for heresy. These men
held that Christ and the Apostles owned no property, not even the clothes they
wore; this opinion was condemned as heretical in 1323 by John XXII. The net
result of St Francis’s life was to create yet one more wealthy and corrupt
order, to strengthen the hierarchy, and to facilitate the persecution of all
who excelled in moral earnestness or freedom of thought. In view of his own
aims and character, it is impossible to imagine any more bitterly ironical
outcome.
Last but not
least, Russell’s delicious sense of humour must be mentioned. It is not as outrageously
flippant and hilarious as in some of his finest essays (“An Outline of
Intellectual Rubbish” is the classic example). It is much rarer and more subtle
than that, mostly manifested by pointed phrases that are very effective within
the context but may sound trivial out of it. He seldom misses the opportunity
to have some discreet fun at the expense of his colleagues. For example, Xenophon
was “a military man, not very liberally endowed with brains”, St Jerome was “a
man of many quarrels”, St Bernard was a “heresy-hunter” whose “saintliness did
not suffice to make him intelligent”, Hobbes is “vigorous, but crude; he wields
the battle-axe better than the rapier”, Kant was awakened from his dogmatic
slumbers by Hume “but the awakening was only temporary, and he soon invented a
soporific which enabled him to sleep again”, David Hume “became first tutor to
a lunatic and then secretary to a general” and then “fortified by these
credentials, he ventured again into philosophy.” I have chosen to quote at some
length another example not only because it’s funny, but because it combines
Russellian humour with provocative historical speculation.
The
Jewish pattern of history, past and future, is such as to make a powerful
appeal to the oppressed and unfortunate at all times. St Augustine
Yahweh
= Dialectical Materialism
The
Messiah = Marx
The
Elect = The Proletariat
The
Church = The Communist Party
The
Second Coming = The Revolution
Hell
= Punishment of the Capitalists
The
Millennium = The Communist
Commonwealth
The
terms on the left give the emotional content of the terms on the right, and it
is this emotional content, familiar to those who have had a Christian or a
Jewish upbringing, that makes Marx’s eschatology credible. A similar dictionary
could be made for the Nazis, but their conceptions are more purely Old
Testament and less Christian than those of Marx, and their Messiah is more
analogous to the Maccabees than to Christ.
In his Preface to A Brief History of Western Philosophy (1998; illustrated edition, 2006), written especially as a “modern equivalent” to the one reviewed above, Anthony Kenny loftily observes that “the book is not generally regarded as one of Russell’s best, and he is notoriously unfair to some of the greatest philosophers of the past, such as Aristotle and Kant.” I don’t know about the latter, but I do contend that the book is among Russell’s best. By no means should you accept his facts and opinions at face value. He is bound to be “unfair” to many philosophers, by which people usually mean they disagree with him. Bertrand Russell didn’t write this book as a scholar in (vain) searching of perfect objectivity. He wrote it as a professional philosopher (perhaps it’s not an oxymoron, after all) who was absorbed in philosophical problems for his entire life, not to mention that he made some reportedly not negligible contributions to many of them. Looking Inside, Mr Kenny’s book may well be less subjective and factually more accurate; but at the heavy cost of personality, vigour and charm.
Russell’s History of Western Philosophy remains a classic and a wonderful place to start your personal adventure in the field. Later, you can read the “modern equivalents” of Anthony Kenny and Brian Magee (The Great Philosophers, 1987), or the 11 volumes of Father Copleston’s A History of Philosophy (1946–86) if you’re brave enough, and see how “unfair” Russell really is.
_____________________________________________________
[1]
This quote comes from the Preface to the British edition (1946). The original
Preface to the American edition (1945) says pretty much the same, but in
different words. It was completely revised and re-arranged for the British
edition. The corresponding passages are as follows:
Many
histories of philosophy exist, and it has not been my purpose merely to add one
to their number. My purpose is to exhibit philosophy as an integral part of
social and political life: not as the isolated speculations of remarkable
individuals, but as both an effect and a cause of the character of the various
communities in which different systems flourished. This purpose demands more
account of general history than is usually given by historians of philosophy.
[…]
One
consequence of this point of view is that the importance which it gives to a
philosopher is often not that which he deserves on account of his philosophic
merit. For my part, for example, I consider Spinoza a greater philosopher than
Locke, but he was far less influential; I have therefore treated him much more
briefly than Locke. Some men – for example, Rousseau and Byron – though not
philosophers at all in the academic sense, have so profoundly affected the
prevailing philosophic temper that the development of philosophy cannot be
understood if they are ignored. Even pure men of action are sometimes of great
importance in this respect; very few philosophers have influenced philosophy as
much as Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, or Napoleon. Lycurgus, if only be had
existed, would have been a still more notable example.
In
attempting to cover such a vast stretch of time, it is necessary to have very
drastic principles of selection. I have come to the conclusion, from reading
standard histories of philosophy, that very short accounts convey nothing of
value to the reader; I have therefore omitted altogether (with few exceptions)
men who did not seem to me to deserve a fairly full treatment. In the case of
the men whom I have discussed, I have mentioned what seemed relevant as regards
their lives and their social surroundings; I have even sometimes recorded
intrinsically unimportant details when I considered them illustrative of a man
or of his times.
Finally,
I owe a word of explanation and apology to specialists on any part of my
enormous subject. It is obviously impossible to know as much about every
philosopher as can be known about him by a man whose field is less wide; I have
no doubt that every single philosopher whom I have mentioned, with the
exception of Leibniz, is better known to many men than to me. If, however, this
were considered a sufficient reason for respectful silence, it would follow
that no man should undertake to treat of more than some narrow strip of
history. The influence of Sparta on Rousseau, of Plato on Christian philosophy
until the thirteenth century, of the Nestorians on the Arabs and thence on Aquinas,
of Saint Ambrose on liberal political philosophy from the rise of the Lombard
cities until the present day, are some among the themes of which only a
comprehensive history can treat. On such grounds I ask the indulgence of those
readers who find my knowledge of this or that portion of my subject less
adequate than it would have been if there bad been no need to remember
"time's winged chariot."
Another
fascinating difference between the American and the British editions of the
book is that the indefinite article is dropped in the latter. Personally, I
like the original American title – A
History of Western Philosophy – better. It emphasises the personal
character of the book.
The most
interesting difference between the first (1946) and second (1961) British
editions, besides minor corrections, is that in the newer edition the chapter on Bergson is
greatly shortened. This is a great improvement! Interestingly, no corrections
seem to have been made in later editions across the Pond. Apparently, all American
editions still have, not just the complete – and tedious – chapter on Bergson,
but a wrong year (1634) for Spinoza’s birth (1632).
[2] Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938), chapter LXXIII.
[3] Ibid., chapter LXIII.
[5] Maugham, ibid., chapter LXIII. A lifelong student of human character and writing style, Maugham has some tantalising things to say about the great English philosophers. The phrase about Hume is extracted from this passage:
And when I came to the English philosophers, […] I found that besides being philosophers they were uncommonly good writers. And though they might not be very great thinkers, of this I could not presume to judge, they were certainly very curious men. I should think that few could read Hobbes' Leviathan without being taken by the gruff, downright John Bullishness of his personality and surely no one could read Berkeley
[6] An Enquiry into Human Understanding, Section I (“Of the different Species of Philosophy”), part 4.
