A History of Western Philosophy

“To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”

Philosophy is, in a sense, poised between science and theology. In Russell’s view, both are reminders that there is much that humans do not know, and thus humans must learn to live with the lack of certain knowledge. Philosophy teaches how to ask important questions and seek answers to them, yet always with the understanding that knowledge will always be limited.

“What they achieved in art and literature is familiar to everybody, but what they did in the purely intellectual realm is even more exceptional.”

This passage refers to the ancient Greeks, who have long been revered for their varied contributions to Western civilization. Russell suggests that their invention of philosophy around 500 BCE, as well as their development of mathematics and science, are the most significant of all their achievements. This is because they represented free speculation about the world and had no real precedents.

“Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, as well as in a super-sensible intelligible world.”

This passage suggests the importance Russell places on mathematics in its relation to philosophy and science. Russell sees mathematics as influencing other fields of thought, including theology and political theory, with the idea of achieving a kind of exact and abstract truth by deduction from self-evident principles. Both the idea of mathematical truth and the idea of personal feeling and mysticism go back to the thought of Pythagoras and continued to interact in Western culture.

“The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.”

Russell believes that the natural human longing for permanence is due to the desire to escape danger and dwell in safety. This desire is satisfied by religion, with its beliefs in God and immortality. Philosophy, too, seeks for things which might be permanent and unchanging, like Plato’s doctrine of the Forms. The desire for permanence is strongest where life is most difficult and miserable, turning human beings to hope in the afterlife. This passage shows Russell seeking to explain the origins of philosophy in terms of human psychological needs.

“One of the main ambitions of philosophers has been to revive hopes that science seemed to have killed.”

Sometimes, as in Heraclitus’s doctrine that all things are in flux, science leads people to certain convictions which prove difficult and painful. Philosophy then steps in to try to heal the breach, in this case postulating something that might be permanent. When science seems to contradict long-held beliefs, philosophy tries to suggest alternatives. Historically, this process led to Plato formulating his theory of the Forms.

“Refutations are seldom final; in most cases, they are only a prelude to further refinements.”

Even when it seems that a certain philosophical idea has been defeated, it does not necessarily end there; the idea often gets revived later, and the debate continues. Examples of this process are the atomic theory and the heliocentric theory, which were first formulated in ancient times and reappeared a thousand years later.

“They were interested in everything—meteors and eclipses, fishes and whirlwinds, religion and morality; with a penetrating intellect they combined the zest of children.”

This passage refers to the Pre-Socratic philosophers, whom Russell rates very highly for their curiosity about the world around them and their scientific and experimental attitude toward knowledge. Russell believes that this attitude was eclipsed by a more ethical and religious focus in the works of later philosophers, and that this shift hindered the advancement of science for many centuries.

“One of the defects of all philosophers since Plato is that their inquiries into ethics proceed on the assumption that they already know the conclusions to be reached.”

The tendency to work backwards from already-assumed conclusions is, for Russell, a form of intellectual dishonesty and a betrayal of the disinterested philosophic search for truth. However, it might be questioned whether Russell allows for the possibility that a philosopher may argue on behalf of the innate principles of the natural law.

“The resulting union of idealism and love of power has led men astray over and over again, and is still doing so in the present day.”

Russell is writing in the context of the Greek idealization of Sparta as a perfect state. This admiration led many people into advocating tyranny in the quest of an ideal society. Russell draws the parallel with the world of the 1940s and the rise of totalitarian states in Germany and Russia.

“These memories, as they gradually faded, left in men’s minds the images of certain peaks that had shone with peculiar brightness in the early light, keeping alive the knowledge that behind the clouds a splendour still survived, and might at any moment become manifest.”

This is a particularly lyrical passage in which Russell describes the process in the history of civilization by which knowledge sometimes becomes lost or obscured, while the memory of past cultural accomplishments survives. This memory later fuels a revival of knowledge and culture. Russell is referring to the decline of Sparta as a state and the fact that the historical records about Sparta later inspired philosophers and statesmen in other periods.

“The problem of finding a collection of ‘wise’ men and leaving the government to them is thus an insoluble one. That is the ultimate reason for democracy.”

In the Republic, Plato theorized that the ideal state should be governed by “wise men” or philosopher kings. Russell, however, concludes that modern times have revealed that there is no guarantee that political power will fall into the hands of the “wise.” Thus, to a certain extent experience has proven Plato’s theories impracticable. This is a good example of Russell’s tough critiques of historical philosophers from a contemporary standpoint.

“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.”

This passage summarizes Russell’s tough assessment of Socrates as depicted by Plato. Although acknowledging his virtues, Russell also faults him for intellectual dishonesty in that he often argued for points that he had decided in advance instead of going wherever a philosophical argument led him. This tendency, for Russell, contradicts the very spirit of philosophy and consequently he is very harsh in assessing it.

“The conception of one human family, one Catholic religion, one universal culture, and one worldwide State, has haunted men’s thoughts ever since its approximate realization by Rome.”

After the golden age of Greek culture, Rome emerged as the leading world civilization. The idea that there could be one universal culture persisted as an ideal even after the fall of Rome; it was taken on by the Catholic Church, which aimed at being a spiritual focal point and source of values and culture. Such political arrangements fostered and inspired philosophical endeavor as well.

“In later times, until the Renaissance, men had no such simple happiness in the visible world, but turned their hopes to the unseen.”

As a result of the otherworldly emphasis of Christianity—presaged to some degree by Stoicism, Platonism, and ancient mystery cults—Western people during the Middle Ages put most of their hopes in the afterlife instead of in the present, earthly life. Such an attitude was increased by the political turmoil of the fall of Rome and later upheavals, which fostered a disillusionment with this world. This commonplace repeated by Russell may be seen as oversimplified in light of detailed studies of medieval culture.

“This involved the doctrine that correct belief is at least as important as virtuous action, a doctrine which is essentially Hellenic.”

Russell is here referring to the emphasis in the Christian church on believing the right doctrines about God, Jesus, sin, etc., as a precondition for salvation. Russell identifies this attitude as something that Christianity inherited from the Greek rational philosophical spirit. Thus, the Christian religion derived something distinctive from Greek philosophy as well as from Judaism.

“This extreme subjectivism is a form of madness.”

Subjectivism refers to the idea that “all knowledge is limited to experiences by the self, and that transcendent knowledge is impossible” (Webster’s). Russell sees this tendency as increasingly characteristic of the modern era since the time of Rousseau, and as a dangerous tendency because it cuts humans off from essential reality in favor of a self-created, private world.

“The results of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, in the intellectual sphere, were at first wholly bad, but ultimately beneficial.”

Russell here presents historical developments as sometimes being both bad and good: They can have bad immediate effects, but better effects in the long run. Specifically, Russell is referring to the fact that the Reformation led to turmoil and bloodshed, but ultimately produced a counterreaction in favor of liberalism and a philosophical revival.

“The new conceptions that science introduced profoundly influenced modern philosophy.”

Russell emphasizes that science has been one of the main influences on thought since the modern period began in the 17th century. Among the early discoveries that affected philosophy were the investigations in astronomy and physics by Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, and discoveries about the human body by Harvey. These discoveries led philosophers to seek new answers to questions of life, the universe, and existence in light of the new understanding of science.

“[F]or the Churches, everywhere, opposed as long as they could practically every innovation that made for an increase of happiness or knowledge here on earth.”

Referring to the opposition of church leaders to specific instances of scientific research, this quote is representative of Russell’s bias against religion and generalizations regarding religious thought. Notably, his treatment in this chapter of the controversy between Galileo and the church is incomplete and does not take into account the various ideological nuances on both sides. 

“A philosophy which is not self-consistent cannot be wholly true, but a philosophy which is self-consistent can very well be wholly false.”

Russell argues that when thinkers form philosophical systems, there is a natural conflict between making the system internally consistent and making it credible. Russell argues that credibility is more important than consistency, and that many philosophies that had “glaring inconsistencies” have contained more truth than other philosophies that are stringently consistent but built on false premises.

“To some extent, civilization is furthered by social injustice.”

Russell’s example of social injustice sometimes furthering civilization is that the arts and literature are often funded by the “very rich.” He implies that the existence of this wealthy patron class constitutes “economic inequality” and therefore “social injustice.” This passage illustrates that the book, although primarily about intellectual history, contains many sociopolitical observations as well. This passage appears during Russell’s discussion of Locke’s political views and his reluctance to condemn inequality.

“The stages in the evolution of ideas have had almost the quality of the Hegelian dialectic: doctrines have developed, by steps that each seem natural, into their opposites.”

The History takes a broad, big-picture view of the development of thought. In particular, Russell develops an argument that the modern period has seen the successive achievement of liberalism and its subsequent evolution by degrees into the opposite of liberalism under the influence of the Romantic movement’s excessive subjectivism.

“[A] man’s ethic usually reflects his character, and benevolence leads to a desire for the general happiness.”

Throughout the book, Russell draws attention to the relationship between thought and life. In particular, he argues that philosophers who simply want people to be happy are generally more benevolent themselves than philosophers who construct an ethic based on the idea of “noble” or “heroic” behavior; this latter tendency is part of what he sees as the downfall of modern thought with its worship of power.