BERTRAND RUSSELL'S HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

 

My readers have, by now, in all probability, on my account, Lord Bertrand Russell among their household names. It is no secret that just because Russell’s History of Western Philosophy has been my favorite book on the history of philosophy since my early years, my admiration for him has carried over into my old age. Not that it has been undeserved outside the work in question. Russell is, perhaps, the greatest thinker of the twentieth century, in my estimation, to which the next two entries will bear witness. But rather than to start with the objectively leading general philosophical entry, I have preferred to introduce the Bertrand Russell series with a subjective throwback to the source of my initial interest in him, which is his History. I will be making one single concession to propriety, however, by starting with quoting the About the Author note in my current copy of Russell’s selfsame history. So, here it is:

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3^rd Earl Russell Viscount Amberley, born in Wales on May 18, 1872, was educated at home and at Trinity College, Cambridge. During World War I served four months in prison as a pacifist, where he wrote Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. In 1910 he published the first volume of Principia Mathematica, with Alfred Whitehead. Visited Russia (as part of an official British delegation, in 1920, and there he had the famous conversation with Lenin) and lectured on philosophy at the University of Peking, in 1920-1921. Returned to England, and there with his wife ran a progressive school for young children in Sussex from 1927 to 1932. Came to the United States, where he taught philosophy, successively, at the University of Chicago, UCLA, Harvard, and City College of New York. (Returned to Cambridge in 1944.) Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Was active in disarmament, anti-nuclear testing movements, (protested against Vietnam War, Israeli occupation of Palestine, Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, etc.), while continuing to add to his large number of published books, which include Philosophical Essays 1910, The ABC Of Relativity, 1925, Human Knowledge: Its Scope And Limits, 1948, Why I Am Not A Christian, 1957, and The Autobiography Of Bertrand Russell, 1967, among many others.

Now the principal business of this entry, which is Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. As a tribute to his outstanding accomplishment, I will quote excerpts from his Preface, which explains the principles that underlie this work:

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 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. I have found this particularly necessary as regards periods, with which the general reader cannot be assumed to be familiar. The age of scholastic philosophy was an outcome of the reforms of the 11^th century, and these, in turn, were a reaction against previous corruption… Without some amount of knowledge of the centuries between the fall of Rome and the rise of the medieval Papacy, the intellectual atmosphere of the 12^th and 13^th centuries can hardly be understood. In dealing with this period, as with others, I have aimed at giving only so much general history as I thought necessary for the sympathetic comprehension of philosophers in relation to the times that formed them and the times which they helped to form.

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 philosophical temper that the development of philosophy cannot be understood if they are ignored. Even pure men of action are sometimes of greater importance in this respect; very few philosophers have influenced philosophy as much as Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, or Napoleon. Lycurgus, if only he 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) who did not seem to me to deserve a fairly full treatment. In the case of the men whom I have discussed, I’ve 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.

The significance of Russell’s stated approach to his History of Western Philosophy for my own effort is to focus my attention in these future historical-philosophical entries (implying that presently they are not in an adequate shape, being more like stock entries, and requiring a major overhaul) not on a comprehensive picture, which a combination of such histories may more or less adequately provide, but on a few personal remarks, which make my contribution to the genre subjective, and therefore unique. One way of looking at objectivity is as a multiplicity of subjectivities, and in this sense, my personal subjectivity, being an extra one in this multiplicity, acquires a demonstrable value.