| REVIEWS
A selection of the best from recent issues of the Philosopher
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A History of
Western Philosophy |
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The Philosopher's verdict: an enjoyable 'pot pourri' |
A History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell, pp 848, £9.99 ISBN 0415228549 first pub. 1946 reprinted 1999 Routledge |
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There are many ways to read this book, in its way, one of the key works of twentieth century philosophy. It can be used as an encyclopaedia of philosophy, ordered not alphabetically, but chronologically. Many people in fact do use it like that, looking up in the index a particular philosopher (or less often) a theme, and then reading Russell's short, accessible, witty summaries of the great ideas and individuals. Then it may be used - as Russell asks us too- as a work of social history, comparing and explaining general trends and processes in not only philosophy but in human civilisation. Very few people use it like that. Then again, it can simply be used as a good read - a chapter a week for one and a half years, for hat is how many chapters there are. Many people, doubtless, buy it with something like this in mind. Rather fewer, I would say, persist in that optimistic belief. For Russell's History of Western Philosophy is simply too long, too episodic, too tiring to be read like that. As an encyclopaedia it is full of errors and omissions. It's unfortunate that many of these have passed (unchecked) into general use, ill-recalled opinions of Russell repeated as objective fact. Russell himself admits in the foreword to not being an expert on any of the philosophers with the possible exception (he slightly immodestly adds) of Leibniz. He excuses this in his attempt to unify the disparate specialisms, a task reflected in the History's lumping together of philosophers under various headings. So for instance, Descartes leads to liberalism, and Rousseau to Nazism, according to Russell. As far as the omissions go, the grossest is the denial of any role to Eastern philosophy. It is swept aside as mere unstructured opinion. Elsewhere, a lengthy look at Ancient Greece still manages to exclude Zeno of Elea, whose celebrated paradoxes (we may speculate) serve to illustrate the poverty of Russell's own attempts at logico-mathematical system building. Perhaps for the same reason, Russell's own student and 'enfant terrible', Wittgenstein does not appear, despite the inclusion of other early twentieth century philosophers such as John Dewey, whom Russell claims as a like mind. But there is another way to read 'History of Western Philosophy'. And it is an enjoyable one. read as kind of literary 'pot pourri' to be dipped into as and when one fancies. (Like a real pot pourri, you would be better advised to place the book on a table and let it permeate the atmosphere rather than devour it entire.) Yet it is a bright and refreshing collection of Russell's 'favourite bits', as it were, from a lifetime of delving into and exploring the rich mine of literature that is philosophy - a literature often unappreciated by the pedants and technicians that pass themselves off as philosophers these days in the universities. Thus Russell (under the cloak of putting philosophies into their 'social context') includes all the interesting bits that other philosophical works miss out. The sort of things that readers want to know but often are deprived of. That Thales, for example, insisted that the world was composed only of water, in various forms. That Kant thought all the planets in the solar system had intelligent life on them, with the intelligence increasing the further out from the Sun you went. That Francis Bacon died from a chill caught whilst stuffing a chicken with snow... Russell allows himself complete licence in his writing too. He creates examples with a leisurely skill that belies their subtlety, and explores the parts other 'encylopaedists' cannot reach. One of my favourite bits is where, after a lengthy and one sided attack on Nietzsche, he imagines the wicked philosopher debating with Buddha at the gates of heaven on whether beauty and goodness are nobler than cruelty and pain. The History of Western Philosophy is one of Russell's most influential works. This is despite his life work truly being in mathematical theory and logic, an area in which his ambitions ultimately came to nought. These technical interests appear from place to place in the History. For example, Aristotle is taken to task for his 'failure' to distinguish between the two 'types' of statement : All Men are mortalOnly the second one, thinks Russell, can be be either true or false, as it stands. The first, by invoking an unknowable future is unprovable. 'Socrates is mortal', could be fairly solidly established by empirical investigation., if not exactly proved. 'All Men are mortal', on the other hand, Russell exclaims, makes a quite indefensible assumption about things existing. It is like, he suggests, saying 'All golden mountains are golden'. That statement looks reasonable, but in fact there are no golden mountains. All men are mortal looks reasonable (on the definition of men anyway) but in fact there are no... Such at any rate is the sort of inconsequential logical griping that appears from place to place. It looks persuasive, but isn't really. A good editor might have persuaded Russell to save such points for elsewhere. The whole of the first chapter, might have been dropped too. After all, not only is it dull, it is, on Russell's own account, not about philosophy, as he insists this only started with Thales. Russell's great problem was in knowing when to stop. The History of Western Philosophy's flaw, like the man himself, is in being too ambitious and a tad conceited. But it still stands head and shoulders above the rest.
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