A History of Western Philosophy

A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (1945) by the philosopher Bertrand Russell is a guide to Western philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the early 20th century.

About the book

The book was written during the Second World War, having its origins in a series of lectures for a wide audience on the history of philosophy that Russell gave at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia during 1941 and 1942. Much of the historical research was done by Russell's third wife Peter (Patricia). In 1943, Russell received an advance of $3000 from the publishers Simon and Schuster, and between 1943 and 1944 he wrote the book while living at Bryn Mawr College. The book was published in 1945 in the USA and a year later in the UK. Although criticised in reviews by academic philosophers, the book was an immediate commercial success, being reprinted several times by 1947, and has remained in print ever since. The success of the book provided Russell with much-needed financial security for the last quarter-century of his life.

Russell wrote in a humorous and accessible style, and the book is an important, if negative, part of the philosophy of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. When Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, the History of Western Philosophy was cited as one of the books that had caused the prize to be awarded to him, and was quoted twice in the presentation speech.

Russell not only discusses the life, historical context, social environment, and philosophical system of the subjects of the book; he then cheerfully goes on to explain where and how, in his judgment, they were wrong. The History of Western Philosophy is therefore often about both Russell's own philosophy and that of his subjects.

It includes no chapter-length discussion of any philosopher of Russell's own generation, with the marginal exceptions of Bergson and John Dewey, both 13 years older than Russell. Although they were philosophical opponents, Russell expresses admiration for Dewey's character and almost complete agreement with his opinions, except in epistemology. Dewey had helped Russell during his illness in China during 1921, and led the protests against his dismissal from the City College of New York in 1940, which resulted in Russell's appointment to the Barnes Foundation, where Dewey was Director of Education.

Among modern philosophers the book deals mainly with those who intended their philosophies to influence society and culture directly, such as Marx, James, Bergson, and Dewey. Russell was a logical analyst; he finds much to disagree with in the German idealist tradition, and more in Marx. This rejection of Idealism was a longstanding one - in An Outline of Philosophy (1927) Russell describes Kant as "a mere misfortune", and My Philosophical Development (1959) describes his early rebellion alongside G.E. Moore against the Kantian and Hegelian philosophy that dominated the University of Cambridge and English-speaking philosophers in the late nineteenth century. Russell omits Heidegger and Husserl altogether; he included in his Autobiography a 1951 letter from Max Born (a former pupil of Husserl) approving his decision to leave them out. The poet Lord Byron is included as an exemplar of the rebellious aristocrat, on the grounds that, like Rousseau, his works contain an implicit philosophy that has influenced both later philosophy and later society.

Russell's choice of modern philosophers was fairly conventional when the book was written; it strongly resembles Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy, for example. He did not anticipate later philosophical fashion in discussing Kierkegaard as philosopher (neither had Durant), any more than Jakob Boehme; he mentions Emanuel Swedenborg in two places. Neither did he anticipate Walter Kaufmann's translation or interpretation of Nietzsche.

Structure

The book is divided into three books, subdivided into sections and chapters - each chapter generally deals with a single philosopher, school of philosophy, or period of time. The second book, in particular, is more of an historical overview than a survey of philosophical development. Plato, Aristotle, and Locke are the only philosophers who have more than one chapter devoted to them. The final chapter, The Philosophy of Logical Analysis, is a statement that is very interesting.

Ancient Philosophy

• The Pre-Socratics (including Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Protagoras)
• Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
• Ancient Philosophy after Aristotle (including the Cynics, Sceptics, Epicureans, Stoics and Plotinus)

Catholic Philosophy

• The Fathers (including developments in Jewish philosophy, Islamic philosophy (which he calls Mohammedan throughout, after the fashion of his time), St Ambrose, St Jerome, St Augustine, St Benedict and Pope Gregory the Great)
• The Schoolmen (including John the Scot and St Thomas Aquinas)

Modern Philosophy

• From the Renaissance to Hume (including Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume)
• From Rousseau to the Present Day (including Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Byron, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, William James and John Dewey)

Reviews and reactions

"History of Western Philosophy remains unchallenged as the perfect introduction to its subject. Russell ... writes with the kind of verve, freshness and personal engagement that lesser spirits would never have permitted themselves. This boldness, together with the astonishing breadth of his general historical knowledge, allows him to put philosophers into their social and cultural context ... The result is exactly the kind of philosophy that most people would like to read, but which only Russell could possibly have written." (Ray Monk, Russell's biographer)

"This work possesses outstanding merits; it is throughout written in the beautiful and luminous prose of which Russell is a great master; the exposition and the argument are not merely classically clear but scrupulously honest." (Sir Isaiah Berlin)

"A precious book ... a work that is in the highest degree pedagogical which stands above the conflicts of parties and opinions." (Albert Einstein, quoted in Russell's autobiography)

"Embodies what seems to me the worst features of Lord Russell's previous more journalistic works, but it is of a poorer quality than any of these." (Yorick Smythies, a supporter of Russell's former pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein, as quoted in Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 1921-1970)

"Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy is amusing, but suffers from defects ... First, it deals largely with ancient philosophy, and is curt and selective in its treatment of the post-Cartesian tradition. Secondly, it is dismissive towards all those philosophers with whom Russell felt no personal affinity. Thirdly, it shows no understanding of Kant and post-Kantian idealism. It is, for all that, a classic of wit, elegance and resolute idiosyncrasy." (Roger Scruton, a Kantian, in A Short History of Modern Philosophy)

"...perhaps the worst [book] that Mr. Russell has written. For Mr. Russell is no historian.... [H]is treatment of ancient and medieval doctrines is nearly worthless; in any case it is saddening. For one thing, Mr. Russell's reliance on second-hand sources is almost total and for another his almost total attachment to the present is fatal to any free indulgence in a sense of the past." Leo Roberts in Isis, 38(1948): 268-270.

"A History of Western Philosophy errs consistently in this respect. Its author never seems to be able to make up his mind whether he is writing history or polemic.... One may, and should, indicate the various meanings which the term Idea and its synonyms had in the dialogues. But to point out that 'Plato had no understanding of philosophical syntax' is simply to say that he lived in the 4th century B. C. With all his faults, Plato was not a fool, and if a theory of ideas made sense to him, a reader of a history of philosophy would like to know why." George Boas in Journal of the History of Ideas, 8(1947): 117-123.

"Parts of this famous book are sketchy ... in other respects it is a marvellously readable, magnificently sweeping survey of Western thought, distinctive for placing it informatively into its historical context. Russell enjoyed writing it, and the enjoyment shows; his later remarks about it equally show that he was conscious of its shortcomings." (A. C. Grayling, a Realist, in Russell: A Very Short Introduction)

"It is a standing wonder in the philosophical profession that his most successful and widely read book, A History of Western Philosophy, arguably the source of most people's knowledge of philosophy, is - despite its many other virtues - in a number of places woefully inadequate as philosophical discussion." (Grayling, op. cit.)

Russell on the book

I regarded the early part of my History of Western Philosophy as a history of culture, but in the later parts, where science becomes important, it is more difficult to fit into this framework. I did my best, but I am not at all sure that I succeeded. I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without bias cannot write interesting history — if, indeed, such a man exists. (Bertrand Russell, Autobiography, chapter 13).

References

Russell, Bertrand (1946/1961). A History of Western Philosophy. Great Britain: Allen & Unwin. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)