In this wonderfully wide-ranging, intelligent and humane book Russell not only introduces the most important philosophers and philosophies from the an...moreIn this wonderfully wide-ranging, intelligent and humane book Russell not only introduces the most important philosophers and philosophies from the ancient Greeks onward (in the Western tradition, that is, he alludes occasionally to oriental traditions where they influence western philosophy, but on the whole they are outside his remit), he gives the historical and social context from which the philosophies rose. I found this to be particularly valuable; my modern mind often has difficulty how some beliefs could have been held, but when Russell explains how it was not only more important for a philosophy to be internally consistent than anything else, but that before the era of modern science so much was unknown about the way the world and the universe worked that it was less clear cut what was feasible and what impossible, I felt I understood a lot more. I will not pretend to have understood all the philosophy herein - I have read very little philosophy, and i think that it is an area that needs a certain frame of mind or a thorough grounding, or possibly both - but putting the various philosophies into both historical context and into a continuum with the ideas on which they were built gave me a far greater understanding than I otherwise would have gained.
Even more important to this is Russell's wonderful style. He describes ideas and events with a clarity and fluidity which is astounding, even if some of the ideas still remain somewhat opaque simply because of their complexity to my way of thinking. He is a joy to read, bringing the historical detail and the lives of the philosophers to three dimensions, and regularly throwing in gems of urbane wit that sometimes had me chuckling out loud. While he describes the ideas, for the most part, with academic disinterest (although never dryly), Russell does not necessarily seek to be unbiased; he is forthright in saying, for example, that he not only disagrees with Nietzsche but dislikes his outlook, his fascination with violence, admiration for conquerors and dismissal of 'trivial' humanity. Russell shows, obliquely, how his own philosophy is driven by a belief in humanity and that, while progress might not be inevitable as the writers of the early industrial age seemed to believe, it can be brought about and sustained by human action. He also, in the closing chapter, points out why philosophy is vital to our understanding while at the same time recognising that it has many shortcomings.
Bertrand Russell had a truly magnificent mind and a privileged education, but even taking this into account, one of the things this book shows is something we seem to have lost in the current world of educating people for a specific vocation; Russell shows, and expects his readers to have, a familiarity not only with the subject on which he is writing, but with history, literature and culture beyond that relatively narrow field. Reading a book like this shows how vitally important that is, that making bridges between isolated subjects can lead to a greater understanding of all of them.
There are flaws, both of which I shall put down to the times in which he was writing;this book was written in the 1940s when Russell was already in his 70s. He lived to be 98. He tends to write that 'men have written' or 'men think' where a more modern writer would say 'people have written' or 'scholars think' (although one of the first modern academics to whom he refer is a woman). The other is in the chapter on the 19th century, when he mentions Darwin. While he does not quite get Darwin's theory right, I think this is largely because he was writing in a time when the theory had become distorted both by social Darwinists and by other bits of superfluous baggage that have been dropped away, and before clinching evidence like DNA was discovered.
A book I will keep close by to listen to again, and get hold of a paper copy so I can pore in more detail over some of the more difficult theories.(less)
Paul 'Pezski'
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