A History of Western Philosophy: And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by Bertrand Russell

In a famous section, Kant sets to work to demolish all the purely intellectual proofs of the existence of God. He makes it clear that he has other reasons for believing in God; these he was to set forth later in The Critique of Practical Reason. But for the time being his purpose is purely negative.

There are, he says, only three proofs of God’s existence by pure reason; these are the ontological proof, the cosmological proof...

The ontological proof, as he sets it forth, defines God as the ens realissimum, the most real being; i.e., the subject of all predicates that belong to being absolutely. It is contended, by those who believe the proof valid, that, since “existence” is such a predicate, this subject must have the predicate “existence,” i.e., must exist. Kant objects that existence is not a predicate. A hundr...

The cosmological proof says: If anything exists, then an absolutely necessary Being must exist; now I know that I exist; therefore an absolutely necessary Being exists, and this must be the ens realissimum. Kant maintains that the last step in this argument is the ontological argument...

The physico-theological proof is the familiar argument from design, but in a metaphysical dress. It maintains that the universe exhibits an order which is evidence of purpose. This argument is treated by Kant with respect, but he points out that, at best, it proves only an Architect, not a Creator, and therefore cannot give an adequate conception of God. He concludes that “the only theo...

God, freedom, and immortality, he says, are the three “ideas of reason.” But although pure reason leads us to form these ideas, it cannot itself prove their reality. The importance of these ideas is practical, i.e., connected with morals. The purely intellectual use of ...

The practical use of reason is developed briefly near the end of The Critique of Pure Reason, and more fully in The Critique of Practical Reason (1786). The argument is that the moral law demands justice, i.e., happiness proportional to virtue. Only Providence can insure this, and has evidently not insured it in this life. Therefore there is a God and a f...

Kant’s ethical system, as set forth in his Metaphysic of Morals (1785), has considerable historical importance. This book contains the “categorical imperative,” which, at least as a phrase, is fami...

As might be expected, Kant will have nothing to do with utilitarianism, or with any doctrine which gives to mo...

All moral concepts, he continues, have their seat and origin wholly a priori in the reason.

Moral worth exists only when a man acts from a sense of duty; it is not enough that the act should be such as duty might have prescribed.

The essence of morality is to be derived from the concept of law; for, though everything in nature acts according to laws, only a rational being has the power of acting according to the idea of a law, i.e., by Will.

The categorical imperative is synthetic and a priori.

“Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a general natural law.”

CHAPTER XXI Currents of Thought in the Nineteenth Century

machine production profoundly altered the social structure, and gave men a new conception of their powers in relation to the physical environment.

What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century, Darwin was to the nineteenth. Darwin’s theory had two parts. On the one hand, there was the doctrine of evolution, which maintained that the different forms of life had developed gradually from a common ancestry.

The second part of Darwin’s theory was the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. All animals and plants multiply faster than nature can provide for them; therefore in each generation many perish before the age for reproducing themselves.

The most important effect of machine production on the imaginative picture of the world is an immense increase in the sense of human power.

CHAPTER XXII Hegel HEGEL (1770-1831) was the culmination of the movement in German philosophy that started from Kant;

His influence, though now diminishing, has been very great, not only or chiefly in Germany.

Even if (as I myself believe) almost all Hegel’s doctrines are false, he still retains an importance which is not merely historical, as the best representative of a certain kind of philosophy which, in others, is less coherent and less comprehensive.

The whole, in all its complexity, is called by Hegel “the Absolute.” The Absolute is spiritual; Spinoza’s view, that it has the attribute of extension as well as that of thought, is rejected.

German history is divided by Hegel into three periods: the first, up to Charlemagne; the second, from Charlemagne to the Reformation; the third, from the Reformation onwards.

In Italy and France, while there has been a romantic admiration of the Germans on the part of a few men such as Tacitus and Machiavelli, they have been viewed, in general, as the authors of the “barbarian” invasion, and as enemies of the Church, first under the great Emperors, and later as the leaders of the Reformation.

Protestants in Germany naturally took a different view. They regarded the late Romans as effete, and considered the German conquest of the Western Empire an essential step towards revivification.

So much is Germany glorified that one might expect to find it the final embodiment of the Absolute Idea, beyond which no further development would be possible. But this is not Hegel’s view. On the contrary, he says that America is the land of the future, “where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the world’s history shall reveal itself—perhaps [he adds characteristically] in a contest between North and South America.”

Glorification of the State begins, so far as modern times are concerned, with the Reformation.

Hegel was vehemently Protestant, of the Lutheran section; the Prussian State was an Erastian absolute monarchy. These reasons would make one expect to find the State highly valued by Hegel, but, even so, he goes to lengths which are astonishing.

We are told in The Philosophy of History that “the State is the actually existing realized moral life,” and that all the spiritual reality possessed by a human being he possesses only through the State.

The Philosophy of Law, in the section on the State, develops the same doctrine somewhat more fully.

It will be seen that Hegel claims for the State much the same position as Saint Augustine and his Catholic successors claimed for the Church.

Such is Hegel’s doctrine of the State—a doctrine which, if accepted, justifies every internal tyranny and every external aggression that can possibly be imagined.

Hegel thought that, if enough was known about a thing to distinguish it from all other things, then all its properties could be inferred by logic. This was a mistake, and from this mistake arose the whole imposing edifice of his system. This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise.

CHAPTER XXIII Byron THE nineteenth century* in comparison with the present age, appears rational, progressive, and satisfied; yet the opposite qualities of our time were possessed by many of the most remarkable men during the epoch of liberal optimism.

The aristocratic rebel, of whom Byron was in his day the exemplar, is a very different type from the leader of a peasant or proletarian revolt. Those who are hungry have no need of an elaborate philosophy to stimulate or excuse discontent, and anything of the kind appears to them merely an amusement of the idle rich. They want what others have, not some intangible and metaphysical good.

The aristocratic rebel, since he has enough to eat, must have other causes of discontent.

Like many other prominent men, he was more important as a myth than as he really was. As a myth, his importance, especially on the Continent, was enormous.

SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860)

He dislikes Christianity, preferring the religions of India, both Hinduism and Buddhism.

His appeal has always been less to professional philosophers than to artistic and literary people in search of a philosophy that they could believe. He began the emphasis on Will which is characteristic of much nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy;

Historically, two things are important about Schopenhauer: his pessimism, and his doctrine that will is superior to knowledge.

In one form or another, the doctrine that will is paramount has been held by many modern philosophers, notably Nietzsche, Bergson, James, and Dewey. It has, moreover, acquired a vogue outside the circles of professional philosophers. And in proportion as will has gone up in the scale, knowledge has gone down. This is, I think, the most notable change that has come over the temper of philosophy in our age. It was prepared by Rousseau and Kant, but was first proclaimed in its purity by Schopenhauer. For this reason, in spite of inconsistency and a certain shallowness, his philosophy has considerable importance as a stage in historical development.

CHAPTER XXV Nietzsche NIETZSCHE (1844-1900) regarded himself, rightly, as the successor of Schopenhauer, to whom, however, he is superior in many ways, particularly in the consistency and coherence of his doctrine.

Nietzsche, though a professor, was a literary rather than an academic philosopher.

I shall confine myself almost entirely to his ethics and his criticism of religion, since it was this aspect of his writing that made him influential.

For my part, I agree with Buddha as I have imagined him. But I do not know how to prove that he is right by any argument such as can be used in a mathematical or a scientific question. I dislike Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he erects conceit into a duty, because the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die. But I think the ultimate argument against his philosophy, as against any unpleasant but internally self-consistent ethic, lies not in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to the emotions. Nietzsche despises universal love; I feel it the motive power to all that I desire as regards the world. His followers have had their innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end.

HENRI BERGSON was the leading French philosopher of the present century. He influenced William James and Whitehead, and had a considerable effect upon French thought. Sorel, who was a vehement advocate of syndicalism and the author of a book called Reflections on Violence, used Bergsonian irrationalism to justify a revolutionary labour movement having no definite goal.

But a cool critic, who feels himself a mere spectator, perhaps an unsympathetic spectator, of the charge in which man is mounted upon animality, may be inclined to think that calm and careful thought is hardly compatible with this form of exercise. When he is told that thought is a mere means of action, the mere impulse to avoid obstacles in the field, he may feel that such a view is becoming in a cavalry officer, but not in a philosopher, whose business, after all, is with thought: he may feel that in the passion and noise of violent motion there is no room for the fainter music of reason, no leisure for the disinterested contemplation in which greatness is sought, not by turbulence, but by the greatness of the universe which is mirrored. In that case, he may be tempted to ask whether there are any reasons for accepting such a restless view of the world. And if he asks this question, he will find, if I am not mistaken, that there is no reason whatever for accepting this view, either in the universe or in the writings of M. Bergson.

Bergson’s theory of space occurs fully and explicitly in his Time and Free Will, and therefore belongs to the oldest parts of his philosophy.