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

by Bertrand Russell

Machiavelli’s political thinking, like that of most of the ancients, is in one respect somewhat shallow.

It is the first appearance in literature, so far as I know, of the view set forth in Rousseau’s Savoyard Vicar, according to which true religion comes from the heart, not the head, and all elaborate theology is superfluous.

He soon fell into disfavour, because the king was determined to divorce Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, and More was unalterably opposed to the divorce.

In 1534, the king got Parliament to pass the Act of Supremacy, declaring him, not the Pope, the head of the Church of England.

Under this act an Oath of Supremacy was exacted, which More refused to take; this was only misprision of treason, which did not involve the death penalty. It was proved, however, by very dubious testimony, that he had said Parliament could not make Henry head of the Church; on this evidence he was convicted of high treason, and beheaded. His property was given to Princess Elizabeth, who kept it to the day of her death.

More is remembered almost solely on account of his Utopia (1518). Utopia is an island in the southern hemisphere, where everything is done in the best possible way. It has been visited accidentally by a sailor named Raphael Hythloday, who spent five years th...

Everybody—men and women alike—works six hours a day, three before dinner and three after. All go to bed at eight, and sleep eight hours.

There are many religions among them, all of which are tolerated. Almost all believe in God and immortality; the few who do not are not accounted citizens, and have no part in political life, but are otherwise unmolested.

It must be admitted, however, that life in More’s Utopia, as in most others, would be intolerably dull. Diversity is essential to happiness, and in Utopia there is hardly any. This is a defect of all planned social systems, actual as well as imaginary.

Roughly speaking, the Reformation was German, the Counter-Reformation Spanish; the wars of religion were at the same time wars between Spain and its enemies, coinciding in date with the period when Spanish power was at its height.

The three great men of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation are Luther, Calvin, and Loyola. All three, intellectually, are medieval in philosophy, as compared either with the Italians who immediately preceded them, or with such men as Erasmus and More.

Luther and Calvin reverted to Saint Augustine, retaining, however, only that part of his teaching which deals with the relation of the soul to God, not the part which is concerned with the Church.

They concentrated on education, and thus acquired a firm hold on the minds of the young.

Politically, they were a single united disciplined body, shrinking from no dangers and no exertions; they urged Catholic princes to practise relentless persecution, and, following in the wake of conquering Spanish armies, re-established the terror of the Inquisition, even in Italy, which had had nearly a century of free-thought.

These are among the reasons for the fact that, while the sixteenth century, after the rise of Luther, is philosophically barren, the seventeenth contains the greatest names and marks the most notable advance since Greek times.

CHAPTER VI The Rise of Science ALMOST everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century. The Italian Renaissance, though not medieval, is not modern; it is more akin to the best age of Greece. The sixteenth century, with its absorption in theology, is more medieval than the world of Machiavelli. The modern world, so far as mental outlook is concerned, begins in the seventeenth century. No Italian of the Renaissance would have been unintelligible to Plato or Aristotle; Luther would have horrified Thomas Aquinas, but would not have been difficult for him to understand. With the seventeenth century it is different: Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Occam, could not have made head or tail of Newton.

Four great men—Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton—are pre-eminent in the creation of science.

He came early to believe that the sun is at the centre of the universe, and that the earth has a twofold motion: a diurnal rotation, and an annual revolution about the sun.

The Church in the lifetime of Copernicus was more liberal than it became after the Council of Trent, the Jesuits, and the revived Inquisition had done their work.

What was important in his work was the dethronement of the earth from its geometrical pre-eminence.

CHAPTER VII Francis Bacon FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626), although his philosophy is in many ways unsatisfactory, has permanent importance as the founder of modern inductive method and the pioneer in the attempt at logical systematization of scientific procedure.

The whole basis of his philosophy was practical: to give mankind mastery over the forces of nature by means of scientific discoveries and inventions.

He was thus an advocate of the doctrine of “double truth,” that of reason and that of revelation.

Bayle, in the late seventeenth century, made ironical use of it, setting forth at great length all that reason could say against some orthodox belief, and then concluding “so much the greater is the triumph of faith in nevertheless believing.”

Bacon was the first of the long line of scientifically minded philosophers who have emphasized the importance of induction as opposed to deduction.

Although he did not deny that the course of nature exemplifies a Divine purpose, he objected to any admixture of teleological explanation in the actual investigation of phenomena; everything, he held, should be explained as following necessarily from efficient causes.

Usually some hypothesis is a necessary preliminary to the collection of facts, since the selection of facts demands some way of determining relevance. Without something of this kind, the mere multiplicity of facts is baffling.

The part played by deduction in science is greater than Bacon supposed. Often, when a hypothesis has to be tested, there is a long deductive journey from the hypothesis to some consequence that can be tested by observation. Usually the deduction is mathematical, and in this respect Bacon underestimated the importance of mathematics in scientific investigation.

CHAPTER VIII Hobbes’s Leviathan HOBBES (1588-1679) is a philosopher whom it is difficult to classify. He was an empiricist, like Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, but unlike them, he was an admirer of mathematical method, not only in pure mathematics, but in its applications. His general outlook was inspired by Galileo rather than Bacon. From Descartes to Kant, Continental philosophy derived much of its conception of the nature of human knowledge from mathematics, but it regarded mathematics as known independently of experience.

In politics, there are two different questions, one as to the best form of the State, the other as to its powers. The best form of State, according to Hobbes, is monarchy, but this is not the important part of his doctrine. The important part is his contention that the powers of the State should be absolute.

The reason that Hobbes gives for supporting the State, namely that it is the only alternative to anarchy, is in the main a valid one.

The merits of Hobbes appear most clearly when he is contrasted with earlier political theorists. He is completely free from superstition; he does not argue from what happened to Adam and Eve at the time of the Fall. He is clear and logical; his ethics, right or wrong, is completely intelligible, and does not involve the use of any dubious concepts. Apart from Machiavelli, who is much more limited, he is the first really modern writer on political theory.

CHAPTER IX Descartes RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650) is usually considered the founder of modern philosophy, and, I think, rightly. He is the first man of high philosophic capacity whose outlook is profoundly affected by the new physics and astronomy.

When God’s existence has been proved, the rest proceeds easily. Since God is good, He will not act like the deceitful demon whom Descartes has imagined as a ground for doubt. Now God has given me such a strong inclination to believe in bodies that He would be deceitful if there were none; therefore bodies exist.

Plato’s Theaetetus, Saint Augustine, and Saint Thomas contain most of what is affirmative in the Meditations.

The method of critical doubt, though Descartes himself applied it only half-heartedly, was of great philosophic importance. It is clear, as a matter of logic, that it can only yield positive results if scepticism is to stop somewhere.

The decision, however, to regard thoughts rather than external objects as the prime empirical certainties was very important, and had a profound effect on all subsequent philosophy.

In two other respects the philosophy of Descartes was important. First: it brought to completion, or very nearly to completion, the dualism of mind and matter which began with Plato and was developed, largely for religious reasons, by Christian philosophy.

The above argument, “I think, therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum), is known as Descartes’s cogito, and the process by which it is reached is called “Cartesian doubt.”

CHAPTER X Spinoza SPINOZA (1634-77) is the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers. Intellectually, some others have surpassed him, but ethically he is supreme.

The last two books of the Ethics, entitled respectively “Of human bondage, or the strength of the emotions” and “Of the power of the understanding, or of human freedom,” are the most interesting. We are in bondage in proportion as what happens to us is determined by outside causes, and we are free in proportion as we are self-determined. Spinoza, like Socrates and Plato, believes that all wrong action is due to intellectual error: the man who adequately understands his own circumstances will act wisely, and will even be happy in the face of what to another would be misfortune.

Emotions are called “passions” when they spring from inadequate ideas; passions in different men may conflict, but men who live in obedience to reason will agree together.

Pleasure in itself is good, but hope and fear are bad, and so are humility and repentance: “he who repents of an action is doubly wretched or infirm.”

“In so far as the mind conceives a thing under the dictate of reason, it is affected equally, whether the idea be of a thing present, past, or future.”

To this argument Spinoza’s determinism supplies the answer. Only ignorance makes us think that we can alter the future; what will be will be, and the future is as unalterably fixed as the past. That is why hope and fear are condemned: both depend upon viewing the future as uncertain, and therefore spring from lack of wisdom.

Spinoza’s outlook is intended to liberate men from the tyranny of fear. “Airee man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death, but of life.” Spinoza lived up to this precept very completely. On the last day of his life he was entirely calm, not exalted, like Socrates in the Phaedo, but conversing, as he would on any other day, about matters of interest to his interlocutor.

In so far as what happens to us springs from ourselves, it is good; only what comes from without is bad for us. “As all things whereof a man is the efficient cause are necessarily good, no evil can befall a man except through external causes.” Obviously, therefore, nothing bad can happen to the universe as a whole, since it is not subject to external causes. “We are a part of universal nature, and we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavour to persist.” In so far as a man is an unwilling part of a larger whole, he is in bondage; but in so far as, through the understanding, he has grasped the sole reality of the whole, he is free. The implications of this doctrine are developed in the last Book of the Ethics.

Spinoza does not, like the Stoics, object to all emotions; he objects only to those that are “passions,” i.e., those in which we appear to ourselves to be passive in the power of outside forces. “An emotion which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it.” Understanding that all things are necessary helps the mind to acquire power over the emotions. “He who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his emotions, loves God, and so much the more as he more understands himself and his emotions.” This proposition introduces us to the “intellectual love of God,” in which wisdom consists. The intellectual love of God is a union of thought and emotion: it consists, I think one may say, in true thought combined with joy in the apprehension of truth. All joy in true thought is part of the intellectual love of God, for it contains nothing negative, and is therefore truly part of the whole, not only apparently, as arc fragmentary things so separated in thought as to appear bad.

“Love towards God,” we are told, “must hold the chief place in the mind.”

The proof of the above proposition is as follows: “For this love is associated with all the modifications of the body (V, 14) and is fostered by them all (V, 15) ; therefore (V, 11 ) it must hold the chief place in the mind. Q.E.D.”