bertrand russell, a history of western philosophy — review
in many ways, its unnecessary to seperately examine the entire "structure" of russell's work as this assignment demands, partially because the stereotype that this very faculty holds about russell is generally true. russell's logicisim extended to his philosophical analysis, and his perspectives of his philosophers largely emerges within the 20th century anglophonic epistemological worldview. it would in fact only really be necessary to examine his analysis of hegel as pertaining to his own ideological assumptions about the way philosophers use concepts, his commentary on bergson to understand how personally impactful the philosophical conflict he was interpreting was at this time of and towards his own writing, and his analysis of leibniz to understand the way he structures his reconstructions and the way the general writing switches between thinking about the philosophers ideas and about the philosopher in totality.
russell’s history of western philosophy is divided into three books: ancient philosophy, catholic philosophy, and modern philosophy. book one covers the pre-socratics, socrates, plato, aristotle, and post-aristotelian ancient schools; book two covers the fathers and the schoolmen, including jewish religious development, early christianity, augustine, the papacy, islamic culture, and aquinas; book three moves from the renaissance to modern thinkers, including machiavelli, the reformation, the rise of science, bacon, hobbes, descartes, spinoza, leibniz, locke, schopenhauer, nietzsche, marx, bergson, james, dewey, and logical analysis. he actually doesn't spend any time speaking of secondary thinkers, and in fact, spends most of his time analyzing only the few main ancient thinkers, a surprisingly huge amount of time analyzing a variety of religious scripture, and only spends his time analyzing a few very specifically handly-picked modern thinkers. russell's method follows this exact methodology: 1) he reconstructs an argument. 2) then he asks what it actually proves. 3) then he judges it by logic, science, mathematics and clarity, or in other words, his own personal philosophical stakes. 4) and then he judges the character of the philosopher himself, often times in such a way that examines the icon around his thinking or his immediate influence.
however, he doesn't extend the logic of the otherwise fair manner of his usual philosophical criticisms into the manner in which he evaluates their character. for example, in the chapter dedicated to leibniz, he writes: 1) "leibniz, in his private thinking, is the best example of a philosopher who uses logic as a key to metaphysics." follows that up with 2) " certainly the inferences found in leibniz and other a priori philosophers are not valid, since all are due to a defective logic. the subject predicate logic, which all such philosophers in the past assumed, either ignores relations altogether, or produces fallacious arguments to prove that relations are unreal." and then goes on to say 3) " leibniz is guilty of a special inconsistency in combining the subject-predicate logic with pluralism, for the proposition "there are many monads" is not of the subject-predicate form. "
even if on its own this is a largely indefensible attack, since just because it is absent directly in its most vulgar form, this doesnt indicate that either leibniz doesn't use that form, or that even if he doesnt explicate it, it isnt there, as for example the claim that there are many monads can be seen as a claim about the predicate of the property of the wider world "the monad containing property/quality" and so on.
he then starts his next paragraph off with 4) "leibniz is a dull writer, and his effect on german philosophy was to make it pedantic and arid ... his discipline left out whatever was most interesting in leibniz and produced a dry professorial way of thinking" and ends it with 5) "nevertheless, leibniz remains a great man, and his greatness is more apparent now than it was at any earlier time. apart from his eminence as a mathematician and as the inventor of the infinitesimal calculus..." even though this writing on its own isn't awful, the way it jumps from russell's thoughts on the monad, to his understanding of his character, to his assertions over his influence seem odd and weirdly antagonistic, especially given the way he presents the thinkers as a type of commodity of thought or an appearance into a supposed world of intellectual canon.
he even starts his analysis off with "leibniz (1646-1716) was one of the supreme intellects of all time, but as a human being he was not admirable. he had, it is true, the virtues that one would wish to find mentioned in a testimonial to a prospective employee: he was industrious, frugal, temperate, and financially honest. but he was wholly destitute of those higher philosophic virtues that are so notable in spinoza." in regards to how this is relevant towards interpreting the history of philosophical thinking, it is true that you cannot simply imagine somebody writing about a philosopher still influential and living today in the manner of "being good with their finances", and even if this is supposed to give us a clearer or more honest image of a thinker and to make us enjoy reading russell's own thoughts, the form of gossip that overlays his philosophical reconstruction is heavily polemical, nearly to the point of a propagandistic attachment between thought and character.
this personalization is most obvious in the bergson chapter which appears as one of the last chapters in the work. one of the primary bergsonian commentators today, emily herring, shares her frustrations and the subsequent status wars that appear on this manner in her substack article on the topic, saying: "in a scathing article published in the monist in 1912, later reproduced in his history of western philosophy, russell painted bergson as scientifically illiterate and accused him of promoting an “anti-intellectual philosophy” that led to the absurd view that “incapacity for mathematics is therefore a sign of grace.” these claims are demonstrably false. bergson was very gifted in mathematics ... in preparation for each of his books, bergson extensively studied..."
and so on and so fourth, you get the jist. what is also interesting is that he spends a lot of his time using bergson (due to his popularity at time) as the paramount example of a "new type of philosopher" - a practical philosopher - a representation of the new "common man" in russell's mind, which corresponds with the "invention of the motorcar" (this i believe to be russell's realization of the existence of a new urban middle class which does not require its philosophy to strictly adhere with a class position or in earlier times a social role). russell writes: "the classification of philosophies is effected, as a rule, either by their methods or by their results: "empirical" and "a priori" is a classification by methods, "realist" and "idealist" is a classification by results. an attempt to classify bergson's philosophy in either of these ways is hardly likely to be successful, since it cuts across all the recognized divisions."
russell constructs an entire new conceptual categorization here, which is a very important part of his system of classification. he writes: "thus we shall have philosophies of feeling, inspired by the love of happiness, theoretical philosophies, inspired by the love of knowledge; and practical philosophies, inspired by the love of action.", bergsons philosophy would of course belong in this new "practicalist" camp for him, even if his own ideas of what this entials are partially influenced by bergson's growing fame and popularity and the very "practical" consequences on politics this entailed (bergson was actually used as a diplomatic or charismatic figure by political figures during this time)
the light antagonism present in russell's understanding of bergson is not one that defeats the character of the writer. in many ways, russell's writing on bergson is his most passionate and interested, given he is actually directly involved in the debate. not only that, he spends a substantially longer amount of time, tens of pages simply reconstructing bergson's philosophy before commenting on it, as opposed to most other thinkers which he only spends half a page reconstructing before giving out his own refutation or agreement on/with. russell ends his chapter on bergson with a philosophical refutation of his thought due to it failing to pass his own understandings of truth, affirming it as a form of creative writing or image-making:
"of course a large part of bergson's philosophy, probably the part to which most of its popularity is due, does not depend upon argument, and cannot be upset by argument. his imaginative picture of the world, regarded as a poetic effort, is in the main not capable of either proof or disproof. shakespeare says life's but a walking shadow, shelley says it is like a dome of many-coloured glass, bergson says it is a shell which bursts into parts that are again shells. if you like bergson's image better, it is just as legitimate." this on its own isn't even insulting, if not for russell's own emphasis on philosophy as pertaining strictly towards a discovery of whatever "primary world" he understands to be at the center of an epistemological concern.
what, if not for russell's own emphasis on an idea of a primary understanding of the constitutions of the world, stresses that this very understanding russell understands as primary is indeed primary? of course, you cannot blame the anglophonic insistence on truth-making on its own, for it remains blind to the mechanism that produces the ability to interpret the world through means that don't correlate to the intersection between the thinking subject and its correlation the world (in matters of memory, space and time), even if russell is able to understand on a more functional level bergson's philosophy just fine.
he even comments on this very idea of a philosophical division on the requirements of an epistemological primacy of interpretation himself towards the end of his "history" by saying: "ever since plato most philosophers have considered it part of their business to produce "proofs" of immortality and the existence of god. in the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness, by which i mean the habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings." russell ends his long work around this statement, and this quote is on the very last page of the work. the chapter, entitled "the philosophy of logical analysis".
now, it's not necessary that every interpreter of the philosophy of history remain as supposedly neutral towards the field as say, antony kenny would, however, russell doesn't just spend time interpreting philosophers this way, but he spends his time rather dishing out constantly his own opinions on exactly the shortcomings of philosophers, and a majority of his narrative is based upon or rather serves to confirm his own project, which can be seen from todays perspective as a type of strict logicism that "functionalizes" the intersection between mathematics, the supposedly empirical world, and most cruically, the possibility to write within this restriction. at the beginning of this chapter, he writes:
"next came georg cantor, who developed the theory of continuity and infinite number. "continuity" had been, until he defined it, a vague word, convenient for philosophers like hegel, who wished to introduce metaphysical muddles into mathematics. cantor gave a precise significance to the word, and showed that continuity, as he defined it, was the concept needed by mathematicians and physicists."
russell doesnt mention neither what cantor nor hegel say about continuity, but this quote sits at the forefront of russell's method of historicizing and interpreting philosophy and his personalist, intimate understandings of how terminologically accurate concepts ought to be, and the way they should be allowed or disallowed in literature. in roger's journal article on haldane's understanding of hegel as retrospected against cantor, we get this quote attempting to summarize how an anglophonic thinker would understand hegel's use of continuity: “discretion is the denotation regarded as realising the connotation. discretion is the diversity in conceptual unity, continuity is the conceptual unity in diversity.”
this means that according to this quote, if we were to "functionalize" hegel's use of concepts, we'd arrive at the conclusion that hegel treats continuity as unity within difference, or in other words, as many distinct things are held together by a common concept or property, rather than being merely separate items. now of course, russell’s point is not “cantor proves hegel is dumb because he manages to create a mathemtical graph that exemplifies an actual instance of non metaphorical continuity” which on its own would be a stupid argument. the point, in many ways, is far worse than that type of arrogance: russell thinks that hegel uses words like continuity, infinity, contradiction, becoming, etc. as if their vagueness gave metaphysical depth, or more accurately, as if every time he uses one of these concepts, the term itself justifies its belonging in that sequence of sentences by its associative value rather than its immediate strenght to appear as a self-complete unit, or as something that is epistemologically verifiable in real time.
the best way to describe what cantor's concept "the cantor function" is is to use the metaphor of a progress bar. imagine that you have a progress bar from 0% to 100%, a bar which does not fill smoothly like liquid. instead, it fills according to an insane hidden rule: some stretches do nothing, then tiny pieces fill, then tinier pieces fill, forever. by the end, it reaches 100%, even though in most places, if you test whether its actually extending locally, it looks like nothing is happening. cantor's concept in many ways breaks the lazy intuition that “continuous change” must mean smooth, flowing or organic becoming. this should suggest that continuity can be exact and hostile to an idea of "flux/change/etc".
in hegel's own writings, it appears something along these lines: "continuity is, therefore, simple, self-same self-relation, which is not interrupted by any limit or exclusion; it is not, however, an immediate unity, but a unity of ones which possess being-for-self. the asunderness of the plurality is still contained in this unity, but at the same time as not differentiating or interrupting it. in continuity, the plurality is posited as it is in itself; the many are all alike, each is the same as the other and the plurality is, consequently, a simple, undifferentiated sameness. continuity is this moment of self-sameness of the asunderness, the self-continuation of the different ones into those from which they are distinguished."
if you were to force this thought to have more conceptual clarity even if you subjected it to a reduction in detail and ambiguity, what you would get away with is something along the lines of an idea that sees hegel's continuity as a subject that becomes undifferentiated only through the not immediately noticeable unity of subjects in differentiation. it is clear on further notice, that this idea in fact shares many of the central aspects of cantor's continuity concept.
in fact, the main idea that continuity doesn't appear as visible in any single moment yet still pertains to one whole subject, and still provides a sense of change within its own motion is the central idea in both cases. the only difference is that hegel examines the term on its own behalf, as if continuity were a metaphysically transcendent concept, in the sense that, it would appear in the world as a property that "holds" or in other words resembles, or belongs to, a set of effects that never directly contain continuity as an actual observable process, or as a process you can speak towards as if speaking about the subject to which it occurs (say, history or civilization).
this is where we can begin to parody russell's thought, or to overcome it in many ways. if we were to take the end-point of his own thought, unless you get a pitch perfect example of continuity, unless you're talking about continuity as a specific kind of liquid called, for example, "the abstract boring liquid" that only expands whenever it feels like it, and this liquid is actually the new oil civilizations fight over, and then, this liquid somehow influences every form of dialectical development, and when you use the word continuity you can only use it in reference to the continual development of this specific liquid's flow in territories in real time – unless you are doing this – you are not allowed to use continuity to describe anything else.
if we were to take the end point of his own disposable critique of hegel, unless continuity must only be used when something is progressing unevenly and unapproachably but still progressing, continuity as a term must not appear in writing. so if you say "the continuity of history", unless you can observe that "history" (whatever that's supposed to be) is at times exactly "still" in whatever it considers its progress, and other points suddenly has shifted gears, then russell wouldn't want you to bother using that term.
if we were truly to speak of subjects through a metaphysical lense, it would almost be necessary to reduce concepts to their primary components. we should speak of humans only as composites of organs and masses with particular processes, or only speak about them through whatever primary system organizes them at a certain time. a person who has fallen from a cliff is a "nervous system" due to their shaking, trembling, disabled movement, or crippled character. a person eating is a "a metabolic system", and continuity must only be the functional change of a graph, mapped perfectly to a real process of continuity. what, if not for this, is a more perfect poetic image? this is a paradigmatic example of how russell justifies his ideology through his own method, and a clear-case example of his laden interests in changing the way the canon is supposed to approach philosophy, by discarding, disregarding or minimizing every thought that appears in the canon that isn't directly related to his own philosophical project.