Top Photo: Bertrand Russell in 1938. 2nd Photo: Russell in 1907.

A History of Western Philosophy

and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day

© Copyright 1945 – Bertrand Russell

A Few Choice Excerpts:

“…Scientific technique requires the co-operation of a large number of individuals organized under a single direction. Its tendency, therefore, is against anarchism and even individualism, since it demands a well-knit social structure. Unlike religion, it is ethically neutral: it assures men that they can perform wonders, but does not tell them what wonders to perform. In this way it is incomplete. In practice, the purposes to which scientific skill will be devoted depend largely on chance. The men at the head of the vast organizations which it necessitates can, within limits, turn it this way or that as they please. The power impulse thus has a scope which it never had before. The philosophies that have been inspired by scientific technique are power philosophies, and tend to regard everything non-human as mere raw material. Ends are no longer considered; only the skillfulness of the process is valued. This also is a form of madness. It is, in our day, the most dangerous form, and the one against which a sane philosophy should provide an antidote.”

“The ancient world found an end to anarchy in the Roman Empire, but the Roman Empire was a brute fact, not an idea. The Catholic world sought an end to anarchy in the Church, which was an idea, but was never adequately embodied in fact. Neither the ancient nor the medieval solution was satisfactory – the one because it could not be idealized, the other because it could not be actualized. The modern world, at present, seems to be moving towards a solution like that of antiquity: a social order imposed by force, representing the will of the powerful rather than the hopes of common men. The problem of a durable and satisfactory social order can only be solved by combining the solidity of the Roman Empire with the idealism of Saint Augustine’s City of God. To achieve this a new philosophy will be needed.”

Book 2, “Catholic Philosophy”, Chapter VII, “The Papacy in the Dark Ages” (page 399):

The year 1000 may be conveniently taken as marking the end of the lowest depth to which the civilization of Western Europe sank. From this point the upward movement began which continued till 1914. In the beginning, progress was mainly due to monastic reform. Outside the monastic orders, the clergy had become, for the most part, violent, immoral, and worldly; they were corrupted by the wealth and power that they owed to the benefactions of the pious. The same thing happened, over and over again, even to the monastic orders; but reformers, with new zeal, revived their moral force as often as it had decayed.

Another reason which makes the year 1000 a turning-point is the cessation, at about this time, of conquest by both Mohammedans and northern barbarians, so far at least as Western Europe is concerned. Goths, Lombards, Hungarians, and Normans came in successive waves; each horde in turn was Christianized, but each in turn weakened the civilized tradition. The Western Empire broke up into many barbarian kingdoms; the kings lost authority over their vassals; there was universal anarchy, with perpetual violence both on a large and on a small scale. At last all the races of vigourous northern conquerors had been converted to Christianity, and had acquired settled habitations. The Normans, who were the last comers, proved peculiarly capable of civilization. They reconquered Sicily from the Saracens, and made Italy safe from the Mohammedans. They brought England back into the Roman world, from which the Danes had largely excluded it. Once settled in Normandy, they allowed France to revive, and helped materially in the process.

Our use of the phrase the “Dark Ages” to cover the period from 600 to 1000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe. In China, this period includes the time of the Tang dynasty, the greatest age of Chinese poetry, and in many other ways a most remarkable epoch. From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary. No one could have guessed that Western Europe would later become dominant, both in power and in culture. To us, it seems that West-European civilization is civilization, but this is a narrow view. Most of the cultural content of our civilization comes to us from the Eastern Mediterranean, from Greeks and Jews. As for power: Western Europe was dominant from the Punic Wars to the fall of Rome – say, roughly, during the six centuries from 200 B.C. to A.D. 400. After that time, no State in Western Europe could compare in power with China, Japan, or the Caliphate.

Our superiority since the Renaissance is due partly to science and scientific technique, partly to political institutions slowly built up during the Middle Ages. There is no reason, in the nature of things, why this superiority should continue. In the present war, great military strength has been shown by Russia, China, and Japan. All these combine Western technique with Eastern ideology – Byzantine, Confucian, or Shinto. India, if liberated, will contribute another Oriental element. It seems not unlikely that, during the next few centuries, civilization, if it survives, will have greater diversity than it has had since the Renaissance. There is an imperialism of culture which is harder to overcome than the imperialism of power. Long after the Western Empire fell – indeed until the Reformation – all European culture retained a tincture of Roman imperialism. It now has, for us, a West-European imperialistic flavour. I think that, if we are to feel at home in the world after the present war, we shall have to admit Asia to equality in our thoughts, not only politically, but culturally. What changes this will bring about, I do not know, but I am convinced that they will be profound and of the greatest importance.

Book 3, “Modern Philosophy”, Chapter 1, “General Characteristics” (page 492ff):

The authority of science, which is recognized by most philosophers of the modern epoch, is a very different thing from the authority of the Church, since it is intellectual, not governmental. No penalties fall upon those who reject it; no prudential arguments influence those who accept it. It prevails solely by its intrinsic appeal to reason. It is, moreover, a piecemeal and partial authority; it does not, like the body of Catholic dogma, lay down a complete system, covering human morality, human hopes, and the past and future history of the universe. It pronounces only on whatever, at the time, appears to have been scientifically ascertained, which is a small island in an ocean of nescience. There is yet another difference from ecclesiastical authority, which declares its pronouncements to be absolutely certain and eternally unalterable: The pronouncements of science are made tentatively, on a basis of probability, and are regarded as liable to modification. This produces a temper of mind very different from that of the medieval dogmatist.

So far, I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an attempt to understand the world.Practical science, which is an attempt to change the world, has been important from the first, and has continually increased in importance, until it has almost ousted theoretical science from men’s thoughts. The practical importance of science was first recognized in connection with war; Galileo and Leonardo obtained government employment by their claim to improve artillery and the art of fortification. From their time onwards, the part of the men of science in war has steadily grown greater. Their part in developing machine production, and accustoming the population to the use, first of steam, then of electricity, came later, and did not begin to have important political effects until near the end of the eighteenth century. The triumph of science has been mainly due to its practical utility, and there has been an attempt to divorce this aspect from that of theory, thus making science more and more a technique, and less and less a doctrine as to the nature of the world. The penetration of this point of view to the philosophers is very recent.

Emancipation from the authority of the Church led to the growth of individualism, even to the point of anarchy. Discipline, intellectual, moral, and political, was associated in the minds of the men of the Renaissance with the scholastic philosophy and ecclesiastical government. The Aristotelian logic of the Schoolmen was narrow, but afforded a training in a certain kind of accuracy. When this school of logic became unfashionable, it was not, at first, succeeded by something better, but only by an eclectic imitation of ancient models. Until the seventeenth century, there was nothing of importance in philosophy. The moral and political anarchy of fifteenth-century Italy was appalling, and gave rise to the doctrines of Machiavelli. At the same time, the freedom from mental shackles led to an astonishing display of genius in art and literature. But such a society is unstable. The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, combined with the subjection of Italy to Spain, put an end to both the good and the bad of the Italian Renaissance. When the movement spread north of the Alps, it had not the same anarchic character.

Modern philosophy, however, has retained, for the most part, an individualistic and subjective character. This is very marked in Descartes, who builds up all knowledge from the certainty of his own existence, and accepts clearness and distinctness (both subjective) as criteria of truth. It is not prominent in Spinoza, but reappears in Leibniz’s windowless monads. Locke, whose temperament is thoroughly objective, is forced reluctantly into the subjective doctrine that knowledge is of the agreement or disagreement of ideas – a view so repulsive to him that he escapes from it by violent inconsistencies. Berkeley, after abolishing matter, is only saved from complete subjectivism by a use of God which most subsequent philosophers have regarded as illegitimate. In Hume, the empiricist philosophy culminated in a scepticism which none could refute and none could accept. Kant and Fichte were subjective in temperament as well as in doctrine; Hegel saved himself by means of the influence of Spinoza. Rousseau and the romantic movement extended subjectivity from theory of knowledge to ethics and politics, and ended, logically, in complete anarchism such as that of Bakunin. This extreme of subjectivism is a form of madness.

Meanwhile science as technique was building up in practical men a quite different outlook from any that was to be found among theoretical philosophers. Technique conferred a sense of power: man is now much less at the mercy of his environment than he was in former times. But the power conferred by technique is social, not individual; an average individual wrecked on a desert island could have achieved more in the seventeenth century than he could now. Scientific technique requires the co-operation of a large number of individuals organized under a single direction. Its tendency, therefore, is against anarchism and even individualism, since it demands a well-knit social structure. Unlike religion, it is ethically neutral: it assures men that they can perform wonders, but does not tell them what wonders to perform. In this way it is incomplete. In practice, the purposes to which scientific skill will be devoted depend largely on chance. The men at the head of the vast organizations which it necessitates can, within limits, turn it this way or that as they please. The power impulse thus has a scope which it never had before. The philosophies that have been inspired by scientific technique are power philosophies, and tend to regard everything non-human as mere raw material. Ends are no longer considered; only the skillfulness of the process is valued. This also is a form of madness. It is, in our day, the most dangerous form, and the one against which a sane philosophy should provide an antidote.

The ancient world found an end to anarchy in the Roman Empire, but the Roman Empire was a brute fact, not an idea. The Catholic world sought an end to anarchy in the Church, which was an idea, but was never adequately embodied in fact. Neither the ancient nor the medieval solution was satisfactory – the one because it could not be idealized, the other because it could not be actualized. The modern world, at present, seems to be moving towards a solution like that of antiquity: a social order imposed by force, representing the will of the powerful rather than the hopes of common men. The problem of a durable and satisfactory social order can only be solved by combining the solidity of the Roman Empire with the idealism of Saint Augustine’s City of God. To achieve this a new philosophy will be needed.

Book 3, “Modern Philosophy”, the end of Chapter 2, "The Italian Renaissance" (page 500ff):

…The Renaissance was not a period of great achievement in philosophy, but it did certain things which were essential preliminaries to the greatness of the seventeenth century. In the first place, it broke down the rigid scholastic system, which had become an intellectual strait jacket. It revived the study of Plato, and thereby demanded at least so much independent thought as was required for choosing between him and Aristotle. In regard to both, it promoted a genuine and first-hand knowledge, free from the glosses of Neoplatonists and Arabic commentators. More important still, it encouraged the habit of regarding intellectual activity as a delightful social adventure, not a cloistered meditation aiming at the preservation of a predetermined orthodoxy.

…The Renaissance was not a popular movement; it was a movement of a small number of scholars and artists, encouraged by liberal patrons, especially the Medici and the humanist popes. But for these patrons, it might have had very much less success…

…The attitude of Renaissance scholars to the Church is difficult to characterize simply. Some were avowed free-thinkers, though even these usually received extreme unction, making peace with the Church when they felt death approaching. Most of them were impressed by the wickedness of contemporary popes, but were nevertheless glad to be employed by them. Guicciardini the historian wrote in 1529:

“No man is more disgusted than I am with the ambition, the avarice, and the profligacy of the priests, not only because each of these vices is hateful in itself, but because each and all of them are most unbecoming in those who declare themselves to be men in special relations with God, and also because they are vices so opposed to one another, that they can only co-exist in very singular natures. Nevertheless, my position at the Court of several popes forced me to desire their greatness for the sake of my own interest. But, had it not been for this, I should have loved Martin Luther as myself, not in order to free myself from the laws which Christianity, as generally understood and explained, lays upon us, but in order to see this swarm of scoundrels put back into their proper place, so that they may be forced to live either without vices or without power.”

This is delightfully frank, and shows clearly why the humanists could not inaugurate a reformation. Moreover, most of them saw no half-way house between orthodoxy and free-thought; such a position as Luther’s was impossible for them, because they no longer had the medieval feeling for the subtleties of theology. Masuccio, after describing the wickedness of monks and nuns and friars, says: “The best punishment for them would be for God to abolish purgatory; they would then receive no more alms, and would be forced to go back to their spades.” But it does not occur to him, as to Luther, to deny purgatory, while retaining most of the Catholic faith.

The wealth of Rome depended only in small part upon the revenues obtained from the papal dominions; in the main, it was a tribute, drawn from the whole Catholic world, by means of a theological system which maintained that the popes held the keys of heaven. An Italian who effectively questioned this system risked the impoverishment of Italy, and the loss of the position of Rome in the Western world. Consequently Italian unorthodoxy, in the Renaissance, was purely intellectual, and did not lead to schism, or to any attempt to create a popular movement away from the Church. The only exception, and that a very partial one, was Savonarola, who belonged mentally to the Middle Ages.

Most of the humanists retained such superstitious beliefs as had found support in antiquity. Magic and witchcraft might be wicked, but were not thought impossible. Innocent VIII, in 1484, issued a bull against witchcraft, which led to an appalling persecution of witches in Germany and elsewhere. Astrology was prized especially by free-thinkers; it acquired a vogue which it had not had since ancient times. The first effect of emancipation from the Church was not to make men think rationally, but to open their minds to every sort of antique nonsense.

Morally, the first effect of emancipation was equally disastrous. The old moral rules ceased to be respected; most of the rulers of States had acquired their position by treachery, and retained it by ruthless cruelty. When cardinals were invited to dine at the coronation of a pope, they brought their own wine and their own cup-bearer, for fear of poison. Except Savonarola, hardly any Italian of the period risked anything for a public object. The evils of papal corruption were obvious, but nothing was done about them. The desirability of Italian unity was evident, but the rulers were incapable of combination. The danger of foreign domination was imminent, yet every Italian ruler was prepared to invoke the aid of any foreign power, even the Turk, in any dispute with any other Italian ruler. I cannot think of any crime, except the destruction of ancient manuscripts, of which the men of the Renaissance were not frequently guilty.

Outside the sphere of morals, the Renaissance had great merits. In architecture, painting, and poetry, it has remained renowned. It produced very great men, such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Machiavelli. It liberated educated men from the narrowness of medieval culture, and, even while still a slave to the worship of antiquity, it made scholars aware that a variety of opinions had been held by reputable authorities on almost every subject. By reviving the knowledge of the Greek world, it created a mental atmosphere in which it was again possible to rival Hellenic achievements, and in which individual genius could flourish with a freedom unknown since the time of Alexander. The political conditions of the Renaissance favoured individual development, but were unstable; the instability and the individualism were closely connected, as in ancient Greece. A stable social system is necessary, but every stable system hitherto devised has hampered the development of exceptional artistic or intellectual merit. How much murder and anarchy are we prepared to endure for the sake of great achievements such as those of the Renaissance? In the past, a great deal; in our own time, much less. No solution of this problem has hitherto been found, although increase of social organization is making it continually more important.