B ibliographies, A rchival I nventories, I ndexes

 

 

A SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY OF
A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

PART II: EXTRACTED NON-ENGLISH REVIEWS

 

Kenneth Blackwell

Giovanni D. de Carvalho

Harry Ruja

 

 

F

or “Part i: Extracted Reviews in English”, see Russell 39 (summer 2019): 23–96. The reviews combine Russell’s own files and copies of many reviews added and identified in this compilation and earlier. The assistance of Lukas Spencer when he was a student employee of McMaster Library Research Collections was appreciated. Abbreviations for holdings are: ra = original clipping that came with ra; ra′ = original clipping added to ra; ra″ = photocopy. The total number of reviews is 160. They are kept in box 1.65 of the Russell Archives and are searchable online there. Appended is a select bibliography of publications on the History since the reviews appeared.

 

 

A., C. Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 4, no. 1 (Jan.–Mar. 1948): 107–8. ra″. In Por­tu­guese. “Driven perhaps by his political ideas, Russell does not like Sparta or Plato, much less Aristotle. On the other hand, the Greek philosopher who seduces him most is Pythagoras, and the Greek mathematicians. He speaks sympathetically of Plotinus, with whom the Greek speculation comes to an end.” “The book is less a history of philosophy than a scientist’s views across Western culture. Therefore it does not have a bibliography, it does not study any author in depth, it only sticks to some salient points, which the author tries to develop in their political and historical environment.” “His metaphysical concerns are minimal, what interests him most is the development of the sciences, and from the beginning to the end of the book one feels that he wants to show how teleological knowledge has moved on to mechanistic and relativistic knowledge, which allows him to finish the work with praise of the modern science of analytical thought, of which the author himself is one of the main representatives today.”

 

Ahlberg, Alf. “Bertrand Russell som Filosofihistoriker” [Bertrand Russell as Historian of Philos­ophy]. Samtid och Framtid 4 (1947): 32–5. ra″. In Swedish. “It is very charming; it follows a a worthy tradition in English historical writing, which is marked by such names as Gibbon, Macaulay and others.”

 

Anonymous. L’Orma 1 (1949): 49. ra. In Italian. Not seen.

Asti Vera, Armando. Sur: Revista Men­suel, Buenos Aires, 16, no. 162 (Apr. 1948): 113–18. ra″. In Spanish. “His History of Western Philosophy may be subject to criticism—and some have already been made—but it must be acknowledged that few could have undertaken such a task by demonstrating, as Russell has done, such extensive and rigorous scientific knowledge, together with an analytical aptitude that is astonishing.” “To write a history of philosophy like Russell’s would have required prodigious scholarship, impossible to find in one single man. This is what he himself has acknowledged, and sometimes the resort to secondhand sources, which although it does not affect the informational aspect—especially in terms of history—has been the cause of serious errors when it comes to philosophical thinking. Thus, for example, his interpretation of Socrates is poor, and the chapter on the Sophists confused, among whom he fails to differentiate critics from demagogues.”

“It should be noted, as one of the best merits of the work, Russell's extraordinary ability to distinguish the fundamental from the accessory, of which many examples can be found in many parts of his history of philosophy, such as in the examination of Leibniz’s philosophy and the preponderance that he grants to the problem of universals, which he analyzes repeatedly and thoroughly through Plato, Aristotle, Scotus, Avicenna, the Scho­lastics, Roscellinus, Abelard, St. Thomas, Roger Bacon, Occam, Leibniz, Locke and Hume.” “There are excellent chapters, for example, the exposition of the problem of causality in Hume, the study and critical examination of Kant (he notices, among other aspects, the Kantian error of locating arithmetic in time, an error that has gone unnoticed to most critics of Kant).” “The chapter on Marx is brilliant and so is the critique of the concept of number in Bergson and the explanation of Zeno’s fallacies about the arrow as the result of assuming the discontinuity of movement.” “At times his epithets are acute as well as ingenious: Machiavelli was a ‘disillusioned romantic’, and something similar is said of Dr. Frankestein’s teratological spawn; according to Leibniz’s monadological conception, a table is ‘a colony of souls’, and the sharp antinomy between the Eleatics and Heraclitus (or Bergson) is synthesized thus: for the former, ‘there are things but no changes’, for the latter ‘there are changes but no things’.”

 

Beth, E. W. Gids 109 (1946): 177–8. ra″. In Dutch. “[The book] will be able contribute to the solution of disharmony in our spiritual lives.” “The reading of Russell's book now will convince many that in addition to the German, irrationalistic, philosophy there is a rationalistic-empirical philosophy that, though she has barely found purchase with us in the last 100 years, is suitable to be practised on a large scale, and bring a powerful influence on our lives.”

 

Cafaro, F. “La Storia della Filosofia di B. Russell” [The History of Philosophy by B. Russell]. Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 3 (1948): 51–71. ra″. In Italian. “How, then, do external circumstances influence the formation of philosophies? Instruc­tive in this regard is what the author says about Marx, where he tries to investigate the problem further. Russell states that the materialistic conception of history contains very important elements of truth and, while not accepting it in its entir­ety, acknowledges having been influenced by it ‘in the development of the elabor­ation of this history’ ” (page 813). “Russell, who confesses that he was never able to understand ‘what exactly does the word category mean in Aristotle, Kant, Hegel’ (page 222), and who has no great esteem for Kant, and therefore has not understood the value of the a priori synthesis, is far from thinking that it is in the act of thinking that the relations and connections which seem to exist in objective reality are established.”

“And so it is in fact in this History, where in chapters or parts of chapters of pure historical treatment, expositions of ideas, systems and philosophical schools are interpolated, but without it being possible to see why certain problems and particular solutions stemmed from certain historical conditions and vice versa.” “[I ] f we linger on the theoretical parts of the book and carefully analyze all the criticisms, dis­cussions and numerous observations that gradually come up in the exposition of the various schools of philosophy, we would find in them the author’s whole system of neo-realism, and particularly the philosophy of logical analysis.” “[T ]he author, with no clear ideas in mind, set about making a history of philosophy that risks being a history of culture, if not a history of political relations, and sometimes of political and social thought.” “What value can be found in such a large volume? We can consider it a new partial exposition of the main philosophical doctrines, scattered with acute and sometimes original observations, expressed in a brilliant, flowing style, not lacking a certain formal elegance.”

“Modern philosophy after Kant in the nineteenth century is treated very insufficiently and unilaterally; contemporary philosophy does not exist for him, except for Bergson and Dewey.” “The only contemporary Italian mentioned besides Mussolini is Papini in his pragmatist phase of Uomo Finito! [A Man-Finished; us title, The Failure] Definitely Italian philosophy does not deserve the sympathies of our new Historian!” “To Pythagoras, Russell, who is a mathematician, dedicates a long chapter, almost as if out of gratitude for the father of mathematics.” “We note, incidentally, that the expo­sition of ancient, medieval and modern philosophies is seasoned with modern flavoured remarks, and with reflections, especially on the concepts of the Greek philosophers, from a strictly personal viewpoint; not a historical exposition, but a critical one in which the personality of the author appears every moment and almost overlaps with the exposed thoughts.” “It is natural that witty and hu­morous observations towards such crude, primitive and infantile conceptions should emerge from a mind that is modern and scientifically educated; but they are no less unjustified and inopportune, sometimes even annoying.”

“Math­ematics, according to Russell, gave rise to faith in eternal and exact truths and in an intelligible and supersensible world; from this concept the Platonic idealism of the Timaeus, medieval theology, and all rationalistic philosophy up to Kant must de derived. All this rationalism was implicit in the propositions and thought of Pythagoras. The History of Philosophy is largely the progressive development of this line of mathematical-Pythagorean rationalism (page 56); Russell therefore sees in the history of philosophy the development of strands implicit in the thought of Greek philosophers; and the political and social conditions, where do they end up with similar theory?” “From time to time the exposition of philosophical doctrines is alternated, as we have seen, with ‘historical excursus’, and in these general pictures Russell sometimes shows a happy hand, and, al­though not strictly a method of history of philosophy, this exposition serves to better guide the reader with respect to the historical environment in which the various systems of philosophy developped.”

“He invented two Leibniz[es]: one popular and superficially optimistic, and the other profoundly Spinozistic; but although Russell, who has also written a book on Leibniz, tries to show us his greatness, the Leibniz that comes out always remains a philosopher wrapped up in the aporias of the rationalists.” “Kant is considered the initiator of German idealism, but it seems very strange to me that ‘Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel made innovations in theology in the interest of religion!’ (p. 731).” “The meaning of the Hegelian dialectic and of the historicity of the spirit and of philosophy escapes him completely.” “In it there are oscillations of concepts, uncertainties of thought, confusion of ideas and errors of method that reflect and fully confirm the judgment that Santayana had already pronounced in an essay on the philosophy and mentality of Russell in 1913; in it, while recognizing that Russell ‘possesses by inheritance a political and historical mind, and an intrepid determination to pierce convention and look to ultimate things’, and that ‘he writes with a singular lucidity, candour, and charm’, does not hesitate to note that ‘by reading Russell one perceives that exact thinking and true thinking are not synonymous’.”[1]

 

Caillois, Roland. Critique, Paris, 10 (1954): 476–8. ra″. In French. “Although this history of philosophy does not pretend to define a philosophy of history, it is quickly obvious that Russell’s logical analysis is the reasonable and happy outcome of the history of ideas. However the logical positivism which commands it, its theory and articulations remain discreet throughout the exposition, and leave room for a pleasant conversation with one of the most pleasant gentlemen that England has produced.” “This is the first time, it seems, that a liberal philosopher bothers to understand philosophy in its social context. Russell has no preconceived idea about historical determinism, he thinks there is a reciprocal relation and that every case must be studied; it is possible that certain epochs allow more than others the autonomy of intellectual development.” “One will be surprised—in France especially—that Malebranche almost does not exist, and Germany will be outraged by the fact that Husserl does not exist at all, while John Dewey—besides very sympathetic—is entitled to a substantial chapter. I fear that the great scandal is the violent knock-out that Bergson suffers, disfiguring him indecently.” “But it would be wrong to ask Russell to be complete and distribute prizes, for academicism is not his forte. Ask him, instead, for the joyous disrespect, the British humour, the ironic good sense, even the joke, and perhaps you will find there a very serious foundation, but one that does not like to say its name, and would rather that philosophy seem like a nice pastime for gentlemen. This has its price today.”

 

Colombi, G. Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica 44 (1952): 478–81. ra″. In Italian. “In some cases the seriousness of the work is seriously compromised by significant and deplorable deficiencies in the direct and in-depth study of the texts; the more strange this is when it comes to some English authors, and even more so for the fact that almost all the bibliography, rarely cited and with extreme parsimony, is Anglo-Saxon.” “I must add that a taste and predilection for the anecdote, the particular, perhaps the lesser-known trifle, in which the author’s sarcasm is gladly exercised, is certainly not a merit.” “When he is called upon to pronounce himself on the most arduous themes of Platonic philosophy, Russell throws hasty, com­pletely inadequate observations, with a con­de­scending tone, almost as if those assertions were games of fantasy and not the living and long-suffering centre of Platonic speculation.” “It becomes clear that the world of Patristic and Scholastic philosophies is very difficult for him to penetrate, and he thus accumulates ten­dentious statements and insinuations of disconcerting superficiality.” “It is a testi­mony of philosophical dilettantism that it is difficult to equate the parallel sketched by Russell between the theology of Judeo-Christian history in St. Augustine and the phi­losophy of history in Marx: Jaweh = Dialectical Materialism; the Messiah = Marx; the Elect = the Proletariat; the Church = the Communist Party; the Second Coming = Revolution; Hell = the punishment of the capitalists; the Millennium = the Communist Community.” “To conclude on the whole work, it seems to me that the accusations of improper, partial and unilateral information, the personal rethinking of scarce and sometimes absent arguments, the lack of the most elementary dialectical penetration of doctrines, the sometimes even irritating irreverence and frivolity, the gaps, disproportions and disorder in the exhibition, are completely founded.”

 

de Carvalho, A. Pinto. Kriterion 10 (1957): 494–6. ra″. In Por­tu­guese. “Unin­tentionally, the illustrious mathematician transposes into the sphere of values, into the sphere of qualitative valuations, a dogmatic tone that is tolerable only when quantitative relations come into play. I don’t know if, in logic, the process deserves acceptance.” “It should be noted, in passing, that Russell, so well informed in everything else, shows evidence of extreme ignorance when it comes to interpreting whatever is related to the Catholic Church. To such an extent that we can say that the entire second book fails in its very base.” “Perhaps unin­tentionally, the author, who opposes every kind of intolerance, and let him be praised for that, seems extremely intolerant in his appreciations and judgments and, in certain domains, exquisitely sectarian, with a kind of sectarianism that is in very little harmony with the scientific spirit of which he claims to be a culti­vator.”

 

de Vos, A. “De Moderne Wijsbegeerte” [The Modern Philosophy]. Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 10 (1948): 343–62 (at 343–8). ra″. In Dutch. “Despite all that, it really pays to read this History carefully and recommend it to students for consideration if they only want to take into account the incorrect assumptions of the author. But he is usually very penetrating, and with regard to many minds who think otherwise he often is open and delicate.”

 

Ducoin, G. Études 281 (1954): 264. ra″. In French. “Many philosophers are partially interpreted, St. Thomas, of course, in whom the author recognizes ‘little real philosophical spirit’, but also Kant, and Fichte, whose subjectivism ‘almost seems to imply a kind of madness’, and many others.” “[T]he most serious is the criticism that this book does little more than juxtapose some chapters of social or political history with good monographs on various philosophies.”

 

F., Max. “Histoire de la Philosophie”. La Flandre Liberale, 10 June 1953. ra. In French. “[T]his book is in fact a ‘social’ history of western philosophy, where curious insights abound and open up to the reader horizons constantly renewed.” “As it stands, this book by B. Russell offers a vast and suggestive overview of philo­sophical thought and history, with a concern for scientific objectivity. For this reason, its reading will be profitable and exhaustive for any curious and cultivated mind.”

 

Fatone, Vicente. Sur: Revista Mensuel, Buenos Aires, 152 (June 1947): 98–101. ra″. In Spanish. “Bertrand Russell has imposed on himself the norm, which he wished should become a universal norm, to be intelligent and happy, and happy through intelligence. As an intelligent man, when he thinks he wants to limit himself to thinking; and as a happy man, he expresses his thoughts with good humour. His History of Western Philosophy differs, in that respect, from all the others.” “Only twice in this history Bertrand Russell gets serious: when he talks about Plotinus and when he talks about Spinoza.” “His sympathy for Buddha has reasons which Bertrand Russell has confessed in his article ‘Physics and Metaphysics’:[2] there, after exposing his theory of the instan­taneousness of objects, he confesses that ‘this is no new idea: the Buddhists of the Asoka era already knew it’.” “Reading the chapters dedicated to Plotinus and Spinoza, the reader suspects that Bertrand Russell is not so on this side as he wants us to believe. He is, almost, on the other side.”

 

Ferro, Carmelo. Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolas­tica 42 (1950): 198–9. ra″. In Ital­ian. (Ferro’s is not a proper review; it is rather a sudy on Descartes’ philosophy, in which the author cites Russell’s treatment of Descartes in HWP.) “[F]rom a mathematical and logical point of view, [in] the pages dedicated to Descartes by Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy, although drab from a philosophical and historical point of view, ... it is maintained that what made Descartes great was inconsistency: ‘consistency could have made him only the founder of a new Scholasticism, while inconsistency made him the initiator of two important, however divergent, philosophical schools’, that is, empiricism and rationalism: and in fact, the cogito ergo sum and its justification constitute the kernel of the Cartesian theory of knowledge, and the most important part of his philosophy.”

 

Finger, Otto. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philoso­phie 5 (1957): 366–73. ra″. In Ger­man. Highly critical, and not only of Russell’s treatment of Marx, which is characterized thus: “Marx’s scientific predictions were emotionally based. Even Marx’s atheism was only pretended, for he ‘retained a cosmic optimism that only theism could justify.’ Spare us the mess of Russell’s antimarxist filth. These objections are as worn out as they are insubstantial.”

 

Gueroult, Martial. “Deux Histoires de la Philosophie”. Revue philosophique et de France et de l’étranger 144 (1954): 420–5 (at 420–1). ra″. In French. “No doubt this book is easily read, it is often seasoned with a pinch of humour; but it is afflicted with enormous gaps, filled with summary judgments, scrambled criticisms, estab­lished or unheard-of errors, superficial analyses.” “What it contains of scholarship is too often borrowed from second or third hand works, even from the columns of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.” “These 900 pages do not deserve much atten­tion.” “Finally, pointing to the whole, a work which presents itself as a History of Western Philosophy, in relation to political and social events, does not mention, even if only once, the names of D’Alembert, Diderot, Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, Proud’hon, Cournot ; does not breathe a word, either about the Encyclopédie or Positivism (the ‘French Encyclo­pedists’ are mentioned accidentally at the turn of a sentence, in the company of the founders of the American Constitution!).” “It is regrettable that so much toil has been put in the translation of a book that should be ignored by the French cultivated public.”

 

Heitzman, Marian. “Historia Filosofii Bertranda Russella” [Bertrand Russell’s His­tory of Philosophy]. Przeglad Filozo­fic­zny 44 (1948): 190–8 (English sum­mary, p. 293). ra″. In Polish. “Ber­trand Russell’s book (London 1946), is inter­esting, vivid, and witty, a genuine inter­pretation of the thought of past phi­losophers. There are however many short­comings. Lord Russell, himself a logician, does not mention the logical achievements of various philosophers. He does not give even a hint of the logic of the Stoics. There is also no word of the controversy on universals and the dispute on the relation between science and faith, though these constitute the main methodological questions of the Middle Ages. Moreover, the author, though claiming to trace the social and political background in such countries as produced new philosophies, does not mention such impor­tant facts as the foundation of uni­versities and the role of the religious orders. Economic changes, for instance the devel­opment of trade and towns and the for­mation of the middle class during the Renais­sance, are not sufficiently stressed. There is no chapter about the French ency­clopaedists and materialists of the XVIIth century. On the whole Lord Russell has not fulfilled the promise he gave us in the title (‘Western Philosophy in connection with political and social circumstances’). He evi­dently lacked the patience and toleration which make the two best weapons of a his­torian. Nevertheless the book is a stimu­lating historical and critical survey.”

 

Ketonen, Oiva. “Länsimaisen Filosofian Historiaa” [History of Western Philosophy]. Suomalainen Suomi 3 (1949): 150–4. ra″. In Finnish. “It introduces old things from a new angle and give reason for many kinds of thoughts. Probably Russell has, through its various fields, even permanently enriched the study of the history of philosophy.”

 

Krohn, Sven. “Bertrand Russellin ‘Filosofian Historiaa’ ” [Bertrand Russell’s History of Phi­los­ophy]. Valvoja 69, no. 1 (1949): 18–24. ra″. In Finnish. “However, as for Russell’s own objectivity or objectivity of values, the position is not final. For at the end of his work, it reiterates the subjectivity of values ​​and wills—as has been said in the past, he has not been able to solve the question of the nature of values ​​(I. p. 139).”

 

Kropp, Gerhard. Phi­los­o­­phischer Literatur­anz­ei­ger 5, no. 3 (1953): 122–3. ra″. In German. “When a significant thinker gives a historical picture of his knowledge it will always be interesting to see how this knowledge, usually known to the specialist, is selected and structured.” “Logical analysis developed a method that claimed objectivity and therefore the hope, gradually, of conquering all fields of philosophizing in the spirit of tolerance and strict truthfulness, free from dogmatism and fanaticism.”

 

L., P. Tiden 41 (1949): 365–6. ra″. In Swedish. “That problem, as Russell in several instances suggests, how democracy will be able to survive … there is no solution in this book.”

 

Le Roy, Georges. “Ouvrages d’Histoire”. Revue philosophique de Louvain 45 (1947): 355–7. ra″. In French. “M. Russell refuses to consider philosophy as a mere school matter, and philosophical doctrines as closed systems whose arrangement is explained by the logic of ideas alone. In his eyes, all the doctrines, even the greatest ones and those whose influence has been considerable, are products of the environment in which they were originated, that is to say, the historical cir­cumstances of time and place in which they were formed.” “It is impossible to summarize a book of such exceptional magnitude, whose pages are full of inge­ni­ous glimpses.” “One regret, no doubt, can be formulated here: the one that is noticed before some gaps. Certainly Mr. Russell could not retain everything, or even mention all the names: hence sometimes some summary analysis can be excused. But why, on the other hand, some silences? In modern times, Pascal and Malebranche are mentioned only incidentally, without the slightest suspicion, even vaguely, of the grandeur of their work and action.” “These omissions are all the more regrettable, as M. Russell’s book, always very clear, reads with the greatest interest.”

 

Leger, G. Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques 39 (1955): 140–72 (at 154–5). ra″. In French. “The design of this history of philosophy is in itself admirable.” “The subject is treated as a casual walk in the gardens of philosophy, appealing to humour, to common sense of which it is never said what it is, to verve, to the sceptical caricature, to a final plea—discreetly, it is true—for liberalism and the logical analysis that the author himself embraces.” “Simply, one wonders what is valid in itself in such a work, and seriously worry about it, were it not for the name of its author, which, moreover, offers some guarantees.” “As relates to modern philosophy only, it would be too long and tedious to weave the thread of injus­tices, omissions and ridiculous remarks which embellish the work incessantly.”

 

Resso, Giovanni. Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica 40 (1948): 104–5. ra″. In Italian. “However, those likely to remain disillusioned, so I fear, will be the philosophers, not only and not so much because they do not find evaluations of systems and doctrines habitual in works of history of philosophy, but rather for the position assumed by Lord Russell before individual thinkers.” “In the critique of Marx as a philosopher, Russell states that his defects are to be sought in an excessive anthropocentrism and an excessive faith in the idea of ​​progress.” “The lack of documentation of what the author affirms justifies the final judgment; it is the work of a man of great genius, but who has not been able to sufficiently document the demonstration of what he affirms.”

 

Rossi, Mario M. Nuova Rivista Storica 31 (1947): 212–14. ra″. In Italian. “His writing is interwoven with fine irony, with a vivacity that catches the reader’s attention constantly: rather than dealing with matters in depth, he mentions them, and often leaves the reader with the desire to read more, while he is already on another track, already pointing to another grand spiritual scene.” “Of thinkers who do not interest him, Lord Russell does not speak; if a writer interests him, he talks about him even though he is not one of the names usually found in the history of philosophy. Worse still: for many thinkers, the author limits himself to the expo­sition and criticism of this or that work, without considering it in its whole philosophical system.” “Logic must have some connection with political and social circumstances for Lord Russell to conclude his History with a chapter on the philosophy of logical analysis. Whether or not evolutionism is directly related to liberalism, it is surprising that Lord Russell, who is so interested in sociology, does not even mention Spencer.” “Above all, this is a book that is read with pleasure because, rather than a history, it is the sincere confession of the likes and dislikes of a spirit with a passion for truth and justice; as were, from the sixteenth century to the present, the ancestors of Lord Russell, who, despite errors and exaggerations, were always enthusiastic and passionate about the great idealistic causes of humanity.”

 

Sokolov, V. V. “Бертран Рассел как историк философии” [“Bertrand Russell kak istorik filosofii” [Bertrand Russell as historian of philosophy)]. Voprosi Filosofii 9 (1960): 100–10, 185. ra″. In Russian. Eng­lish summary, p. 185: “Russell’s His­tory of Western Philosophy has re­cently appeared in a Russian translation. This work possesses a number of pos­itive features which distinguish it from numerous other histories of philosophy by bourgeois authors. This is expressed in Russell’s endeavour to regard phi­losophy as an insep­arable part of the life of society, which sometimes brings him close to revealing the class essence of some philosophical doctrines. The advan­tages of Russell’s book as com­pared with other histories of philosophy also lie in the fact that the author ap­proaches the exam­ination of philo­sophical conceptions of the past from the angle of a leading scholar of our times, a mathematician and a logi­cian.

Of scientific interest is Russell’s ration­­alism, his battle against religious fan­ati­cism and clerical obscurantism, against all sorts of myth-creation, against the objec­tive ideal­ism of Plato, Thomas of Aquinas, Hegel and others. Worthy of at­tention is Russell’s ener­getic oppo­sition to the subjec­tivism of Fichte, Scho­penhauer, Bergson, James, Dewey, and others. The article analyses the philosophical outlook of Russell himself and shows that the theory of the ‘logical analysis of the language of science’ presented by him, which rejects the onto­logical content of the concept of ‘matter’, does not go beyond the bounds of idealism. The idealistic character of Russell’s defin­ition of philosophy, as given in the intro­duction to the History of Western Philos­ophy, is also revealed, and it is shown that Russell’s agnosticism and scepticism lead to a limitation of his ration­alism and objec­tively to conces­sions to reli­gion and fideism. Russell’s philosophical position also influ­ences the methodology of his book, the most important methodo­logical defects of which are subjectivism and anti-his­torism. Sub­jec­tivism is express­ed in the ‘selective’ char­acter of his historico-philosophical con­ceptions, in his omission of some philos­ophers, especially materialists, and his very cursory and schematic treat­ment of others (Kant, Fichte, for example). Anti-his­torism appears in Rus­sell’s book in his attempts to ‘clear up’ the philosophical concepts of past thinkers with the aid of the method of the ‘logical analysis of language’, so that often no attention is paid to their specific origin (as is seen in the case of the analysts of the views of Plato and Aris­totle). Anti-historism is also manifested in modernist tendencies contained in the His­tory of Western Philosophy.”

 

Tecoz, Henri François. Algemeen Ned­er­lands Tijd­schrift voor Wijsbegeerte en Psy­­chologie 40 (1947): 39–40. ra″. In Dutch. “Extensive works such as the histories of philosophy can generally be divided into two classes: the superficial and the unreadable.The work of Russell belongs to the very small number of those which are neither among the one nor fall under the other. It is certainly the most attractive history since Hegel’s (now completely forgotten unfortunately, because despite the fact that it is old, it remains a small masterpiece). Russell has tackled a huge problem: nothing less than the serious one of giving a thorough account of the development of European thinking; and I believe too I can say that he has succeeded beyond all expectation. His clarity never leaves him and the story develops with great enthusiasm, light and stylish.” “Incidentally, it would be incorrect not to say again that the passages are numerous in this book in which criticism and explanation give way to real wisdom; that wisdom, incidentally, his own metaphysics belies. [H]e warns of the dangers of titanism….”

 

Trofimov, P., and E. Pomogayeva. “Фальсификация истории философии” [“Falsifikasiya historii filosofii” (Falsification of the history of philosophy)]. Bol­’sh­e­vik 25, no. 11 (15 June 1948): 71–8. ra″. In Russian. “The seventy-year-old Lord Bertrand Russell, an idealist philosopher, who in his youth was a troubadour of the most shameful Anglo-Boer War—and a notorious supporter of the Pact of Munich before the Second World War, and during that war a lying pacifist or, in other words, a fascist in disguise—is now fiercely propagandizing the Churchill imperialist idea of a world government, the ‘United States of the World’, and urging American militarists to throw atomic bombs all over Soviet Russia. ‘I see’, howls this thoroughbred ancient frantically, ‘only one hope of saving civilization [i.e., capitalism—T & P ]: a courageous and more or less imperialist policy on the part of the United States over the next few years, until the other powers will have atomic bombs….’ [3] The philosophizing thug summons the reactionary forces of the world to wage war against the Soviet people and, slavishly flattering the American money bag, blatantly declares that ‘if the US government orders us [the English—T & P] go to war we will go without blinking’. (Ibidem.)”

“For Russell, matter is nothing more than ‘the stable grouping of events’, and he defines ‘events’ themselves, in a subjective-idealistic spirit, as the whole of human perceptions. Russell announces this idealistic nonsense as his philosophical ‘discovery’, stemming from what he says are the latest achievements of science. In practice, what Russell does is repeat an old reactionary folly, whose idealistic essence Lenin unveiled and demonstrated with irrefutable persuasion in Materialism and Empiri0-Criticism.” “Pretentiously calling his book History of Western Philosophy and its connection with political and social circumstances from antiquity to this day, Russell actually gives nothing even remotely resembling a concrete representation of the social and political circumstances in which philosophy has historically developed.”

“In his voluminous ‘work’ we find neither a picture of the struggle of political currents and socialist groups in society, nor a characterization of the changing economic circumstances of people’s lives, nor a description of the evolution of the concrete sciences, which responded to the needs of society. Such a separation between the history of philosophy and the concrete history of peoples and countries is necessary for Russell to more easily falsify the history of philosophy to the liking of his own subjective-idealistic and mystical-theological system.” “In the book of the English pseudo-historian we find not a word about the struggle of the peasant servants against the feudal lords. On the other hand, Russell dedicates hundreds and hundreds of pages of his fat book to the struggle between the clergy feudal lords and the lay feudal lords, between the popes and the emperors, without further disclosing the true roots of that struggle. In clarifying the history of the Modern Age, we still encounter the same poor idealism.”

“In a chauvinistic exaltation of the Anglo-Saxons, the English aristocrat goes so far as to argue, despite widely known facts, as if only the English had saved the old culture and preserved its achievements for the cultural development of the other peoples.” “Russell pursues a totally definite objective: to show, first, that the position of dialectical materialism regarding party struggle in philosophy is supposed to be an incorrect position, and secondly to inculcate in the reader the idea that science and theology might not be antagonistic and therefore, they would come to be reconciled in a single whole: philosophy.” “Thus, through a varied falsification of materialist doctrines, Russell goes so far as to completely remove from the history of philosophy the irreconcilable struggle of principles between materialism and idealism. He reduces some materialists to the degree of ordinary ‘libertarians’ who aspire to conciliation with idealism, and others he simply expels from the history of philosophy.” “In his pseudo-history, Russell also talks about socialism. The English lord knows that under the present circumstances the pillars of capitalism cannot be defended by the old means, openly praising the capitalist regime, which for a successful defence must be disguised under a false socialist verbiage. Such a façade socialism, wholly acceptable to the imperialists, is called labour ‘democratic’ socialism. This is why in his History of Western Philosophy, the English aristocrat defends this bourgeois variety of socialism against the communists, supporters of scientific socialism.”

“Russell hates and despises the people, and at the same time is afraid of them. The rising consciousness of the masses and the growing revolutionary struggle of the peoples against their oppressors are leaving the philosopher-lord terrified and trembling. In all his most recent writings, Russell preaches submission, calls upon the people to be obedient and ‘peaceful’ before imperialist rulers, and by all means exalts the moral borrowed from the Stoics by Christianity.” “[I]n Russell’s idealistic theories there is not a shred of science, nor a shadow of novelty. But that does not prevent Russell from announcing that his litany is the crowning achievement of all the historical development of philosophy. His last thorough work, History of Western Philosophy, aims to point out the
‘irrefutability’ of its creator’s subjective-idealistic delirium and to show that Russell’s philosophy is the apex of the whole history of philosophy.” “Of course, Russell’s sub-literature on the history of philosophy has nothing in common with science. Its purpose is to defend and reinforce, with material taken from the history of philosophy as misrepresented by him, the positions of modern reactionary idealism. By slandering materialism, and above all dialectical materialism, he imposes on the reader the absurd idea that the apex of all philosophical thought would be Anglo-Saxon philosophy, and thereby, aided by the history of philosophy, he aims to maintain the odious theory of Anglo-Saxon racism.” “Bertrand Russell’s evident malignant falsification of the history of philosophy in no way represents an isolated phenomenon in reactionary Anglo-American philosophy. Fighting dialectical materialism and science, bour­geois philosophers aspire to use the history of philosophy to defend and ground idealism, ‘reworking’ it for this purpose. Russell’s shameful and misleading ‘work’ is an example of the misrepresentation of the history of philosophy in the writings of imperialist reactionary ideologues.”

“Contemporary idealistic philosophy, Comrade Zhdanov[4] pointed out in philo­sophical discussions, reflects all the depths, lowness and abomination of the fall of the bourgeoisie. This in full measure relates to a history of philosophy established by contemporary idealists. In setting out their history of philosophy, they are governed by their fear of materialism and science, worship of superstition and reaction, and immortalization of social, political, and spiritual oppression. A clear example of this is Bertrand Russell’s ‘History of Western European Philosophy’.”

 

Verdenal, René. Pensée 50 (1953): 101–7. ra″. In French. “A history of philosophy is always a rigorous test to judge the philosopher who undertakes it, and the interest increases when one of the ideologues who positions himself in favour of American imperialism gives it a try.” “His historical vision hastily hides in the past the sclerotic patterns of imperialist thought in honour of Anglo-American capi­talism, and more American than English.” “Russell does not want to see how philosophical debates stem from the struggles of the peoples in order to settle the vital questions for their national existence, and we need the conceit of a prop­agandist of American imperialism to say nothing at all about modern Italy, about Spain, about Russia, and utter untruths about Germany.”

“The arrogance to­wards the masses and their creative activity obviously accommodates a disdainful overview of the past, without any concern for precision, indifferent to separating the theses of the exploiters from those of the exploited.” “The result of such prejudices is the inability to understand the unfolding of history and to grasp the ‘work’ that slowly shapes its evolution: his history of philosophy ignores the transformation of thought and only describes truncated results, without any analysis of their genesis.” “Bertrand Russell began to ‘refute’ Marxism a long time ago. He was only twenty-four years old in 1896, when, attached to the British Embassy in Berlin, he wrote his first book on ‘German Social Democracy’, where he already specialized in the fight against socialist ideas.” “Let us agree with Russell that his doctrine ‘brings a great simplification to our representation of the world’. This need for ‘simplification’ would perhaps satisfy the ‘cultivated gen­tleman’, but Russell knows that ‘the days of the cultivated gentleman are gone’.”

 

Appendix: Selected Bibliography Following the Reviews

 

Clark, Ronald W. The Life of Bertrand Russell. London: Cape/Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975. Pp. 476–82, 490–1. ra″. “[In HWP] Russell is dealing with the prob­lem of reconciling individuality with cohe­sion”.

Gottlieb, Antony. Introduction to Routledge Classics edition of HWP. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Pp. ix–xiii. ra″. “On the whole he engages with all philosophers as if they were his contemporaries, paying relatively little attention to the intellectual landscapes in which they moved.…” “One reviewer pointed out that although Russell writes that most philosophers of the Hellenistic period believed in astrology, his own treat­ment reveals that they did not. This minor slip remains in the text. A more substantial historical error is that Russell exaggerates the importance of Pythagoras in mathe­matics and philosophy, attributing to Pytha­g­oras himself various views and achievements that in fact belong to later Pythagoreans.”

“[T]hose who vehemently condemn his treatment of a thinker are usually admirers of the philosopher con­cerned when Russell is not.” “[I]n 100 years’ time these two omissions [of Witt­genstein and Heidegger] will still be noticed as somewhat eccentric—in other words, that people will still be reading this book.”

Grayling, A. C. Introduction to Fol­io Society edition of HWP. London: Folio Society, 2004. Pp. ix–xiv. ra″. “[N]ot a few readers of Hist0ry of Wes­tern Philosophy will have acquired their first sense of the general sweep of western history from Russell’s panorama of it.” “With his encyclopedic grasp of the histor­ical back­ground to western philosophy, Russell was able to choose the right frame­work for explaining the development of ideas and theories within it.”

“Russell alludes to the historical context in which it was being written—which means, to the Second World War actually raging about him.” “These chapters [on James, Dewey and logical analysis] accord­ingly offer a valuable starting point for any­one planning to make a study of Russell’s thought, which is complex both in the details of its earlier focus upon philosophical logic and in the series of evolutions it went through when his attention turned more fully to the overlap between epistemology … and the philosophy of science.” “Instead it has belonged to the amateurs of philosophy, in the sense of both those who love the pursuit and those who read it in their own time for their own instruction.”

Monk, Ray. Bertrand Russell: 1921–70; the Ghost of Madness. London: Cape, 2000. Pp. 266, 279, 296.

Moorehead, Caroline. Bertrand Russell: a Life. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992. Pp. 436–43, 450–2. ra″.

Ogden, Dawn, and A. D. Irvine. “A Bibliographical Index to Bertrand Rus­sell’s A History of Western Philosophy”. Russell 19 (1999): 63–83.

Russell, Bertrand. [Quotations from:] “A History of Wes­tern Philosophy”. en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_History_of_​Wes​tern_Philosophy.

—. Auto., 2: 224–4. 3: 15, 42, 60 (Einstein on HWP ), 64, 135.

—. SLBR 2: 381–93.

Vianelli, Giovanni. “A Newly Discov­ered Text by Russell on Pythagoras and the History of Mathematics”. Russell 21 (2001): 5–30.

—. “Bertrand Russell: il problema dell’in­fer­enza scientifica negli anni della His­tory of Western Philosophy (1936–46).” Unpublished phd thesis, Bologna, 2000. ra″.

Wood, Alan. Bertrand Russell, the Pas­sion­ate Sceptic. London: Allen & Unwin, 1957. Pp. 196–9. ra″.