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PhilosophyNow
a magazine of ideas

Experiments
on Twin Earth

Denis Diderot’s
life and ideas

What Ho,
Bertrand
Russell!
Philosophy Now ISSUE 120 June/July 2017
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Bertrand Russell on
The Value of Philosophy for Life
John R. Lenz tells us why Russell thought philosophy worthwhile.
B
ertrand Russell did a disservice to philosophy by defin-
ing the word. Early in his career he defined philoso-
phy as the logical-analytic method. This definition
was so restricting that although he spent the next fifty
years writing one book after another on topics such as war,
peace, happiness, science and society, and the future of mankind,
it forced him to describe most of them as ‘popular’ or ‘non-
philosophical’. In fact, he gradually developed an alternative
view of philosophy and its value for humanity.
His many popular books are unfairly ignored by historians
of ideas and those interested in Russell as a philosopher. Of
course, his many-sided activities, popular writings and work
for peace are well-known and beloved. But these are usually
left for his biography as opposed to his supposed ‘real’ academ-
ically-valid, philosophical work. Pick up a book such as The
Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell or a recent hundredth-
anniversary commemoration of The Problems of Philosophy. You
would never know from these that Russell held theories of
human nature; that he repeatedly (from at least 1916 into the
late 1960s) advanced utopian proposals for the future; and that
he passionately advocated the value of philosophy and the philo-
sophic life in more traditional terms, that is, as a road to hap-
piness and wisdom. Academic study favors the analytic Rus-
sell, especially his work in the first decade of the twentieth cen-
tury. The academy should be broader than that. He was.
Russell trumpeted his formal contribution to philosophy as
revolutionary. The logical-analytical method he helped pio-
neer is a tool to cut the Gordian Knot of traditional philosoph-
ical problems. He developed this ‘scientific method’ in works
such as Our Knowledge of the External World (1914). As that title
suggests, here the theory of knowledge took center stage. Phi-
losophy had become the science of separating true from false
knowledge, beliefs, and statements.
Philosophy Beyond Analysis
Philosophers today debate the origins of analytic philosophy,
partly to ground their own view of the field. Tom Akehurst
offers a fresh insight. He argues in his 2010 book The Cultural
Politics of Analytic Philosophy that British (and thence American)
analytic philosophy purported to ignore politics, but in fact took
for granted British liberalism (and imperialism). Analytic phi-
losophy flourished within a cultural consensus because Britain
and America did not suffer the ideological unrest that racked
the Continent. It was safely non-ideological, concerning itself
with formal statements, not with life, not with revolution, not
with Hegelian-inspired radicalism. It had no interest in revolu-
tion, because Hegel’s logic was wrong.
Russell contributed greatly to the development of analytic
philosophy himself, but never limited the scope of his interests.
His break with Hegelian philosophy is not unrelated to his
British-socialist approach to matters of social progress in his
first book, German Social Democracy (1896). He remained equally
Russell
interested in pursuing both logical analysis and social science,
while recognizing that the latter was not yet a science. As an
atheist, he perhaps exemplifies Karl Marx’s dictum that the crit-
icism of religion is the beginning of all criticism. For him phi-
losophy pointed to a new and better way of life.
Even before raising the logical-analytic flag, Russell had
voiced an equally, or more, important credo concerning ‘the
value of philosophy’. The concluding chapter of The Problems
of Philosophy, especially its last six paragraphs, still embarrasses
Russell’s more strictly academic admirers by its gushy praise of
philosophy’s spiritual value. “Apart from its utility... philosophy
has a value – perhaps it chief value – through the greatness of
the objects which it contemplates, and the freedom from nar-
row and personal aims resulting from this contemplation,” he
writes, adding that through “philosophic contemplation” of the
vast impersonal universe, a “philosophic life” is “calm and free.”
The sentiment is thoroughly Socratic, and close to Stoicism.
Peace of mind comes after an escape from the prison of desire,
ego, passion. Sure, Russell adopted much Platonic language even
after he rejected Platonic philosophy. We know that in this period
he talked of spiritual matters in a futile effort to find common
ground with his lover, Ottoline Morrell. But it would be wrong
to dismiss this by saying that this is Russell the person speaking
rather than Russell the philosopher. Indeed, he held this view
of philosophy until the end of his long life. Just two years after
announcing his ‘scientific method’, in the midst of war, Russell
wrote, “The world has need of a philosophy... which will pro-
mote life” (Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916). This was his
life’s work. As he later said: “What the truth on logic is does not
matter two pins if there is no one alive to know it” (interview,
1964, in R.W. Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell, p.504).
Philosophy Beyond Practicality
After analysis comes wisdom. Russell typically ends his ‘popu-
lar’ books with a warning that puts in perspective the technical
matters he has been analyzing. In, for example, the concluding
Chapter 17 of The Scientific Outlook (1931), ‘Science and Val-
ues’, he distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge: “We
may seek knowledge of an object because we love the object or
because we wish to have power over it. The former impulse leads
to the kind of knowledge that is contemplative, the latter to the
kind that is practical. In the development of science the power
impulse has increasingly prevailed over the love impulse.” Sci-
ence has achieved practical success, but it is merely instrumen-
tal, a means to an end. What is a higher end? Contemplative
knowledge, inspired by love, allows us to know and come to rest
in higher purposes that give “delight or joy or ecstasy.” Philoso-
phers (among others) seek “the ecstasy of contemplation.” “The
lover, the poet and the mystic find a fuller satisfaction than the
seeker after power can ever know.” The lover includes the lover
of truth, that is, the philosopher, although many individual paths
are possible.
June/July 2017 ● Philosophy Now 9
 Bertrand Russell
by Athamos Stradis 2017

10 Philosophy Now ● June/July 2017


Such high praise of a life of reason is not incompatible with
his view of logical-analytical philosophy, which is meant to
achieve impersonal truth; but he certainly goes far beyond it in
preaching wisdom: “It is this happy contemplation of what is
eternal that Spinoza calls the intellectual love of God. To those
who have once known it, it is the key of wisdom.” By ‘eternal’,
the famous atheist means something “outside human life, some
end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or
truth or beauty” (Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916). Russell
never deviated from this view, although he would later tone down
the metaphysical imagery. In the conclusion of his book on the
future of science he regrets that the triumph of practical science
apparently entails a loss of the sense of wonder, of love of the
universe, of those human values that metaphysics previously pro-
vided. So Russell offered a philosophy that, he hoped, would
remedy this loss.
At first it seems paradoxical for Bertrand Russell the great
secularist to talk this way. However, contrary to a popular
assumption, philosophers inclined to metaphysical materialism
do not usually espouse materialist values – think of the Epicure-
ans; whereas, conversely, we are used to seeing the spiritually-
inclined practicing real-world materialism. Russell mocked
unimaginative materialism: he said that most human activity
consists of “altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s
surface” (‘In Praise of Idleness’, 1932). And “Pragmatism appeals
to the temper of mind which finds on the surface of this planet
the whole of its imaginative material.” (Pragmatism, 1909).
This was the basis of his objection to Utilitarianism, which
he (unfairly) regarded as purely practical. He thought that a
philosophy, or a philosophy of science, or an educational the-
ory, which only advocates practical success or utility, arises from
the “power impulse” and purveys merely “a governmental view
of truth.” Therefore education should train not good citizens
of the state, but “citizens of the world.” “Considered sub specie
aeternitatis [under the aspect of eternity], the education of the
individual is to my mind a finer thing than the education of the
citizen...” Such individuals bring a cosmic perspective to the
improvement of society. (Think of the philosopher escaping
Plato’s Cave and then returning to teach its denizens a higher
wisdom.) Both the individual and society reap the rewards of
contemplation, of being ‘citizens of the universe’ on a grand
scale. Of course, we perpetually need to remind the universi-
ties of this principle of a liberal education.
Russell the secularist does not stop at quietism. This is a phi-
losophy of action: “action is best when it emerges from a profound
appreciation of the universe and human destiny” he wrote (Useless
Knowledge, 1932). Or, “The good life is not contemplation only,
or action only, but action based on contemplation, action attempt-
ing to incarnate the infinite in the world” (The Perplexities of John
Forstice, 1912 in Collected Papers, v.12). The wise person has, so to
speak, one eye on the city, and one eye looking beyond it.
Philosophy Beyond Space & Time
Later Russell toned down his rather Platonic language of the
contemplation of eternal universal truth. However, he contin-
ued to make ambitious claims about the effectiveness of philos-
ophy, and therefore, about what philosophy is. In the tri-
umphalist final chapter of his History of Western Philosophy (1946),
Russell
he even avers that the benefits of the impersonal ‘scientific’
philosophical method extend “to the whole sphere of human
activity, producing... a lessening of fanaticism with an increas-
ing capacity of sympathy and mutual understanding.” He con-
cludes, “philosophy does not cease to suggest and inspire a way
of life” thus readmitting a traditional aim of philosophy as the
consequence of his method. (Indeed, writing a history of phi-
losophy in relation to society is not itself a logical-analytic activ-
ity.)
‘The Duty of a Philosopher in this Age’ (1964) is one of Rus-
sell’s last writings on the topic. In this essay he describes, indeed
he defines, the philosopher as a public intellectual. This model
individual charts the same course Russell himself had taken.
First: “I shall suppose that, until his education was finished, he
was too much absorbed in the technicalities of modern philos-
ophy to concern himself with the political problems of his own
time.” Later, more is demanded of ‘him’ and of philosophy:
“There is, perhaps, one duty which falls specially within the
province of philosophy, and that is to persuade mankind that
human life is worth preserving....” Then: “How, in our modern
world, should a philosopher live? Some of the lessons of phi-
losophy are ancient and timeless. He should endeavour to view
the world, as far as he is able, without a bias of space and time,
without more emphasis upon the here and now than upon other
places and other times. When he considers the world in which
he has to live, he must approach it as if he were a stranger
imported from another planet. Such impartiality is a part of the
duty of the philosopher at all times.” Such a philosophical state
of mind gives the philosopher the credentials both to be logi-
cal and to take a beneficent position on world problems.
Philosophy Beyond The Academy
True, Russell often adopts a prophetic and utopian tone. A late
work of his of the nuclear age, Has Man a Future? (1961), for
example, ends with provisional predictions of “the transition
period... to the new world that would be in process of being cre-
ated.” Yet behind such seeming fantasies, including elaborate
schemes for world government, lie Russell’s unwavering advo-
cacy of reason, his theory of human nature, and his related the-
ories of education and the proper pursuit of science.
Russell put what was most important to him into his ‘popu-
lar’ books. Fortunately, he himself burst the bonds of his self-
imposed mathematical-logical straitjacket. Human life had a way
of intruding, not only into his eventful biography, but into his
philosophy. Looking back in old age, he said that in 1901 the suf-
fering of a friend had filled him “with a desire almost as profound
as that of the Buddha to find some philosophy which should make
human life endurable” (Autobiography, 1967). He knew this vitally
important ‘philosophy of life’ could not be entirely scientific,
although he always aspired to found it on reason. Over many
decades he fleshed out his view of the good life and of the future
of humanity and of the world. In doing so he continued to use
‘philosophy’ in a broad sense and to insist that a universal, impar-
tial perspective results in wiser, happier individuals and is the only
path to a more perfect world.
© DR JOHN R. LENZ 2017
John R. Lenz is a former President of the Bertrand Russell Society
and teaches Classics at Drew University.
June/July 2017 ● Philosophy Now 11