according to bertrand russell what is the value of philosophy

April 09, 2022 Post a Comment

Unit 1: What Is Philosophy?

3 The Value of Philosophy

Bertrand Russell

Black and white photo of Russell in 1957 — Bertrand Russell in 1957

We need to consider what is the value of philosophy and why it ought to be studied. It is the more necessary to consider this question, in view of the fact that many people, under the influence of scientific discipline or of applied diplomacy, are inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hairsplitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is impossible.

This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong conception of the ends of life, partly from a wrong conception of the kind of goods which philosophy strives to achieve. Physical science, through the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant of information technology; thus the report of concrete science is to be recommended, not only, or primarily, considering of the result on the student, but rather because of the result on mankind in general. This utility does not belong to philosophy. If the study of philosophy has any value at all for others than students of philosophy, it must exist simply indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of those who study it. It is in these furnishings, therefore, if anywhere, that the value of philosophy must be primarily sought.

But further, if we are not to fail in our endeavour to make up one's mind the value of philosophy, we must outset gratuitous our minds from the prejudices of what are wrongly called "applied" people. The "applied" person, equally this word is often used, is ane who recognizes only material needs, who realizes that people must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing nutrient for the mind. If all people were well off, if poverty and affliction had been reduced to their lowest possible point, there would withal remain much to be done to produce a valuable club; and even in the existing world the goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body. It is exclusively among the appurtenances of the mind that the value of philosophy is to exist found; and only those who are not indifferent to these goods can be persuaded that the study of philosophy is not a waste matter of fourth dimension.

Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge information technology aims it is the kind of cognition which gives unity and arrangement to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and behavior. Just it cannot exist maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other person of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his scientific discipline, his answer will final as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his report has not accomplished positive results such as have been accomplished by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as shortly as definite knowledge concerning whatsoever subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a split scientific discipline. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was in one case included in philosophy; Newton'southward keen work was called "the mathematical principles of natural philosophy." Similarly, the report of the human mind, which was, until very lately, a role of philosophy, has at present been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a neat extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more than apparent than existent: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can exist given, remain to grade the residue which is chosen philosophy.

This is, withal, only a function of the truth concerning the dubiety of philosophy. There are many questions—and among them those that are of the profoundest interest to our spiritual life—which, so far as we can see, must remain insoluble to the human being intellect unless its powers get of quite a different order from what they are now. Has the universe whatsoever unity of program or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving promise of indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet on which life must ultimately get impossible? Are proficient and evil of importance to the universe or merely to humanity? Such questions are asked by philosophy, and variously answered by various philosophers. Merely it would seem that, whether answers be otherwise discoverable or not, the answers suggested by philosophy are none of them demonstrably true. Yet, however slight may exist the hope of discovering an answer, information technology is part of the business of philosophy to continue the consideration of such questions, to make us aware of their importance, to examine all the approaches to them, and to go on alive that speculative involvement in the universe which is apt to exist killed past circumscribed ourselves to definitely ascertainable cognition.

Many philosophers, it is true, have held that philosophy could establish the truth of certain answers to such cardinal questions. They have supposed that what is of virtually importance in religious beliefs could be proved by strict sit-in to be true. In order to judge of such attempts, it is necessary to take a survey of human being cognition, and to form an stance every bit to its methods and its limitations. On such a subject it would be unwise to pronounce dogmatically; simply if the investigations of our previous capacity have not led united states of america astray, nosotros shall be compelled to renounce the hope of finding philosophical proofs of religious beliefs. We cannot, therefore, include as function of the value of philosophy whatsoever definite fix of answers to such questions. Hence, once more, the value of philosophy must not depend upon any supposed torso of definitely attestable knowledge to be acquired by those who study information technology.

The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The person who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his historic period or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his heed without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a person the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; mutual objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. Equally before long as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we detect, as nosotros saw in our opening chapters, that even the most everyday things pb to problems to which only very incomplete answers tin be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true respond to the doubts which it raises, is able to advise many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, information technology greatly increases our knowledge equally to what they may be; information technology removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and information technology keeps alive our sense of wonder past showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect.

Apart from its utility in showing unsuspected possibilities, philosophy has a value—perhaps its chief value—through the greatness of the objects which it contemplates, and the freedom from narrow and personal aims resulting from this contemplation. The life of the instinctive person is close up within the circle of his individual interests: family unit and friends may be included, merely the outer world is not regarded except as it may assist or hinder what comes within the circle of instinctive wishes. In such a life there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the philosophic life is at-home and free. The private world of instinctive interests is a small-scale i, ready in the midst of a great and powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private world in ruins. Unless we can then enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer earth, we remain like a garrison in a beleaguered fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life there is no peace, only a abiding strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of volition. In one mode or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison house and this strife.

Ane way of escape is by philosophic contemplation. Philosophic contemplation does not, in its widest survey, divide the universe into two hostile camps—friends and foes, helpful and hostile, good and bad—it views the whole impartially. Philosophic contemplation, when it is unalloyed, does not aim at proving that the rest of the universe is alike to humanity. All acquisition of cognition is an enlargement of the Cocky, just this enlargement is all-time attained when it is non directly sought. It is obtained when the desire for knowledge is alone operative, by a study which does not wish in accelerate that its objects should have this or that grapheme, merely adapts the Self to the characters which it finds in its objects. This enlargement of Self is not obtained when, taking the Self as it is, nosotros try to show that the world is and then similar to this Self that knowledge of it is possible without any admission of what seems alien. The desire to prove this is a form of cocky-assertion, and like all self-assertion, it is an obstacle to the growth of Cocky which it desires, and of which the Self knows that it is capable. Self-exclamation, in philosophic speculation equally elsewhere, views the world as a means to its own ends; thus it makes the globe of less account than Self, and the Self sets bounds to the greatness of its goods. In contemplation, on the contrary, nosotros first from the not-Self, and through its greatness the boundaries of Self are enlarged; through the infinity of the universe the mind which contemplates it achieves some share in infinity.

For this reason greatness of soul is not fostered by those philosophies which assimilate the universe to Humanity. Knowledge is a form of wedlock of Self and non-Self; similar all wedlock, information technology is impaired past dominion, and therefore past whatever effort to strength the universe into conformity with what we discover in ourselves. There is a widespread philosophical tendency towards the view which tells united states of america that humanity is the measure of all things, that truth is person-made, that infinite and time and the world of universals are backdrop of the mind, and that, if there exist annihilation not created by the mind, information technology is unknowable and of no account for us. This view, if our previous discussions were correct, is untrue; but in addition to being untrue, it has the effect of robbing philosophic contemplation of all that gives it value, since it fetters contemplation to Self. What it calls knowledge is not a union with the not-Self, just a set of prejudices, habits, and desires, making an bulletproof veil between us and the globe beyond. The person who finds pleasure in such a theory of knowledge is similar the person who never leaves the domestic circle for fear his discussion might non be law.

The true philosophic contemplation, on the reverse, finds its satisfaction in every enlargement of the not-Self, in everything that magnifies the objects contemplated, and thereby the subject contemplating. Everything, in contemplation, that is personal or individual, everything that depends upon habit, self-interest, or desire, distorts the object, and hence impairs the union which the intellect seeks. By thus making a barrier between bailiwick and object, such personal and private things become a prison to the intellect. The free intellect will run across as God might meet, without a hither and at present, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary behavior and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive want of knowledge—knowledge equally impersonal, as purely contemplative, equally it is possible for humanity to attain. Hence also the complimentary intellect volition value more than the abstract and universal cognition into which the accidents of private history do non enter, than the knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, equally such cognition must be, upon an exclusive and personal point of view and a body whose sense-organs misconstrue as much every bit they reveal.

The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of philosophic contemplation volition preserve something of the same freedom and impartiality in the world of action and emotion. It will view its purposes and desires as parts of the whole, with the absence of insistence that results from seeing them as infinitesimal fragments in a world of which all the rest is unaffected by any one person'southward deeds. The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed want for truth, is the very aforementioned quality of heed which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal beloved which tin can be given to all, and non simply to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus, contemplation enlarges not only the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our angel: information technology makes the states citizens of the universe, non only of one walled city at war with all the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists humanity'southward true freedom, and his liberation from the thralldom of narrow hopes and fears.

Thus, to sum upwards our give-and-take of the value of philosophy: Philosophy is to be studied, non for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, just rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our formulation of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination, and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the heed against speculation; but above all considering, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that spousal relationship with the universe which constitutes its highest skillful.