Bertrand Russell — History of Western Philosophy

197 published claims from this book.

• A pre-established harmony between windowless monads creates the semblance of causal interaction.
• A punishment form tied to early capitalism cannot claim eternal validity
• A self-consistent philosophy can be completely false while inconsistent systems hold truth
• A tired historical age generates philosophies focused on endurance rather than hope
• A universal is merely a mental sign that signifies many individual things
• Alexander’s intermarriage policy fostered the conception of a unified mankind
• All social inequality ultimately reduces to inequality of income
• An analytic proposition’s predicate is always contained within its subject
• Anaximenes explained all substantial differences through quantitative degrees of condensation.
• Ancient Jewish prophets were innovators rather than restorers of past strictness
• Ancient scepticism failed because it offered no positive intellectual alternative
• Ancient sceptics conformed to local custom while rejecting underlying beliefs
• Anselm defines God as the greatest possible object of thought.
• Antisthenes held doctrines strikingly similar to Tolstoy regarding society and simplicity
• Applied development economics theory produced disastrous results across Latin America
• Aquinas selects rational arguments to justify foregone religious conclusions.
• Aristocratic philosophies of rebellion inspired revolutions from the Carbonari to Hitler.
• Aristotelian physics directly contradicts the Newtonian law of uniform inertial motion
• Aristotle considers the rational soul to be impersonal and immortal through divinity.
• Aristotle defines good and bad governments by ethical intent rather than constitution
• Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher to face the world cheerfully
• Aristotles God cannot love humans and remains unaware of the sublunary world.
• Athens population peaked at around two hundred thirty thousand in forty three hundred BC
• Augustine anticipated both Descartes cogito and Kant time theories
• Augustine defines past and future as present memory and expectation
• Augustine provided the theoretical justification for medieval papal supremacy
• Bacon classified bad mental habits causing error into four distinct idols
• Bacon failed to emphasize hypothesis formation within his empirical inductive method
• Bacon grounded his entire philosophical project in achieving practical mastery over nature
• Barbarian conquerors transferred their awe of the Caesars to the papacy
• Bergson conflates actual past events with present memories of them.
• Blackstone’s view that certain abstract terms definitionally incorporate a wide range of specific results is tied intimately to his perception of a hard and suprahuman reality behind these general…
• Bodily differences rather than intrinsic mental differences explain human superiority
• Boethius embraced Platonic metaphysics and the privative theory of evil in his final work
• Boethius maintained a purely Platonic worldview despite his medieval reputation as a Christian Father
• Byron exercised greater historical influence as a myth than as a man.
• Byron’s legacy united nationalism Satanism and hero worship within German culture.
• Calvinistic predestination of sin drove Byron into theatrical rebellion and remorse.
• Christian simplicity-based religion locates true devotion in the heart.
• Combining passion and intellect drove the exceptional greatness of the Greeks
• Compulsory acceptance of foundational state myths stunts human intelligence and philosophy.
• Cosmic justice acts as a natural law that limits elemental expansion.
• Cultural Studies is founded on agonistic debate inimical to orthodoxy
• Darwin’s stress on congenital differences refutes the tabula-rasa equality doctrine
• Deductive proof must rely on circular reasoning or endless chains
• Demonstrative deductive mathematics originated with Pythagoras and mysticism
• Descartes assumed an ego where only raw thoughts existed as data.
• Descartes grounded certainty in thought, establishing mind as primary over matter.
• Desire is non-reflective and cannot posit its own suppression as end
• Dewey judged past-event beliefs by their future effects
• Dewey rejected the traditional static and eternal conception of truth
• Dewey viewed inquiry as organism-environment mutual adjustment
• Disgust with theological warfare turned able men toward secular learning and science.
• Each era produces its own distinct capitalist class
• Each major philosophical era mirrors its epoch’s dominant social structure
• Earth, air, fire, and water combine to form complex changing substances
• Enforced covenants require a sovereign power to prevent collapse into war
• Enthusiasm etymologically means having a god enter the worshipper
• Epicurus derived all virtue and wisdom from physical pleasures
• Erotic arousal and desire to please are inseparably linked
• Ethical systems that despise happiness often unconsciously provide outlets for cruelty and power.
• Euclidean axiomatic structure dominated Newton Principia and political doctrine
• European absolute monarchies emerged from the suppression of feudal nobility
• Every argument favoring domestic government applies equally to international government
• Experience is defined by habit formation, requiring life.
• Experience shows that mechanistic questions yield scientific knowledge while teleological ones do not.
• Facts must be discovered through observation rather than logical deduction alone.
• For Leibniz, contingency means an infinity of possible alternative selves surrounds each real one
• Franciscan reform made philosophy an independent discipline before Tempels studied
• Franciscan seminary reform separated philosophy from theology as an independent field
• Frederick II failed politically because his imperial ambitions clashed with democratic forces
• Galileos principle of inertia replaced the Aristotelian distinction between natural motions.
• General social collapse redirected people from earthly joy to heavenly hope
• German idealists like Kant and Hegel remained essentially pre-Humian rationalists
• German over-theorizing reflects the backwardness of its economic development.
• Gnosticism provided a philosophical half-way house between paganism and Christianity
• God produces motion as an unmoved final cause through being loved.
• Greeks modeled physical motion on biological life rather than mechanical machines
• Gregory established Western papal authority by exploiting prevailing anarchy and personal ability
• Hellenistic political impotence shifted philosophical focus from metaphysics to individual ethics
• Hereditary economic power persists despite the abolition of political dynasties
• Historical synthesis by a single mind reveals deep connections across eras
• Histories of pragmatism usually begin with Charles Sanders Peirce, although he himself gave credit for the idea to a lawyer friend, Nicholas St. John Green, and anticipations can be found much…
• Hostility toward pagan learning persisted within the Church for centuries
• I am inclined to believe that the framers were an authentically American, uniquely American, and uniquely lawyerly generation of thinkers who have as much in common with twentieth-century…
• Ideas and practical life mutually influence each other in a reciprocal interaction
• Immediate unhappiness combined with reflection generates metaphysical optimism about super-sensible worlds
• Institutional power persists even in egalitarian settings that believe they disavowed it
• Islamic civilization preserved ancient learning and stimulated Western scholasticism
• James denies consciousness is a separate substance, holding everything is pure experience.
• Jerome prioritized eternal virginity over political survival against invaders.
• Knowledge requires mental reflection on existence rather than passive sensory impressions
• Language requires general terms that cannot be explained purely by particulars
• Late antique intellectuals focused on virginity while civilization collapsed
• Leibniz anticipated modern mathematical logic but suppressed his findings out of respect for Aristotle.
• Leibniz chose the actual world as containing the greatest excess of good over evil.
• Leibniz defined an infinite number of unextended soul substances called monads.
• Liberal ideas evolved into totalitarianism through logical stages governed by external circumstances and emotions.
• Logical monism assumes every proposition has a single subject and single predicate.
• Lorenzo Valla exposed the Donation of Constantine as a forgery in 1439.
• Machiavelli based political philosophy on empirical means rather than moral ends
• Many provisions of Platos Republic were actually realized at Sparta.
• Marx held that production methods determine an epoch’s culture
• Marx overemphasized economics while neglecting power and technical detail
• Marx reaffirmed economic determination was universal across all epochs including feudal and antique ones
• Marx’s core socialism can stand without his Hegelian dialectic
• Mathematical certainty led philosophers to suppose thought is superior to sense
• Meaning consists in the behavior an event would promote
• Medieval legitimate power depended on the mutual dependence of pope and emperor.
• Men cannot be collective authors of their actions because circumstances decentre them
• Mere co-activation of related ideas makes people reduce logical inconsistency.
• Metaphysical distinctions between substances and universals stem from grammatical syntax.
• Modern physics replaced indestructible matter with persistent energy.
• Moral disputes over ideal states cannot be settled by reason alone.
• Nietzsche extended Byron’s Satanic pride into a direct denial of gods.
• Objectivist truth served as philosophy’s safeguard against the intoxication of power
• Obsession with mortality functions as a form of psychological slavery.
• Occams razor states that explanatory entities must not be multiplied unnecessarily
• Once dominant, Puritans grew more religiously intolerant toward others
• Origen taught that all spirits and the devil will eventually achieve salvation
• Papal temporal power prevented the political unification of Renaissance Italy
• Parmenides argued that language and thought require persistent existing objects
• Parmenides invented metaphysics based on logic that influenced subsequent philosophy
• Philosophers both reflect their historical milieu and shape future institutions
• Philosophers have repeatedly revived the ontological argument despite theological rejection.
• Philosophical inconsistency can generate richer intellectual movements than rigid logical consistency.
• Philosophical refutations are seldom final and merely precede further refinements
• Philosophy divides into scientific questions and extrarational commitments
• Philosophy occupies a contested intellectual middle ground between theology and science
• Physical conditions and scientific torture can destroy human will-power
• Planned social systems produce lives that are intolerably dull.
• Plato argues that real knowledge derives from concepts rather than sensory perception
• Plato derived his metaphysical view of space from geometry reflections
• Plato erroneously assimilated all forms of knowledge into mathematics
• Plato sacrificed intellectual honesty to promote socially edifying philosophical conclusions
• Platonic dualism naturally generated an ascetic morality that Christianity partially adopted
• Platos Republic achieves military success and subsistence but no art or science.
• Pleasure follows from desire rather than desire being caused by pleasure
• Popes achieved supremacy because no Western monarch matched Byzantine imperial power.
• Popular Greek religion included widespread fear of punishment after death
• Post-Socratic philosophy suffered from an undue emphasis on man over the universe.
• Pragmatism relates to ancient skepticism via valuing opinions by utility
• Protestant theology inadvertently weakened church power by eliminating purgatory and indulgences.
• Pythagorean cosmology provided the conceptual leap toward the Copernican hypothesis.
• Rejecting substance requires defining mind as a structured group of events connected by memory.
• Rigid adherence to ritual law destroyed originality among ancient Jews
• Roman imperial rule inspired the universalist ideology of the medieval church
• Romantic revolt glorified will over intellect and allied with nationalism
• Rousseau and Kant prepared the doctrine Schopenhauer first proclaimed pure.
• Rousseau invented basing faith on human nature rather than proofs
• Rousseau’s general-will system inevitably yields totalitarianism
• Russell defines matter as whatever satisfies the equations of physics.
• Saint Francis inadvertently created a wealthy, corrupt order that facilitated persecution
• Scholastic philosophy operates within orthodoxy and uses syllogistic reasoning
• Scholasticism prized numbered schematism and deemed poetic order unbefitting of God
• Schopenhauer derived body-as-will doctrine from Kant’s moral law view.
• Schopenhauer held that will is the source of all suffering.
• Science relies entirely on an induction principle that empiricism cannot prove
• Social structures are objectivated meanings built through inter-subjective exchange
• Socrates anticipated both Stoic virtue ethics and Cynic rejection of civilization.
• Socrates deliberately provoked his own death sentence by refusing concessions.
• Socratic questioning yields linguistic definitions rather than new ethical discoveries.
• Solitary instincts conflict with the gregarious self-interest required for society
• Spinoza posits that God or Nature is the sole substance with infinite attributes.
• Stoicism functions philosophically as an insincere rationalization of unavoidable unhappiness
• Studying a philosopher requires hypothetical sympathy followed by critical abandonment.
• Substance theory fails because removing all properties leaves nothing behind
• Teleological explanations appeal to future purpose while mechanistic explanations trace earlier causes.
• Tentative philosophical methods naturally lead to gradual reform rather than violent revolution.
• Thales hypothesis that everything consists of water resembles modern scientific theories.
• The Catholic Church blended diverse historical, religious, and administrative traditions for strength
• The Church’s shape and doctrine were fixed by three figures.
• The Dark Ages represent an undue concentration on Western Europe.
• The desire to sever knowledge from observation is persistent and, to some extent, fruitful. Armed with the rules of arithmetic, one can drop a succession of balls into an urn and, if one has…
• The discovery of radioactivity proved that atoms could disintegrate.
• The eclipse of the City State shifted Greek philosophy toward individual salvation
• The Franciscan tradition distinguished the God of philosophers from the God of Christianity
• The general will permits leader-people identification without elections
• The Gothic king Theodoric employed Roman elites like Boethius for administrative and technical modernization
• The impossibility of identifying wise rulers justifies the necessity of democracy
• The industrial revolution rendered Lockean political philosophy inadequate for modern problems
• The law of inertia and momentum made outside divine intervention unnecessary for planetary motion.
• The Reformation and Counter-Reformation represented the less civilized nations rebelling against Italian intellectual domination.
• The Renaissance broke scholasticism and revived direct study of Plato and Aristotle.
• The revival of Italian city-states renewed political interest in classical antiquity
• The scientific revolution systematically expelled teleology and final purposes from scientific explanations.
• The Spartan myth shaped Plato and subsequent political theorists including Rousseau and Nietzsche
• The state precedes the individual because humans achieve their full purpose only within society
• The Stoic doctrine of virtue leads to logical contradictions with determinism
• The worst human pleasures, including cruelty and power, are mental rather than physical
• Things appear to be composed of whatever element predominates within them
• Transplanted philosophies operate differently depending on a countrys economic development stage
• Truth about the past limits human power, future-dependent truth expands it
• Unchecked romantic egoism leaves disciples with the alternative of anarchy or despotism
• Weaker logic produces more interesting philosophical consequences.
• Weariness from religious wars fostered the growth of religious toleration and liberalism.
• Will-primacy doctrine, not pessimism, is Schopenhauer’s most influential legacy.