 The
Problems of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
CHAPTER XV
THE VALUE OF PHILOSOPHY
HAVING now come to the end of our brief and very incomplete
review of the problems of philosophy, it will be well to
consider, in conclusion, 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
men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs,
are inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better
than innocent but useless trifling, hair-splitting 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 it; thus the study of physical science is to be recommended,
not only, or primarily, because of the effect on the student,
but rather because of the effect on mankind in general.
Thus utility does not belong to philosophy. If the study
of philosophy has any value at all for others than students
of philosophy, it must be only indirectly, through its effects
upon the lives of those who study it. It is in these effects,
therefore, if anywhere, that the value of philosophy must
be primarily sought.
But further, if we are not to fail in our endeavour to
determine the value of philosophy, we must first free our
minds from the prejudices of what are wrongly called 'practical'
men. The 'practical' man, as this word is often used, is
one who recognizes only material needs, who realizes that
men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the
necessity of providing food for the mind. If all men were
well off, if poverty and disease had been reduced to their
lowest possible point, there would still remain much to
be done to produce a valuable society; 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 goods
of the mind that the value of philosophy is to be found;
and only those who are not indifferent to these goods can
be persuaded that the study of philosophy is not a waste
of time.
Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge.
The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which
gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and
the kind which results from a critical examination of the
grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But
it cannot be 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 man of learning,
what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his
science, his answer will last 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 study
has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved
by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted
for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning
any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be
called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole
study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was
once included in philosophy; Newton's great work was called
'the mathematical principles of natural philosophy'. Similarly,
the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy,
has now been separated from philosophy and has become the
science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty
of philosophy is more apparent than real: 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 be given, remain to form the residue
which is called philosophy.
This is, however, only a part of the truth concerning the
uncertainty 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 intellect unless its powers
become of quite a different order from what they are now.
Has the universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it
a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent
part of the universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in
wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet
on which life must ultimately become impossible? Are good
and evil of importance to the universe or only to man? Such
questions are asked by philosophy, and variously answered
by various philosophers. But 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 be the hope of discovering an answer, it 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 keep alive
that speculative interest in the universe which is apt to
be killed by confining ourselves to definitely ascertainable
knowledge.
Many philosophers, it is true, have held that philosophy
could establish the truth of certain answers to such fundamental
questions. They have supposed that what is of most importance
in religious beliefs could be proved by strict demonstration
to be true. In order to judge of such attempts, it is necessary
to take a survey of human knowledge, and to form an opinion
as to its methods and its limitations. On such a subject
it would be unwise to pronounce dogmatically; but if the
investigations of our previous chapters have not led us
astray, we shall be compelled to renounce the hope of finding
philosophical proofs of religious beliefs. We cannot, therefore,
include as part of the value of philosophy any definite
set of answers to such questions. Hence, once more, the
value of philosophy must not depend upon any supposed body
of definitely ascertainable knowledge to be acquired by
those who study it.
The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely
in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of
philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices
derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of
his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown
up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his
deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become
definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions,
and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected.
As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we
find, as we saw in our opening chapters, that even the most
everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete
answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell
us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts
which it raises, is able to suggest 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, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what
they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism
of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating
doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by 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 man is shut
up within the circle of his private interests: family and
friends may be included, but the outer world is not regarded
except as it may help 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 calm and free. The private world of instinctive
interests is a small one, set in the midst of a great and
powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private
world in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge our interests as
to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison
in a beleagured fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents
escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such
a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between
the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will.
In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free,
we must escape this prison and this strife.
One 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 akin to
man. All acquisition of knowledge is an enlargement of the
Self, but this enlargement is best attained when it is not
directly sought. It is obtained when the desire for knowledge
is alone operative, by a study which does not wish in advance
that its objects should have this or that character, but
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, we try to show that the world
is so 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 self-assertion and, like all self-assertion,
it is an obstacle to the growth of Self which it desires,
and of which the Self knows that it is capable. Self-assertion,
in philosophic speculation as elsewhere, views the world
as a means to its own ends; thus it makes the world of less
account than Self, and the Self sets bounds to the greatness
of its goods. In contemplation, on the contrary, we start
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 Man. Knowledge
is a form of union of Self and not-Self; like all union,
it is impaired by dominion, and therefore by any attempt
to force the universe into conformity with what we find
in ourselves. There is a widespread philosophical tendency
towards the view which tells us that Man is the measure
of all things, that truth is man-made, that space and time
and the world of universals are properties of the mind,
and that, if there be anything not created by the mind,
it 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, but a set of prejudices, habits,
and desires, making an impenetrable veil between us and
the world beyond. The man who finds pleasure in such a theory
of knowledge is like the man who never leaves the domestic
circle for fear his word might not be law.
The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, 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 private, 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 subject and object, such personal
and private things become a prison to the intellect. The
free intellect will see as God might see, without a here
and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels
of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly,
dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge
-- knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as
it is possible for man to attain. Hence also the free intellect
will value more the abstract and universal knowledge into
which the accidents of private history do not enter, than
the knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, as such
knowledge must be, upon an exclusive and personal point
of view and a body whose sense-organs distort as much as
they reveal.
The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and
impartiality of philosophic contemplation will 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 man's
deeds. The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the
unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of
mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that
universal love which can be given to all, and not only 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 affections: it makes
us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city
at war with all the rest. In this citizenship of the universe
consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the
thraldom of narrow hopes and fears.
Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy;
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite
answers to its questions since no definite answers can,
as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake
of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge
our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual
imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes
the mind against speculation; but above all because, through
the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates,
the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of
that union with the universe which constitutes its highest
good.
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