Review of “The History of Western Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell

This book should be called “A Critique of Western Philosophy” because the author doesn’t hesitate to share his view of the writers whose work he summarizes.

As with most academic writers, this volume is wordy. I had to reread many of the sentences because I forgot the topic by the end of the paragraph. I don’t know why people write that way. The author has an advantage over the reader because they can read it several times while writing whereas the reader usually doesn’t feel like working that hard. After all, they aren’t getting paid and may not be fascinated by the topic.

Russell includes chapters summarizing the historical context for blocks of writing, which is the most interesting aspect of the book. Philosophy is a boring topic, which hasn’t made any progress in more than two millennia (I’m reading between the lines here). If I read this review correctly (doubtful), no philosophical system is complete; I suppose that if someone pulls a rabbit out of his ink well, we’ll all have to believe whatever consistent system they’ve invented. The pursuit of truth (whatever that is) is supposedly the philosopher’s goal, but they’d settle for consistency, at least sufficient to resist the assault of other philosophers.

If I sound cynical it’s because I never cared for philosophy, a failure I accepted as a lack of intellectual inquisitiveness on my part; however, after reading this history I think the failure is not mine. I was seeking enlightenment, but all I found was circular reasoning, confirmation bias, pseudo-science and quasi-mathematics; even with all of this cheating, philosophy hasn’t even produced one internally consistent system. The craziest ideas of all (e.g. Berkeley’s denial of the existence of matter) aren’t consistent, and they don’t even have to conform to reality.

Unless you are interested in the never-ending, circular, quest for academic intellectuals to try and justify their personal biases (and get tenure nowadays), I can’t recommend this book, but it isn’t the author’s fault. I’d recommend the Wikipedia page on philosophy.