|
Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy
Chapter 15
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.
|