THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 1

The Problems of
Philosophy

By Bertrand Russell

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THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 2

CONTENTS
I APPEARANCE AND REALITY

II THE EXISTENCE OR MATTER

III THE NATURE OF MATTER

IV IDEALISM

V KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE AND KNOWLEDGE BY DESCRIPTION

VI ON INDUCTION

VII ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES

VIII HOW A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE IS POSSIBLE

IX THE WORLD OF UNIVERSALS

X ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF UNIVERSALS

XI ON INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE

XII TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD

XIII KNOWLEDGE, ERROR, AND PROBABLE OPINION

XIV THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE

XV THE VALUE OF PHILOSOPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

INDEX

PREFACE

IN the following pages I have confined myself in the main to those problems of
philosophy in regard to which I thought it possible to say something positive and
constructive, since merely negative criticism seemed out of place. For this reason, theory

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THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 71

constitutes philosophy. Some knowledge, such as knowledge of the existence of our

sense-data, appears quite indubitable, however calmly and thoroughly we reflect upon it.
In regard to such knowledge, philosophical criticism does not require that we should
abstain from belief. But there are beliefs -- such, for example, as the belief that physical
objects exactly resemble our sense-data -- which are entertained until we begin to reflect,
but are found to melt away when subjected to a close inquiry. Such beliefs philosophy
will bid us reject, unless some new line of argument is found to support them. But to
reject the beliefs which do not appear open to any objections, however closely we
examine them, is not reasonable, and is not what philosophy advocates.

The criticism aimed at, in a word, is not that which, without reason, determines to reject,
but that which considers each piece of apparent knowledge on its merits, and retains
whatever still appears to be knowledge when this consideration is completed. That some
risk of error remains must be admitted, since human beings are fallible. Philosophy may
claim justly that it diminishes the risk of error, and that in some cases it renders the risk
so small as to be practically negligible. To do more than this is not possible in a world
where mistakes must occur; and more than this no prudent advocate of philosophy would
claim to have performed.

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'

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THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 72

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.

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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,

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THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 74

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.

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THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 75

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.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The student who wishes to acquire an elementary knowledge of philosophy will find it
both easier and more profitable to read some of the works of the great philosophers than
to attempt to derive an all-round view from handbooks. The following are specially
recommended:

PLATO: Republic, especially Books VI and VII.

DESCARTES: Meditations.

SPINOZA: Ethics.

LEIBNIZ: The Monadology.

BERKELEY: Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.

HUME: Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.

KANT: Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic.

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THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 76

INDEX
The interrogations indicate places where a view is discussed, not asserted [To use this
index divide the sought page number by the number of pages in the book, 160, and scroll
down that fraction. Example: "Phenomenon" is on page 86. 86/160=53%. Scroll down
53% into the file and there you are. (Or just use the search function.)]

• Absolute idea, 142

• Acquaintance, 43 ff., 60, 108, 109, 119, 136 with Self? 50
• Act, mental, 41
• Analytic, 82
• Appearance, 9, 16
• A priori, 74-7, 80, 82 ff., 103 ff. mental? 88
• Arithmetic, 84
• Association, 62 63 65
• Being, 100
• Belief, 119 ff., instinctive, 24 25
• Berkeley, George (Bishop), 12, 13, 15, 16, 36, 38 ff., 73, 95, 97
• Bismarck, Prince Otto von, 54-8
• Bradley, Francis Herbert, 95
• Cantor, Georg, 147
• Causality, 63, 69, 83
• China, Emperor of, 44, 75
• Cogito, ergo sum, 18. See Descartes
• Coherence, 122, 123, 140
• Colours, 8-10, 34, 35, 138
• Concept, 52
• Constituents, 126
• Contradiction, law of, 72, 83
• Correspondence of belief and fact, 121 ff.
• Correspondence of sense-data and physical objects, 22, 24, 31, 33, 34, 37, 39
• Criterion, 140
• Critical philosophy, 82 ff.
• Deduction, 79
• Descartes, René, 18, 19, 73, 150
• Description, 45, 47, 52 ff., 109
• Divisibility, infinite, 146, 147
• Doubt, 17, 18, 25, 150
• Dreams, 19, 22, 110, 122
• Duration, 32
• Empiricists, 73-5, 86, 95
• Error, 110 119 ff., 139, 151
• Excluded middle, 72
• Existence, 100, knowledge of, 17 ff., 60, 73

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