A Secondary Bibliography of A History of Western Philosophy Part I: Extracted Reviews in English

Abstract

russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (summer ): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn –; online – Bibliographies, Archival Inventories, Indexes A SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY PART I: EXTRACTED REVIEWS IN ENGLISH Kenneth Blackwell blackwk@mcmaster.ca Giovanni D. de Carvalho giovanniduarte@gmail.com Harry Ruja introduction by john g. slater jgs@gmail.com was struck by the fact that none of the reviewers cited in the reception article seemed to know how Russell came to write this book. When war broke out he was stuck in the United States with no way of making a living. He had just been denied a position teaching logic and the philosophy of mathematics at the College of the City of New York by a bigoted judge who claimed his appointment would establish “a chair of indecency”. He had resigned from the University of California at Los Angeles to take the New York position, and now no college or university would have him. His situation was increasingly becoming desperate. A saviour appeared in the shape of Albert C. Barnes who had founded and continued to run an art appreciation school near Philadelphia. He offered Russell a five-year contract to deliver one lecture per week to his students on the history of philosophy beginning with the ancient Greeks and ending with Russell’s own philosophy. The pay was $, per year. The clear understanding was that Russell’s lectures were to provide background for the really important aim of the school, namely, the cultivation of the appreciation of art, especially painting. The intent from the start was to embed the views of a given philosopher in the cultural characteristics of his time. Russell was obliged to provide background lectures on historical periods for the students. He was, as a matter of fact, teaching an introduction to philosophy course using its history as its structure. I  blackwell, de carvalho and ruja With his wife Patricia’s help, Russell took a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania and got down to work. He faced the daunting task of deciding how much time to spend on each period and each prominent figure in that period. These decisions determined the time that would be available for research on each topic and each philosopher. Once a lecture, say on Plotinus, was written, typed, and delivered (or delivered and then typed), it was filed away, and it was on to the next one. He had, of course, a lifetime of study to draw upon and at ucla he had been teaching a course entitled “Philosophic Ideas in Practice” with a similar sweep.1 It is hardly surprising that Russell to fill the gaps in his knowledge found himself relying on secondary works. What would have happened to his completed lectures had Barnes not fired him we will never know. What we do know is that when he was fired, because the notoriously prickly Barnes who attended his lectures hated the sound of Patricia’s knitting needles, he faced the necessity of making money. Completing the history project seemed the quickest way. Because of his fame the book would probably sell well, and it did. The extraordinary number of reviews is testimony of its wide appeal. Had a leading university offered him a professorship in competition with Barnes I feel sure he would have taken it, and his History would never have been written. As we know from his discussion in his Leibniz book of how the history of philosophy should be approached, this book does not measure up, but his thousands of readers are thankful he departed from his preferred path and recorded some of his opinions on his philosophical ancestors for posterity. Extracts from the more academic reviews in English follow. They are representative of the totality rather than of individual reviews. Those in the popular press indicate Russell’s high reputation in the mid-s but little else. Excluded are blurbs from the Allen & Unwin dustjacket, and there were none on the Simon and Schuster jacket. Einstein wrote a blurb-like paragraph,2 but its early use has not been traced. Copies of all but one of these  reviews are in box . of...