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well russell what is philosophy
well that's very controversial question
i think no two philosophers will give
you the same answer
my own view would be that
philosophy consists of
speculations about
matters where exact knowledge is not yet
possible but that will never be my
answer not anybody else's what's the
difference between philosophy and
science
well roughly you say
science is what we know and philosophy
is what we don't know that's a simple
definition and for that reason
the christians are perpetually passing
over from philosophy into science as
knowledge advances
when something is established and
discovered it ceases to be philosophy
and becomes sound yes
and all sorts christians that used to be
labeled philosophy are no longer so
labeled
what good is philosopher
i think
philosophy has two
uses really
one of them is
to keep alive
speculation about things that are not
yet amenable to scientific knowledge
after all scientific knowledge covers a
very small part
of the things that interest mankind and
all to interest them
there are great many things of immense
interest
about which science at present attention
say
and i don't want people's imaginations
to be
limited and enclosed within what can be
now known
and i think to enlarge your
imaginative purview of the world
into the hypothetical realm
is one of the uses of philosophy but
there's another use which i think is
equally important
which is to show
that
there are things we thought we knew and
don't know
on the one hand keep us thinking about
things that we may come to know and on
the other hand to keep us
modestly aware
of how much that seemed like knowledge
isn't knowledge could you give some
illustrations of the sort of subject
which have been speculated about and
then produce some material result later
yes
it's quite easy to do so
especially from greek philosophy the
greeks invented a whole lot of
hypotheses
which turned out valuable later but
which in their day couldn't be tested
take for example the atomic hypothesis
democritus invented the atomic
hypothesis that matter consists of
little atoms
and
after about 2 000 years rather more than
that
it turned out that this was the right
scientific view but in his day it was
merely a suggestion
but didn't i think that democracy's
theory about athens with a lot of
nonsense peter was horrified by him said
all these books ought to be burnt
because plato didn't like science he
liked mathematics but he didn't take
anything else that was scientific
now in this way philosophy in a sense
becomes a kind of certainty of science
well that's part of it
but of course it isn't only a servant of
science
because there are a number of things
that science can't deal with
all questions of values for example
science won't tell you what is good and
what is bad
tell you what is good or bad as an end
and not just as a means but what change
has there been over the years in the
attitude of philosophers and the public
to philosophy would you say
well that depends on the school of
philosophy that you're thinking of
in
plato and in aristotle
both of them there was the main thing
was an attempt to understand the world
and that i should say personally is what
philosophy ought to be doing
but then you come onto the stoics and
their emphasis was mainly on on morality
that you ought to be hysterical you want
to endure misfortunes patiently
and
that came to be the popular use of a
philosopher
would you say that marx was a
philosopher
really he wasn't certainly in a sense a
philosopher but now there you have an
important division among philosophers
there are some philosophers who
exist
to
uphold the status quo
and others who exist to upset it and
marx of course belongs to the second law
for my part i should reject both those
as being not the true business of a
philosopher
and i should say the business of a
philosopher is not
to change the world but to understand it
which is the exact opposite of what marx
said what kind of a philosopher would
you say you are
well the only label i have is a logical
atomist but pretty keen on the label i'd
rather avoided labels i mean a logical
it means in my mind that
the way to get
at
the nature of any subject matter you're
looking at is analysis
and that
you can analyze until you get to things
that can't be analyzed any further and
those would be logical atoms i call them
logical atoms because they're not little
bits of matter
they're the so to speak ideas out of
which a thing is built up what is the
main trend of philosophy today
well one would have to distinguish there
between english-speaking countries and
continental european countries
the trends are much more separate than
they used to be
very much more
in
english-speaking countries and
especially in england
there is a new philosophy which has
arisen i think
through the desire to find
a separate field for philosophy
in what i was saying a moment ago it
would appear
that philosophy is merely incomplete
science and there are people who don't
like that you they want to have science
atmosphere a philosophy you have a
sphere to itself
that has led them
into what you may call linguistic
philosophy
but the important thing for the
philosopher
is not to answer questions but to get
the meaning of the questions quite clear
i can't myself agree to that view but uh
i could give an illustration
i was once uh bicycling to winchester
and i lost my way and
i went to a village shop and i said can
you tell me the shortest way to
winchester
and the man i asked called to a man in a
back region whom i couldn't see
gentleman wants to know the shortest way
to winchester
and the voice came back winchester all
right
way to winchester
right
shortest way
i
don't know
so i had to go on without getting an
answer well that is what oxford
philosophy thinks one should do we get
the question right never mind about the
answer yes it's somebody else's business
to give the answer how does this differ
from the continental approach the
continental approach is well it's more
full-blooded i i don't agree with it
anymore
but
in a sense it's much more full-blooded
and much more like
philosophies of earlier times
there are various kinds of
the philosophy that
comes from
kierkegaard existentialism
and then there's there are philosophies
designed to
provide
apologetics for
traditional religion
there are various
things of that sort i don't think myself
that there's anything very important in
all that what practical use is your sort
of philosophy to a man who wants to know
how to conduct himself
a great many people write to me
saying they're now completely puzzled as
to how they ought to conduct themselves
because they've ceased to accept the
traditional signposts to write action
and don't know what others to adopt
and uh
i think that the sort of philosophy i
believe in
is useful in this way that
it enables people to act
with vigor
when they're not absolutely certain that
that is the right action
i think nobody should be certain of
anything
if you're certain you're certainly wrong
because nothing deserves certainty
and
so why not always to hold all one's
beliefs with a certain element of doubt
and one ought to be able to act
vigorously in spite of the doubt
after all this is what
a general does when he's planning a
battle he doesn't quite know what the
enemy would do
but if he's a good general he guess he's
right
it was a bad general because he's wrong
but one has in practical life to act
upon
and what i should look to philosophy to
do
is to
encourage people to act with vigor
without complete certainty
yes but now
how about this business though of um
making people so uncertain about things
they'd sort of believe and had faith in
uh doesn't that rather disturb them
well it does for a time of course
and i think a certain amount of
disturbance is an essential part of
mental training
but
if they have any knowledge of science
they get
a ballast which enables them
to avoid being completely upset by
the doubts that they ought to feel
what do you think is the future of
philosopher
i don't think philosophy
can in the future have anything like the
importance
that it had
either to the greeks or in the middle
ages
i think the rise of science inevitably
diminishes the importance of philosophy
but would you say the value of
philosopher
first
because as i say it
keeps you
realizing that there are very big very
important questions
that science at any rated present can't
deal with and that
a scientific attitude by itself is not
adequate
and the second thing it does
is to make people a little more modest
intellectually
and aware
that great many things which have been
thought certain
turned out to be
untrue and
there's no shortcut
to knowledge and that the understanding
of the world which to my mind is
the underlying purpose that every
philosopher should have
the debt is a very long and difficult
business about which we ought not to be
dogmatic
thank you lord russell
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you