A History of Western Philosophy

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1945

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Book 3, Part 1, Chapters 12-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 12 Summary: “Philosophical Liberalism”

Liberalism was a sociopolitical perspective that developed mainly in England and the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries. It centered on respect for individual rights (especially property rights), religious toleration, and commerce and industry. It favored democracy and the middle class instead of monarchy (especially the doctrine of the “divine right of kings”) and aristocracy. Liberalism distrusted the hereditary principle and instead emphasized education and equal rights.

Russell sees two forms of liberalism taking shape during this period: a moderate and an extreme form. Moderate liberalism is represented by John Locke, the American Founding Fathers, and the French encyclopedists. The more extreme form of liberalism took control in France during the French Revolution. Inspired by Rousseau, French liberalism took strength from the Romantic movement and nationalism. Russell sees this form of liberalism as tending toward extreme individualism, subjectivism, and anarchy; he argues that it ultimately developed into the opposite of liberalism in the form of 20th-century totalitarianism.

Chapter 13 Summary: “Locke’s Theory of Knowledge”

Although John Locke (1632-1704) is best known as a social and political philosopher, he also wrote on topics of general philosophy. His ideas on epistemology (theory of knowledge) are contained in Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

Locke is considered the founder of the school of philosophy known as empiricism, emphasizing experience as a source of knowledge. Locke believed that all knowledge originates in experience, thereby rejecting the classical Platonic view of innate ideas. He held that the human mind starts out at birth like a blank sheet of paper and that all subsequent knowledge is generated by sensation. Locke saw the desire for pleasure and the desire to avoid pain as the chief motivations of human nature. In general, Locke constructed his philosophy in a “piecemeal” fashion, from observation and experience, rather than as a complicated and internally-consistent system.

Chapter 14 Summary: “Locke’s Political Philosophy”

Locke’s political ideas are stated in his two Treatises on Government, written just after the Revolution of 1688. Russell identifies Locke’s core political beliefs as follows:

Rejection of the hereditary principle
Mankind emerged from a state of nature and achieved orderly government by means of a social contract; civil laws are established according to the natural law
Everyone is entitled to private property
Government should have checks and balances in the form of mutually-correcting branches

Chapter 15 Summary: “Locke’s Influence”

As a political philosopher, Locke was one of the most influential thinkers of the modern period. His arguments in favor of liberalism inspired England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, the founders of the United States, and the architects of the French Revolution. Locke represented one of two major strains in Western philosophy in the modern period, the empiricist, which was especially associated with Great Britain. The other strain, the idealist, was more at home on the continent of Europe, where it tended to produce abstract intellectual systems.

Chapter 16 Summary: “Berkeley”

George Berkeley (1685-1753) was an Irish-born philosopher and Anglican bishop who continued the tradition of British empiricism. In his metaphysics he arrived at the startling conclusion that matter does not exist; rather, “material objects only exist through being perceived” (647). Ironically, Berkeley’s empiricism—or emphasis on perception—led him in the opposite direction toward idealism, or belief that ideas and minds are the only things that exist. Berkeley discusses these ideas in The New Theory of Vision (1709) and The Principles of Human Knowledge (1710).

Chapter 17 Summary: “Hume”

The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) led British empiricism in the direction of greater skepticism. An agnostic on the question of God, Hume became a materialist, believing that the laws of nature determine all things. His principal ideas were stated in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740).

Russell sees Hume as “one of the most important among philosophers” (659) and as taking Locke’s and Berkeley’s ideas to their “logical conclusion,” making it “self-consistent” yet at the same time “incredible.” For this reason, according to Russell, Hume’s philosophy is “a dead end” because, by applying skeptical doubt to the very idea of perception, its skepticism ends by destroying faith in experience itself.

Book 3, Part 1, Chapters 12-17 Analysis

This section is devoted to the British empiricists, one of the main philosophical groups of the 17th and 18th centuries. Russell contrasts the tradition of British empiricism with that of continental European philosophy in the 18th century and afterward, which he characterizes as idealism. Berkeley in some ways represents the intersection of empiricism and idealism: His close study of human perception led him to the conclusion that only ideas exist. Russell sees Hume’s empiricism as ultimately self-destructive through skepticism about the validity of experience. Indeed, Russell considers that the skepticism introduced by Hume led to an increasing “irrationalism” and “subjectivism” in modern thought, in which external reality was rejected in favor of a self-created inner world.

While the empiricists tended to build their philosophy “piecemeal,” on the basis of observation and conclusions drawn, German idealists preferred to construct elaborate philosophical “systems” in which abstract ideals often became more important than observation of reality and experience. Russell classifies all subsequent philosophers as deriving either from the empiricist tradition of Locke or the idealist tradition of Kant.

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Ultimately, Russell will frame his historical narrative so as to culminate in the final chapter with the logical positivists, presumably including himself (although he does not actually discuss his own work). However, in pursuing this precise narrative he leaves out some philosophers of the modern period who are widely considered to be important, such as Kierkegaard and Heidegger.