Review of Good wide view of, mostly, traditional philosophy. Not Jew-aware Bertrand Russell: History of Western Philosophy and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day 
Best single volume on philosophy, June 26, 2010 and some updates to 2024Best book on philosophy that I know of. But don't get the idea that it's simple: Russell's style is clear, and he is witty, and this can lead readers to think his material is simple; but Russell now and then puts in very sharp and complicated theory-of-types analysis. His book is divided mostly into names, which is handy for anyone dipping into the views of Parmenides, Plato, Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Spinoza, John Stuart Mill, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson... there's a long list. Russell is happy to admit that academic philosophers have usually been cowardly types, and admits some names (e.g. Byron) not normally considered philosophers.
A Note on the Title: Much of the material is Jewish in origin. But has been repeated and inserted often enough to appear 'Western'.
Russell's style is so convincing he was often plagiarised—unconscious imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. C E M Joad (who copied Russell on Marx and German philosophers), and Aldous Huxley (who based Brave New World on a Russell work) are just two non-philosopher examples.
There are innumerable asides, which I presume (he wrote and assembled this book aged about 70) were the fruit of discussions in his youth and middle age; on psychology, groups, sex, emotions, animals, ethics, totalitarianism, adventures, trade—a vast range of topics.
I recommend this to everyone willing to take some trouble. I've met many people who would have benefitted from its intellectual stiffening—for example a gifted physics man who couldn't seem to grasp that atoms are mostly holes, even though they don't look that way. And who had never understood that the square root of two is 'irrational'. Hoary problems—'universals', 'analytical' and 'synthetic', 'induction', 'teleology', 'determinism'—appear here and there, and it can do no harm to know about them. Russell also is good at picking out the strange practical effects of beliefs: just one example: Stoics and Christians both believed (supposedly) in personal virtue: if external circumstances cannot prevent a man from being virtuous, there is no need to seek a 'just' social system.
There are omissions, all I think to do with demarcation problems—the boundaries of philosophy, apart from politics, history, science, economics, and psychology. Darwin isn't here (much). Freud isn't here—but then Russell regarded the idea of unconscious motivation as the only significant part of Freud. Adam Smith isn't in. Marx is only treated as a philosopher: his economics is looked at by Russell in an earlier book, Freedom and Organization 1814-1914, in its first half titled Legitimacy versus Industrialism 1814-1848. Note that Russell seemed to regard Marx as 'socialistic'.
All Russell's history in a sense is official: there must be innumerable people who were censored or killed or otherwise silenced; but Russell doesn't really bother with them. His book is a bit like commentary on a tidy, ordered library. A great deal of 'philosophy' must have been analogous to 'politically correct' chanting and chatter, not intended to help understanding, in fact, the reverse. His comments on (e.g.) Sparta, the various sackings of Rome, Platonists—any Christian discussing future life and God seems to be called a 'Platonist', even though Plato doesn't seem to be monotheistic—Islam, the Reformation, the World Wars—all are unquestioning. He doesn't ask about gangs and loot. Russell in fact has a comment to the effect that it seems impossible to find out to what extent anti-Semitism was based on genuine money concerns.
Russell's history is typical 20th century western: prehistory, with Egypt, Babylon and the rest regarded as 'oriental despotisms'. Rather inconsistently, the Bible is admitted. There's a conspiracy of silence about Jewish beliefs. Then Greece, then Rome; then the dark ages, and 'middle ages'; Russell accepts that Islam was a transmitter, though I'm not sure he makes a good case. Finally, modern enlightenment and science. Not much was known about many chunks of history, so this schema appeared satisfactory. Some of his historical comments are typically Victorian: the dislike of Rousseau from hatred of the French revolution, and of Rousseau as the supposed origin of romanticism and silliness. Rousseau and Nietzsche and Carlyle were supposed to have led to extremism and Auschwitz; Plato and Sparta to Stalin.
Part 2 From Rousseau to the Present Day - Chapter XVIII THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT is a short, bridging chapter, which shows Russell had no idea how movements can be fed and planned. His lists of emotions and (mostly) authors appear to him to be spontaneous; he takes Frankenstein's monster as an allegory summarising romanticism, and deduces from it what led to 'Auschwitz'—showing (Russell wrote in 1945-ish) he had little idea of artificially made-up 'narratives'.
When eras change, Russell usually finds transitional people or ideas as exemplars: the Greeks treated in the then-usual awed way as a mix of peoples; Christianity as taking in Platonic and Judaic elements; Europe as church vs monarchs and feudal nobility and knights; Machiavelli, Erasmus and More at about the Renaissance. ...
Two social events largely ignored by Russell are the Thirty Years War in early- to mid-17th century (a few scattered mentions of the vast devastation—but surely this was a Social Circumstance) and the late 17th century 'Glorious Revolution' of the Jewish foundation of the Bank of England in its new London home, away from the Netherlands. Locke, in Russell's opinion, was its philosopher, and of course says nothing on Jews and the Bank of England. I'm inclined to think that Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge was publishable precisely because of its uselessness—as with current 'politically correct' 'thought' in the USA, and orthodox un-heretical opinion many centuries ago. Hume, possibly genuinely Scottish, assembled a system in which only immediate impressions counted towards knowledge. 'Empiricism' is supposedly made up from the Greek word meaning 'experience'; so that anything secret cannot presumably count as 'knowledge'. This of course rules out speculations on Jews and money and serious history and secret agreements, and on the possible reasons for 18th-century Britain being impoverished. Hume disliked induction; he said there was no rational source of the belief that the sun would rise tomorrow. There is no space in his system for frank avowals that full information may not be known, but if it was, a reason might be found for sunrises and sunsets, even if it's not known now.
For my taste, Russell show little feeling for the changes over time in population, discoveries, technology and so on. He says of Aristotle that the 'natural way to get wealth is by skilful management of house and land'. Russell notices Aristotle's view of the City-State was outdated as he wrote. But he had no firmly integrated views on ease of transport, changes of meaning of slavery or war, effects of knowledge both of good (e.g. food) and bad (e.g. poisons), extents of laws, and effects of scale. In particular he had no theory of costs of weaponry, as was needed to understand invasions, infiltrations, expansions. And these topics were not generally recognised by Russell in 'philosophy'.
Russell gives an example of an idea built up from other ideas: he says it's possible to imagine a winged horse. This is where his lack of science shows up: a horse is far too heavy to be lifted by bird-style wings; so his example is untrue. Rather oddly, Hume wrote a piece for post-mortem publication, supposedly (I haven't read it) showing that miracles are impossible—flatly contradicting the idea that induction is a superstition, and we have no reason to suppose expectations will fail. Probably the key to Hume is his statement that literary fame was his prime object in life. And probably the key to the empiricists was success, if they avoided the Jewish issue, plus perhaps the pun on India and Empire. (Added 29 Nov 2018)
Some accuse Russell of bias; typically these are:-
[1] Catholics often can't face the rationalistic side of Russell. (They don't seem to know that Russell wrote a lot on mysticism).
[2] People who like Kant and Hegel, and Nietzsche. Russell was not keen on German philosophy—when he was young, all official philosophers were Hegelians. He followed G E Moore in 'climbing down'.
It's clear that 'German philosopher' was often a synonym for Jew. Schopenhauer, Fichte and Anglo-Americanised Jews from Germany, mostly 20th century, are now-obvious examples: Dewey, Popper, Noam Chomsky, Herbert Marcuse, ... [3] Supporters of Wittgenstein. Russell was a friend of his, and liked his work when it was new, but decided later it was rather trivial. (Though this is rarely stated, and not at all by Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein appears to have considered himself a Jew).
[4] Supporters of Sartre and other existentialists. Russell dismissed it in a sentence in Dear Bertrand Russell: based emotionally on exasperation, and intellectually on errors of syntax.
[5] 'Linguistic' philosophers of the Gilbert Ryle type—'just another clever man' according to Russell. He supplied an introduction to Ernest Gellner's Words and Things.
Note that, near the end of his life, Russell spent years on the problem of nuclear weapons, Kennedy's assassination, and, later, the Americans and the Vietnam War. For this reason he's partly censored, still. [These of course are all Jewish frauds].
It's a pity there is no equivalent book on eastern philosophies... that would be something. Incidentally Sophie's World is based on Russell. Probably Nigel Warburton's book is, too. This sort of thing is the penalty for a highly convincing writing style.
The word has mutated in meaning; now it conveys the idea of a mistaken cause attributed to human desires, not a genuine cause attributed to nature. If the quoted etymology is correct, it's worth noting that it pre-dates The Origin of Species.
Here's a passage (from Russell's chapter on 'The Atomists') which shows Russell's unawareness of the possibility of parasitical subgroups of human beings emerging:
There are I think better passages in Russell on this topic, but I haven't found one. The point is that "Why?" can also be answered by the desire to trick or manipulate others.
I think it's worth pointing out that logic can also be used in attempts to trick and manipulate others. As examples: (1) a woman in her Amazon reviews wanted everyone to be taught Aristotelian logic; then, she thought, many errors in reasoning would fade away. (2) Many people seem to think there is a fixed scientific method, so that some arguments can be deemed unscientific, if they don't conform to their definitions. For example, if events are not 'repeatable'; or evidence is hidden and therefore may not exist; or some principle ('light travels in straight lines', 'water finds its level', 'a vacuum cannot exist') is violated.
Russell on the Reformation, and Counter-Reformation, [these names are Protestant] shows complete unawareness of the possibilities of adopting views because of their results in (e.g.) getting wealth, or invasion, or military conquest. Russell's two-and-a-half page commentary on 'The Reformation and Counter-Reformation' suggests to me that both events were managed by Jews, presumably holding on to (or increasing) their control over the surplus above survival generated in Christendom.
The three great men of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation are Luther, Calvin and Loyola. [Note by RW: All are now viewed as Jews below] All three, intellectually, are medieval in philosophy, as compared either to the Italians who immediately preceded them, or to such men as Erasmus and More. Luther and Calvin['s] ... theology was such as to diminish the power of the Church. They abolished purgatory, from which the souls of the dead could be delivered by masses. They rejected the doctrine of Indulgences, upon which a large part of the Papal revenue depended. By the doctrine of predestination, the fate of the soul after death was made wholly independent of the actions of priests. ...
Protestant success, at first amazingly rapid, was checked mainly as a result of Loyola's creation of the Jesuit order. ... founded on military models; there must be unquestioning obedience to the General, and every Jesuit was to consider himself engaged in warfare against heresy. ... Their theology was the opposite of that of the Protestants; .. they opposed predestination. Salvation ... was by both Faith and works. They became popular as confessors because ... they were more lenient, except towards heresy... They concentrated on education... in the wake of conquering Spanish armies, re-established the terror of the Inquisition...
All three of Luther, Calvin, and Loyola have been argued convincingly were Jews. It appears both the Reformation and Counter-Reformation were Jewish movements; the point of interest is mostly the interactions with local people, including monarchs—Russell includes paragraphs on the attitudes of the various religions which 'made it necessary to abandon the medieval hope of doctrinal unity...' Russell had no idea of Jewish practices; he obviously doesn't understand that the Inquisition was, at least partially, concerned with unearthing secret Jews. He had no idea that beliefs, considered as memes to be argued for, lied about, and used, could be weapons, and often were—perhaps always. As just one example, Priories were buildings and occupants in similar style to monasteries; if purgatory was officially abolished, their work of praying for souls of dead rich people would come to a stop.
BOOK 3 - MODERN PHILOSOPHY. Part I - Chapter VI The Rise of Science
Short (14 pages). Worth making three main points:
[1] Russell was not good on the distinctions (if they exist) between science and technology. Russell thought technology was applicable to common sense constructions, such as windmills. But consider, for example, modern dams; skyscrapers; aeroplanes. The general idea is obvious, but not the detail.
Anyway, Russell's chapter mostly looks at astronomy and the solar system. He writes the detail in the precise style of Victorian mathematics, with acceleration and inertia and momentum and so on (though he gives no explanation of how Kepler could have done his work on ellipses; after all, planetary orbits are almost circular and not quite flat). His conclusion is simple: '... the outlook of educated men was completely transformed. At the beginning of the [17th; the 1600s] century, Sir Thomas Browne took part in trials for witchcraft; at the end, such a thing would have been impossible. In Shakespeare's time, comets were still portents; after the publication of Newton's Principia in 1687, it was known that he and Halley had calculated the orbit of certain comets, and that thy were as obedient as the planets to the law of gravitation. The reign of law had established its hold on men's imaginations, making such things as magic and sorcery incredible. In 1700 the mental outlook of educated men was completely modern; in 1600, except among a very few, it was medieval.
{2} In 1700 the mental outlook of educated men was completely modern; in 1600, except among a very few, it was medieval. I suggest this is wrong, and is a 'contrast effect' resulting from one new, sharp, belief system overpowering anything else. What is wrong is that the Jewish rubbish remained, and is still here hundreds of years later. The outlook of people like Biden and Lipstadt and the Clintons and Obama ad infinitum is not modern. I think Dawkins God Delusion is incomplete; he avoids the Jewish issue.
[3] Russell notes the effect of telescopes on knowledge of astronomy. He is aware of their tremendous influence, without bothering about reflecting mirrors and glass lenses. Fine. But the problem is that, if (say) Egyptians or Persians had had telescopes, they might have invented science millennia earlier. Surely worth mentioning.
Philosophical Liberalism (Book Three, MODERN PHILOSOPHY. Part I: From the Renaissance to Hume. Chapter XII). This is a shortish, 7-page chapter, which covers, more or less, the Reformation in Britain up to the 'Glorious Revolution' and vaguely beyond.
A more modern interpretation views the time as a process of Jewish infiltration, and I'd recommend Americans in particular, who are swamped with phrases about 'liberals', to examine Russell's chapter more or less in the light of Kevin MacDonald's account of Jewish movements in The Culture of Critique.
Here are two paragraphs from Philosophical Liberalism (Russell's first two paragraphs distinguish liberal 'affairs')–
Early liberalism was optimistic, energetic, and philosophic, because it represented growing forces which appeared likely to become victorious without great difficulty, and to bring by their victory great benefits to mankind. It was opposed to everything medieval, both in philosophy and in politics, because medieval theories had been used to sanction the powers of Church and king, to justify persecution, and to obstruct the rise of science; but it was opposed equally to the then modern fanaticisms of Calvinists and Anabaptists. It wanted an end to political and theological strife, in order to liberate energies for the exciting enterprises of commerce and science, such as the East India Company and the Bank of England, the theory of gravitation and the discovery of the circulation of the blood. Throughout the Western world bigotry was giving place to enlightenment, the fear of Spanish power was ending, all classes were increasing in prosperity, and the highest hopes appeared to be warranted by the most sober judgement. For a hundred years, nothing occurred to dim these hopes; then, at last, they themselves generated the French Revolution, which led directly to Napoleon and thence to the Holy Alliance. After these events, liberalism had to acquire its second wind before the renewed optimism of the nineteenth century became possible.
All this was absorbed by Russell and his predecessors and successors. But a closer examination suggests a different interpretation: Jews pushed for things they thought suited them, and changed words and phrases to those ends.
• 'it stood for religious toleration'. Well, it said nothing about the fanaticism of Judaism, which in any case invented Christianity.
• 'It valued commerce and industry'. This is fascinating, because science was getting into its stride; consider a modern supermarket, which needs motor traffic, roads, electric refrigeration, and many other things—which may well have happened irrespective of 'liberalism'.
• 'it had immense respect for the rights of property'. Well, it had no respect for the rights of people to their own lands. But it had respect for Jewish-style things: corporations, shares, the priority of money.
• 'the hereditary principle was restricted in scope.' Jewish descent, or so-called descent, was secretly given priority.
• 'the tendency was towards democracy tempered by the rights of property.' Russell hadn't noticed that Jewish-style democracy was purely intended to give votes to bribable and/or silly people.
• 'there was a belief ... that all men are born equal' is obviously not a Jewish belief, but the related idea that all goyim are equally worthless is a Jewish belief.
• '... medieval theories ... sanction[ed] the powers of Church and king ...' is thrown in, but not very à propos, if you understand that Church and king each supported Jews
• note that Russell mentions the 'Bank of England' (he does again later in the chapter) but seems to have no idea that it was Jewish—and that poverty resulted in Britain.
Another complication is the emphasis on kings. Even at the time, many states were too big to be controlled by a king; probably the very idea of Kingship was ridiculed; how could one man possibly know enough and have sufficient competence and control? On close reading I'd suggest the Jewish policy was to ridicule kings, then get rid of them in any serious capacity.
• Russell says things about 'individualism'. He does not make the rather obvious point that, when Jews need collaborators and traitors and Freemason types, they are likely to look for isolated, selfish types—but, if Jews get their way, these individualists may be jettisoned.
Look at videos from the USA. The obvious push by Jews for policies they think suit them is pitifully obvious, though it is necessary to look for the Jews behind the scenes directing their puppets as anonymously as possible.
Spinoza: Russell, writing of insincerities when the First War ended (nominally) when he described himself as a Liberal, a Socialist, a Pacifist, while his sceptical intellect whispered doubts, and when he found 'no woman to whom the claims of intellect were as absolute as they are to me' (until 1967), wrote: 'What Spinoza calls 'the intellectual love of God' has seemed to me the best thing to live by, but I have not had the somewhat abstract God that Spinoza allowed himself...'.
Another part of the intrusion by Jews of their obsessions.
Schopenhauer: (Arthur Schopenhauer 1788-1860). As (of if) censorship of Jews diminishes, it's likely that Jewish roots of 'German' philosophy will be discovered. Schopenhauer seems likely to be of this type. Russell notes Schopenhauer's dog was called (translated into English) the 'World Soul'. And that he dined in expensive restaurants, while recommending asceticism to his readers. He injured an old woman, and hated paying damages. All these things are typical of Jews.
Hegel's fantastic determined historical views on historical eras and the use of violence in history, sound very Jewish. Kant's 'categorical imperative' sound Jewish. 'Idealism', the primacy of the mind over mere matter, sounds Jewish. Russell presumably had no idea of Talmudic and Kabbalistic beliefs.
Nietzsche: At present (2018) some people are turning to Nietzsche, I think as a result of naive reassessments of Hitler, ignorant of the likely great and international Jew-influence on Hitler. Russell's view of Nietzsche partly includes Greek philosophers, which presumably allowed Nietzsche, the classicist, to write about these matters, in plausible style. But of course Nietzsche was more important as regards recent times. (He died in 1900). Nietzsche believed in the 'Great Man' idea, which is largely a Jewish promotion: Jews want whites to believe in one-man superheroes, as a distraction from the reality that large groups, operating secretly, and specialising in disparate aspects of power (propaganda, teaching, food, work, law, transport...), in practice can be far more important. There are no Jew superheroes—Rothschilds and the rest are very careful to remain hidden. On will, Russell is handicapped by not grasping evolution: he had no real idea about impulses and instincts and the brain converting the outside world into action; he contrasts Nietzsche with Buddha, but can't understand that some biological types can't understand emotional sympathy. I don't think Nietzsche has anything to offer. And he's pretty much unreadable.
But Nietzsche can be regarded as a person influenced by the Talmud or by accounts based on it, though I suppose he might have read it untranslated. The superior race, indifferent to cruelty to the 'bungled and botched', and to their women, sounds very much like the secret theory of Judaism. Nietzsche's life (in which he debated, or argued, with Wagner) seems to have warned him off comments on Jews, and it's possible enough that Nietzsche's books and lecturing were conditional on Jewish approval, something Russell would not consider. I suspect even Nietzsche's insanity may have been a Jewish-approved diagnosis; in other words he may have ranted in ways 'unacceptable' to Jews. And perhaps the 'übermensch' idea of a vastly muscular physically impressive person was stressed to distract from the reality of deformed poison-dwarf style Jews.
Russell has no idea how naive his assumptions on Christianity are. For example, he regards Christian saints as being embodiments of love for all people. But. historically, the award of 'Saint' was made to people who'd advanced the Church; it was a practical thing.
Henri Bergson: Suggested to me indirectly by C J Bjerknes's book Beware the World to Come. Bergson, a French Jew, interpreted by me here as pushing Jew-centred ideas.
John Dewey in Russell's chapter includes 'pragmatism' in a rather unemphatic and feeble way. The full meaning includes such aspects as insisting that mass murders of whites in the USSR by Jews never took place—with sufficient censorship, no such events are reported. This means that it is 'pragmatically' true that such events did not occur. For Jewish pragmatists, mass murders of Jews did take place, because many Jews tell what are considered 'lies'. Russell was too pro-Jew to be clear on these points.
Currents of Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Book Three, Chapter XXI) Added 3 May 2021
About ten pages which encapsulate Russell's opinions on the 19th century, which he probably considered his own preserve—born about the last quarter, aristocratic, fully-educated, wealthy enough until the 'Great War', then disoriented until the end of the Second World War, and looking back at the part he liked. The chapter is well worth reading, but mainly as an object lesson in misinterpreting the past.
Russell regarded the 18th century as rationalistic. He felt no need to investigate the effects of the Bank 'of England' and its selective impoverishment, combined with the rather gross country house establishments, and such events as militarism against the Americas, India, and China, backed up by the world-wide navy and sea-power. Although he discussed industrialists and financiers, he never really integrated them into his worldview—unsurprising as he was never able to identify Jewish people or thought. This of course was partly because Russell's life depended on his grandfather working for Jews, and in effect against the closely-related Church of England.
Russell had no idea of Jewish intellectual influences, or perhaps it's more accurate to say of propaganda and control of ever-enlarging media. Many of the ideas he produces for examination were themselves products of Jews. For example, Kant and Hegel sound Jewish in addition to Marx and Engels. Nationalism looks like a Jewish prod to push areas into vulnerable monarchies. Elections and voting, and unified policing, and unified education, all sound Jewish as diverted through Freemasons and new religions. The emphases on education and equality sound like Jewish hypocrisies. Much of education was incredibly eastern-Mediterranean. Darwin is presented by Russell as ‘Darwin's theory’, and though Russell was aware of the tapeworm, he made nothing of intra-species competition.
It's agonising to see Jewish manipulations entirely unrecognised by Russell. Consider the US Civil War, for example. Let's hope for improvement, understanding, and action!