Hello I'm Dr. Anadale.
In this lecture I'm going to talk about Bertrand
Russell's essay The Value of Philosophy.
I'm going to talk about three themes from the essay, give you some things to
think about, and I'm going to end with several discussion questions that we can
talk about later in another forum.
You already should have read the essay and
you should have watched my five minute introduction video as preparation for
this lecture.
Now, Russell tells us several important things in this essay
on the value of philosophy.
First, he tells us that philosophy is to be valued
for its effects on us, the ones who do philosophy, rather than for its products
or its practical effects or things that it generates.
Philosophy is not chiefly valuable because it helps us to get
ahead in life.
It's valuable for other reasons, specifically, it's valuable
because of the character formation, for what it does to help us change and
develop as people.
I might think of this, for example, in the study of logic.
If I study logic purely in order to improve
my chess game, so that I can become a better chess player, we might say there's
an advantage to be had in studying logic for that reason, but it seems that
there are also even better reasons for studying logic that are not directly
tied to the practical benefit of winning more chess games.
The second thing Russell tells us in this essay is that philosophy is a good
of the mind, not of the body.
And so we are going to find that the goods that
philosophy generates for us are not practical goods; they are not goods that
can have a cash value that we can trade for in daily life; they don't have an
immediate usefulness.
But that these goods are internal to the self, not
external to the self.
So the value in doing philosophy is not the bread that
it bakes or the good product that it generates, like a kind of technology, but
rather the way in which I change by becoming philosophical, by becoming one
who philosophizes, who takes a philosophical attitude towards myself and
the world.
Again, it's character development, not practical tangible results, that
constitutes the chief value of philosophy, says Bertrand Russell.
Some of these chief values are: curiosity about
the nature of the universe, it is kept alive and fed by a philosophical
attitude, freedom from prejudice and from selfishness: think about the way in which
the proper study of philosophy, taking a right attitude toward ourselves in the
universe, is going to help us to rise up above our own individual concerns and
take a kind of global perspective on affairs, to be able to see ourselves in
the context of the whole universe, not as one who is simply striving to get ahead
at this particular place and time.
And the third example that Russell gives of one
of these internal goods, one of these goods of the mind, is the ability to
escape, he says, the strife of desire and will.
Again, this is the constant rat race the struggle, the desire to seek
advantage, to maximize my cash income, to be as productive as possible.
Philosophy is a relief from these things.
When we do philosophy we are setting those things
aside temporarily in order to engage with something different and perhaps
better and more deeply human.
So this escape, this peace of mind, escape from
desire and strife, is one of these chief internal goods that comes through the
proper study and practice of philosophy, according to Bertrand Russell.
The third point that Russell makes is in his long
section at the end of the essay on philosophical contemplation.
Now, philosophical contemplation, he says, is
knowing for the sake of knowing.
It's a purely disinterested, meaning a neutral
or non-advantage-seeking type of knowing.
It is contemplation, as we'll see, in the classical sense in the sense that
Aristotle and Aquinas talked about, contemplation, simply knowing for the
sake of knowing, not in order to achieve any sort of advantage for oneself.
Russell says that this is a matter of engaging with the world around us in a
humble way.
There's an important humility involved in philosophic contemplation.
Russell says that when the self meets the not-self and when I and my ego encounter
the reality of the world around me, Russell says if we are being properly
philosophical, we realize that it is I who must change, the self must
change my opinions and beliefs and values to match the demands that the
objective world places upon me.
The alternative to this would be a kind of
ideological perspective in which the self with its values and prejudices and
preconceived opinions encounters the real world and demands that the real
world be modified and changed to match up with the ideological categories that
we bring to our encounter with it.
A properly philosophical attitude in Russell's sense would preclude this kind
of ideological domination of the real.
There's a sense in which, for Russell, when we come into contact with
the real world, we are being humble and being receptive and open to what reality
is telling us.
We are adapting our knowledge and our beliefs to match what
we find in reality.
This is, I think, part of the source of that peace that he
was speaking about.
When we adapt ourselves to the world we achieve a kind
of tranquility and a kind of unity with the world.
So Russell says this is a kind of expansion of the self, it allows me to
think as it were with a mind that is larger than my own.
It allows me to exceed the boundaries of my own selfish
ambition, to think as a human being can think at his highest, as humanity can
think at its highest and best, in encountering reality.
A couple of questions for discussion to leave you
with: first, Is Russell correct?
Is he correct in identifying philosophy as one
of these disciplines or practices which is not valuable for its utility or its
contribution to our immediate material well-being but for its formation of our character?
Second question: What's the proper mix of useful and non-useful knowledge?
How much of my overall time, which is quite limited, should I be
spending on doing this kind of philosophy?
Should the split be 70/30? Should it be 90/10?
Is there some minimum level that everybody should
spend in terms of their time and work and investment on this kind of
philosophical reflection and encounter with the world, separating it from their
overall attitude towards building up the usefulness and productivity of their own life?
Third question: Are there other types of activities, intellectual activities or
cultural activities, that are not strictly useful but which are valuable
nevertheless precisely because they stand outside of the buying and selling
matrix of utilitarian economic advantage calculation?
I can suggest a couple of these drawing, on the philosopher Josef Pieper.
Prayer and worship, any kind of encounter with the divine.
Typically we do not think of these things in terms of
the material advantage they give us.
Also love, and art or beauty, and death.
Think of the rituals surrounding the death of a loved one.
There are things that we do and don't do, things that we say and
don't say, when we are in the presence of death.
And this these things do not seem to be strictly dictated by utility and
by usefulness.
So if somebody were to say, well when I die just bury me in the
backyard as fertilizer for the flowers, we know in a sense that this is not
correct and it's not the correct way to treat a dead human body, not simply
because it's not the most useful way (it might in fact be useful).
And it's not the incorrect way to treat a human body
simply because it might be a public health hazard if people were to bury
bodies in their backyard, but simply because there's a way in which this
particular place and time is not a place in time in which we should be making
calculations of maximum utility and following out what is most useful for
ourselves individually or collectively.
There's something about death that commands us to pause and step outside of
that type of calculative thinking.
In a similar way, if someone were to think
about art in a purely instrumental way, if they were to think, well this art is a
valuable addition to my investment portfolio so I will buy it intending to sell
it five years from now at a profit, we would say, that's all
well and good and I'm glad you're supporting the arts, but there's
something about art that you're missing with that attitude.
Something about the value of art and the way it speaks to us
as human beings seems to be lost here if you are doing a purely economic
calculation about the value of art.
We would say that type of calculation ought
to be mixed with some other type of value judgment about art in order to get
the full experience of what art is.
And just to give another example: if we think
of prayer and worship in an instrumental way: if my atheist friend were to say to
me, well why don't you pray in order to achieve some kind of shortening of your
illness or relief from pain, I would say, the difficulty there is that if I'm
praying solely in order to get the advantage of healing from an illness, I'm
going about prayer in entirely the wrong way.
Prayer is not that kind of thing.
It can have a positive effect on my health, and God might in fact heal me
or shorten my suffering or relieve me in some way, but I can't come at it with a
utilitarian attitude that I'm going to pray in order to attain that benefit.
My attitude toward God as I am asking for
healing has to be very different from that type of calculation.
Exactly how it's different is a subject we can talk
about perhaps in another forum.
Final question: What practical steps can we
take to help us not to forget about philosophy or prayer, art, beauty, love,
these other practices which help to take us outside of the matrix of economic and
utilitarian calculation?
What can I do in my own life to help to remind me to take
a step back occasionally to think about these transcendent practices and
transcendent values that go beyond the workday world and the contest for
practical advantage?
One suggestion I can make in this regard comes again from the
world of religion, and it's the institution of the Sabbath.
Think about why it is that many religions celebrate
a Sabbath day, a day on which no practical work is to be done.
The reason for this is to help to set boundaries to the world of practical
economic advantage, seeking and to remind people that there is a day set aside
solely for engagement with, thought about, relationship with, and prayer and worship
directed toward, a divine being, something that stands outside of this economic
advantage-seeking.
Looked at purely from a practical economic standpoint, the
Sabbath looks like a dead loss.
Its value doesn't come in the economic realm, it
comes in some other realm.
That realm also is where the chief value of
philosophy is to be found, according to Bertrand Russell.
So that's the end of my lecture on Bertrand Russell.
I hope you found some things to think about.
I'll enjoy talking with you about this essay in the near future.
Thanks for watching today; goodbye.