What's wrong with Russell's History of Western Philosophy? Everyone says that it's a bad choice and has biases...

What's wrong with Russell's History of Western Philosophy? Everyone says that it's a bad choice and has biases, but never told me how it's biased. From what I've read so far, it's quite solid. What do you think about it?

He uses dry humour as a platform for simplistic views.

it's not enough as an intro to philosophy but it's not that bad. slightly biased but there are no fallacies

>He uses dry humour as a platform for simplistic views
Please elaborate.

It was absolutely awful. His entire section front Augustine until Descartes was full of his shitty annoying opinions, his astonishing lack of understanding of the aristotelian views, his sections on the Germans were just as bad.
It isn't a History of Western Philosophy, it's Russell's misinformed shitty opinions.
For example, he wrote that Kierkegaard was a Catholic and reduced all of Augustine to having mommy issues.

In the beginning it's more or less alright. Later on he shows his bias and outright dismisses or ridicules philosophers while showing that he didn't understand their ideas. Better read Windelband.

See I don't have a copy here to provide examples.

>It's not possible to both understand and dismiss a philosopher
wew

He clearly shows his understand is on a very low level and dismisses out of ignorance.

It's not a bad choice, Russell's book is just an introductionary base line. After reading thoroughly those philosophers' ideas, you'll start to form your own opinions and have a better understanding overall. Learn Plotinus, Hegel and others from Russell, but just don't make your own opinions from him. People often make that mistake.

I often got the impression that he just wanted to get somebody out of the way to keep the work compact.

>"He did it to make money, he wrote it fast. Bertrand Russell was a great philosopher but a dreadful historian." – Edward Pols

He had a hardon for mathematicians (Pythagoras gets way more attention than more influential philosophers) and his overall representation of medieval philosophy is just bad and wrong, he pretty much just babbles about the Dark Ages and how the church didn't let any progress happen. This is pretty much correct as well. If you look for a history of philosophy look for Kenny's book, it also has its small biases (esp about the German idealists later on) but is quite solid overall.

> After reading thoroughly those philosophers' ideas
more like bertie's shitty understanding of those philosophers' ideas

the only reason he's known is he's a toff who spouts the toff philosophy of all change is evil and the toffs at oxbridge eat that shit up

butthurt incontinentals.

>toff
You are aware of the fact that philosophy is considered an idle "toff" activity since ancient times, right?

Basically shits on the stuff he doesn't like and talks it down, without even grasping their thoughts completely.

if by ancient times you mean the 19th century then sure

Aristocrats hold the privilege of learning philosophy until the mid 20th century.

Russell puts Pyhtagoras for the metaphysical basis of ancient philosophy, just not because he's a mathematician.

i didn't say aristocrats i said toffs

also >academic philosophy

>academic philosophy
Biggest joke I've ever seen. Everyone knows that you must have at least 1000 acres of land and a rank of peerage to criticise about Plato.

are you the same poster i was replying to

Of course not.

That is not true.
St. Augustine wasn't an aristocrat.
Plenty of presocratics weren't.
Descartes wasn't, he was even conscripted in the military.
Medieval philosophy had priests all of whom gave up their prior belongings and worked. Some were originally aristocrats tho.

>biased but there are no fallacies
That's Durant's if anyone's. There are significant problems with most of the factuality of Russell's work.

His takes are best when he's dealing with thinkers who put a premium on logic (even then, he seems unable to imagine that there's more to philosophy then formal logic, or that the philosophers might use bad arguments intentionally sometimes; he *almost* gets it with Leibniz, who he largely understands), but with other philosophers he seems to miss the point almost entirely (people have already noted that his "take-down" of Nietzsche is embarrassingly bad; his chapter on Hegel is probably the worst though, since it should be inexcusable that a man like Russell who was a British Idealist for about a decade could've apparently never picked up *any* lick of Hegel. That chapter's not just infuriating as a supposed refutation of Hegel--it just doesn't even make sense as at all describing Hegel in the slightest.).

People seem to like his take on the Greeks; he's fine with them when, again, modal logic has become a thing, but he has trouble dealing with things like the dialectical components to Aristotle's thinking, and he's miserably unable to make *good* sense of Parmenides and Plato, having taken them to be writing straightforward treatises that he thinks are interested in the same subjects as his logical studies are (ignoring that Parmenides' poem is, well, a poem in Homeric meter, and that Plato's writings are all largely fictional dialogues emphasizing dialectical reasoning, and not formal logic.)."

His take on Plato in particular reflects not just badly on his own grasp (often it looks as if he's cribbing from other summaries of the works he's discussing), but bad tendencies in Anglo-scholarship of Plato at the time (tendencies that are largely still present, but which have been going out of fashion more and more within the last two decades). I just looked at my copy to spell out specific examples in the Plato chapter, and the problems I have with it are so numerous that I had to give up in disgust. He's so attached to his own logical atomism, and the notion that Plato's a primitive, that he can't see that Plato's doing something wholly other from his interests, and he can't make sense of that without accusing Plato of being a mere mystic instead.

(His take on Xenophon is also pretty lousy. He's depending far too much on other scholars and barely looking at the text itself.)

Bertrand Russell is a cunt. On a personal level he's just an actual cunt of a human being. He's also a splitter and not a lumper, and he tends to have a simplistic base worldview and measure everything poorly against it, both things characteristic of Anglos.

The result is an entertaining book that doesn't help you to understand philosophy much. He doesn't give a fuck about anything that doesn't fit into his base worldview, his view of what is actual and important in philosophy, and he's a huge cunt about any "failure" by previous philosophers to fit into it.

It's like a modern jazz musician with autism, antisocial personality disorder giving, and boring political opinions givnig a review of the history of music that just sounds like
>Bach? Typical German. Wrote some shit for piano. Too complicated with no soul, just like all Germans. Beethoven? German. I hate Germans. All huffing and puffing. Not half as good as an Englisher, no sir.

Like.. okay, but I wanted to learn what Bach and Beethoven actually did and what distinguishes them.

>The result is an entertaining book that doesn't help you to understand philosophy much
That's the main issue here. Russell didn't write HoWP to teach people philosophy, it's an introductionary book, and must be considered and treated as a historical narrative than philosophical. If you want to understand philosophy, just start from scratch by reading pre-Socratics one by one.

It's a shit introductory work and a shit history.

He's an autistic anglo and probably a faggot as well

Every introductory work is somewhat shit. Russell's work may be worse than the others but it doesn't matter as long as you continue to read philosophy. Does he explains Hegel in a wrong perspective, what does it matter? You only have to know who Hegel is and what he has done in the broadest sense. Same can be applied to Augustine or Nietzsche. It's a book for people who know "nothing" about philosophy. It's natural to have disdain in Russell's works for someone who has a major or excessive knowledge in philosophy. But, that's your fault in the first place. Russell gives a slight ajar into the land of philosophy, not much, not less.

A literal children's book is a less shitty intro to philosophy than this, likely because it's not written by an autistic anglo (redundant I know)

Russell sure loved ad hominem. Now let's look at his personal life:

>Parallel to their intense intellectual life, Dora and Bertrand wanted to establish, in practice, a new kind of marriage where instead of fidelity there would be loyalty, where there would be no reason for jealousy, and in which they could talk openly about the sexual adventures each of them had. The gamble was risky, but they took it, and Dora pushed it to its ultimate consequences. Dora, much younger (and sexually more spirited than her husband), put her theoretical convictions into practice and took a young lover, an attractive American journalist, war correspondent, and adventurer named Griffin Barry, who was also open-minded. She was not in love with him, as she was with Bertie, but they went on trips and spent some pleasant times together.

>While Russell was on a speaking tour of the United States (where they ultimately cancelled his contracts because of his “immoral” opinions about sex and matrimony), Dora became pregnant by Barry. When she realized it, she wrote to her husband, telling him the news without much enthusiasm. Since she was a defender of the right to abortion, she asked him if he would prefer her to terminate the pregnancy. The philosopher answered by telegram, saying not to do anything, that they could raise the new little one between the three of them. He recognized, as well, that since he hadn’t been doing “his part,” it was good that another man was doing so, since Dora wanted to have more children. When Griffin Barry found out he was going to be a father, he ran away to Paris like any old seducer, and only returned months later to meet Russell face to face.

>And so Harriet was born, Dora’s third child (after John, the first-born, and Kate, my hostess on this visit). Russell plucked up his courage and initially even recognized the baby girl officially as his own, granting her his famous surname of lords and earls. But at the same time he was growing very close, physically and emotionally, to the children’s governess, Patricia (known as Peter) Spence. While Bertie and Dora carried on their travels and untiring intellectual activity, the marriage now had two phantoms at its side. Perhaps what Bertrand could not abide was his wife’s second pregnancy by the same man. In fact, Dora actually wanted another child with Bertrand, but as he was no longer fulfilling his conjugal duties with her, she became pregnant again by her friend the American journalist. And so Roderick was born. Bertrand, then, felt more comfortable with his new love, Peter, and distanced himself from his wife, perhaps no longer able to maintain in practice his theoretical ideals of sexual freedom within matrimony. This was fine up to a certain point, but it was not possible to overlook the issue of paternity.

TL;DR he had an open relationship with his wife, she got two children from other men and he realised that he doesn't love her anymore. Quite literally a cuck.

>Patricia (known as Peter) Spence.
What.

I don't get this "Peter" name.

A literal meme

Trying to figure out the alternatives mentioned here. So far it looks like:

>Kenny
Anthony Kenny's A New History of Western Philosophy?

Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy?

>Wilhelm Windelband's A History of Philosophy?

I should have proofread this. Disregard the Kenny quote and the > before Wilhelm Windelband's A History of Philosophy

This post seems accurate. When addressing Parmenides he starts from the premise that the claim that any conception we might have must in some sense be part of reality must be wrong from the start. While I agree that it's wrong, Russell didn't seem to seriously consider whether it might be right or convey why it seemed a reasonable thing to believe. He just said something like "How can we get around an argument like this?" and set about trying to debunk the argument that was apparently worth discussing in the first place.

I can't yet identify exactly which sorts of ideas he actually takes seriously, but he largely seems to be writing his own assessments rather than attempting to give me the education I came for.

I don't know much of anything about the pre-socratics (and I've barely begun the portions on Socrates and Plato), but I've grown more and more suspicious of Russell's ability to teach and my own ability to avoid inheriting bias from the way he presents the texts. This isn't an easy thing to avoid.

From his comments on how Plato and Aristotle fucked up philosophy for the next 2000 years, I think it's possible/likely he spent much of the book afraid of spreading what he saw as bad philosophy.

It's less a proper history of philosophy (ideas), than a list of Russell's jokes on philosophers in historical order. He often oversimplifies and reiterate common misconceptions or opinions (memes) like the fact that the Spanish had no philosophers (only I believe mentioning briefly Suarez, but not the Salamanca school) ; he makes pretty shaky connections between Plato's philosophy and Orphism and proceeds to explain most of his philosophy through Orphism ; he uses humor to discredit philosophers (for instance, he claims no modern man would want to be Aristotle's ideal man) ; he barely demonstrates any of claims (like that the Church prevented development in philosophy, while it's not accurate - they funded a lot of the research, including Galileo's) ; he makes shaky connections with the modern age (especially when he talks about political philosophy he often compares the ideas of some philosophers with those of modern dictators) ; he is completely biased and drops his own ideas here and there, without, again, proofs. The only interesting thing is when he talks about logic or mathematics in relation to some philosopher's claims, but he barely does it at all.

tl;dr : he's a glorified shitposter.

Not sure about Kenny, but Durant is a nice skim of some major figures, but don't expect anything rigorous. He can really help as a mild intro to Kant though.

Windelband is my favourite history of philosophy but it's a brick. Also, I read it when I had an undergrad degree worth of philosophy behind me, which was great, but I don't know if it'd be anything other than ball-destroyingly painful to read as your very first philosophy thing.

ITT: Veeky Forums being out-bantered by a dead Englishman

>You only have to know who Hegel is and what he has done in the broadest sense. Same can be applied to Augustine or Nietzsche.
Crying shame that Russell can't even do that.

It is true that every introductory text has flaws, even major ones, but they rarely have the amount of shitty opinions of the author like this does. It's what sets it apart from other shitty introductory texts.

Can somebody recommend a good History of Philosophy book?

I know of a few which deal with specific histories.
God, Philosophy, Universities by Alasdair MacIntyre is amazing if you want to get into the Catholic philosophical tradition.
Philosophy of the Mind by Edward Feser is a history of well philosophy of the mind. It is honest, respectful and devotes around 30 pages to every major school. It's really well done.
A Universe Next Door by I've already forgotten the author is about general worldviews much more than philosophy and great if you have a younger brother or something like that.

He misunderstood almost every major German philosopher. His interpretations of Nietzsche were particularly bad, and you can tell he never took the time to try and 'get' Hegel.

t. German

>a British Idealist for about a decade could've apparently never picked up *any* lick of Hegel.
The secret was well kept, as Lenin put it.

Great, thanks senpai

>Every introductory work is somewhat shit.
That's not quite true, however. Copleston's History of Philosophy, while intimidating to trawl through, actually does a very good job of combining historical information of certain periods with the concerns that the philosophers addressed, and he's much more careful about presenting their arguments and ideas. Not all introductions are equal, just because they're introductions.

>Russell's work may be worse than the others but it doesn't matter as long as you continue to read philosophy.
The issue, though, is whether one comes into philosophy through such an introduction with the pretense of having already figured out the great thinkers without having to ever lift a finger. Further, given Russell's very clear and obvious prejudices towards philosophy as such (namely, that only math and logic are especially important), and his prejudices towards the work of other philosophers, certainly one can argue that the reading of a work that is just as likely to narrow the horizon of the reader if they take Russell at all seriously deprives said reader of an accurate account of any of the philosophers and of an opportunity to learn from any of those philosophers.

> Does he explains Hegel in a wrong perspective, what does it matter? You only have to know who Hegel is and what he has done in the broadest sense. Same can be applied to Augustine or Nietzsche.
It matters precisely because that's not true. 1) It matters whether he explains the work of the philosophers accurately, because that is both how one can become acquainted with how philosophical inquiry and thinking work, and because if it's done badly or unsympathetically (that, combined with inaccurate exposition) leads the reader to avoid said thinkers, and not because the readers have themselves even pondered over the arguments and observations of said thinkers. 2) There's no good reason to treat the philosophers from a merely historicist or history-oriented perspective. That is itself a philosophical question and topic that the individual must take up for themselves. Hegel/Augustine/Nietzsche are not important because "history of philosophy or whatever."

>It's natural to have disdain in Russell's works for someone who has a major or excessive knowledge in philosophy. But, that's your fault in the first place.
It's the fault of someone who knows what they're talking about to actually know what they're talking about? Again, I can compare Russell with Copleston, who, though certainly a Catholic and not a Platonist, or a Hegelian, or a Spinozist, does much better work in his treatments, while still offering an introduction. It seems ridiculous besides to give Russell a pass on something that seems antithetical to the very enterprise of philosophy itself.

>Durant is a nice skim of some major figures, but don't expect anything rigorous
P much. You find out where they were born some of their background and a handful of other details. Quality then starts to decline beyond that.

Copleston's multi-volume history is excellent, though intimidating precisely for being multi-volume. But if there's a particular set of philosophers or era you'd like to learn more about, consider getting just a volume focusing on that.

There's an especially good volume edited by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, "History of Political Philosophy," which contains a set of essays on most major philosophers with very penetrating readings of their work from a political focus (even philosophers one wouldn't consider to be "political philosophers," such as Descartes and Husserl get excellent treatments).

No prob lad.
This lad seems to know what he is talking about, downloading Copleston now.

>ITT: literally nothing

I've never understood all this hate for Russell's "History." it's flawed in dozens of ways, but it's hard to beat as a single volume overview of the whole subject.

I've had so many arguments on here about this book, and this thread makes me loose all hope tbqh. the thing that bothers me really is that everyone accuses him of misunderstanding and bias, but that's exactly what his critics are guilty of when they casually dismiss him. people are totally incapable of acknowledging his virtues, and they don't get why that's breathtakingly ironic. I guess bc they're to busy thinking of their next "[insert clever insult here]."

look, I think we'd all be better off if we just took Russell's advice at the end of "The Problems of Philosophy": skip "handbooks," read the classics.

also: if you hate Russell but like Durant you're a fucking moron.

Plus:

The Story of Philosophy by Bryan Magee

And

The Philosophy Book by DK publishing

If you're down with a multi-volume series, Frederick Copleston's history is excellent.

You're an idiot

haha, good post, im saving this one friend.

hi prom

Bertrand Russel's "History of Western Philosophy" is, not surprisingly, Bertrand Russel's take on the history of western philosophy.

Small minded people who think a feigned neutrality is necessary for engaging any historical topic have a problem with this, for some reason.

>le biased meme

Here's my latest book, "Philosophy of Perception"

>YOU SEE STUFF THEN YOU SAW IT

That's my take on it. Good book imho. It being my take means it's a good book

Prom what?
The only small minded person is Russel. He's small minded enough, not to show a bias or have an opinion in themselves, but being full of himself in his ignorance.
Copleston for one clearly shows his bias, he's honest about it, but he shows the necessary respect to thinkers he is writing about. His bias doesn't make him into an ass who had so little respect for the philosophers discussed that he called Kierkegaard a Catholic. Which a mistake someone completely ignorant of both him as a philosopher and the entirety of the Catholic philosophical tradition.

>and you can tell he never took the time to try and 'get' Hegel

But he used to be a damn Hegelian.

Usually buttmand continentals.

That's pretty embarrassing.
If by continentals you mean everyone from Augustine to Descartes and half of German philosophy, yes, it's just the continentals.

I strongly disagree with many of Bertrand Russell's ideas. I still find him charming, funny, entertaining and clever.

>but being full of himself...

He was arguably the first person to undertake a one volume history of philosophy for whom a chapter could have easily been included. Russell isn't a historian or a minor professor. He's a major figure in 20th century phil (like him or not) and he knew it, and he had every right to insert his own opinions here and there.

Keep in mind that I haven't reviewed any of the other replies, but I know that Russel historically has expressed serious criticisms of Continental philosophy, which makes sense considering he comes from the Analytic tradition. Without espousing one or the other, I will say that a properly comprehensive historical compendium of philosophy should not be especially beholden to any one camp.

Ironically, the proud objectivist succumbs to subjectivist shortcomings.

I find him obnoxious, narcissistic... A proper cunt in short.
He had right to insert his opinions, I ever in the very comment say that it is in itself not a problem. The problem is that they aren't simply mistaken, they are incredibly poorly researched on top oh his cunt like opinions making the whole thing worse.
Hegel was also most certainly a person who did a History of Philosophy, and a far better one, where you get both factual analysis of authors talked about and his own philosophy of history.

history of philosophy $\neq$ philosophy of history

>implying Hegel fanboys can $\Latex$

>the thing that bothers me really is that everyone accuses him of misunderstanding and bias, but that's exactly what his critics are guilty of when they casually dismiss him.
What do you have in mind? I mean, I judge his History on the basis of exactly that, i.e., whether the positions and arguments he ascribes to thinkers are present in their texts, and whether he characterizes them as they actually appear in said texts, and further, whether the whole of the book then is suitable to the ostensive purpose in being both a history and an introduction to philosophy and philosophers; judged that way, the book is a failure. Judged as a collection of Russell's thoughts on his philosophical precursors, I don't think *anyone* would disagree that it's certainly the most comprehensive collection of such opinions.

But I'm not seeing how pointing out that he doesn't understand most of the thinkers he deals with happens to somehow also be a position guilty of misunderstanding and bias. He doesn't understand Plato, he doesn't understand Hegel, he doesn't understand Nietzsche; the list goes on, end of story.

>Judged as a collection of Russell's thoughts on his philosophical precursors...

yeah I don't think anyone would disagree about its scope, but lots of people do fault Russell for being so polemic. I think that's actually one of the books merits: you get one of the great philosopher's takes on many of the other great philosophers.

on the irony point, consider for example. he denounces Russell's ad hominem attacks....while attacking Russell's life, just like Russell did to Rousseau. people love Nietzsche's takedowns, for instance, even when he attacks caricatures. but many of those same people are scandalized when Russell does something similar. the last thing to point out is that lots of people never actually read the damn book, they just *know* it's the worst thing of all time bc Wikipedia says so (not accusing you of that,) and they're not shy about letting you know that they know on a Nigerian arts and crafts website.

as far as accuracy goes, I agree he gets pretty sloppy sometimes. that's not in serious dispute, I already said it's a (sometimes considerably) flawed book. but for some reason people only remember Russell's failures and none of his merits, maybe bc those who do bother to read it already have their minds made up from the start. everybody knows about his silly chapters on Nietzsche and Hegel, nobody mentions his excellent treatments of e.g. Leibniz and Locke.

all I'm saying is that the book is a lot better than the meme would have you think, and many of the people who push that meme are guilty of the same things they roast Russell for.

>his excellent treatments of e.g. Locke.
His treatment of Locke is shit on many levels.

>he denounces Russell's ad hominem attacks....while attacking Russell's life, just like Russell did to Rousseau. people love Nietzsche's takedowns, for instance, even when he attacks caricatures. but many of those same people are scandalized when Russell does something similar.

The point is that Nietzsche, for one, didn't preach against ad hominem - and even his ad hominem attacks were usually considered or backed up in some way.

Russell, however, was the original "LOGIC AND REASON" fedora, who'd spend his days linking that one image with those Greeks and a list of all the fallacies, if he existed today.

Nietzsche, conversely, makes total allowance for genuine lying/hypocrisy/inconsistency/etc.

Not even that but nietzsche thought that philosophies were decadent depending on the person that produced them, so that a shitty/dumb/boring person would necessarily produce a retardating and poor philosophy. It's really at the core of his ideas.

I think we hate Russell so much because the particular philosophers he shits on (Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Nietzsche) are all Veeky Forums's particular favorite thinkers. We don't care that he does right by Locke because nobody here reads Locke.

yeah that's fair, you could make the case that Russell's personal attacks make him a hypocrite, but that's not usually what people who shit on the book are saying. what I meant was that, if you're an admirer of Freddy, then you can't be mad about Bert's attacks per se. you at least have to "show your work" and tell us why one approach is legit while the other isn't.

Reading the book is great as an inspirational work. Just think, you can write something as bad as this and still become well-known. I legitimately think most undergrads could cover it better than him.

>I think that's actually one of the books merits: you get one of the great philosopher's takes
why has no one else challenged this

by what possible metric is bertie a "great philosopher"

pls just go, this thread is already dumb enough

It's easily one of the best threads on Veeky Forums rn unless you are a Russel fanboy

>We don't care that he does right by Locke
You think "lol Locke, don't you know you can sell plums stupid?" is doing right by Locke? That's not the only bad part either.

no i want someone to explain this to me

how is bertrand russell a "great philosopher"

what has he done to deserve this title

It's funny to see all of you pretend to have a deep knowledge of philosophy when all of us know Russel is far more intelligent and knowledgeable than anyone on this shitty website.

Peter/Patricia did the research bruh.

>

a bertrand russell apologist is using ad hominems

how unexpected

So? That's also a personal attack.

Be consistent with what you preach, little boy. Nothing wrong with personal attacks as long as they're not disguised as arguments.

he's only stooping to your level, little man. Russell fans aren't worth the intellectual time or energy expended in order to disprove them

that's not a personal attack that's a statement of fact

unless you think "how unexpected" is a personal attack

I'm not a Russel fan at all. I'm merely stating the fact that everyone here is less intelligent and knowledgeable than Russel.

Oh, personal attacks can't be factual now? Please, you're embarrassing.

I don't get him.
>have deep knowledge of philosophy
>more than people on a bosnian halal food board
>still write a massive amount of pure bullshit in your book, enough to make it one of the worst resources on the subject
Why did he do it?

>I'm merely stating the fact that everyone here is less intelligent and knowledgeable than Russel.
that's not a fact

>that's not a personal attack that's a statement of fact
>Oh, personal attacks can't be factual now
it's not a personal attack because it isn't a personal attack

please explain how "a bertrand russell apologist is using ad hominems" is a personal attack

Russell was a disgusting degenerate FAGtheist. Anything he wrote is therefore null and void.

You've just proven that you're mentally challenged, please stop polluting the field of philosophy with your irrelevant ideas.

No wonder you're unable to understand Russel.

We aren't discussing his original work at all, no one mentioned it, we are discussing his awful history of philosophy.

>You've just proven that you're mentally challenged
Ah yes the old "no you're retarded" argument. Russell fags surely excel at logical discussion.

i've just realised that you've been changing everything i've said

i said ad hominems
you said personal attacks
i said that's not a personal attack that's a statement of fact
you said Oh, personal attacks can't be factual now

this is what happens when you treat a fucking analytic philosophy memer like a non autist they strawman you then they call you retarded

To anyone new to Russell going over this thread: remember, Veeky Forums is a predominantly a Christian board that loathes formal logic and symbol-manipulation, which explains the bile vomiting.

Re Russell: without him, the face of analytic philosophy, mathematical logic, and in part, computer science, wouldn't be the same. The range of his contributions is immense and the content--unparalleled; many great contemporary minds, including Chomsky and Kripke, look up to the guy.

I was correcting you since clearly you don't know what an Ad Hominem is.

Analytical thomism is very popular here, newfag.
On top of that, Russell's work in logic and mathematics was not discussed.
It is his poor work, History of Philosophy, to which a number of alternatives were proposed.