Is this book good? I'm reading it right now, I'm on page 75. I don't mean "is it pleasing"...

Kenny attempts to be objective and trace the development of western thought, while Russel doesn't even attempt to move away from his biases, some of his chapters are almost completely devoted to criticism of important philosophers of the past. Point is, that's fine but it's not what is being advertised by the book. If you're already familiar with these thinkers to some extent you might profit from Russel, otherwise read an actual history of philosophy.

Also, is there any reason you hate Copleston other than his being a Thomist?

Of course not, it's by Bertrand Russell, a socialist and complete pseud..

Opinion discarded.

I don't look at it as criticism as much as he's trying to give a cohesive view of philosophy. He'll often say why the arguments of earlier philosophers were wrong, because of what they led to which stifled progress in philosophy. In my perspective, he's not just telling you about these philosophies, he's telling you how they correlate with what we now know. I don't think he's that biased. Like, when he was talking about the atomists, he was describing how the problem played out throughout the centuries, and how a focus on pure thought as opposed to observation 'led science down a blind alley" until much later; and how the arguments of early philosophers compare to the arguments of newton vs einstein. He's trying to make philosophy cohesive and he does a good job of astutely interweaving his whole book together of the early ideas with the latter ones. I think if anything, you've been misled to believe he's biased.

>Also, is there any reason you hate Copleston other than his being a Thomist?
I cannot honestly take a priest and someone who unironically argues for the existence of god seriously about intellectual subject matter.

It's good save for the last 200 years. The last 200 years are pure autistic screeching.

>It's good save for the last 200 years. The last 200 years are pure autistic screeching.
This doesn't really mean anything to me, I don't even know what you're talking about. Explain your noise.

No. I'm still triggered by his presentation of the stoics, of "catholic philosophy" (as if that was some unified thing), of Hegel. The man was bizarrely triggered by Leibniz being the greatest logician of history because he hates the guy. Also has a hate boner for anything even close to freedom.
Perhaps the worst comes with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche though, where Russel resorts to pure shitposting.
There is also this weird mid 20th century "analytic philosophy" obsession with language. Aesthetics? Language. Law? Language. Metaphysics? Language. Theology? language. Epistemology? Language.

Russel himself admitted the book was extremely biased and one sided with the people attacked, long dead, not being able to respond, but he said it made the book more "interesting" than a scholarly presentation.

Last 200 years of historical narration in the book, dummy. So all XIX century philosophers and most XVIII century ones.

>He'll often say why the arguments of earlier philosophers were wrong, because of what they led to which stifled progress in philosophy

The progress he believed to have culminated in a project called logical positivism, which turned out to be highly flawed, even according to the philosopher who set the whole thing in motion. Commit it to the flames.

>be Aristotle
>found western science
>argue for the existence of God
Really gets the synapses firing

He's actually really bad and uninformed about medieval philosophers. I'm not gonna get into it here but you should pick up a real overview of the period to judge it beyond the Enlightenment hatred of religion.

I gathered that, but "autistic screeching" doesn't really describe what it is you feel he's supposedly blathering incoherently about.

*tips*

Maybe "shitposting" would be more precise.

It's not just medieval, though the fedora makes it extra cringe. Russel knew little about Nietzsche and proceeds to trash him. The late antiquity philosophers are largely ignored but they are not well served by his presentation.

>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.

Lmao

I'm guessing you're all christians. I honestly wish you were all dead. If there's one reason I would rather use reddit than Veeky Forums, it's because there's so many religious people here, probably gathered because of (I think it was andy warhol's) saying that if you act stupid long enough you'll eventually attract stupid people. I don't do well with people telling me what to do, so I often get banned very quickly from reddit forums by letting myself get banned immediately by not following their rules. I wish mods would die too. But it's unfortunate that this forum has more in common with donald trump than it does any actual intellectual thinkers. As I've said before, I do hope that you all die. Have a nice day.

*TIPPING INTENSIFIES*

Kek

I assume you're trolling, but in any case, I'm actually a Marxist but I see no advantage in misrepresenting genuinely worthwhile medieval and Christian philosophy.

For fuck sake, is there any redeeming feature to Russel?
>socialist
>literal cuck and proud of it
>logical positivism
>tried to co-opt the principia mathematica when 95% of the reflection behind it was from Whitehead who proceeded to hate Russel
>axiom of reducibility
>was bitchslapped by actual mathematician Henri Poincaré on his entire philosophy of mathematics
>was bitchslapped by Gödel on his logical pretenses
>argued for pedophilia
>katana wielding fedora warrior

There's a female professor in Chicago who did similar stuff 'because philosophy'. Classic examples of how reading books can fuck your mind so hard that you forget about real life.

>*tips fedora*
People like you are going to destroy the West.

Holy shit, the meme is real.

Good. If you mean destroy archaic dogmatic institutions and make the gays have the smelly buttsex, then good.

nietzche was more critical of those that were ignorantly critical of christianity than christianity itself. your first principles are no better.

That fedora tip was so hard I think it gave you brain damage.

>Good. If you mean destroy archaic dogmatic institutions and make the gays have the smelly buttsex, then good.
And replace it with a morally degenerate mulatto Communist hellhole? No, your type needs to be thrown from a helicopter purely out of a need for self-preservation.

They forgot about the revival of virtue ethics senpai.

Let's start making the world a better place by letting another man sleep with my wife. That'll show those stupid Christians with their dogma.

Ms Russel on blacked.com when?

...

>morally degenerate mulatto Communist hellhole
>being this much of a redneck

Why don't they just accept the world changes (((we))) have in store for them? We should seriously stop them from having different values than us.

>any redeeming feature
He's still able to make /pol/tards like you mad.

If you are starting from absolute zero this is a good starting point to get oriented

I actually own that book too, and will probably read it after I finish russell's history.

I love bertrand russell

who?

this.

Like John Green with some actual talent to try and redeem his strange opinions.

brilliant

yeah the nietzsche section was terrible, and russell's criticisms of medieval philosophers just seemed nitpicky most of the time

Was choosing a history of philosophy written by a whiggish, pig-disgusting positivist a good idea?

No, it was not.

Copleston might be an idiot in his own thought, but his treatment of the thoughts of others is precise and fair. His history of philosophy is by far the best one there is.

How does it feel to know that Gödel made a formal logic proof of Leibniz' argument for God, and that it hasn't been successfully refuted?

Holy shit, that fedora tip must have registered on the Richter scale

This has to be bait. I refuse to believe that people like you actually exist.

I mean if that's how you feel you'd basically have to throw out Kant, and then you might as well not even bother with philosophy at all.

If you're determined to read Russell's history, fine. But nobody takes it seriously as a history of philosophy, as pretty much anyone who knows anything about philosophy will tell you.

>le west

>His bias seems pretty accurate though, from what I've been reading
kek. What have you been reading?

Seconded. This is painful to read

reported

And what about it is hard to believe and painful to read? Always expressing disapproval but never expressing what it is the problem actually is. This sort of saber rattling doesn't impress me, it never has.

>You don't deserve to be taken seriously if you use philosophy to argue for the existence of god
Yeah, because the existence of god is not a metaphysical question and it can be explained with fluid mechanics and Bernoulli's principle.

Oh really? Then explain it.

ITT: people who blatantly haven't read the book and just regurgitate the opinions from other Veeky Forums threads and goodreads reviews

>Any post arguing against christian ideals or christianity "FEDORA LOL"
I do agree however this ad homenim has just become trite and has always been uneffective in productive conversation.

it's a good read as long as you don't take everything you read at face value
you'll get a sort logical positivist picture of philosophy, written well and digestibly, which is fine, just so long as you keep Russell's bias in mind

Russell made a lot of mistakes, but a lot of Russell's mistakes are still tempting, so it's worth taking time to understand his point of view before moving past it

Ayyy yo hold up, did you think the post they were responding to was productive in the slightest? The fedora meme is not used as an ad homenim to argument. It is a response to comments that are void of any real content that gets insecure people upset.

I see your point in this case, but in most instances where I remember encountering this meme, it's used as an ad hominem to halt further discussion. It does still offend those who are on the recieving side of it, and i think that it why it is so tempting. Everytime any user claims athiesm there this masturbatory reaction to shout fedora, so asserting that the only time it is utilized is against a post devoid of any refutable arguement is myopic.

> Everytime any user claims athiesm there this masturbatory reaction to shout fedora, so asserting that the only time it is utilized is against a post devoid of any refutable arguement is myopic.
This is really bad, please try to write better. Is the reaction masturbatory? Is the assertion that "fedora" is only utilized against a post devoid of any refutable argument? Or is it that "fedora" is only used then? Is the assertion myopic, or is it just wrong? Words have very specific meanings!

Do not even mention that garbage in my presence, russell is not a philosopher, neither is whitehead or chomsky.

That fedora tip broke all my God damn windows.

In my perception, most instances like this case I see the meme being used towards a post devoid of real content or just general shit posting. Yeah, it is myopic but I don't see it often used on actually real, thoughtful discussion on Veeky Forums which is very rare in itself.

*tips fedora*

>I would rather use reddit than Veeky Forums, it's because there's so many religious people here
False dilemma. Lurking /soc/ would suit you.

Unfortunately it is severely biased and inappropriate. I only read it because I like Russell and wanted to learn more about his ideas concerning philosophers from the past. As a piece of scholarship it has very little value nowadays, and you ought to search for another source.

>Everytime any user claims athiesm there this masturbatory reaction to shout fedora
Claiming atheism is a masturbatory reaction. We care about arguments here, not about your fucking biography. I've seen well thought and well written metaphysical arguments that postulate the absence of a personal god on this board, and the replies, unsatisfactory as they might be, are never a meme. Stupid MUH ENLIGHTENED ATHEISM idiots do get the treatment they deserve.

"I'm guessing you're all christians. I honestly wish you were all dead". Just tip your fedora and fuck off to reddit.

That debate with Russell is an embarassment on Russell's part; for a man who spent so much of his life devoting himself to the study of logic and argument, his arguments against Copleston's position are mere sophistical evasions. In fact, one can accept a good number of Copleston's arguments without having to thereby agree that the being called "god" in the argument is the same as the biblical deity. Russell is simply unable to catch that, and deals with it miserably.

Is it respected as a source of history? No. It might be respected among neophytes, but even analytics disagree strongly with his interpretations of the philosophers, which is the primary thing one can slam him for: his interpretations are almost uniformly bad, and he clearly relies too much on secondary sources and summaries to make up his mind about the philosophers.

I love the Fedora tipping on lit sometime.

Exactly this. Ironically being a theist is the latest contrarian trend on his pathetic site

>Copleston gives an elaborate explanation for the argument from motion
>Russel is incapable of anything outside of autistic screeching of "it doesn't mean anything"
>Copleston goes into more detail
>autistic screeching is intensified
It was embarrassing.

Nah.

It is ok for it's small size, but he misreads Nietzsche pretty badly. IIRC at the time he wrote it Nietzsche was being retconned by the nazi party pretty hard.

The most valuable part is really just the first volume (antiquity)