Philosophy for Laymen
When men first learned to cultivate the soil, they used their knowledge
to establish a cruel cult of human sacrifice. The men who first tamed
the horse employed him to pillage and enslave peaceful populations...
Philsophy means 'love of wisdom', and philsophy in this sense is what
men must acquire if the new powers invented by technicians, and handed
over by them to be wielded by ordinary men and women, are not to plunge
mandkind into an appalling cataclysm.
Philosophy has had from its earliest days two different abjects which
were believed to be closely interrelated. On the one hand, it aimed at a
theoretical understanding of the structures of the world; on the other
hand, it tried to discover and inculcate the best possible way of life.
...philsophical speculation as to what we do not yet know has shown itself a valuable preliminary to exact scientific knowledge.
...has the universe a purpose? or is it driven by blind necessity? or is
it a mere chaos and jumble, in which natural laws that we think we find
are only a fantasy generated by our own love of order? If there is a
cosmic scheme, has life more importance in it than astronomy would lead
us to suppose, or is our emphasis upon life mere parochialism and
self-importance?
Some kind of philosophy is a necessity to all but the most thoughtless, and in the absence of knowledge it is almost sure to be a silly philosophy. The result of this is that the human race becomes divided into rival groups of fanatics, each group firmly persuaded that its own brand of nonsense is sacred truth, while the other side's is damnable heresy. Arians and Catholics, Crusaders and Muslims, Protestants and Adherents of the Pope, Communists and Fascists, have filled large parts of the last 1,600 yrs with futile strife, when a little philosophy would have shown both sides in all these disputes that neither had any good reason to believe itself in the right. Dogmatism is an enemy to peace, and an insuperable barrier to democracy. In the present age, at least as much as in former times it is the greatest of the mental obstaceles to human happpiness.
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.
Even a modicum of philosophy would make it impossible to accept such bloodthirsty nonsense; but, so long as men are not trained to with-hold judgement in the absense of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dis-honest charlatans. To endure un-certainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues. For the learning of every virture ther is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgement the best discipline is philosophy.
Among most of the philosophers of antiquity there was a close connection btwn a view of the universe and a doctrine as to the best way of life.
Philosophy can give an impersonal breadth and scope to the conception and the ends of life. It can give to the individual a just measure of himself in relation to society, of man in the present to man in the past and in the future, and of the whole history of man in relation to the astronomical cosmos. By enlarging the objects of his thoughts it supplies an antidote to the anxieties and anguish of the present, and makes possible the nearest approach to serenity that is available to a sensitive mind in our tortured and uncertain world.
The Future of Man-Kind
Before the end of the present century, unless something quite unforeseeable occurs, one of three possibilities will have been realized. These 3 are:
1. The end of human life, perhaps of all life on our planet.
2. A reversion to barbarism after a catastrophic diminution of the population of the globe.
3. A unification of the world under a single government, possessing a monopoly of all the major weapons of war.
I do not pretend to know which of these will happen, or even which is the most likely. What I do contend, without any hesitation, is that the kind of system to which we have been accustomed cannot possible continue.
An oligarchy which controls all the means of publicity can perpetrate injustices and cruelties which would be scarcely possible if they were widely known. Only democracy and free publicity can prevent the holders of power from establishing a servile state, with luxury for the few and overworked poverty for the many.
Wherever an oligarchy has power, economic inequalities threaten to become permanent owing to the modern impossibility of successful rebellion.
The uses to which men have put their increased control over natural forces are curious.
If war no longer occupied men's thoughts and energies, we could, within a generation, put an end to all serious poverty throughout the world.
An out-line of intellectual rubbish
... if there were a god capable of such wanton cruelty, I should certainly not think him worthy of worship. But that only proves how sunk I am in moral depravity.
Self-importance, individual or generic, is the source of most of our religious beliefs. Even "sin" is a conception derived from self-importance.
Until you have admitted your own fears to yourself, and have guarded your-self by a difficult effort of will against their myth-making power, you cannot hope to think truly about many matters of great importance, especially those with witch religious beliefs are concerned. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of Truth as in the endeavor after a worthy manner of life.
Collective fear stimulated herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity towards those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Fear generates impulses of cruelty, and there fore promotes such supersticious beliefs as seem to justify cruelty. Neither a man nor a crowd or a nation can be trusted to act human-ly or think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
Ideas that have helped Man-Kind.
War has always been the chief promoter of governmental power. The control of government over the private citizen is always greater where there is war or immenent danger of war than where peace seems secure.
but when governments have aquired power with a view to resisting foreign aggression, they have naturally used it, if they could, to further their private interests at the expense of the citizens. Absolute monarchy was, until recently, the grossest form of this abuse of power. But in the modern totalitarian state the same evil has been carried much further than had been dreamed of by Xerxes or Nero or any of the tyrants of earlier times.
Democracy is intended to make mens tenure of power temporary and dependant on popular approval.
In so far as it achieves this, it prevents the worst abuses of power.
More Quotes...
Some kind of philosophy is a necessity to all but the most thoughtless, and in the absence of knowledge it is almost sure to be a silly philosophy. The result of this is that the human race becomes divided into rival groups of fanatics, each group firmly persuaded that its own brand of nonsense is sacred truth, while the other side's is damnable heresy. Arians and Catholics, Crusaders and Muslims, Protestants and Adherents of the Pope, Communists and Fascists, have filled large parts of the last 1,600 yrs with futile strife, when a little philosophy would have shown both sides in all these disputes that neither had any good reason to believe itself in the right. Dogmatism is an enemy to peace, and an insuperable barrier to democracy. In the present age, at least as much as in former times it is the greatest of the mental obstaceles to human happpiness.
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.
Even a modicum of philosophy would make it impossible to accept such bloodthirsty nonsense; but, so long as men are not trained to with-hold judgement in the absense of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dis-honest charlatans. To endure un-certainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues. For the learning of every virture ther is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgement the best discipline is philosophy.
Among most of the philosophers of antiquity there was a close connection btwn a view of the universe and a doctrine as to the best way of life.
Philosophy can give an impersonal breadth and scope to the conception and the ends of life. It can give to the individual a just measure of himself in relation to society, of man in the present to man in the past and in the future, and of the whole history of man in relation to the astronomical cosmos. By enlarging the objects of his thoughts it supplies an antidote to the anxieties and anguish of the present, and makes possible the nearest approach to serenity that is available to a sensitive mind in our tortured and uncertain world.
The Future of Man-Kind
Before the end of the present century, unless something quite unforeseeable occurs, one of three possibilities will have been realized. These 3 are:
1. The end of human life, perhaps of all life on our planet.
2. A reversion to barbarism after a catastrophic diminution of the population of the globe.
3. A unification of the world under a single government, possessing a monopoly of all the major weapons of war.
I do not pretend to know which of these will happen, or even which is the most likely. What I do contend, without any hesitation, is that the kind of system to which we have been accustomed cannot possible continue.
An oligarchy which controls all the means of publicity can perpetrate injustices and cruelties which would be scarcely possible if they were widely known. Only democracy and free publicity can prevent the holders of power from establishing a servile state, with luxury for the few and overworked poverty for the many.
Wherever an oligarchy has power, economic inequalities threaten to become permanent owing to the modern impossibility of successful rebellion.
The uses to which men have put their increased control over natural forces are curious.
If war no longer occupied men's thoughts and energies, we could, within a generation, put an end to all serious poverty throughout the world.
An out-line of intellectual rubbish
... if there were a god capable of such wanton cruelty, I should certainly not think him worthy of worship. But that only proves how sunk I am in moral depravity.
Self-importance, individual or generic, is the source of most of our religious beliefs. Even "sin" is a conception derived from self-importance.
Until you have admitted your own fears to yourself, and have guarded your-self by a difficult effort of will against their myth-making power, you cannot hope to think truly about many matters of great importance, especially those with witch religious beliefs are concerned. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of Truth as in the endeavor after a worthy manner of life.
Collective fear stimulated herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity towards those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Fear generates impulses of cruelty, and there fore promotes such supersticious beliefs as seem to justify cruelty. Neither a man nor a crowd or a nation can be trusted to act human-ly or think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
Ideas that have helped Man-Kind.
War has always been the chief promoter of governmental power. The control of government over the private citizen is always greater where there is war or immenent danger of war than where peace seems secure.
but when governments have aquired power with a view to resisting foreign aggression, they have naturally used it, if they could, to further their private interests at the expense of the citizens. Absolute monarchy was, until recently, the grossest form of this abuse of power. But in the modern totalitarian state the same evil has been carried much further than had been dreamed of by Xerxes or Nero or any of the tyrants of earlier times.
Democracy is intended to make mens tenure of power temporary and dependant on popular approval.
In so far as it achieves this, it prevents the worst abuses of power.
More Quotes...
Meantime, the world in which we exist has other aims. But it will pass
away, burned up in the fire of its own hot passions; and from its ashes
will spring a new and younger world, full of fresh hope, with the light
of morning in its eyes. –Bertrand Russell
All moral culture springs solely and immediatiely from the inner life of the soul, and can only be stimulated in human nature, and never produced by external and artificial contrivances…whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but still remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness. –Bertrand Russell
…then all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into artists; that is men who love their labor for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, enoble their character, and exalt and refine their pleasures. And so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often serve to degrade it. –Bertrand Russell
The state tends to make man an instrument to serve it’s arbitrary ends, overlooking his individual purposes. –Bertrand Russell
All moral culture springs solely and immediatiely from the inner life of the soul, and can only be stimulated in human nature, and never produced by external and artificial contrivances…whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but still remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness. –Bertrand Russell
…then all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into artists; that is men who love their labor for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, enoble their character, and exalt and refine their pleasures. And so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often serve to degrade it. –Bertrand Russell
The state tends to make man an instrument to serve it’s arbitrary ends, overlooking his individual purposes. –Bertrand Russell
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