Russell's advice for philosophy students!

 

Russell’s advice for philosophy students: “If you wish to become a philosopher, you must try, as far as you can, to get rid of beliefs which depend solely upon the place and time of your education, and upon what your parents and school-masters told you. No one can do this completely, and no one can be a perfect philosopher, but up to a point we can all achieve it if we wish to. “But why should we wish to?” you may ask. There are several reasons.

• One of them is that irrational opinions have a great deal to do with war and other forms of violent strife. The only way in which a society can live for any length of time without violent strife is by establishing social justice, and social justice appears to each man to be injustice if he is persuaded that he is superior to his neighbors. Justice between classes is difficult where there is a class that believes itself to have a right to more than a proportionate share of power or wealth. Justice between nations is only possible through the power of neutrals, because each nation believes in its own superior excellence. Justice between creeds is even more difficult, since each creed is convinced that it has a monopoly of the truth of the most important of all subjects. It would be increasingly easier than it is to arrange disputes amicably and justly if the philosophic outlook were more wide-spread.

• A second reason for wishing to be philosophic is that mistaken beliefs do not, as a rule, enable you to realize good purposes. In the middle ages, when there was an epidemic of plague, people crowded into the churches to pray, thinking that their piety would move God to take pity on them; in fact, the crowds in ill-ventilated buildings provided ideal conditions for the spread of the infection. If your means are to be adequate to your ends, you must have knowl-edge, not merely superstition or prejudice. 

• A third reason is that truth is better than false-hood. There is something ignominious in going about sustained by comfortable lies. The deceived husband is traditionally ludicrous, and there is something of the same laughable or pitiable quality about all happiness that depends upon being deceived or deluded.

If you wish to become a philosopher, you must train both the intellect and the emotions. The two sorts of training are intimately interconnected, but they must be to some extent separated in discussion.”

 — Bertrand Russell, The Art of Philosophizing: And Other Essays (1968), Essay 1: The Art of Rational Conjecture (1942), pp. 9-10

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The essays found in The Art of Philosophizing were written by Bertrand Russell during the Second World War. In those years the author was teaching philosophy at US universities, exercising a growing influence on America's student population.

Image: Bertrand Russell in his private study at his home in Penhyndeudreath, Gwynedd, United Kingdom, 13 January 1962.