 What's up to all my philosophy lovers out there? It's your boy Ian here today to break down Batran Russell's a history of Western philosophy and if you guys would like to see more books about philosophy psychology literature and other social sciences and humanities subscribe to the channel everybody I am trying to become the best booktuber in the world and change the world through books but first we have to talk about Batran Russell the logical positivist the boogie man of early American analytics in West early 20th century American philosophy and this book is really good and when I read a historical book on Western philosophy or psychoanalysis most of the time I want it to be biased I don't want to read the Cambridge history of Western philosophy I want the bias reasoning I want Batran Russell one of the most impactful American philosophers maybe not in maybe not in the top 10 but at a time and for all the pseudo hipsters out there who like to read Batran Russell's critiques of Christianity for all them he's a big figure and he drops bombs in this text biased bombs and that's what we want and I'm going to talk about some of the ones I think that fall flat on their faces and some that I think are really good so I would recommend though if you have never read a history of Western philosophy that you start with Will Durant's the story of philosophy this book is a lot better a lot better Will Durant is a beautiful writer I think one of the best writers of the 20th century across all genres and he really he covers fewer people he covers I think eight or nine philosophers and it's a little bit shorter and a little bit easier but Tran Russell though gives a very historical breakdown and one of the shiny moments of this text is at the very start and he breaks down all the Greeks the pre-socratics and of course Aristotle Plato Socrates and then the philosophers coming after them and then of course the Dark Ages and I think that Batran really shines here because a lot of people especially you're going to be reading a history of Western philosophy most of the most of the time like I said two things are happening you want to know Batran Russell's thoughts on all these philosophers and he'll give them to you he'll give you his biased opinion and then and then that's the funny thing about this text is this text starts to go on as we start hitting the middle to the end starts turning more into what Russell thinks instead of what these philosophers think and almost to the point of like this should just be one of his books but at the start he really keeps it calm especially through the Greeks and then the Catholic philosophers because if you are a philosopher you are a fan of philosophy you will find that there is a goldmine in the Greeks and then of course in the Catholic philosophers Augustine and Aquinas and that whole crew I think that Russell really captures the Greeks very well because at some level he has everything to give to Plato and Aristotle Plato and Aristotle and he drops a bomb though that really blew my mind when I was reading it and I kind of passed by it the first time I read it but then I just reread this for this review and he said that he questioned Socrates existence and you know Jesus's existence Shakespeare's existence we contemplate that we you know intellectuals we like to argue about that but I've never heard anyone question Socrates existence I remember one time I was in this philosophy class and very I'm just gonna tell the story she was a very good looking right and like all the guys like on the first like in the first week we're just got Google eyes about it right and then we were reading it was like an ancient Greek philosophy class and then she raises her hand right like on the first day we're actually talking in like the second week and she's she starts talking about Socrates and I'm like who the fuck is Socrates I think she's like talking about some priests and she's talking about Socrates and then I realized slowly among everyone else that she's talking about Socrates and anyway that's just a quick side funny story about that another time at one in the morning at a park in Las Vegas right and that girl ended up I feel like felt like liking me but I was way too stoned to even notice or care and at 1 a.m. at a park in Las Vegas one time I was doing calisthenics this crazy Ian I'm doing calisthenics and ring workout on the bars and I see this girl on a bench reading a book and then I'm walking by her to go back to my car and I see it's her and I'm like yo what's up what are you reading and she's reading an Einstein book Einstein's book trying to prove the theory of God and I'm like and I'm like why are you reading that and in my head I was thinking like you're not smart enough to read that you call them Socrates Socrates and many other things throughout the semester and then she said yeah anyway anyway that was just a synchronicity but Socrates Socrates I'm going to call him right now the existence is questioned by Petran Russell and he says what do you think the reasoning is oh there's always yeah there's really not that much historical evidence for him you know it's a little bit far back the only historical evidence that we have really is that Plato said that Socrates Socrates existed and Socrates Socrates Russell says that the only reason the Plato is the only storyteller in the world that can make us believe that Socrates existed I don't know if they said that right but Plato is such a good writer that he could actually make us believe that this guy who never existed existed and if you think about it if you are going to start a movement if you want to be remembered you have to have a storyline what is Plato without the story of Socrates and all those different you know all the stories all of his dialogues a lot of Plato's dialogues are based off of Socrates and you need a character you need someone to rumble with in your dialects if you think about it it's actually really smart you always need an adversary the biggest selling fights in the UFC or whatever do you need another person sugar Ray Leonard in the 1990s was one of the best boxers in the world but no one remembers him because he just was way too good and he never had an adversary you always need an adversary to you know create numbers to create people to Karen even though he's not an adversary he was Socrates was an adversary of the Sophists and Plato was thus taking the torch and fighting not just against the Sophists but against the people that killed Socrates his mentor got killed what's a better storyline as the philosopher rising up out of the ashes other than your mentor got killed that's like some movie shit man it's so great I mean but Tran Russell come out here throwing the shots and like I said we really can't prove that just like how we can't prove the historicity really of Jesus and I know all my Christians out there are going to go crazy over that but we really can't because the first non-christian source to talk about Jesus talked about Jesus 128 years after the fact if I have that correct so really Socrates that really blew my mind I've never heard of that before that calling Socrates into a question but if you really think about the logical positive this which really in short summaries that truth doesn't exist that really objective truth doesn't exist and that's what butran Russell and the analytic American thought philosophers were trying to you know shoot down in their own personal way if you think about it Aristotle and thus Plato and thus Socrates are the big part of that feeling that the connection the Renee Descartes separation you know between man and nature really starts with the categorization and the taxonomies in nature done by Aristotle thus influenced by Plato's forms and we don't have a very Heraclitian society we don't really appreciate in their nature like Heraclitus does I think butran Russell has a very beautiful section on Heraclitus and he actually gives respect you know a lot of these Greek philosophers when you look at their philosophy they're kind of whack right like I don't want to say they're whack but like oh it's all the elements you know they don't their ideas don't really hold up as they're like the the ideas of elementary schoolers or middle schoolers of today if they had to philosophize or think about the world and never knew science but butran Russell really gives them a lot of credit for what they thought and they're linear thinking I really like that unlike will Durant that Russell shows the evolution of thought of Western thought and I think he does that and mark across the whole book even with his transgressions and his self-promotion he still shows that line of thinking and gives respect to the people for what they did at the time because what these guys were doing these Greek philosophers at the time was magical it we don't really get to experience that magic anymore with all these nuanced wars and phd's and all the illiterate masses we don't get to see these big breakthroughs because no one cares anymore no one reads the journal philosophical journals anymore we think schlavo zizek is the best philosopher of all time because once again he's the guy on the board he's the a side of the card he how did Jordan Pearson is you just get bigger they had there's an adversary right that's how they got their name out there even more but we don't see these debates we don't see philosopher debates other than if there are polarizing figures like those two in the public eye anymore because to become a great philosopher now you have to be deeper than conch you have to know all of conch and then take it to the next level and to take things to the next level during the 21st century it's almost like becoming a crazy computer engine uh programming or or engineer you kind of get a little detached and in that detachment you can't become a sociable person that's where i think betram russell really shines and he's like well of that last generation was with George santiant santiana i'm saying that wrong i'm sorry who really had a personality who had some force who could really come out as philosophers and walk the walk and be like making big progress you know making substantial claims and being the top of their field and being a public figure like i said i i'm challenging you right now tell me someone that is at the top of their field and a huge public figure right now in terms of philosophy like a lot of these guys are if we're you know going through you know lock and hum and reso and conch and hegel and schopenhauer you know maybe not marx but and dewey all these people at their time were big deals maybe not all of them but you guys get what i'm saying here so russell is a really cool figure for that and i think that's why his ego and his personality comes out now and i yeah i think it's really awesome so if we move on from the greeks which i think that russell makes of it once again a very good stab at i think that very well worth reading i learned a lot that a lot of these people i will you know haven't read before even though i consider myself i've read the complete works of play though read a lot of Aristotle consider myself pretty well versed taken some uh philosophy classes i didn't know you know there were you know five or six people in here i knew about but didn't really get the whole history on and i gained a new perspective on some people also like heraclitus who i really admire because if you look at the story of philosophy right here he has this really cool section of the table of philosophical affiliations and kind of the lines of thinking and if you look at heraclitus up at the top it kind of just jumping it goes heraclitus marcus aurelius spinoza shelling schopenhauer Nietzsche and then Nietzsche if you want the path to Nietzsche you have to go through kind of hey go schopenhauer shelling spinoza you know it's that it's that idealism mind you know for everyone who's reading who's read it i'm assuming you know i'm talking about that god that god maybe isn't singular that it's god maybe could be multifaceted and of many consciousnesses or just isn't this one thing and that's coming from heraclitus is more subjective view of nature but if we look at oh i lost the page oh no i didn't if we look at russell russell we um or like for instance the sophist you know inspire socrates which inspire playdough and aerosol then equinus then bacon then conch and then you know going down to james and dewey these associations are really cool and and russell and i once again it gives me some different perspectives and when you start to understand and connect the philosophical affiliations that's what's really good about these books that are you going to read about heraclitus or about all these guys that are talked about especially at the start of this text probably not you're probably not going to just judging on your life unless you're really into philosophy but and i guess i should have said this a minute number one but if you philosophy is hard philosophy isn't a walk in the park like pop psychology even pop philosophy if you once you start diving into real set philosophical or psychoanalytical thought it's hard because a lot of it actually builds off of the start it builds off of the greeks if you don't understand the greeks and you can't really understand the catholic philosophers then you can then in today a few thing about like if you read derrida or fuco they're always talking about playdough playdough is still coming up and if you read heidegger it's like a response and to playdough into the idealism and all these different people so it it never ends and to really dive into it you don't really know where to start and starting at the start with the greeks can be really hard and working away all the way through it so philosophy can be hard but something that you can do is that you can get inspired you can learn the stories that you love and become inspired that's what i did first with um these two books especially with the story philosophy i read all the authors at least a couple of their works that i learned about in now in the in that book because all of them have a great personal story also that wilderant tells well so anyway yeah so now if we move on to the catholic philosophers more you know mid mid middle of the philosophical around medieval philosophers earlier than that Aquinas augustine surprisingly once again i read this book a couple years ago i feel way more versed in philosophy now rustle i wouldn't you know you read rustle you know knowing rustle you expect him to attack them you expect him to attack these christian philosophers but he does it because they take it to the next level they are monks they are in the game they are doing them the hard work of taking and remixing Plato in the Greeks because nobody did it nobody for hundreds of years took it all to the next level you can't start from nothing that's what people don't realize that you can't start from nothing that you have to start in stand you have to climb up the mountain then stand on the shoulders of the greats and then you know be the next pillar in the in the chain of thought if you want you know to be great or to understand what is going on and that's what rustle really does because he gives praise and that's something that we a lot of people in philosophy now suck at if you're listening to that it's right now you have to give praise you have to be positive about all philosophers all writers all people even if you disagree with them even if you think they're a jerk or crazy or a jerk you have to or they're elitist you have to give them like if you hate communists and you can't give praise to call marks and you're just not a deep thinker because you don't realize that that had to happen communism and marxism had to happen maybe not in the way that happened but the philosophy had to manifest from the path and trajectory that excuse me philosophy got started on these things once you understand it's all just cause and effect at some level and you can't be angry about it because if you're angry about it you don't understand the power of it if you can't sit and understand marks you can't understand the last 70 years of philosophy you're going to be stuck back with rustle you're not going to understand the postmodernist and all the crazy stuff happening in philosophy now even if you think it's all just a bunch of crazy leftists and it is but back in the day some of these people are a bunch of crazy people crazy um elitists like you have to separate yourself from the fact in philosophy and a lot of people love to get in these wars i you know i'm spent so much time in university and people like oh you like him i'm like dude i like everybody man and that's what these books are so important for man is that it shows you what why it matters what the it brings the human element back it hopefully can separate you through the story because that's what matters it's the story of philosophy his story for trans story of western philosophy and they are trying to make you see they're trying to open up the flower and help you bloom into the philosophical mind and if you're 17 minutes into this video and still listening then that means that you probably already have done that so brussell accolades to him for giving praise to the to the calc philosophers giving them the justice that they deserve i can guarantee you that he haven't read it yet go check it out i mean and he shows you why equinus and augustine and those guys and that whole camp are i once again very important you can't yeah you can't be where we're at now really i mean i guess you could but without what they did can't can you have the renaissance can you have the enlightenment period can you have francis bacon probably not and without francis bacon none of that happens so yeah our boy francis my mr bacon batrand doesn't really give it i would you know the story of philosophy so reading this compared to the story of philosophy the philosophers that he covers fall a lot shorter that batrand gives a very clear he likes to give a clear history he doesn't like to tell the story you don't really know if you read the story philosophy section on francis bacon because he's a really interesting figure some of these philosophers actually really interesting i think that's a part of the history like i said that it makes you care makes you really care when they're interesting so moving on a little bit further he does a very big analysis of hume and lock and pull it up and you can kind of see his biases starting to come out in the modern philosophy section i'm looking right now and you start to see like francis bacon gets five pages spinoza gets nine pages but hume gets 17 pages and you start to see it's like really really that but you think about it oh humes very important i'm sorry if i mispronounce any of these very important for batrand russell's thought patterns and his where he's going with his philosophy you need that so that's what he really focuses on like he doesn't even mention shelling who i think is very important for nicha he doesn't he barely i mean he does a slight analysis six pages on schopenhauer so in this final section and now i think it's now time to i think he does a great job i think he does a really great job he shows the he shows the whole history he brings in a lot of people that most history of philosophy books don't bring in he summarizes their thoughts very well but it's kind of a travesty and this is kind of he's writing in the in the world war two period of while he's writing this during world war two and you know there's of course a very negative view of nicha until the fifties and sixties with an author a famous philosopher writing for writer i can't remember right now nicho had a dark stain that nobody really understood and brought his actual work to light and all the opinions were generally negative and i would agree here and you would think that anyone that actually just read the work would understand but the will to power when you have a bunch of nazis killing tens of millions well yeah tens of millions of people i guess in total across you know tens of million people dying a war that they start is a lot right and with fascism is general everywhere and then communism sparking up and all the full dictators and stuff you know i understand why it's not very good but at some level for us to where we are going as human beings now with this infinite potential in this mostly free world this mostly pretty chill world until the recent you know war happening we can learn a lot through nicha for personal development for own life about the way the technology and technologies position which is very superman like very uberman like and we need to understand that and come to terms with that before we started going into a island but no one seems to care nobody seems to care and want to understand a lot of these concepts which are now so important that the real thing that we're going to need moving forward and i think you know obviously russell doesn't understand this is that we need a big set of ethics if we're going to start making robots if they're going to be weapons and robots that can kill people and go crazy we need to have very good ethics for the people controlling them or for even the robots or ai itself we need to be able to understand that and reason with it and understand what we are making and it doesn't seem like we are doing that it seems like we are just heading straight into the void having this maki valley in point of view toward the earth there's a this Descartes and that's it kind of all stems from this Cartesian split from nature that we still haven't mended yet that in the poetic world and in parts of literature we've mended that but in actual our actual consciousness we are still fragmented we are still fragmented traumatized human beings engaging in abuse and so if you guys enjoyed this review leave a like subscribe to the channel and then go check out my video on a little big book on the human shadow by Robert Bly it will delve into some of the problems that human