"Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealing and adulteries and deceiving of one another..Mortals deem that gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form…yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds…The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have bluee eyes and red hair."
— Xenophanes, quoted in Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, 1945, p. 40. Quoted by Mr. Russell from Edwyn Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, 1913, p. 121.
"There is, however, a more general argument against reverence,
whether for the Greeks or for anyone else. In studying a
philosophy, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt,
but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to
know that it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a
revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as
possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which
he as hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of
this process, and reverence with the second. Two things are to be
remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth
studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no
man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any
subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which
seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that
it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever
came to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological
imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps
us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will
seem to an age which has a different temper of mind."
—
Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy.
Mr. Russell makes a fascinating point, one which is applicable to more than philosophical thought. Our ability to communicate effectively is wholly dependant on our ability to sympathetically contextualize the argument of those with which we disagree, or agree, for that matter. Unbridgeable disagreements—an angry “You lie!” for instance—are not communication but are rather more akin to trench warfare: harmful to both parties, engendering of stagnation and, in the end, utterly pointless.
I been t’inkin’ ‘bout de preachah; whut he said de othah night,
‘Bout hit bein’ people’s dooty, fu’ to keep dey faces bright;
How one ought to live so pleasant dat ouah tempah never riles,
Meetin’ evahbody roun’ us wid ouah very nicest smiles.
Dat ‘s all right, I ain’t a-sputin’ not a t’ing dat soun’s lak fac’,
But you don’t ketch folks a-grinnin’ wid a misery in de back;
An’ you don’t fin’ dem a-smilin’ w’en dey ‘s hongry ez kin be,
Leastways, dat ‘s how human natur’ allus seems to ‘pear to me.
We is mos’ all putty likely fu’ to have our little cares,
An’ I think we ‘se doin’ fus’ rate w’en we jes’ go long and bears,
Widout breakin’ up ouah faces in a sickly so’t o’ grin,
W’en we knows dat in ouah innards we is p’intly mad ez sin.
Oh dey ‘s times fu’ bein’ pleasant an’ fu’ goin’ smilin’ roun’,
‘Cause I don’t believe in people allus totin’ roun’ a frown,
But it’s easy ‘nough to titter w’en de stew is smokin’ hot,
But hit’s mighty ha’d to giggle w’en dey’s nuffin’ in de pot.
"A similar thing has happened in Russia as regards manual work. For ages, the rich and their sycophants have written in praise of ‘honest toil’, have praised the simple life, have professed a religion which teaches that the poor are much more likely to go to heaven than the rich, and in general have tried to make manual workers believe that there is some special nobility about altering the position of matter in space, just as men tried to make women believe that they derived some special nobility from their sexual enslavement. In Russia, all this teaching about the excellence of manual work has been taken seriously, with the result that the manual worker is more honored than anyone else. What are, in essence, revivalist appeals are made, but not for the old purposes: they are made to secure shock workers for special tasks. Manual work is the ideal which is held before the young, and is the basis of all ethical teaching."
—
Bertrand Russell In Praise of Idleness, 1932.
This passage reminded me, oddly enough, of Sarah Palin’s “good, small-town folk” rhetoric from the 2008 US Presidential election and this Op-Ed piece by Timothy Egan.
"The victory of the proletariat in Russia has some points in common with the victory of the feminists in some other countries. For ages, men had conceded the superior saintliness of women, and had consoled women for their inferiority by maintaining that saintliness is more desirable than power. At last the feminists decided that they would have both, since the pioneers among them believed all that the men had told them about the desirability of virtue, but not what they had told them about the worthlessness of political power."
—
Bertrand Russell In Praise of Idleness, 1932.
One of my favourite essayists, Dr. Russell was never shy of making a strong statement, generally logically deduced in the produced essay.
"One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers. The net result of the man’s economical habits is to increase the armed forces of the State to which he lends his savings. Obviously it would be better if he spent the money, even if he spent it in drink or gambling."
—
Bertrand Russell In Praise of Idleness, 1932.
One of my favourite essayists, Dr. Russell was never shy of making a strong statement, generally logically deduced in the produced essay.
