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Bertrand Russell, His Views on Ancient Philosophy and Critical Reaction on Them in Poland
In August 17-18th T. Mróz took part in the sixth annual History of Analytic Philosophy Workshop organised by Tilburg Center for Moral Philosophy, Epistemology and
Philosophy of Science. This year’s meeting was devoted to Global Reception of Russell’s Scientific Philosophy.
T. Mróz’s paper was prepared in co-operation with Paweł Polak (The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków), who presented his part in an on-line form. The title of their presentation was The Early Reception of Russell’s Philosophy among Polish Philosophers – a Diversity of Perspectives. P. Polak focused in particular on reception of Russell’s ideas among the representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School, while T. Mróz discussed two cases of reception of Russell’s History of Western Philosophy (1945) among Polish historians of philosophy, and some other issues, e.g. the censorship of Russell’s texts in Poland.
What matters here is ancient philosophy. The first Polish critic of Russell’s History was Wincenty Lutosławski (1863-1954), who expressed his views on Russell’s Plato in a letter (Lutosławski’s draft on the left) to the author (a paper in “Russell” on the letters between the two philosophers has been announced here). Despite the differences between them, Lutosławski declared in his letter: “Your History proves that we agree in our esteem of Plato”. Moreover, he praised Russell, “In your six chapters on him [=Plato] I did not discover a single error and I agree with everything you say”. In fact, both authors set themselves different goals in discussing Plato and this resulted in disparate methods in their presentations of Platonism, yet Lutosławski’s opinion was so important for Russell that he passed it immediately to his publisher.
Marian Heitzman (1899-1964) was not a philosopher of a similar recognition to Lutosławski, he was an expert in Renaissance philosophy and in F. Bacon. His views on Russell’s History were published as an extensive review study in the oldest Polish philosophical journal „Philosophical Review” [Przegląd Filozoficzny]. His general opinion on Russell’s book was the following: “it is worth to read the book and it is worth to have it on a bookshelf, but it cannot be recommended as a handbook or a synthetic study of the history of philosophy”. He appreciated Russell’s style and his „humour coloured by a bit of Volterian scepticism”. His focus was Renaissance philosophy, but he remarked on many deficiences in Russell’s chapters on ancient topics. For example, the missing or too shortly discussed subjects, according to Heitzman, included Gorgias, Zeno and the logic of the Stoics. Although Russell intended to emphasise issues in political and social philosophies, in Heitzman’s eyes he missed the cosmopolitanism of the Cynics and misrepresented the problem of the Sophists and democracy. Finally, Russell aimed to present various philosophers as the effects of their social conditions, but he failed to illustrate this with Antisthenes of Athens (not an Athenian citizen) and his philosophy of cynicism.
Lutosławski on Russell’s Plato
A paper by Tomasz Mróz titled Letters of Bertrand Russell and Wincenty Lutosławski on Immortality, Matter and Plato was published in “Russell. The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies” (1, vol. 40, 2020, pp. 27-42; DOI: https://doi.org/10.15173/russell.v40i1.4417).
The paper presents letters between Wincenty Lutosławski and Bertrand Russell, but what seems to be the most interesting regarding AΦR are the post-war letters on Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, for despite their different philosophical positions, Lutosławski’s opinion on this work as a whole was favourable, in particular the chapters on Plato. Such an assessment was the exception rather than the rule for that book, and knowing Lutosławski’s general recognition in Platonic studies, Russell forwarded the letter to his publisher.
Full text can be downloaded here, from the journal’s website.
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