A History of Philosophy, Vol. VIII: Bentham to Russell

Summary

Bentham to Russell (1966) is the eighth volume of Frederick Copleston's A History of Philosophy. Having followed German thought from Fichte to Nietzsche in Volume VII, Copleston crosses the Channel and the Atlantic to trace British and American philosophy from the reforming utilitarians of the early nineteenth century to the analytic turn associated with G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. The book thus covers roughly a century in which English-speaking philosophy changed its allegiance three times. The first stage is empiricist and reforming. Jeremy Bentham's principle of utility, his calculus of pleasures and pains and his program of legal reform are set beside James Mill's associationist psychology. John Stuart Mill then receives extended treatment: his inductive logic and the methods of experimental inquiry in A System of Logic, his attempt to make utilitarianism humane by distinguishing higher and lower pleasures, and his defence of individual liberty. Copleston follows the empiricist line into the agnostics and positivists of the later century and into Herbert Spencer's ambitious evolutionary synthesis, with its doctrine of an Unknowable behind phenomena. The second stage is idealist. Copleston describes how German idealism, mediated by literary figures and by scholars such as J. H. Stirling and T. H. Green, gave British universities a new metaphysics and a new ethics of self-realization in the common good. F. H. Bradley's dialectic of appearance and reality and Bernard Bosanquet's absolute receive careful exposition, followed by the reaction of the personal idealists who wished to preserve the reality of finite selves. A shorter section on America centres on Josiah Royce's absolute idealism and his philosophy of loyalty. The third stage is pragmatist and American. Charles Sanders Peirce's theory of inquiry and his rule for clarifying the meaning of concepts by their conceivable practical effects, William James's broader pragmatism and his defence of the right to believe, F. C. S. Schiller's humanism and John Dewey's instrumentalism and philosophy of education are distinguished with care rather than lumped together. The last stage is the revolt against idealism: British and American realism, Moore's defence of common sense and his method of analysis, and three chapters on Russell's mathematical logic, his theory of descriptions and logical atomism, his changing theories of knowledge and his views on ethics and religion. An epilogue reflects on what the century had achieved, and an appendix treats John Henry Newman's account of belief, assent and the illative sense. Copleston had debated Russell on the existence of God over BBC radio in 1948, which makes the patience of the Russell chapters notable. Throughout he keeps his own estimates apart from the exposition, though as a Catholic philosopher he often presses the question of what each school can say about God, conscience and the moral law. The volume remains in copyright; this record describes it and links to editions for purchase.

Plot or Argument

• Bentham, the Mills and the reforming empiricists

  The principle of utility and legal reform in Bentham, James Mill's associationism, and John Stuart Mill's logic of induction, revised utilitarianism and defence of liberty.

• Agnostics, positivists and Spencer

  Later empiricist and positivist currents, the agnosticism provoked by evolutionary science, and Herbert Spencer's evolutionary system with its Unknowable.

• Idealism takes root in Britain

  The introduction of German idealism, T. H. Green's ethics of self-realization, Bradley's Appearance and Reality, Bosanquet's absolute and the personal idealists' defence of finite selves.

• Royce and American idealism

  The American idealist movement and Josiah Royce's absolute, his account of the individual and his ethics of loyalty, with personal idealism and other tendencies.

• Peirce, James, Schiller and Dewey

  Peirce's theory of inquiry and pragmatic maxim, James's pragmatism and right to believe, Schiller's humanism, and Dewey's experimentalism and educational theory.

• Moore, the realists and Russell

  British and American realism, Moore's common sense and analysis, and three chapters on Russell's logic, theory of knowledge and views on ethics and religion.

• Epilogue and the Newman appendix

  A retrospective on the philosophical century, and an appendix on Newman's Grammar of Assent, real and notional assent, the illative sense and the argument from conscience.

Characters

• Frederick Copleston, author and expositor

  Jesuit historian who here writes about a tradition he knew at first hand, including a living opponent in debate, Bertrand Russell.

• Jeremy Bentham, subject

  Legal reformer who made the greatest happiness the test of law and morals and tried to measure pleasures and pains.

• John Stuart Mill, principal subject

  Bentham's heir and critic, author of A System of Logic, Utilitarianism and On Liberty.

• Herbert Spencer, subject

  Evolutionary system-builder whose Synthetic Philosophy tried to unify the sciences under one law of development.

• F. H. Bradley, subject

  Oxford idealist whose Appearance and Reality argued that finite things are self-contradictory appearances of one absolute.

• Josiah Royce, subject

  Harvard idealist who joined an absolute mind to an ethics of loyalty to a community.

• Charles Sanders Peirce, subject

  Logician and scientist who formulated the pragmatic maxim for making ideas clear.

• William James, subject

  Psychologist and philosopher who popularized pragmatism and defended the will to believe.

• John Dewey, subject

  Instrumentalist philosopher whose theory of inquiry shaped American education.

• G. E. Moore, subject

  Cambridge philosopher of common sense and analysis whose 1903 papers helped break idealism's hold.

• Bertrand Russell, principal subject

  Logician of the theory of descriptions and logical atomism, and Copleston's opponent in the 1948 radio debate.

• John Henry Newman, subject of the appendix

  Oratorian and later cardinal whose Grammar of Assent analyses how people reach certainty in concrete matters.

Lessons

• Counting pleasures and weighing persons

  Copleston sets out Bentham's hope of reforming law by calculating pleasures and pains, and Mill's attempt to rescue the theory by ranking pleasures in quality. The chapters let students see both the moral seriousness of the reformers and the difficulty of deriving duty, justice and the dignity of the single person from the sum of happiness.

  • Why did Mill think Bentham's calculus needed a distinction between higher and lower pleasures?
  • Can Mill's ranking of pleasures be defended without appealing to something beyond pleasure?
  • Name a public policy argument you have heard that reasons in a utilitarian way. What does it leave out?

• The absolute and the finite self

  British idealism began partly as a moral protest against what Green and Bradley saw as the thin individualism of the utilitarians, offering an ethics of self-realization within a social whole. Yet Copleston shows that the absolute of Bradley and Bosanquet threatened to swallow the very persons it was meant to ennoble, which is why the personal idealists rebelled. Students can trace how a corrective can overshoot.

  • What did Green find lacking in the empiricist account of the self?
  • Why did personal idealists think Bradley's absolute left no room for real persons or a personal God?

• Truth, usefulness and belief

  Copleston carefully separates Peirce's rule for clarifying meaning from James's broader claim that true ideas are those that work, and from Dewey's instrumentalism. The distinction teaches students that a method for testing ideas is not the same as a definition of truth, and it frames James's argument that in some live, momentous choices we may believe before evidence compels us.

  • Why was Peirce unhappy with what James made of pragmatism?
  • Is James's will to believe a defence of faith or a weakening of it?
  • Can an idea be useful and still false?

• Answering an opponent you have debated

  Copleston and Russell argued about God on the BBC in 1948, yet the Russell chapters expound his logic, theory of knowledge and ethics at length and with evident respect before offering criticism. The book models how a Christian can give an adversary a full hearing without conceding the argument.

  • Where in the Russell chapters can you tell Copleston disagrees, and how does he signal it?
  • What would it look like to treat a classmate's opposing view as fairly?

• How ordinary people reach certainty

  The appendix on Newman closes the volume with a different kind of empiricism, attentive to how real people arrive at certainty through converging probabilities judged by the illative sense. Copleston presents it as a serious alternative to both Mill's logic and the idealist absolute, and as a philosophical account of religious belief that does not depend on demonstration alone.

  • What is the difference between notional and real assent?
  • Is it reasonable to be certain of something you cannot strictly prove?

Context

When the volume appeared in the mid-1960s, Oxford linguistic analysis and Cambridge logical analysis dominated British philosophy, and many students knew little of the idealists who had ruled the same universities sixty years earlier. Copleston's narrative recovers the century of debate out of which analysis emerged, and it treats American pragmatism as a tradition in its own right rather than a footnote.

Composition

Copleston wrote the volume while Professor of the History of Philosophy at Heythrop and lecturing each year at the Gregorian University in Rome. It was published by Burns and Oates in London in 1966; Image Books later issued it in two American paperback parts, and Continuum reissued it in 2003 as Utilitarianism to Early Analytic Philosophy. His own shorter book Contemporary Philosophy (1956) had already discussed logical positivism and existentialism.

Reception

Reviewers commended the volume's range and its fairness, especially in the chapters on Russell and on the idealists, who were then out of fashion. Later scholarship on Peirce, on British idealism and on early analytic philosophy has expanded considerably, and specialists now draw on manuscript sources unavailable to Copleston, but the book remains a widely used orientation for students.

Comparisons

• Utilitarianism

  Mill's essay is the text behind Copleston's discussion of higher and lower pleasures and of the proof of the principle of utility, which Copleston examines step by step.

• On Liberty

  Copleston places Mill's harm principle within his revised utilitarianism and asks whether liberty is valued for its consequences or for its own sake.

• A System of Logic, Book III: Of Induction

  Book III of the Logic contains the methods of agreement, difference and concomitant variation that Copleston expounds in his chapter on Mill's empiricism.

• Illustrations of the Logic of Science

  These essays, including 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear', are the source of the pragmatic maxim that Copleston carefully distinguishes from James's use of it.

• Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

  James's 1907 lectures give the popular form of pragmatism that Copleston contrasts with Peirce's more logical version and with Schiller's humanism.

• Experience and Education

  Dewey's late restatement of progressive education illustrates the instrumentalist theory of inquiry described in Copleston's Dewey chapter.

• The Problems of Philosophy

  Russell's 1912 introduction to the theory of knowledge, with its sense-data and knowledge by acquaintance, is a main source for Copleston's chapter on Russell's epistemology.

• Apologia Pro Vita Sua

  The appendix concerns Newman's Grammar of Assent rather than the Apologia, but the autobiography shows the converging probabilities of the later book at work in Newman's own path to Rome.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The shift in what counts as the good: pleasure for Bentham, quality of pleasure for Mill, self-realization for Green, and growth for Dewey.
• How each school answers the question 'What is truth?': correspondence for the realists, coherence for the idealists, satisfactory working for James.
• The place of God in each system, from Spencer's Unknowable and Bradley's absolute to James's finite God and Russell's unbelief.
• Where Copleston distinguishes thinkers usually grouped together, especially Peirce and James, and Moore and Russell.
• The Newman appendix. Ask why Copleston ends a book about empiricists, idealists and analysts with a Victorian churchman's account of belief.

Key terms and names

Principle of utility

Bentham's rule that actions and laws are right in proportion as they tend to increase the happiness of those affected.

Higher pleasures

Mill's claim that pleasures of the intellect and moral feeling are superior in kind, as judged by those acquainted with both.

Self-realization

The ethical ideal of Green and Bradley, in which a person becomes himself by taking his station and duties in a moral community.

Pragmatic maxim

Peirce's rule that our conception of an object is clarified by considering the practical effects we conceive it to have.

Theory of descriptions

Russell's analysis of phrases like 'the present King of France' that shows how they can be meaningful without naming anything.

Common sense realism

Moore's defence of ordinary certainties, such as the existence of material things and other minds, against idealist doubt.

Illative sense

Newman's name for the judgment by which a mind reaches certitude from many converging probabilities.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What reforms of law and punishment did Bentham hope the principle of utility would produce?
2. Comprehension How does Bradley argue that relations make finite things into appearances rather than ultimate realities?
3. Interpretation Why does Copleston treat Peirce, James and Dewey as three distinct versions of pragmatism rather than one doctrine?
4. Interpretation What did Moore's defence of common sense take away from the idealists, and what did it leave unexplained?
5. Interpretation How does Newman's account of assent challenge Mill's view of reasoning from experience?
6. Big Question If an idea makes people happier or more productive, does that make it true?
7. Big Question Should a Christian student read Russell's criticisms of religion, and if so, how?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 22:37–40 (Scripture)

  The two great commandments ground love of neighbour in love of God, a contrast with the utilitarian attempt, set out in Copleston's opening chapters, to ground benevolence in a sum of pleasures.

• 1 Peter 3:15 (Scripture)

  Copleston's readiness to debate Russell on the radio and then to expound him fairly in print is one historical example of giving a reason for hope with gentleness and respect.

• John Henry Newman, Grammar of Assent (Great Conversation)

  The appendix shows a Catholic thinker meeting the empiricists on their own ground, analysing belief as it actually occurs, and so gives students a model for engaging rather than ignoring the philosophers of this volume.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Copleston narrates English-speaking philosophy from 1789 to the early twentieth century as a sequence of reactions: idealism against utilitarian empiricism, pragmatism against both abstract systems, and realism and analysis against idealism, with each movement exposing a weakness in its predecessor.

Rhetorical device: distinction of near neighbours. Rather than treating pragmatism as one theory, Copleston separates Peirce's logical maxim, James's theory of truth and belief, Schiller's humanism and Dewey's instrumentalism, showing where each would reject the others' formulations.

Debate: Resolved: The pragmatist test of truth by consequences is sound.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Following Copleston, explain why Moore and Russell turned against British idealism around 1900, and argue whether their revolt was a gain or a loss for philosophy's ability to speak about God and the soul.

Comparison with Utilitarianism: Read chapter 4 of Mill's Utilitarianism, on the proof of the principle, alongside Copleston's discussion of it. Identify the step Copleston thinks fails and decide whether you agree.

Medical Lens

The volume touches the history of psychology at several points: the associationist psychology of James Mill and his successors, Spencer's evolutionary account of mind, and William James, who trained in medicine and wrote The Principles of Psychology (1890) before turning chiefly to philosophy. Copleston treats these as philosophy of mind rather than as medicine, so the book is useful mainly as context for readers of James or Mill. Any discussion of Mill's well-known mental crisis should be drawn from Mill's Autobiography, not attributed to this volume without checking.

• Chapters on the utilitarian movement, James Mill section

  Exposition of James Mill's associationist psychology, in which complex mental states are built from associated sensations and ideas, an important stage in the history of empirical psychology.

  Psychology Unconscious Mind Body
• Chapter on William James and F. C. S. Schiller

  Account of James's radical empiricism and his view of consciousness as a stream of experience rather than an entity, background to his psychology and to his writings on religious experience.

  Psychology Unconscious
• Appendix on John Henry Newman

  Newman's analysis of how the mind moves from probabilities to certitude, relevant to the psychology of belief and conviction.

  Philosophy AS Therapy

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation that might have followed the 1948 broadcast, with Copleston and Russell discussing not God but Mill's proof of utility. Keep each man's arguments consistent with this volume's account of their views.

• Classroom

  Hold a 'philosophers' congress' of 1905: students represent Bradley, James, Moore, Russell and Dewey, each presenting in three minutes what truth is, based on Copleston's chapters, and then questioning one another.

• Essay

  Using Copleston's chapters on Bentham and Mill, write an essay on whether the principle of utility can protect an innocent person whom the majority would gain by sacrificing.

Further Reading

• Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill

• Appearance and Reality, F. H. Bradley

• Pragmatism, William James

• The Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell

• An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, John Henry Newman

• Principia Ethica, G. E. Moore

• Contemporary Philosophy, Frederick Copleston

  Copleston's 1956 studies of logical positivism and existentialism, which continue the story beyond this volume.