The New York Review of Books - USA (2021-03-25)

March 25, 2021 37

Rée goes on to examine the rise of
a new style of English philosophizing
developed by James Mill, an ordained
minister of the Church of Scotland who
rejected the Christian faith and in 1802
moved to London, where he became a
writer and editor. After meeting the
philosopher and legal reformer Jeremy
Bentham, Mill became a promoter of
the resolutely secular moral philoso-
phy of utilitarianism, which Bentham
had founded. But it was his son John
Stuart Mill who became notorious as
an enemy of the Christian religion.
Writing in On Liberty (1859), the
younger Mill defended “Pagan self-
assertion” over “Christian self- denial,”
while at the same time accusing Chris-
tian morality of being “essentially
selfish” because it promised rewards
for virtue in a future life. Rée cites
the poet and novelist Thomas Hardy,
who was studying architecture in Lon-
don at the time Mill’s book was pub-
lished, as recalling that “‘we students
of that date’ knew On Liberty ‘almost
by heart.’”

Full of color and arresting detail, this
is a rich account of the variety of An-
glophone philosophy during the period
discussed. What is unclear throughout,
however, is why some figures are in-
cluded and others omitted. The only
programmatic statements Rée makes
on the objectives and methods of his
book concern the affinities of philoso-
phy with the arts and the need to avoid
the view that the subject culminates in
some grand system. But he does not
tell us how philosophies might be com-
pared aesthetically, or why rejecting

grand systems means denying that phi-

losophers have struggled with similar

questions for centuries.

Some questions do in fact recur in

Rée’s account, chiefly concerning the

connections between philosophy and

religion, but are not pursued. Locke’s

concern with personal identity is

echoed in Rée’s discussion of Hume

and James, for example, but the Cam-

bridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick,

now widely recognized as having

probed into the foundations of ethics

more deeply than any other nineteenth-

century English- speaking philosopher,

is not mentioned. Sidgwick questioned

personal identity, both as a psycholog-

ical fact and as an element in morality,

arguing that the true dichotomy in eth-

ics is not between pursuing long- term

self- interest and serving universal good

but between the latter and pursuing the

immediate satisfaction of one’s desires.

If this is so, it is a profound contribution

to philosophical inquiry. It is puzzling,

then, that Sidgwick does not appear in

Witcraft.

The explanation must be Rée’s rejec-

tion of a thematic history of philosophy.

Rather than trace a range of recurring

questions, he insists that philosophers

have been engaged in disrupting the

discourse of their time and place. The

work of Friedrich Nietzsche, which Rée

considers by way of its influence on

semi- forgotten writers in English such

as the theorist of “degeneration” Max

Nordau and the sexologist Havelock

Ellis, fits that description. But philos-

ophers who thought of themselves as

disrupting prevailing ways of thinking

and speaking had different views of

why they did so. Nietzsche believed he

was promoting a revolutionary shift in

human values, whereas Wittgenstein

more modestly claimed only to be free-

ing thinking from the undue influence

of past philosophies. Rée does not spell

out his own view of the purposes served

by the disruptive inquiry he thinks is

central to philosophy.

On top of lacking any clear criteria

for examining some philosophers and

not others, Rée’s nonthematic history

can blunt perception of the philoso-

phers who are selected for inclusion.

Rightly, he features Bertrand Russell

as one of the last century’s most in-

teresting and influential philosophers.

But he says little of Russell’s deep en-

gagement with mysticism in the period

leading up to his encounter with Witt-

genstein. Not only did Russell produce

the well- known volume of essays Mys-

ticism and Logic (1914), cited in pass-

ing by Rée; he wrote an unpublished

short novel, The Perplexities of John

Forstice (1912), clearly autobiographi-

cal in inspiration, about the search for

mystical illumination. Perhaps more

damagingly, Rée omits to consider how

Russell’s views on ethics changed fun-

damentally as he turned away from this

quest.

Under the influence of G. E. Moore,

Russell had come to regard mathemat-

ics as Plato did: as a discipline dealing

with timeless realities. In Rée’s de-

scription of Russell’s view, the study

of mathematics “liberates its votaries

from ‘real life,’ ‘human passions’ and

‘the pitiful facts of nature’ and leads

them into a realm of ‘pure reason.’”

Also under Moore’s influence, Russell

viewed ethics in a Platonic fashion, as

being concerned with “non- natural

qualities” of goodness and rightness

that exist independently of human judg-

ment. However, Russell was persuaded

by the Spanish- American philosopher

George Santayana, who, commenting

on Russell’s “new scholasticism” in

Winds of Doctrine (1913), wrote that

values were not timeless Platonic ver-

ities but the needs and wants of living

organisms, and in that sense subjective.

This was a reversal on a question that

had occupied philosophers since the

late fifth century BC, when Socrates re-

jected arguments, put forth by Callicles

and Thrasymachus in Plato’s dialogues,

that morality serves self- interest and is

ultimately a matter of subjective pref-

erence. But Rée does not discuss Rus-

sell’s change of mind, and Santayana

does not appear in the book.

A nonthematic history of philosophy

is hard to sustain. Philosophers—not

only in Western traditions, but wher-

ever the questions with which they deal

have been asked—have nearly always

presented their answers by referenc-

ing other philosophers. Rée is resistant

to the idea of perennial philosophical

questions because he associates it with

the Hegelian notion that philosophers

are architects engaged in the construc-

tion of a grand edifice of ideas. But

one can recognize enduring questions

in philosophy without thinking they

are ever conclusively resolved. Hegel’s

beautifully constructed building is a

systematically misleading ideal. Yet

without some recognition of philoso-

phy as having a definite subject matter,

a history of the subject can only resem-

ble a folly, full of unexpected doors

and labyrinthine passageways, leading

nowhere. Q

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