Russell's History was great, and I read it all the way through. One problem I had with it was that when a philosophy was very much to his disliking, he tended to be a bit dismissive, which, in terms of a strong polemic is good. However in a History of Philosophy, one should actually seek to represent not only one's own views but ones one strongly disagrees with, and to represent those views, as best as one can, in the way one thinks the originator would have wanted them to be represented. I mean, for instance, I could write a History of Christianity and start by saying, "The now discredited and superstitous silliness of this long folly should be looked at." But that would be not so much a History as an essay.

Russell was fond of saying stuff like, "Philosopher Smith, whose ideas barely deserve repeating, have long since failed to be taken seriously by any credibly analytic minds. We now know his primary assertions to be false." Now it may be true that the Philosopher in question is wrong, but still, how is that a historical report?

All that being said, the subject Russell does cover fairly, he covers with brilliance and excellence and with his usual incisive and stunning intellect. And it does bear mentioning again what a fabulous sense of humor he had, such that even when he reports on an ideology inacurrately, it can still be fun as hell.

Oddly, the most objective History of Philosophy I've ever read, and it's a big one, is Frederick Copleston's. It's a nine volume thing, about 4,000 pages in all, but it's also a blast. Plus, there was lots of remedial stuff that, even after I got by B.A. in Philosophy, I really didn't have a handle on, and I feel that Copleston is really great refresher training as well. Ironically, for Russell, Copleston was an Orthodox Catholic, almost personally a Fundamentalist, and so it is odd, even bizarre that such a source, which would seemingly be the most unobjective, really does a wondrous job.

And on people Copleston disagrees with, he does so with a phenominal fairness. In fact, the people he disagrees with, you can tell he made an extra effort to be very careful to represent those views as the people putting them forward really intended.

So, although I am a die-hard Agnostic who believes that Copleston's Catholic Orthodoxy is pure silliness, amazingly, I must say that his ability to portray other philosophers in a way that is true to those philosphers in question, is almost uncanny, really sheer genius. That being said, probably Russell had a higher I.Q., and that may have gotten in his way with his particular History project. I've noticed that people who are too intelligent also sometimes have issues with patience and this affets their attention span. One needs to be a bit slower and not quite as stunningly quick in order to have the patience to plod very carefully through, and to carefully represent in deep detail, ideas which one personally feels are silly.

Hence, virtually none of my friends who border on having IQs over 140 or so, can actually stand to listen to stupid stuff. And this is their great defect, because then they lose track of what the ideas are that people who are allegedly stupid have, and hence their arguments end up dismissive and shallow rather that actually systematic. Hence, I pitch here for those of us with IQs around 130, just smart enough to grasp the ideas in question, but not smart enough to get them too quickly, and thus we sympathize with others that might not get them quickly, and so we tend to describe them slowly and cautiously.