Bertrand Russell

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Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell (May 18, 1872 - February 2,1970), the third Earl Russell, was a philosopher and influential logician, an important political liberal, activist and a popularizer of philosophy. Millions looked up to Russell as a sort of prophet of the creative and rational life; at the same time, his stance on many topics was extremely controversial. He was born in 1872, at the height of Britain's economic and political ascendancy, and died, of influenza, in 1970 when Britain's empire had all but vanished and her power had been drained in two victorious but debilitating world wars. At his death, however, his voice still carried moral authority, for he was one of the world's most influential critics of nuclear weapons and the American war in Vietnam.

In 1950, Russell was made Nobel Laureate in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".

Russell's philosophical and logical work

In mathematical logic, Russell established Russell's paradox, which exposed an inconsistency in naive set theory and led directly to the creation of modern axiomatic set theory. He defended logicism (the view that mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic) by creating, with Alfred North Whitehead, the Principia Mathematica, a clean axiomatic system on which all of mathematics can be built, but which was never fully completed.

His "theory of descriptions" is illustrated by the phrase "the present King of France".

Russell is generally recognized as one of the founders of analytic philosophy. His most influential contributions include his theories of definite descriptions and logical atomism. Wittgenstein was his student, but he disagreed with Wittgenstein's later linguistic approach to philosophy.


Russell's activism

Russell was an outspoken pacifist. He opposed England's participation in World War I and as a result was first fined, then lost his professorship at Trinity College of Cambridge University and later imprisoned for six months. In the years leading to World War II, he supported the policy of appeasement, but later acknowledged that Hitler had to be defeated.

Russell called his stance "Relative Pacifisim" -- he held that war was always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances (such as when when Hitler threatened to take over Europe) it might be a lesser of multiple evils.

On November 20, 1948, in a public speech at Westminster School, addressing a gathering arranged by a peace-loving foundation, Russell shocked most of his listeners by advocating a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. Russell argued that war between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed inevitable, so it would be a humanitarian gesture, to get it over with quickly. Currently, Russell argued, humanity could survive such a war, whereas a full nuclear war after both sides had manufactured large stockpiles of more destructive weapons was likely to result in the extinction of the human race. Russell later relented from this stance, instead arguing for mutual disarmament by the nuclear powers.

Starting in the 1950s, Russell became a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons, released a manifesto together with Albert Einstein and organized several conferences. In 1961, he was imprisoned for a week in connection with his nuclear disarmament protests. He opposed the Vietnam War and along with Jean-Paul Sartre organized a tribunal intended to expose American war crimes.

Russell wrote against Victorian notions of morality. His early writings expressed his opinion that sex between a man and woman who are not married to each other is not necessarily immoral if they truly love one another. This might not seem extreme by today's standards, but it was enough to raise vigorous protests and denunciations against him during his first visit to the United States. (Russell's private life was rather more hedonistic than his published writings revealed, but that was not yet well known at the time.)

He was an early critic of the official story in the John F. Kennedy assassination; his "16 Questions on the Assassination" from 1964 is still considered a good summary of the apparent inconsistancies in that case.

In matters of religion, Russell classified himself as a philosphical agnostic and a practical atheist. He wrote that his attitude towards the Christian God was the same as his attitude towards the Greek gods: strongly convinced that they don't exist, but not able to rigorously prove it. His position is explained in the essays Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? and Why I am not a Christian.

Politically he envisioned a kind of benevolent democratic socialism. He was extremely critical of the totalitarianism exhibited by Stalin's regime.

Russell's life

Russell's mother died when he was 2, his father died when he was 4. He was raised by his grandparents.

Russell first met the American Quaker, Alys Pearsall Smith, when he was seventeen years old. Russell fell in love with the puritanical, high-minded Alys, and married her in December 1894. Their marriage was ended by separation in 1911.

Russell studied philosphy and logic at Cambridge University, starting in 1890. He joined the faculty of Trinity College in 1908. In 1920, Russell travelled to Russia and subsequently lectured in Peking on philosophy for one year.

In 1921, after Russell had lost his professorship, he divorced Alys and married Dora Russell. Their children were John Russell and Katharine Russell. Russell supported himself during this time by writing popular books explaining matters of physics, ethics and education to the layman. Together with Dora, he founded the experimental Beacon Hill school in 1927.

After Russell's marriage to Dora broke up, in 1936 he took as his third wife an attractive Oxford undergraduate, Patricia ("Peter") Spence. She had been his children's governess in the summer of 1930.

In the spring of 1939, Russell moved to Santa Barbara to lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was appointed professor at the City College of New York shortly thereafter, but after public outcries, the appointment was annulled by the courts: his radical opinions made him "morally unfit" to teach at the college. He returned to Britain in 1944 and rejoined the faculty of Trinity College.

In 1952, Russell divorced Peter and married his fourth wife, Edith (Finch). They had known each other since 1925. Edith had lectured in English at Bryn Mawr College, near Philadelphia.

Russell wrote his three volume autobiography in the late 1960s and died in 1970 in Wales. He is buried in ???.

Further reading

Quotes

  • "Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education."
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