Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell om frs (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was born in Wales, but spent most of his life in England. He worked mostly in the 20th century. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950.

Bertrand Russell OM FRS
Bertrand Russell in 1936
Born	Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-05-18)18 May 1872 Trellech, Wales, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Died	2 February 1970(1970-02-02) (aged 97) Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales, UK
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy Empiricism Humanism Liberalism Logical atomism Socialism Utilitarianism
Main interests	Axioms, epistemology, ethics, logic, mathematics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science

Bertrand Russell wrote many books and articles. He also tried to make philosophy popular. He gave his opinion on many topics. He wrote the essay, "On Denoting", which has been described as one of the most influential essays in philosophy in the 20th Century. He wrote on very serious issues as well as everyday things.

He was a well known liberal as well as a socialist and anti-war activist for most of his long life. Millions looked up to Russell as a prophet of the creative and rational life. At the same time, his stances on many topics were extremely controversial. From 1931 until his death, he was a member of the House of Lords.

Personal life

Born at the height of Britain's economic and political ascendancy, he died of influenza nearly a century later when the British Empire had all but vanished, its power dissipated in two victorious, but debilitating world wars. Russell's voice carried enormous moral authority, even into his early 90s. Russell supported nuclear disarmament a lot, but did not support the American war in Vietnam even when it was popular.

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

Early life and family

Russell was born at Ravenscroft, a country house in Trellech, Wales. His parents were Viscount and Viscountess Amberley. They were quite modern for their time and believed in things like birth control, which many people found shocking. His father even asked the famous philosopher John Stuart Mill to be Russell's godfather. Mill died shortly after Russell was born, but his ideas influenced Russell later.

Russell's grandfather, Lord John Russell, was twice the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the 1840s and 1860s. The Russell family had been important in England for hundreds of years, playing a part in major historical events like the Glorious Revolution.

Russell's mother's family, the Stanleys of Alderley, were also influential. His grandmother, Lady Stanley of Alderley, was a strong supporter of women's education.

Childhood and growing up

Tragedy struck Russell's family early. His mother and younger sister died from diphtheria in 1874. His father died of bronchitis in 1876 after a long period of sadness. This left Bertrand and his older brother, Frank, to be raised by their grandparents at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park.

His grandfather died in 1878. His grandmother, Countess Russell, became the main figure in his life. She was religious but also had progressive ideas, like supporting Darwinism and Irish Home Rule. Her favorite Bible verse, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil," became very important to Russell. The house was strict and formal, and Russell learned to hide his feelings.

Russell felt lonely as a teenager and even thought about ending his life. He said that nature, books, and especially mathematics saved him. When he was eleven, his brother showed him the work of Euclid, which Russell called "one of the great events of my life." He also loved the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

As he got older, Russell began to question religious ideas. By age 18, after reading John Stuart Mill's autobiography, he became an atheist, meaning he did not believe in God.

In 1890, he traveled to Paris and saw the Eiffel Tower soon after it was finished.

Education

Russell went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1890 to study mathematics. He was very good at it and also studied philosophy. He became friends with other important thinkers like George Edward Moore and Alfred North Whitehead. He finished his math studies in 1893 and became a Fellow in philosophy in 1895.

Early work

In 1896, Russell published his first book, German Social Democracy, showing his interest in politics. He also taught at the London School of Economics.

He then started to study the basic ideas of mathematics. In 1897, he wrote a book about the foundations of geometry. In 1900, he met Italian mathematicians who were working on set theory. Russell was very impressed by their ideas and later discovered "Russell's paradox," a problem in set theory. In 1903, he published The Principles of Mathematics, where he argued that mathematics and logic are closely related.

In 1901, Russell had a powerful experience he called a "mystic illumination" after seeing the suffering of a friend's wife. This made him want to find a philosophy that could make human life bearable.

In 1905, he wrote a famous essay called "On Denoting." In 1908, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a very important scientific group.

From 1910 to 1913, he worked with Alfred North Whitehead to write Principia Mathematica, a three-volume book that made Russell famous in his field.

In 1907, he tried to become a Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party but was not elected.

In 1910, he became a lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. He taught Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian student who later became a very important philosopher. Russell saw Wittgenstein as someone who could continue his work on logic.

First World War

During World War I, Russell was one of the few people who actively spoke out against the war. Because of this, Trinity College fired him in 1916. He said this was wrong and went against free speech. He also supported Eric Chappelow, a poet who was jailed for refusing to fight.

In June 1917, Russell spoke at the Leeds Convention, a meeting of many "anti-war socialists." He received a great cheer from the crowd.

In 1916, Russell was fined £100 for his anti-war activities. He refused to pay, hoping to be sent to prison, but his books were sold to raise the money. Friends bought them back for him.

In 1918, he was sent to Brixton Prison for six months for speaking publicly against the United States joining the war. He later said he found prison quite bearable.

Russell was allowed to return to Trinity College in 1919 but resigned in 1920. He lectured there again in 1926 and was a Fellow from 1944 to 1949.

Between the wars

In August 1920, Russell went to Soviet Russia as part of a British government group to see the effects of the Russian Revolution. He met Vladimir Lenin but was not impressed by him. His experiences made him lose his earlier support for the revolution. He wrote a book about his trip called The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism. His girlfriend, Dora Black, also visited Russia at the same time and was much more positive about the revolution than he was.

The next year, Russell and Dora went to Peking (now Beijing) in China, where he lectured on philosophy. He was hopeful about China's future. He became very sick with pneumonia there, and newspapers in Japan wrongly reported that he had died.

Russell supported his family by writing popular books about science, ethics, and education.

From 1922 to 1927, Russell and Dora lived in London and Cornwall. He ran for Parliament twice in the 1922 and 1923 elections as a Labour Party candidate but did not win.

After his children were born, Russell became very interested in education. In 1927, he and Dora started an experimental school called Beacon Hill School. He wrote a book called On Education, Especially in Early Childhood. Dora continued to run the school after Russell left in 1932.

Russell's marriage to Dora ended because she had children with another man. They divorced, and in 1936, Russell married his third wife, Patricia Spence, who had been his children's governess. They had one son, Conrad.

In 1931, when his older brother Frank died, Russell became the 3rd Earl Russell.

In the 1930s, Russell became good friends with V. K. Krishna Menon, who was working for India's independence. Russell led the India League from 1932 to 1939.

Second World War

Russell's views on war changed over time. Before World War II, he was against fighting Nazi Germany. In 1937, he even wrote that if Germans invaded England, they should be treated as visitors. However, in 1940, he changed his mind, realizing that Adolf Hitler taking over Europe would be a threat to democracy. By 1943, he believed that war could sometimes be the lesser of two evils.

Before the war, Russell taught at the University of Chicago and UCLA. In 1940, he was offered a job at the City College of New York (CCNY), but a public uproar about his views on sexual morality led to the job being taken away. Many thinkers, including John Dewey and Albert Einstein, supported Russell and protested the decision. Russell then lectured at the Barnes Foundation, and these lectures became the basis for his book A History of Western Philosophy. In 1944, he returned to Trinity College.

Later life

By the 1940s, Russell was well-known beyond academic circles and appeared on BBC radio often. In 1948, he was one of 24 survivors of a plane crash in Norway. He joked that smoking saved his life because the people who drowned were in the non-smoking part of the plane. A History of Western Philosophy(1945) sold very well and provided him with money for the rest of his life.

In 1942, Russell supported a moderate kind of socialism. In 1943, he also supported Zionism, believing that Jews needed their own country.

After the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Russell wrote and spoke about the dangers of nuclear weapons. He initially argued that it might be justified to go to war against the USSR using atomic bombs while the United States was the only country that had them, to prevent a future, more destructive war. However, after the USSR developed its own atomic bomb in 1949, Russell strongly argued for getting rid of all atomic weapons.

In 1948, Russell gave the first "Reith Lectures" on the BBC, a series of talks that are still broadcast today. He talked about the role of individuals in society and the role of government.

In 1949, he received the Order of Merit from King George VI, and in 1950, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 1952, Russell divorced his third wife, Patricia, and soon after married his fourth wife, Edith Finch. Their marriage was very happy and loving, and Edith stayed with him until he died.

Russell remained politically active. In 1962, he played a public role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, exchanging telegrams with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy to try to prevent war.

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Russell questioned the official story and helped form a committee to investigate. He also wrote articles criticizing the official findings.

Final Years and Death In 1955, Russell moved to Plas Penrhyn in Wales, which became his main home.

He published his three-volume autobiography between 1967 and 1969. In 1967, he appeared in a Hindi anti-war film called Aman, his only acting role.

Even in his late 90s, Russell continued to speak out on political issues. In 1969, he protested against show trials in Czechoslovakia and the expulsion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the Soviet Union of Writers.

His final political statement, issued on January 31, 1970, condemned "Israel's aggression in the Middle East." This statement was read at a conference in Cairo the day after he died.

Bertrand Russell died of influenza on February 2, 1970, at his home in Wales, at the age of 97. His body was cremated without a religious ceremony, and his ashes were scattered over the Welsh mountains.

His daughter, Lady Katharine Jane Tait, started the Bertrand Russell Society in 1974 to keep his work and ideas alive. The society publishes a bulletin and holds meetings.

In 2022, to celebrate 150 years since his birth, McMaster University's Bertrand Russell Archive held an exhibition about his anti-nuclear work, and the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation held a commemoration in London.

Bangladesh's first leader, Mujibur Rahman, even named his youngest son Sheikh Russel in honor of Bertrand Russell.

Beliefs

In his 1949 speech, "Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?", Russell expressed his difficulty over whether to call himself an atheist or an agnostic:

As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

— Bertrand Russell, Collected Papers, vol. 11, p. 91

In Russel's book The Impact of Science on Society he wrote:

I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology. Mass psychology is, scientifically speaking, not a very advanced study, and so far its professors have not been in universities: they have been advertisers, politicians, and, above all, dictators. This study is immensely useful to practical men, whether they wish to become rich or to acquire the government. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called "education." Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part...

What people said about Russell

As a man

"Bertrand Russell would not have wished to be called a saint of any description; but he was a great and good man."

— A.J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell, NY: Viking Press, 1972.

As a philosopher

"It is difficult to overstate the extent to which Russell's thought dominated twentieth century analytic philosophy: virtually every strand in its development either originated with him or was transformed by being transmitted through him. Analytic philosophy itself owes its existence more to Russell than to any other philosopher."

— Nicholas Griffin, The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

As a writer and his place in history

"Russell's prose has been compared by T.S. Eliot to that of David Hume's. I would rank it higher, for it had more color, juice, and humor. But to be lucid, exciting and profound in the main body of one's work is a combination of virtues given to few philosophers. Bertrand Russell has achieved immortality by his philosophical writings."

— Sidney Hook, Out of Step, An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century, NY: Carol & Graff, 1988.

"Russell's books should be bound in two colours, those dealing with mathematical logic in red — and all students of philosophy should read them; those dealing with ethics and politics in blue — and no one should be allowed to read them."

— Ludwig Wittgenstein quoted in Rush Rhees, Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford Paperbacks, 1984.

As a mathematician and logician

Of the Principia: "...its enduring value was simply a deeper understanding of the central concepts of mathematics and their basic laws and interrelationships. Their total translatability into just elementary logic and a simple familiar two-place predicate, membership, is of itself a philosophical sensation."

— W.V. Quine, From Stimulus to Science, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

As an activist

"Oh, Bertrand Russell! Oh, Hewlett Johnson! Where, oh where, was your flaming conscience at that time?"

— Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Harper & Row, 1974.

As a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature

In other words, it was specifically not for his incontestably great contributions to philosophy — The Principles of Mathematics, 'On Denoting' and Principia Mathematica — that he was being honoured, but for the later work that his fellow philosophers were unanimous in regarding as inferior.

— Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell, The Ghost of Madness, p. 332.

From a daughter

"He was the most fascinating man I have ever known, the only man I ever loved, the greatest man I shall ever meet, the wittiest, the gayest, the most charming. It was a privilege to know him, and I thank God he was my father."

— Katharine Tait, My Father Bertrand Russell, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975, p. 202.

Quotations

• "War does not determine who is right. Only who is left." (Often attributed to Russell, but no sources exist.)^[1]
• "The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible." (Source: Alan Wood, Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic, 1957)
• "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." (Source?)
• "You could tell by his [Aldous Huxley] conversation which volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica he'd been reading. One day it would be Alps, Andes and Apennines, and the next it would be the Himalayas and the Hippocratic Oath." (Source: Parris, M., Scorn: With Added Vitriol, London: Penguin, 1996, quoting Russell's 1963 letter to Ronald W. Clark)
• "A Tale of Two Moralities" "I dislike Nietzsche," Russell wrote, "because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he erects conceit into a duty, because the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die." (Source: History of Western Philosophy, chap. on Nietzsche, last par.)

Further reading

Selected bibliography of Russell's books

This is a selected bibliography of Russell's books in English sorted by year of first publication.

• 1896, German Social Democracy, London: Longmans, Green.
• 1897, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, Cambridge: At the University Press.
• 1900, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, Cambridge: At the University Press.
• 1903, The Principles of Mathematics, Cambridge: At the University Press.
• 1910, Philosophical Essays, London: Longmans, Green.
• 1910 – 1913, Principia Mathematica (with Alfred North Whitehead), 3 vols., Cambridge: At the University Press.
• 1912, The Problems of Philosophy, London: Williams and Norgate.
• 1914, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy, Chicago and London: Open Court Publishing.
• 1916, Principles of Social Reconstruction, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1916, Justice in War-time, Chicago: Open Court.
• 1917, Political Ideals, New York: The Century Co.
• 1918, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, London: Longmans, Green.
• 1918, Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1919, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1920, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, London: George Allen & Unwin
• 1921, The Analysis of Mind, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1922, The Problem of China, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1923, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (in collaboration with Dora Russell), London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1923, The ABC of Atoms, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• 1924, Icarus, or the Future of Science, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• 1925, The ABC of Relativity, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• 1925, What I Believe, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• 1926, On Education, Especially in Early Childhood, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1927, The Analysis of Matter, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• 1927, An Outline of Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1927, Why I Am Not a Christian, London: Watts.
• 1927, Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell, New York: Modern Library.
• 1928, Sceptical Essays, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1929, Marriage and Morals, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1930, The Conquest of Happiness, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1931, The Scientific Outlook, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1932, Education and the Social Order, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1934, Freedom and Organization, 1814 – 1914, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1935, In Praise of Idleness, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1935, Religion and Science, London: Thornton Butterworth.
• 1936, Which Way to Peace?, London: Jonathan Cape.
• 1937, The Amberley Papers: The Letters and Diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley (with Patricia Russell), 2 vols., London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press.
• 1938, Power: A New Social Analysis, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1940, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
• 1945, A History of Western Philosophy, New York: Simon and Schuster.
• 1948, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1949, Authority and the Individual, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1950, Unpopular Essays, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1951, New Hopes for a Changing World, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1952, The Impact of Science on Society, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1953, Satan in the Suburbs and Other Stories, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1954, Human Society in Ethics and Politics, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1954, Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1956, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1956, Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901 – 1950 (edited by Robert C. Marsh), London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1957, Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (edited by Paul Edwards), London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1958, Understanding History and Other Essays, New York: Philosophical Library.
• 1959, Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1959, My Philosophical Development, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1959, Wisdom of the West ("editor", Paul Foulkes), London: Macdonald.
• 1960, Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind, Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company.
• 1961, The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell (edited by R.E. Egner and L.E. Denonn), London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1961, Fact and Fiction, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1961, Has Man a Future?, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1963, Essays in Skepticism, New York: Philosophical Library.
• 1963, Unarmed Victory, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1965, On the Philosophy of Science (edited by Charles A. Fritz, Jr.), Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
• 1967, Russell's Peace Appeals (edited by Tsutomu Makino and Kazuteru Hitaka), Japan: Eichosha's New Current Books.
• 1967, War Crimes in Vietnam, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1967 – 1969, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 3 vols., London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1969, Dear Bertrand Russell... A Selection of his Correspondence with the General Public 1950 – 1968 (edited by Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils), London: George Allen and Unwin.

Note: This is a mere sampling, for Russell also authored many pamphlets, introductions, articles and letters to the editor. His works also can be found in any number of anthologies and collections, perhaps most notably, The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, which McMaster University began publishing in 1983. This collection of his shorter and previously unpublished works is now up to 16 volumes, and many more are forthcoming. An additional 3 volumes catalogue just his bibliography. The Russell Archives at McMaster also have more than 30,000 letters that he wrote.

Additional references:

A. Russell

• 1900, Sur la logique des relations avec des applications à la théorie des séries, Rivista di matematica 7: 115-148.
• 1901, On the Notion of Order, Mind (n.s.) 10: 35-51.
• 1902, (with Alfred North Whitehead), On Cardinal Numbers, American Journal of Mathematics 23: 367-384.

B. Secondary references:

• John Newsome Crossley. A Note on Cantor's Theorem and Russell's Paradox, Australian Journal of Philosophy 51: 70-71.
• Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870-1940. Princeton University Press.

Books about Russell's philosophy

• Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments, edited by A. D. Irvine, 4 volumes, London: Routledge, 1999. Consists of essays on Russell's work by many distinguished philosophers.
• Bertrand Russell, by John Slater, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994.
• The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, edited by P.A. Schilpp, Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University, 1944.
• Russell, by A. J. Ayer, London: Fontana, 1972. ISBN 0006329659. A lucid summary exposition of Russell's thought.

Biographical books

• Bertrand Russell: 1872 – 1920 The Spirit of Solitude by Ray Monk (1997) ISBN 0099731312
• Bertrand Russell: 1921 – 1970 The Ghost of Madness by Ray Monk (2001) ISBN 009927275X
• Bertrand Russell: Philosopher and Humanist, by John Lewis (1968)
• Bertrand Russell, by A.J. Ayer (1972), reprint ed. 1988: ISBN 0226033430
• The Life of Bertrand Russell, by Ronald W. Clark (1975) ISBN 0394490592
• Bertrand Russell and His World, by Ronald W. Clark (1981) ISBN 0500130701

Related pages

• Russell's teapot