work essay by bertrand russell summary

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5 Themes from “In Praise of Idleness” by Bertrand Russell (Essay Summary)

By Kyle Kowalski · Leave a Comment

“The first principle of all action is leisure.” — Aristotle

Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate.¹

In 1932, at 60 years old, he wrote  In Praise of Idleness —  you can view the full essay for free on Harper’s Magazine or download a PDF here .

After reading the essay, I feel like a more appropriate title would have been In Praise of Wise Leisure . And, now 86 years later, I can’t help but wonder…is today’s knowledge work the equivalent of his era’s manual labor?

5 Themes from “In Praise of Idleness” by Bertrand Russell

Before we jump in, let’s cover how Bertrand Russell defines work:

• “First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.”

Throughout the essay, he generally discusses the evolution of work as he sees it:

• “From the beginning of civilization until the industrial revolution a man could, as a rule, produce by hard work little more than was required for the subsistence of himself and his family, although his wife worked at least as hard and his children added their labor as soon as they were old enough to do so. The small surplus above bare necessaries was not left to those who produced it, but was appropriated by priests and warriors.”
• “In the West we have various ways of dealing with this problem. We have no attempt at economic justice, so that a large proportion of the total produce goes to a small minority of the population, many of whom do no work at all. Owing to the absence of any central control over production, we produce hosts of things that are not wanted. We keep a large percentage of the working population idle because we can dispense with their labor by making others overwork. When all these methods prove inadequate we have a war: we cause a number of people to manufacture high explosives, and a number of others to explode them, as if we were children who had just discovered fireworks. By a combination of all these devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive the notion that a great deal of manual work must be the lot of the average man.”
• “Much that we take for granted about the desirability of work is derived from this system and, being pre-industrial, is not adapted to the modern world. Modern technic has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.”

Here’s his take on the current perception of work during his time:

• “Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying ‘Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.’ Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my  actions,  my  opinions  have undergone a revolution.”
• “If you ask him what he thinks the best part of his life, he is not likely to say, ‘I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man’s noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return to the toil from which my contentment springs.’”
• “They consider work, as it should be considered, as a necessary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure hours that they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.”

Now, let’s get into the 5 themes…

• “The fact is that moving matter about, while a certain amount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically not one of the ends of human life.”
• “I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.”
• “I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by the belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.”
• “What will happen when the point has been reached where everybody could be comfortable without working long hours?”
• “Modern technic has made it possible to diminish enormously the amount of labor necessary to produce the necessaries of life for every one.”
• “Let us take an illustration. Suppose that at a given moment a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?”
• “If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day there would be enough for everybody, and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization.”
• “When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours’ work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential part of any such social system that education should be carried farther than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently.”
• “It will be said that while a little leisure is pleasant, men would not know how to fill their days if they had only four hours’ work out of the twenty-four. In so far as this is true in the modern world it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.”
• “A man who has worked long hours all his life will be bored if he becomes suddenly idle. But without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things.”
• “The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education.”
• “In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and the capacity.”
• “Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen instead to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines. In this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.”

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
• https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

About Kyle Kowalski

👋 Hi, I'm Kyle―the human behind Sloww . I'm an ex-marketing executive turned self-education entrepreneur after an existential crisis in 2015. In one sentence: my purpose is synthesizing lifelong learning that catalyzes deeper development . But, I’m not a professor, philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist, scientist, mystic, or guru. I’m an interconnector across all those humans and many more—an "independent, inquiring, interdisciplinary integrator" (in other words, it's just me over here, asking questions, crossing disciplines, and making connections). To keep it simple, you can just call me a "synthesizer." Sloww shares the art of living with students of life . Read my story.

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41 Bertrand Russell–two essays

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell , 1872 – 1970 CE, was a British philosopher, writer, social critic and political activist. In the early 20th century, Russell led the British “revolt against idealism”.  He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy.  Russell was an anti-war activist and went to prison for his pacifism during World War I.    He did conclude that the war against Adolf Hitler was a necessary “lesser of two evils”  He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 “”in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.”

In “Reflections on My Eightieth Birthday” (“Postscript” in his  Autobiography ), Russell wrote: “I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social.

Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times.

Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken”.

You might find it interesting to see the two things that he believed he would like to say to a future generation.  It takes less than 2 minutes, but in 1959, this is what Bertrand Russell had to say:

Message to Future Generations

From  Bertrand Russell’s: The Problems of Philosophy: Chapter XV: The Value of Philosophy

This is a short interview with Woodrow Wyatt in 1960, when Russell was 87 years old.

Mankind’s Future and Philosophy

The life of the instinctive man is shut up within the circle of his private interests : family and friends may be included, but the outer world is not regarded except as it may help or hinder what comes within the circle of instinctive wishes. In such a life there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the philosophic life is calm and free. The private world of instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of a great and powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private world in ruins.

Unless we can so enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison in a beleaguered fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife.

One way of escape is by philosophic contemplation. Philosophic contemplation does not, in its widest survey, divide the universe into two hostile camps—friends and foes, helpful and hostile, good and bad—it views the whole impartially. Philosophic contemplation, when it is unalloyed, does not aim at proving that the rest of the universe is akin to man. All acquisition of knowledge is an enlargement of the Self, but this enlargement is best attained when it is not directly sought. It is obtained when the desire for knowledge is alone operative, by a study which does not wish in advance that its objects should have this or that character, but adapts the Self to the characters which it finds in its objects. This enlargement of Self is not obtained when, taking the Self as it is, we try to show that the world is so similar to this Self that knowledge of it is possible without any admission of what seems alien. The desire to prove this is a form of self-assertion and, like all self-assertion, it is an obstacle to the growth of Self which it desires, and of which the Self knows that it is capable. Self-assertion, in philosophic speculation as elsewhere, views the world as a means to its own ends; thus it makes the world of less account than Self, and the Self sets bounds to the greatness of its goods. In contemplation, on the contrary, we start from the not-Self, and through its greatness the boundaries of Self are enlarged; through the infinity of the universe the mind which contemplates it achieves some share in infinity.

The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, finds its satisfaction in every enlargement of the not-Self, in everything that magnifies the objects contemplated, and thereby the subject contemplating. Everything, in contemplation, that is personal or private, everything that depends upon habit, self-interest, or desire, distorts the object, and hence impairs the union which the intellect seeks. By thus making a barrier between subject and object, such personal and private things become a prison to the intellect. The free intellect will see as God might see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge—knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for man to attain. Hence also the free intellect will value more the abstract and universal knowledge into which the accidents of private history do not enter, than the knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, as such knowledge must be, upon an exclusive and personal point of view and a body whose sense organs distort as much as they reveal.

The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of philosophic contemplation will preserve something of the same freedom and impartiality in the world of action and emotion. It will view its purposes and desires as parts of the whole, with the absence of insistence that results from seeing them as infinitesimal fragments in a world of which all the rest is unaffected by any one man’s deeds. The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus contemplation enlarges not only the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with all the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man’s true freedom, and his liberation from the thralldom of narrow hopes and fears.

Key Takeaway

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

Bertrand Russell

Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; Philosophy is to be studied , not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN CONWAY MEMORIAL LECTURE

FREE THOUGHT AND OFFICIAL PROPAGANDA

Delivered at south place institute on march 24, 1922, by the hon. bertrand russell, m.a., f.r.s., (professor graham wallas in the chair), watts & co., johnson’s court, fleet street, e.c.4 1922.

Moncure Conway, in whose honor we are assembled to-day, devoted his life to two great objects: freedom of thought and freedom of the individual.

“In regard to both these objects, something has been gained since his time, but something also has been lost. New dangers, somewhat different in form from those of past ages, threaten both kinds of freedom, and unless a vigorous and vigilant public opinion can be aroused in defense of them, there will be much less of both a hundred years hence than there is now. My purpose in this address is to emphasize the new dangers and to consider how they can be met.

Let us begin by trying to be clear as to what we mean by “free thought.” This expression has two senses.

In its narrower sense it means thought which does not accept the dogmas of traditional religion. In this sense a man is a “free thinker” if he is not a Christian or a Mussulman or a Buddhist or a Shintoist or a member of any of the other bodies of men who accept some inherited orthodoxy. In Christian countries a man is called a “free thinker” if he does not decidedly believe in God, though this would not suffice to make a man a “free thinker” in a Buddhist country.

I do not wish to minimize the importance of free thought in this sense. I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing.

But there is also a wider sense of “free thought,” which I regard as of still greater importance. Indeed, the harm done by traditional religions seems chiefly traceable to the fact that they have prevented free thought in this wider sense. The wider sense is not so easy to define as the narrower, and it will be well to spend some little time in trying to arrive at its essence.

To begin with the most obvious. Thought is not “free” when legal penalties are incurred by the holding or not holding of certain opinions, or by giving expression to one’s belief or lack of belief on certain matters. Very few countries in the world have as yet even this elementary kind of freedom.

In England, under the Blasphemy Laws , it is illegal to express disbelief in the Christian religion, though in practice the law is not set in motion against the well-to-do. It is also illegal to teach what Christ taught on the subject of non-resistance. Therefore, whoever wishes to avoid becoming a criminal must profess to agree with Christ’s teaching, but must avoid saying what that teaching was.

In America no one can enter the country without first solemnly declaring that he disbelieves in anarchism and polygamy; and, once inside, he must also disbelieve in communism.

In Japan it is illegal to express disbelief in the divinity of the Mikado . It will thus be seen that a voyage round the world is a perilous adventure.

A Mohammedan, a Tolstoyan, a Bolshevik, or a Christian cannot undertake it without at some point becoming a criminal, or holding his tongue about what he considers important truths. This, of course, applies only to steerage passengers; saloon passengers are allowed to believe whatever they please, provided they avoid offensive obtrusiveness.

Legal penalties are, however, in the modern world, the least of the obstacles to freedom of thoughts . The two great obstacles are economic penalties and distortion of evidence. It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search. Both these obstacles exist in every large country known to me, except China, which is the last refuge of freedom. It is these obstacles with which I shall be concerned—their present magnitude, the likelihood of their increase, and the possibility of their diminution.

We may say that thought is free when it is exposed to free competition among beliefs —i.e., when all beliefs are able to state their case, and no legal or pecuniary advantages or disadvantages attach to beliefs. This is an ideal which, for various reasons, can never be fully attained. But it is possible to approach very much nearer to it than we do at present.

Three incidents in my own life will serve to show how, in modern England, the scales are weighted in favor of Christianity. My reason for mentioning them is that many people do not at all realize the disadvantages to which avowed Agnosticism still exposes people.

• The first incident belongs to a very early stage in my life. My father was a Freethinker, but died when I was only three years old. Wishing me to be brought up without superstition, he appointed two Freethinkers as my guardians. The Courts, however, set aside his will, and had me educated in the Christian faith. I am afraid the result was disappointing, but that was not the fault of the law. If he had directed that I should be educated as a Christadelphian or a Muggletonian or a Seventh-Day Adventist, the Courts would not have dreamed of objecting. A parent has a right to ordain that any imaginable superstition shall be instilled into his children after his death, but has not the right to say that they shall be kept free from superstition if possible.
• The second incident occurred in the year 1910 . I had at that time a desire to stand for Parliament as a Liberal, and the Whips recommended me to a certain constituency. I addressed the Liberal Association, who expressed themselves favorably, and my adoption seemed certain. But, on being questioned by a small inner caucus, I admitted that I was an Agnostic. They asked whether the fact would come out, and I said it probably would. They asked whether I should be willing to go to church occasionally, and I replied that I should not. Consequently, they selected another candidate, who was duly elected, has been in Parliament ever since, and is a member of the present Government.
• The third incident occurred immediately afterwards. I was invited by Trinity College, Cambridge, to become a lecturer, but not a Fellow. The difference is not pecuniary; it is that a Fellow has a voice in the government of the College, and cannot be dispossessed during the term of his Fellowship except for grave immorality. The chief reason for not offering me a Fellowship was that the clerical party did not wish to add to the anti-clerical vote. The result was that they were able to dismiss me in 1916, when they disliked my views on the War. If I had been dependent on my lectureship, I should have starved.

These three incidents illustrate different kinds of disadvantages attaching to avowed freethinking even in modern England. Any other avowed Freethinker could supply similar incidents from his personal experience, often of a far more serious character. The net result is that people who are not well-to-do dare not be frank about their religious beliefs.

It is not, of course, only or even chiefly in regard to religion that there is lack of freedom. Belief in communism or free love handicaps a man much more than Agnosticism. Not only is it a disadvantage to hold those views, but it is very much more difficult to obtain publicity for the arguments in their favor. On the other hand, in Russia the advantages and disadvantages are exactly reversed: comfort and power are achieved by professing Atheism, communism, and free love, and no opportunity exists for propaganda against these opinions. The result is that in Russia one set of fanatics feels absolute certainty about one set of doubtful propositions, while in the rest of the world another set of fanatics feels equal certainty about a diametrically opposite set of equally doubtful propositions. From such a situation war, bitterness, and persecution inevitably result on both sides.

Russell was an atheist.  He has specific reasons for this.  Listen to it in his own words:

  Bertrand Russell on Religion

William James used to preach the “will to believe.” For my part, I should wish to preach the “will to doubt.” None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error. The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate. These methods are practiced in science, and have built up the body of scientific knowledge.

Every man of science whose outlook is truly scientific is ready to admit that what passes for scientific knowledge at the moment is sure to require correction with the progress of discovery; nevertheless, it is near enough to the truth to serve for most practical purposes, though not for all. In science, where alone something approximating to genuine knowledge is to be found, men’s attitude is tentative and full of doubt.

In religion and politics, on the contrary, though there is as yet nothing approaching scientific knowledge , everybody considers it  de rigueur  to have a dogmatic opinion, to be backed up by inflicting starvation, prison, and war, and to be carefully guarded from argumentative competition with any different opinion. If only men could be brought into a tentatively agnostic frame of mind about these matters, nine-tenths of the evils of the modern world would be cured. War would become impossible, because each side would realize that both sides must be in the wrong. Persecution would cease. Education would aim at expanding the mind, not at narrowing it. Men would be chosen for jobs on account of fitness to do the work, not because they flattered the irrational dogmas of those in power. Thus rational doubt alone, if it could be generated, would suffice to introduce the millennium.

We have had in recent years a brilliant example of the scientific temper of mind in the theory of relativity and its reception by the world. Einstein, a German-Swiss-Jew pacifist, was appointed to a research professorship by the German Government in the early days of the War; his predictions were verified by an English expedition which observed the eclipse of 1919, very soon after the Armistice. His theory upsets the whole theoretical framework of traditional physics; it is almost as damaging to orthodox dynamics as Darwin was to  Genesis . Yet physicists everywhere have shown complete readiness to accept his theory as soon as it appeared that the evidence was in its favor. But none of them, least of all Einstein himself, would claim that he has said the last word. He has not built a monument of infallible dogma to stand for all time. There are difficulties he cannot solve; his doctrines will have to be modified in their turn as they have modified Newton’s. This critical un-dogmatic receptiveness is the true attitude of science.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite.

If it is admitted that a condition of rational doubt would be desirable , it becomes important to inquire how it comes about that there is so much irrational certainty in the world. A great deal of this is due to the inherent irrationality and credulity of average human nature. But this seed of intellectual original sin is nourished and fostered by other agencies, among which three play the chief part—namely, education, propaganda, and economic pressure .

Let us consider these in turn.

The committee which framed these laws, as quoted by the  New Republic , laid it down that the teacher who “does not approve of the present social system……must surrender his office,” and that “no person who is not eager to combat the theories of social change should be entrusted with the task of fitting the young and old for the responsibilities of citizenship.”

Thus, according to the law of the State of New York, Christ and George Washington were too degraded morally to be fit for the education of the young . If Christ were to go to New York and say, “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” the President of the New York School Board would reply: “Sir, I see no evidence that you are eager to combat theories of social change. Indeed, I have heard it said that you advocate what you call the  kingdom  of heaven, whereas this country, thank God, is a republic. It is clear that the Government of your kingdom of heaven would differ materially from that of New York State, therefore no children will be allowed access to you.” If he failed to make this reply, he would not be doing his duty as a functionary entrusted with the administration of the law.

The effect of such laws is very serious. Let it be granted, for the sake of argument, that the government and the social system in the State of New York are the best that have ever existed on this planet; yet even then both would presumably be capable of improvement. Any person who admits this obvious proposition is by law incapable of teaching in a State school. Thus the law decrees that the teachers shall all be either hypocrites or fools.

Religious toleration, to a certain extent, has been won because people have ceased to consider religion so important as it was once thought to be. But in politics and economics, which have taken the place formerly occupied by religion, there is a growing tendency to persecution, which is not by any means confined to one party. The persecution of opinion in Russia is more severe than in any capitalist country. I met in Petrograd an eminent Russian poet, Alexander Block, who has since died as the result of privations. The Bolsheviks allowed him to teach æsthetics, but he complained that they insisted on his teaching the subject “from a Marxian point of view.” He had been at a loss to discover how the theory of rhythmics was connected with Marxism, although, to avoid starvation, he had done his best to find out. Of course, it has been impossible in Russia ever since the Bolsheviks came into power to print anything critical of the dogmas upon which their regime is founded.

The examples of America and Russia illustrate the conclusion to which we seem to be driven—namely, that so long as men continue to have the present fanatical belief in the importance of politics free thought on political matters will be impossible, and there is only too much danger that the lack of freedom will spread to all other matters, as it has done in Russia. Only some degree of political skepticism can save us from this misfortune.

It must not be supposed that the officials in charge of education desire the young to become educated. On the contrary, their problem is to impart information without imparting intelligence. Education should have two objects: first, to give definite knowledge—reading and writing, languages and mathematics, and so on; secondly, to create those mental habits which will enable people to acquire knowledge and form sound judgments for themselves. The first of these we may call information, the second intelligence. The utility of information is admitted practically as well as theoretically; without a literate population a modern State is impossible. But the utility of intelligence is admitted only theoretically, not practically; it is not desired that ordinary people should think for themselves, because it is felt that people who think for themselves are awkward to manage and cause administrative difficulties. Only the guardians, in Plato’s language, are to think; the rest are to obey, or to follow leaders like a herd of sheep. This doctrine, often unconsciously, has survived the introduction of political democracy, and has radically vitiated all national systems of education.

Definite mis-statements of fact can be legitimately objected to, but they are by no means necessary. The mere words “Pear’s Soap,” which affirm nothing, cause people to buy that article. If, wherever these words appear, they were replaced by the words “The Labour Party,” millions of people would be led to vote for the Labour Party, although the advertisements had claimed no merit for it whatever. But if both sides in a controversy were confined by law to statements which a committee of eminent logicians considered relevant and valid, the main evil of propaganda, as at present conducted, would remain.

Suppose, under such a law, two parties with an equally good case, one of whom had a million pounds to spend on propaganda, while the other had only a hundred thousand . It is obvious that the arguments in favor of the richer party would become more widely known than those in favor of the poorer party, and therefore the richer party would win. This situation is, of course, intensified when one party is the Government. In Russia the Government has an almost complete monopoly of propaganda, but that is not necessary. The advantages which it possesses over its opponents will generally be sufficient to give it the victory, unless it has an exceptionally bad case.

There are two simple principles which, if they were adopted, would solve almost all social problems.

The first is that education should have for one of its aims to teach people only to believe propositions when there is some reason to think that they are true.

The second is that jobs should be given solely for fitness to do the work.

To take the second point first . The habit of considering a man’s religious, moral, and political opinions before appointing him to a post or giving him a job is the modern form of persecution, and it is likely to become quite as efficient as the Inquisition ever was. The old liberties can be legally retained without being of the slightest use. If, in practice, certain opinions lead a man to starve, it is poor comfort to him to know that his opinions are not punishable by law. There is a certain public feeling against starving men for not belonging to the Church of England, or for holding slightly unorthodox opinions in politics. But there is hardly any feeling against the rejection of Atheists or Mormons, extreme communists, or men who advocate free love. Such men are thought to be wicked, and it is considered only natural to refuse to employ them. People have hardly yet waked up to the fact that this refusal, in a highly industrial State, amounts to a very rigorous form of persecution.

If this danger were adequately realized, it would be possible to rouse public opinion , and to secure that a man’s beliefs should not be considered in appointing him to a post. The protection of minorities is vitally important; and even the most orthodox of us may find himself in a minority some day, so that we all have an interest in restraining the tyranny of majorities. Nothing except public opinion can solve this problem. Socialism would make it somewhat more acute, since it would eliminate the opportunities that now arise through exceptional employers. Every increase in the size of industrial undertakings makes it worse, since it diminishes the number of independent employers.

The battle must be fought exactly as the battle of religious toleration was fought. And as in that case, so in this, a decay in the intensity of belief is likely to prove the decisive factor. While men were convinced of the absolute truth of Catholicism or Protestantism, as the case might be, they were willing to persecute on account of them. While men are quite certain of their modern creeds, they will persecute on their behalf. Some element of doubt is essential to the practice, though not to the theory, of toleration.

And this brings me to my other point, which concerns the aims of education.  If there is to be toleration in the world, one of the things taught in schools must be the habit of weighing evidence, and the practice of not giving full assent to propositions which there is no reason to believe true.

History should be taught in the same way. Napoleon’s campaigns of 1813 and 1814, for instance, might be studied in the  Moniteur , leading up to the surprise which Parisians felt when they saw the Allies arriving under the walls of Paris after they had (according to the official bulletins) been beaten by Napoleon in every battle. In the more advanced classes, students should be encouraged to count the number of times that Lenin has been assassinated by Trotsky, in order to learn contempt for death. Finally, they should be given a school history approved by the Government, and asked to infer what a French school history would say about our wars with France. All this would be a far better training in citizenship than the trite moral maxims by which some people believe that civic duty can be inculcated.

If I am asked how the world is to be induced to adopt these two maxims—namely

(1) that jobs should be given to people on account of their fitness to perform them;

(2) that one aim of education should be to cure people of the habit of believing propositions for which there is no evidence—

I can only say that it must be done by generating an enlightened public opinion . And an enlightened public opinion can only be generated by the efforts of those who desire that it should exist. I do not believe that the economic changes advocated by Socialists will, of themselves, do anything towards curing the evils we have been considering. I think that, whatever happens in politics, the trend of economic development will make the preservation of mental freedom increasingly difficult, unless public opinion insists that the employer shall control nothing in the life of the employee except his work.

Freedom in education could easily be secured, if it were desired , by limiting the function of the State to inspection and payment, and confining inspection rigidly to the definite instruction. But that, as things stand, would leave education in the hands of the Churches, because, unfortunately, they are more anxious to teach their beliefs than Freethinkers are to teach their doubts. It would, however, give a free field, and would make it possible for a liberal education to be given if it were really desired. More than that ought not to be asked of the law.

My plea throughout this address has been for the spread of the scientific temper , which is an altogether different thing from the knowledge of scientific results. The scientific temper is capable of regenerating mankind and providing an issue for all our troubles. The results of science, in the form of mechanism, poison gas, and the yellow press, bid fair to lead to the total downfall of our civilization. It is a curious antithesis, which a Martian might contemplate with amused detachment. But for us it is a matter of life and death. Upon its issue depends the question whether our grandchildren are to live in a happier world, or are to exterminate each other by scientific methods, leaving perhaps to Negroes and Papuans the future destinies of mankind.

If you would like to hear a more thorough interview with Russell, you can find it here at:

  Face to Face Interview with the BBC

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In Praise of Idleness: Bertrand Russell on the Relationship Between Leisure and Social Justice

By maria popova.

“Everybody should be quiet near a little stream and listen,” the great children’s book author Ruth Krauss — a philosopher, really — wrote in her last and loveliest collaboration with the young Maurice Sendak in 1960. At the time of her first collaboration with Sendak twelve years earlier, just after the word “workaholic” was coined, the German philosopher Josef Pieper was composing Leisure, the Basis of Culture — his timeless and increasingly timely manifesto for reclaiming our human dignity in a culture of busyness. “Leisure,” Pieper wrote, “is not the same as the absence of activity… or even as an inner quiet. It is rather like the stillness in the conversation of lovers, which is fed by their oneness.”

A generation earlier, with a seer’s capacity to peer past the horizon of the present condition and anticipate a sweeping cultural current before it has flooded in, and with a sage’s ability to provide the psychic buoy for surviving the current’s perilous rapids, Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) addressed the looming cult of workaholism in a prescient 1932 essay titled In Praise of Idleness ( public library ).

Russell writes:

A great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.

With his characteristic wisdom punctuated by wry wit, he examines what work actually means:

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders, but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e., of advertising.

Russell points to landowners as a historical example of a class whose idleness was only made possible by the toil of others. For the vast majority of our species’ history, up until the Industrial Revolution, the average person spent nearly every waking hour working hard to earn the basic necessities of survival. Any marginal surplus, he notes, was swiftly appropriated by those in power — the warriors, the monarchs, the priests. Since the Industrial Revolution, other power systems — from big business to dictatorships — have simply supplanted the warriors, monarchs, and priests. Russell considers how the exploitive legacy of pre-industrial society has corrupted the modern social fabric and warped our value system:

A system which lasted so long and ended so recently has naturally left a profound impress upon men’s thoughts and opinions. Much that we take for granted about the desirability of work is derived from this system, and, being pre-industrial, is not adapted to the modern world. Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

Writing nearly a century after Kierkegaard extolled the existential boon of idleness , Russell considers how this manipulated mentality has hypnotized us into worshiping work as virtue and scorning leisure as laziness, as weakness, as folly, rather than recognizing it as the raw material of social justice and the locus of our power:

The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own. Of course the holders of power conceal this fact from themselves by managing to believe that their interests are identical with the larger interests of humanity. Sometimes this is true; Athenian slave owners, for instance, employed part of their leisure in making a permanent contribution to civilization which would have been impossible under a just economic system. Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization.

Russell notes that WWI — which was dubbed “the war to end all wars” by a world willfully blind to the fact that violence begets more violence, unwitting that this world war would pave the way for the next — furthered our civilizational conflation of duty with work and work with virtue, lulling us into the modern trance of busyness. More than half a century before Annie Dillard observed that “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” Russell traces the ledger of our existential spending back to war’s false promise of freedom:

The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific organization of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world. If, at the end of the war, the scientific organization, which had been created in order to liberate men for fighting and munition work, had been preserved, and the hours of work had been cut down to four, all would have been well. Instead of that the old chaos was restored, those whose work was demanded were made to work long hours, and the rest were left to starve as unemployed. Why? Because work is a duty, and a man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry.

Pointing out that this equivalence originates in the same morality — or, rather, immorality — that produced the slave state, he exposes the core cultural falsehood it has effected, which stands as a monumental obstruction to equality and social justice in contemporary society:

The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.

Born in an era when urban workingmen had just acquired the right to vote in Great Britain, Russell draws on his own childhood for a stark illustration of this belief and its far-reaching tentacles of socioeconomic oppression:

I remember hearing an old Duchess say: “What do the poor want with holidays? They ought to work.” People nowadays are less frank, but the sentiment persists, and is the source of much of our economic confusion.

That sentiment, Russell reminds us again and again, is ahistorical. Advances in science, technology, and the very mechanics of society have made it no longer necessary for the average person to endure fifteen-hour workdays in order to obtain basic sustenance, as adults — and often children — had to in the early nineteenth century. But while the allocation of our time in relation to need has changed immensely, our attitudes about how that time is spent hardly have. He writes:

Every human being, of necessity, consumes, in the course of his life, a certain amount of the produce of human labor. […] The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education. A man who has worked long hours all his life will be bored if he becomes suddenly idle. But without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things. There is no longer any reason why the bulk of the population should suffer this deprivation; only a foolish asceticism, usually vicarious, makes us continue to insist on work in excessive quantities now that the need no longer exists.

But while reinstating the dignity of leisure — or what Russell calls idleness — is a necessary condition for recalibrating our life-satisfaction to more adequately reflect the contemporary realities of work and need, it is not a sufficient one. Exacerbating our already warped relationship with work is the muddling of needs and wants at the heart of capitalist materialism — something Russell would address nearly two decades later in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, listing acquisitiveness as the first of the four desires driving human behavior . He considers the radical shift that would take place if we were to stop regarding the virtue of work as an end in itself and begin seeing it as a means to a state of being in which work is no longer needed, reinstating leisure and comfort — that is, a contented sense of enoughness — as the proper existential end:

What will happen when the point has been reached where everybody could be comfortable without working long hours? In the West, we have various ways of dealing with this problem. We have no attempt at economic justice, so that a large proportion of the total produce goes to a small minority of the population, many of whom do no work at all. Owing to the absence of any central control over production, we produce hosts of things that are not wanted. We keep a large percentage of the working population idle, because we can dispense with their labor by making the others overwork. When all these methods prove inadequate, we have a war; we cause a number of people to manufacture high explosives, and a number of others to explode them, as if we were children who had just discovered fireworks. By a combination of all these devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive the notion that a great deal of severe manual work must be the lot of the average man.

Our society, Russell argues, is driven by “continually fresh schemes, by which present leisure is to be sacrificed to future productivity.” He challenges the inanity of this proposition:

The fact is that moving matter about, while a certain amount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically not one of the ends of human life. If it were, we should have to consider every navvy superior to Shakespeare. We have been misled in this matter by two causes. One is the necessity of keeping the poor contented, which has led the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignity of labor, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect. The other is the new pleasure in mechanism, which makes us delight in the astonishingly clever changes that we can produce on the earth’s surface. Neither of these motives makes any great appeal to the actual worker. If you ask him what he thinks the best part of his life, he is not likely to say: “I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man’s noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return to the toil from which my contentment springs.” I have never heard workingmen say this sort of thing. They consider work, as it should be considered, a necessary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure hours that they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.

Decades before Diane Ackerman made her exquisite case for the evolutionary and existential value of play , Russell considers how the cult of productivity has demolished one of life’s pillars of satisfaction. Noting that modern people — true of the moderns of 1932, even truer of today’s — enjoy a little leisure but wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they had to work only four hours a day, he observes:

In so far as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for lightheartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.

The seedbed of this soul-shriveling belief is the notion — a driving force of consumerism — that the only worthwhile activities are those that bring material profit. A formidable logician, Russell exposes the self-unraveling nature of this argument:

Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad. Whatever merit there may be in the production of goods must be entirely derivative from the advantage to be obtained by consuming them. The individual, in our society, works for profit; but the social purpose of his work lies in the consumption of what he produces. It is this divorce between the individual and the social purpose of production that makes it so difficult for men to think clearly in a world in which profit-making is the incentive to industry. We think too much of production, and too little of consumption. One result is that we attach too little importance to enjoyment and simple happiness, and that we do not judge production by the pleasure that it gives to the consumer.

Another result, Russell argues, is a kind of split between positive idleness, which ought to be the nourishing end of work, and negative idleness, which ends up being the effect of work under the spell of consumerism and its consequent socioeconomic inequality. He writes:

The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.

With an eye to our civilization’s triumphs and failures of self-actualization, Russell points out that, historically, there has been a small leisure class enjoying a great many privileges without a basis in social justice, profiting on the backs of a large working class toiling for survival. While this rendered the oppressive leisure class morally condemnable, it resulted in the vast majority of art and science — “the whole of what we call civilization.” He writes:

Without the leisure class, mankind would never have emerged from barbarism. The method of a hereditary leisure class without duties was, however, extraordinarily wasteful. None of the members of the class had been taught to be industrious, and the class as a whole was not exceptionally intelligent. The class might produce one Darwin, but against him had to be set tens of thousands of country gentlemen who never thought of anything more intelligent than fox-hunting and punishing poachers.

Russell’s most compelling point is the most counterintuitive — the idea that reclaiming leisure is not a reinforcement of elitism but the antidote to elitism itself and a form of resistance to oppression, for it would require dismantling the power structures of modern society and undoing the spell they have cast on us to keep the poor poor and the rich rich. To correctly calibrate modern life around a sense of enough — that is, around meeting the need for comfort rather than satisfying the endless want for consumerist acquisitiveness — would be to lay the groundwork for social justice. In such a society, Russell argues, no one would have to work more than four hours out of twenty-four — a proposition even more countercultural today than it was in his era. He paints the landscape of possibility:

In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational potboilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and the capacity. […] Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least 1 per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.

In Praise of Idleness has only grown timelier by the ticking of the decades. Complement it with trailblazing anthropologist Margaret Mead on leisure and creativity , then revisit Russell on what makes a fulfilling life , our mightiest defense against political manipulation , power-knowledge vs. love-knowledge , why “fruitful monotony” is essential for happiness , and his remarkable response to a fascist’s provocation .

— Published December 27, 2018 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/12/27/in-praise-of-idleness-bertrand-russell/ —

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1 (page 1) p. 1 Life and work

• Published: February 2002
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‘Life and work’ outlines the contributions of Bertrand Russell to the technical fields of logic and philosophy as well as describing his private life — his marriages, agnosticism, pacifism, and prison sentences. Russell was born in 1872 to an aristocratic family, but due to the early death of his parents was brought up by his Scottish Presbyterian grandmother. He won a scholarship to Trinity College Cambridge to read mathematics in 1890. Here he met Alfred North Whitehead, with whom he later collaborated in writing Principia Mathematica . He went on to write over 71 books and booklets during his lifetime including The Principles of Mathematics , The Problems of Philosophy , and The Analysis of Mind .

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Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872–1970) was a British philosopher, logician, essayist and social critic best known for his work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy. His most influential contributions include his championing of logicism (the view that mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic), his refining of Gottlob Frege ’s predicate calculus (which still forms the basis of most contemporary systems of logic), his defense of neutral monism (the view that the world consists of just one type of substance which is neither exclusively mental nor exclusively physical), and his theories of definite descriptions , logical atomism and logical types .

Together with G.E. Moore , Russell is generally recognized as one of the main founders of modern analytic philosophy. His famous paradox , theory of types , and work with A.N. Whitehead on Principia Mathematica reinvigorated the study of logic throughout the twentieth century (Schilpp 1944, xiii; Wilczek 2010, 74).

Over the course of a long career, Russell also made significant contributions to a broad range of other subjects, including ethics , politics, educational theory, the history of ideas and religious studies, cheerfully ignoring Hooke’s admonition to the Royal Society against “meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetorick, or Logick” (Kreisel 1973, 24). In addition, generations of general readers have benefited from his many popular writings on a wide variety of topics in both the humanities and the natural sciences. Like Voltaire , to whom he has been compared (Times of London 1970, 12)), he wrote with style and wit and had enormous influence.

After a life marked by controversy—including dismissals from both Trinity College, Cambridge, and City College, New York—Russell was awarded the Order of Merit in 1949 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Noted also for his many spirited anti-nuclear protests and for his campaign against western involvement in the Vietnam War, Russell remained a prominent public figure until his death at the age of 97.

Interested readers may listen to two sound clips of Russell speaking or consult the Bertrand Russell Society’s video archive for video clips of and about Russell. (Members of the Society have access to a significantly larger video library than is available to the general public.)

1. Russell’s Chronology

2. russell’s work in logic, 3. russell’s work in analytic philosophy, 4. russell’s theory of definite descriptions, 5. russell’s theory of neutral monism, 6. russell’s social and political philosophy, 7. contemporary russell scholarship, primary literature, secondary literature, other internet resources, related entries.

A short chronology of the major events in Russell’s life is as follows:

• (1872) Born May 18 at Ravenscroft in Trelleck, Monmouthshire, UK.
• (1874) Death of mother and sister.
• (1876) Death of father; Russell’s grandfather, Lord John Russell (the former Prime Minister), and grandmother succeed in overturning Russell’s father’s will to win custody of Russell and his brother, rather than have them raised as free-thinkers.
• (1878) Death of grandfather; Russell’s grandmother, Lady Russell, supervises Russell’s upbringing at Pembroke Lodge, London.
• (1883) Receives his first lessons in geometry from his brother Frank.
• (1890) Enters Trinity College, Cambridge; meets Whitehead .
• (1893) Awarded first-class B.A. in Mathematics.
• (1894) Completes the Moral Sciences Tripos (Part II); appointed Honorary British Attaché in Paris; marries Alys Pearsall Smith.
• (1895) Studies at the University of Berlin.
• (1896) Appointed lecturer at the London School of Economics; lectures in the United States at Johns Hopkins and Bryn Mawr.
• (1899) Appointed lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge.
• (1900) Meets Peano at the First International Congress of Philosophy in Paris.
• (1901) Reappointed lecturer at Cambridge; discovers Russell’s paradox .
• (1902) Corresponds with Frege .
• (1905) Develops his theory of descriptions .
• (1907) Runs for parliament and is defeated.
• (1908) Elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
• (1910) Fails to receive Liberal Party nomination for parliament because of his atheism; reappointed lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge.
• (1911) Meets Wittgenstein ; elected President of the Aristotelian Society; separates from Alys.
• (1913) Lectures at the École des Hautes Sociales in Paris.
• (1914) Visits Harvard and teaches courses in logic and the theory of knowledge; meets T.S. Eliot.
• (1915) Reappointed lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge.
• (1916) Fined 100 pounds and dismissed from Trinity College as a result of anti-war writings; denied a passport and so unable to lecture at Harvard.
• (1918) Imprisoned for five months as a result of anti-war writings.
• (1920) Visits Russia.
• (1921) Divorce from Alys and marriage to Dora Black; visits China and Japan.
• (1922) Runs for parliament and is defeated.
• (1923) Runs for parliament and is defeated.
• (1924) Lectures in the United States.
• (1927) Lectures in the United States; opens experimental school with Dora.
• (1929) Lectures in the United States.
• (1931) Lectures in the United States; becomes the third Earl Russell upon the death of his brother.
• (1935) Divorce from Dora.
• (1936) Marriage to Patricia (Peter) Helen Spence.
• (1938) Appointed visiting professor of philosophy at Chicago.
• (1939) Appointed professor of philosophy at the University of California at Los Angeles.
• (1940) Appointment at City College New York revoked prior to Russell’s arrival as the result of public protests and a legal judgment in which Russell was found to be “morally unfit” to teach at the college; delivers the William James Lectures at Harvard.
• (1941) Appointed lecturer at the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania.
• (1942) Dismissed from Barnes Foundation, but wins a lawsuit against the Foundation for wrongful dismissal.
• (1944) Reappointed a Fellow of Trinity College.
• (1948) Involved in a plane crash en route to Norway, he and other passengers save themselves by swimming in the ocean until help arrives.
• (1949) Awarded the Order of Merit; elected a Lifetime Fellow at Trinity College.
• (1950) Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature; visits Australia.
• (1951) Lectures in the United States.
• (1952) Divorce from Patricia (Peter) and marriage to Edith Finch.
• (1955) Releases Russell-Einstein Manifesto.
• (1957) Elected President of the first Pugwash Conference.
• (1958) Becomes founding President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
• (1961) Imprisoned for one week in connection with anti-nuclear protests.
• (1963) Establishes the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.
• (1967) Launches the International War Crimes Tribunal.
• (1970) Dies February 02 at Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales.

Attempts to sum up Russell’s life have been numerous. One of the more famous comes from the Oxford philosopher A.J. Ayer . As Ayer writes, “The popular conception of a philosopher as one who combines universal learning with the direction of human conduct was more nearly satisfied by Bertrand Russell than by any other philosopher of our time” (1972a, 127). Another telling comment comes from the Harvard philosopher W.V. Quine : “I think many of us were drawn to our profession by Russell’s books. He wrote a spectrum of books for a graduated public, layman to specialist. We were beguiled by the wit and a sense of new-found clarity with respect to central traits of reality” (1966c, 657).

Despite such comments, perhaps the most memorable encapsulation of Russell’s life and work comes from Russell himself. As Russell tells us,

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness – that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what – at last – I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. (1967, 3–4)

By any standard, Russell led an enormously full life. In addition to his ground-breaking intellectual work in logic and analytic philosophy, he involved himself for much of his life in politics. As early as 1904 he spoke out frequently in favour of internationalism and in 1907 he ran unsuccessfully for Parliament. Although he stood as an independent, he endorsed the full 1907 Liberal platform. He also advocated extending the franchise to women, provided that such a radical political change would be introduced only through constitutionally recognized means (Wood 1957, 71). Three years later he published his Anti-Suffragist Anxieties (1910).

With the outbreak of World War I, Russell became involved in anti-war activities and in 1916 he was fined 100 pounds for authoring an anti-war pamphlet. Because of his conviction, he was dismissed from his post at Trinity College, Cambridge (Hardy 1942). Two years later, he was convicted a second time, this time for suggesting that American troops might be used to intimidate strikers in Britain (Clark 1975, 337–339). The result was five months in Brixton Prison as prisoner No. 2917 (Clark 1975). In 1922 and 1923 Russell ran twice more for Parliament, again unsuccessfully, and together with his second wife, Dora, he founded an experimental school that they operated during the late 1920s and early 1930s (Russell 1926 and Park 1963). Perhaps not surprisingly, some of Russell’s more radical activities – including his advocacy of post-Victorian sexual practices – were linked in many people’s minds to his atheism, made famous in part by his 1948 BBC debate with the Jesuit philosopher Frederick Copleston over the existence of God.

Although Russell became the third Earl Russell upon the death of his brother in 1931, Russell’s radicalism continued to make him a controversial figure well through middle-age. While teaching at UCLA in the United States in the late 1930s, he was offered a teaching appointment at City College, New York. The appointment was revoked following a series of protests and a 1940 judicial decision which found him morally unfit to teach at the College (Dewey and Kallen 1941, Irvine 1996, Weidlich 2000). The legal decision had been based partly on Russell’s atheism and partly on his fame as an advocate of free love and open marriages.

In 1954 Russell delivered his famous “Man’s Peril” broadcast on the BBC, condemning the Bikini H-bomb tests. A year later, together with Albert Einstein, he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto calling for the curtailment of nuclear weapons. In 1957 he became a prime organizer of the first Pugwash Conference, which brought together a large number of scientists concerned about the nuclear issue. He became the founding president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958 and Honorary President of the Committee of 100 in 1960.

In 1961, Russell was once again imprisoned, this time for a week in connection with anti-nuclear protests. The media coverage surrounding his conviction only served to enhance Russell’s reputation and to further inspire the many idealistic youths who were sympathetic to his anti-war and anti-nuclear message. Beginning in 1963, he began work on a variety of additional issues, including lobbying on behalf of political prisoners under the auspices of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.

Interestingly, throughout much of his life, Russell saw himself primarily as a writer rather than as a philosopher, listing “Author” as his profession on his passport. As he says in his Autobiography , “I resolved not to adopt a profession, but to devote myself to writing” (1967, 125). Upon being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, Russell used his acceptance speech to emphasize themes relating to his social activism.

Over the years, Russell has served as the subject of numerous creative works, including T.S. Eliot’s “Mr Appolinax” (1917), D.H. Lawrence’s “The Blind Man” (1920), Aldous Huxley’s Chrome Yellow (1921), Bruce Duffy’s The World as I Found It (1987) and the graphic novel by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth (2009).

Readers wanting additional information about Russell’s life are encouraged to consult Russell’s five autobiographical volumes: Portraits from Memory and other Essays (A1956b), My Philosophical Development (1959) and The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (3 vols, 1967, 1968, 1969). In addition, John Slater’s accessible Bertrand Russell (1994) gives a short but informative introduction to Russell’s life, work and influence. Other sources of biographical information include Ronald Clark’s authoritative The Life of Bertrand Russell (1975), Ray Monk’s two volumes, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude (1996) and Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness (2000), and the first volume of Andrew Irvine’s Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments (1999).

For a chronology of Russell’s major publications, readers are encouraged to consult the Primary Literature section of the Bibliography below. For a complete, descriptive bibliography, see A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell (3 vols, 1994), by Kenneth Blackwell and Harry Ruja. A less detailed list appears in Paul Arthur Schilpp, The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (1944).

For a detailed bibliography of the secondary literature surrounding Russell up to the close of the twentieth century, see Andrew Irvine, Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments , Vol. 1 (1999). For a list of new and forthcoming books relating to Russell, see the Forthcoming Books page at the Bertrand Russell Archives.

Russell’s main contributions to logic and the foundations of mathematics include his discovery of Russell’s paradox (also known as the Russell-Zermelo paradox), his development of the theory of types , his championing of logicism (the view that mathematics is, in some significant sense, reducible to formal logic), his impressively general theory of logical relations, his formalization of the mathematics of quantity and of the real numbers, and his refining of the first-order predicate calculus.

Russell discovered the paradox that bears his name in 1901, while working on his Principles of Mathematics (1903). The paradox arises in connection with the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Such a set, if it exists, will be a member of itself if and only if it is not a member of itself. In his 1901 draft of the Principles of Mathematics , Russell summarizes the problem as follows:

The axiom that all referents with respect to a given relation form a class seems, however, to require some limitation, and that for the following reason. We saw that some predicates can be predicated of themselves. Consider now those … of which this is not the case. … [T]here is no predicate which attaches to all of them and to no other terms. For this predicate will either be predicable or not predicable of itself. If it is predicable of itself, it is one of those referents by relation to which it was defined, and therefore, in virtue of their definition, it is not predicable of itself. Conversely, if it is not predicable of itself, then again it is one of the said referents, of all of which (by hypothesis) it is predicable, and therefore again it is predicable of itself. This is a contradiction. (CP, Vol. 3, 195)

The paradox is significant since, using classical logic, all sentences are entailed by a contradiction. Russell’s discovery thus prompted a large amount of work in logic, set theory, and the philosophy and foundations of mathematics .

Russell’s response to the paradox came between 1903 and 1908 with the development of his theory of types . It was clear to Russell that some form of restriction needed to be placed on the original comprehension (or abstraction) axiom of naïve set theory, the axiom that formalizes the intuition that any coherent condition (or property) may be used to determine a set. Russell’s basic idea was that reference to sets such as the so-called Russell set (the set of all sets that are not members of themselves) could be avoided by arranging all sentences into a hierarchy, beginning with sentences about individuals at the lowest level, sentences about sets of individuals at the next lowest level, sentences about sets of sets of individuals at the next lowest level, and so on. Using a vicious circle principle similar to that adopted by the mathematician Henri Poincaré, together with his so-called “no class” theory of classes (in which class terms gain meaning only when placed in the appropriate context), Russell was able to explain why the unrestricted comprehension axiom fails: propositional functions , such as the function “ x is a set,” may not be applied to themselves since self-application would involve a vicious circle. As a result, all objects for which a given condition (or predicate) holds must be at the same level or of the same “type.” Sentences about these objects will then always be higher in the hierarchy than the objects themselves.

Although first introduced in 1903, the theory of types was further developed by Russell in his 1908 article “Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types” and in the three-volume work he co-authored with Alfred North Whitehead , Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913). The theory thus admits of two versions, the “simple theory” of 1903 and the “ramified theory” of 1908. Both versions of the theory came under attack: the simple theory for being too weak, the ramified theory for being too strong. For some, it was important that any proposed solution be comprehensive enough to resolve all known paradoxes at once. For others, it was important that any proposed solution not disallow those parts of classical mathematics that remained consistent, even though they appeared to violate the vicious circle principle. For discussion of related paradoxes, see Chapter 2 of the Introduction to Whitehead and Russell (1910), as well as the entry on paradoxes and contemporary logic in this encyclopedia.

Russell himself had recognized several of these same concerns as early as 1903, noting that it was unlikely that any single solution would resolve all of the known paradoxes. Together with Whitehead, he was also able to introduce a new axiom, the axiom of reducibility, which lessened the vicious circle principle’s scope of application and so resolved many of the most worrisome aspects of type theory. Even so, critics claimed that the axiom was simply too ad hoc to be justified philosophically. For additional discussion see Linsky (1990), Linsky (2002) and Wahl (2011).

Of equal significance during this period was Russell’s defense of logicism, the theory that mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic. First defended in his 1901 article “Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics,” and later in greater detail in his Principles of Mathematics and in Principia Mathematica , Russell’s logicism consisted of two main theses. The first was that all mathematical truths can be translated into logical truths or, in other words, that the vocabulary of mathematics constitutes a proper subset of the vocabulary of logic. The second was that all mathematical proofs can be recast as logical proofs or, in other words, that the theorems of mathematics constitute a proper subset of the theorems of logic. As Russell summarizes, “The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists in the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself” (1903, 5).

Like Gottlob Frege , Russell’s basic idea for defending logicism was that numbers may be identified with classes of classes and that number-theoretic statements may be explained in terms of quantifiers and identity. Thus the number 1 is to be identified with the class of all unit classes, the number 2 with the class of all two-membered classes, and so on. Statements such as “There are at least two books” would be recast as statements such as “There is a book, x , and there is a book, y , and x is not identical to y .” Statements such as “There are exactly two books” would be recast as “There is a book, x , and there is a book, y , and x is not identical to y , and if there is a book, z , then z is identical to either x or y .” It follows that number-theoretic operations may then be explained in terms of set-theoretic operations such as intersection, union, and difference. In Principia Mathematica , Whitehead and Russell were able to provide many detailed derivations of major theorems in set theory, finite and transfinite arithmetic, and elementary measure theory. They were also able to develop a sophisticated theory of logical relations and a unique method of founding the real numbers. Even so, the issue of whether set theory itself can be said to have been successfully reduced to logic remained controversial. A fourth volume on geometry was planned but never completed.

Russell’s most important writings relating to these topics include not only his Principles of Mathematics (1903), “Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types” (1908), and Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913), but also his earlier Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897) and his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919a), the last of which was written while Russell was serving time in Brixton Prison as a result of his anti-war activities. Coincidentally, it was at roughly this same time that Ludwig Wittgenstein , Russell’s most famous pupil, was completing his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) while being detained as a prisoner of war at Monte Cassino in Italy during World War I.

Anyone needing assistance in deciphering the symbolism found in the more technical of Russell’s writings is encouraged to consult the Notation in Principia Mathematica entry in this encyclopedia.

In much the same way that Russell used logic in an attempt to clarify issues in the foundations of mathematics, he also used logic in an attempt to clarify issues in philosophy. As one of the founders of analytic philosophy, Russell made significant contributions to a wide variety of areas, including metaphysics , epistemology, ethics and political theory. His advances in logic and metaphysics also had significant influence on Rudolf Carnap and the Vienna Circle .

According to Russell, it is the philosopher’s job to discover a logically ideal language — a language that will exhibit the nature of the world in such a way that we will not be misled by the accidental, imprecise surface structure of natural language. As Russell writes, “Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say” (1931, 82). Just as atomic facts (the association of properties and relations with individuals) combine to form molecular facts in the world itself, such a language will allow for the description of such combinations using logical connectives such as “and” and “or.” In addition to the existence of atomic and molecular facts, Russell also held that general facts (facts about “all” of something) are needed to complete our picture of the world. Famously, he vacillated on whether negative facts are also required.

The reason Russell believes many ordinarily accepted statements are open to doubt is that they appear to refer to entities that may be known only through inference. Thus, underlying Russell’s various projects was not only his use of logical analysis, but also his long-standing aim of discovering whether, and to what extent, knowledge is possible. “There is one great question,” he writes in 1911. “Can human beings know anything, and if so, what and how? This question is really the most essentially philosophical of all questions” (quoted in Slater 1994, 67).

Motivating this question was the traditional problem of the external world. If our knowledge of the external world comes through inferences to the best explanation, and if such inferences are always fallible, what guarantee do we have that our beliefs are reliable? Russell’s response to this question was partly metaphysical and partly epistemological. On the metaphysical side, Russell developed his famous theory of logical atomism , in which the world is said to consist of a complex of logical atoms (such as “little patches of colour”) and their properties and relations. (The theory was crucial for influencing Wittgenstein’s theory of the same name.) Together these atoms and their properties form the atomic facts which, in turn, combine to form logically complex objects. What we normally take to be inferred entities (for example, enduring physical objects) are then understood as logical constructions formed from the immediately given entities of sensation, viz., “sensibilia.”

On the epistemological side, Russell argues that it is also important to show how each questionable entity may be reduced to, or defined in terms of, another entity (or entities) whose existence is more certain. For example, on this view, an ordinary physical object that normally might be thought to be known only through inference may be defined instead

as a certain series of appearances, connected with each other by continuity and by certain causal laws. … More generally, a ‘thing’ will be defined as a certain series of aspects, namely those which would commonly be said to be of the thing. To say that a certain aspect is an aspect of a certain thing will merely mean that it is one of those which, taken serially, are the thing. (1914a, 106–107)

The reason we are able to do this, says Russell, is that

our world is not wholly a matter of inference. There are things that we know without asking the opinion of men of science. If you are too hot or too cold, you can be perfectly aware of this fact without asking the physicist what heat and cold consist of. … We may give the name ‘data’ to all the things of which we are aware without inference. (1959, 23)

We can then use these data (or “sensibilia” or “ sense data ”) with which we are directly acquainted to construct the relevant objects of knowledge. Similarly, numbers may be reduced to collections of classes; points and instants may be reduced to ordered classes of volumes and events; and classes themselves may be reduced to propositional functions.

It is with these kinds of examples in mind that Russell suggests we adopt what he calls “the supreme maxim in scientific philosophizing,” namely the principle that “Whenever possible, logical constructions,” or as he also sometimes puts it, “logical fictions,” are “to be substituted for inferred entities” (1914c, 155; cf. 1914a, 107, and 1924, 326). Anything that resists construction in this sense may be said to be an ontological atom. Such objects are atomic, both in the sense that they fail to be composed of individual, substantial parts, and in the sense that they exist independently of one another. Their corresponding propositions are also atomic, both in the sense that they contain no other propositions as parts, and in the sense that the members of any pair of true atomic propositions will be logically independent of one another. Russell believes that formal logic, if carefully developed, will mirror precisely, not only the various relations between all such propositions, but their various internal structures as well.

It is in this context that Russell also introduces his famous distinction between two kinds of knowledge of truths: that which is direct, intuitive, certain and infallible, and that which is indirect, derivative, uncertain and open to error (1905, 41f; 1911, 1912, and 1914b). To be justified, every indirect knowledge claim must be capable of being derived from more fundamental, direct or intuitive knowledge claims. The kinds of truths that are capable of being known directly include both truths about immediate facts of sensation and truths of logic. Examples are discussed in The Problems of Philosophy (1912a) where Russell states that propositions with the highest degree of self-evidence (what he here calls “intuitive knowledge”) include “those which merely state what is given in sense, and also certain abstract logical and arithmetical principles, and (though with less certainty) some ethical propositions” (1912a, 109).

Eventually, Russell supplemented this distinction between direct and indirect knowledge of truths with his equally famous distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. As Russell explains, “I say that I am acquainted with an object when I have a direct cognitive relation to that object, i.e. when I am directly aware of the object itself. When I speak of a cognitive relation here, I do not mean the sort of relation which constitutes judgment, but the sort which constitutes presentation” (1911, 209). Later, he clarifies this point by adding that acquaintance involves, not knowledge of truths, but knowledge of things (1912a, 44). Thus, while intuitive knowledge and derivative knowledge both involve knowledge of propositions (or truths), knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description both involve knowledge of things (or objects). This distinction is slightly complicated by the fact that, even though knowledge by description is in part based upon knowledge of truths, it is still knowledge of things, and not of truths. (I am grateful to Russell Wahl for reminding me of this point.) Since it is things with which we have direct acquaintance that are the least questionable members of our ontology, it is these objects upon which Russell ultimately bases his epistemology.

Also relevant was Russell’s reliance upon his so-called regressive method (Irvine 1989, Mayo-Wilson 2011) and his eventual abandoning of foundationalism in favour of a more recognizably coherentist approach to knowledge (Irvine 2004). As Russell puts it, even in logic and mathematics

We tend to believe the premises because we can see that their consequences are true, instead of believing the consequences because we know the premises to be true. But the inferring of premises from consequences is the essence of induction; thus the method in investigating the principles of mathematics is really an inductive method, and is substantially the same as the method of discovering general laws in any other science. (1907, 273–274)

Russell’s contributions to metaphysics and epistemology are also unified by his views concerning the centrality of both scientific knowledge and the importance of there being an underlying methodology common to both philosophy and science. In the case of philosophy, this methodology expresses itself through Russell’s use of logical analysis (Hager 1994, Irvine 2004). In fact, Russell often claims that he has more confidence in his methodology than in any particular philosophical conclusion.

This broad conception of philosophy arose in part from Russell’s idealist origins (Hylton 1990a, Griffin 1991). This is so, even though Russell tells us that his one, true revolution in philosophy came as a result of his break from idealism. Russell saw that the idealist doctrine of internal relations led to a series of contradictions regarding asymmetrical (and other) relations necessary for mathematics. As he reports,

It was towards the end of 1898 that Moore and I rebelled against both Kant and Hegel. Moore led the way, but I followed closely in his footsteps. … [Our rebellion centred upon] the doctrine that fact is in general independent of experience. Although we were in agreement, I think that we differed as to what most interested us in our new philosophy. I think that Moore was most concerned with the rejection of idealism, while I was most interested in the rejection of monism. (1959, 54)

The two ideas were closely connected through the so-called doctrine of internal relations. In contrast to this doctrine, Russell proposed his own new doctrine of external relations:

The doctrine of internal relations held that every relation between two terms expresses, primarily, intrinsic properties of the two terms and, in ultimate analysis, a property of the whole which the two compose. With some relations this view is plausible. Take, for example, love or hate. If A loves B, this relation exemplifies itself and may be said to consist in certain states of mind of A. Even an atheist must admit that a man can love God. It follows that love of God is a state of the man who feels it, and not properly a relational fact. But the relations that interested me were of a more abstract sort. Suppose that A and B are events, and A is earlier than B. I do not think that this implies anything in A in virtue of which, independently of B, it must have a character which we inaccurately express by mentioning B. Leibniz gives an extreme example. He says that, if a man living in Europe has a wife in India and the wife dies without his knowing it, the man undergoes an intrinsic change at the moment of her death. (1959, 54)

This is the type of doctrine Russell opposed, especially with respect to the asymmetrical relations necessary for mathematics. For example, consider two numbers, one of which is found earlier than the other in a given series:

If A is earlier than B, then B is not earlier than A. If you try to express the relation of A to B by means of adjectives of A and B, you will have to make the attempt by means of dates. You may say that the date of A is a property of A and the date of B is a property of B, but that will not help you because you will have to go on to say that the date of A is earlier than the date of B, so that you will have found no escape from the relation. If you adopt the plan of regarding the relation as a property of the whole composed of A and B, you are in a still worse predicament, for in that whole A and B have no order and therefore you cannot distinguish between “A is earlier than B” and “B is earlier than A.” As asymmetrical relations are essential in most parts of mathematics, this doctrine was important. (1959, 54–55)

Thus, by the end of 1898 Russell had abandoned the idealism that he had been encouraged to adopt as a student at Cambridge, along with his original Kantian methodology. In its place he adopted a new, pluralistic realism . As a result, he soon became famous as an advocate of “the new realism” and of his “new philosophy of logic,” emphasizing as he did the importance of modern logic for philosophical analysis. The underlying themes of this revolution included Russell’s belief in pluralism, his emphasis on anti-psychologism and his belief in the importance of science. Each of these themes remained central to his philosophy for the remainder of his life (Hager 1994, Weitz 1944).

Russell’s most important writings relating to these topics include Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description (1911), The Problems of Philosophy (1912a), “Our Knowledge of the External World” (1914a), On the Nature of Acquaintance (1914b, published more completely in Collected Papers , Vol. 7), “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” (1918, 1919), “Logical Atomism” (1924), The Analysis of Mind (1921), The Analysis of Matter (1927a), Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), and Theory of Knowledge (CP, Vol. 7).

Russell’s philosophical method has at its core the making and testing of hypotheses through the weighing of evidence. Hence Russell’s comment that he wished to emphasize the “scientific method” in philosophy. His method also requires the rigorous analysis of problematic propositions using the machinery of first-order logic. It was Russell’s belief that by using the new logic of his day, philosophers would be able to exhibit the underlying “logical form” of natural-language statements. A statement’s logical form, in turn, would help resolve various problems of reference associated with the ambiguity and vagueness of natural language.

Since the introduction of the modern predicate calculus, it has been common to use three separate logical notations (“ Px ”, “ x = y ”, and “∃ x ”) to represent three separate senses of the natural-language word “is”: the is of predication, e.g. “Cicero is wise”; the is of identity, e.g. “Cicero is Tully”; and the is of existence, e.g. “Cicero is”. It was Russell’s suggestion that, just as we use logic to make clear these distinctions, we can also use logic to discover other ontologically significant distinctions, distinctions that should be reflected in the analysis we give of each sentence’s correct logical form.

On Russell’s view, the subject matter of philosophy is then distinguished from that of the sciences only by the generality and a prioricity of philosophical statements, not by the underlying methodology of the discipline. In philosophy, just as in mathematics, Russell believed that it was by applying logical machinery and insights that advances in analysis would be made.

Russell’s most famous example of his new “analytic method” concerns so-called denoting phrases, phrases that include both definite descriptions and proper names. Like Alexius Meinong , Russell had initially adopted the view that every denoting phrase (for example, “Scott,” “the author of Waverley ,” “the number two,” “the golden mountain”) denoted, or referred to, an existing entity. On this view, even fictional and imaginary entities had to be real in order to serve as truth-makers for true sentences such as “Unicorns have exactly one horn.” By the time his landmark article, “On Denoting,” appeared in 1905, Russell had modified his extreme realism, substituting in its place the view that denoting phrases need not possess a theoretical unity. As Russell puts it, the assumption that every denoting phrase must refer to an existing entity was the type of assumption that exhibited “a failure of that feeling for reality which ought to be preserved even in the most abstract studies” (1919a, 165).

While logically proper names (words such as “this” or “that” which refer to sensations of which an agent is immediately aware) do have referents associated with them, descriptive phrases (such as “the smallest number less than pi”) should be viewed merely as collections of quantifiers (such as “all” and “some”) and propositional functions (such as “ x is a number”). As such, they are not to be viewed as referring terms but, rather, as “incomplete symbols.” In other words, they are to be viewed as symbols that take on meaning within appropriate contexts, but that remain meaningless in isolation.

Put another way, it was Russell’s insight that some phrases may contribute to the meaning (or reference) of a sentence without themselves being meaningful. As he explains,

If “the author of Waverley ” meant anything other than “Scott”, “Scott is the author of Waverley ” would be false, which it is not. If “the author of Waverley ” meant “Scott”, “Scott is the author of Waverley ” would be a tautology, which it is not. Therefore, “the author of Waverley ” means neither “Scott” nor anything else – i.e. “the author of Waverley ” means nothing, Q.E.D. (1959, 85)

If Russell is correct, it follows that in a sentence such as

(1) The present King of France is bald,

the definite description “The present King of France” plays a role quite different from the role a proper name such as “Scott” plays in the sentence

(2) Scott is bald.

Letting K abbreviate the predicate “is a present King of France” and B abbreviate the predicate “is bald,” Russell assigns sentence (1) the logical form

(1′) There is an x such that Kx , for any y , if Ky then y=x , and Bx .

Alternatively, in the notation of the predicate calculus, we write

(1″) ∃ x [( Kx & ∀ y ( Ky → y=x )) & Bx ].

In contrast, by allowing s to abbreviate the name “Scott,” Russell assigns sentence (2) the very different logical form

(2′) Bs .

This distinction between logical forms allows Russell to explain three important puzzles.

The first concerns the operation of the Law of Excluded Middle and how this law relates to denoting terms. According to one reading of the Law of Excluded Middle, it must be the case that either “The present King of France is bald” is true or “The present King of France is not bald” is true. But if so, both sentences appear to entail the existence of a present King of France, clearly an undesirable result, given that France is a republic and so has no king. Russell’s analysis shows how this conclusion can be avoided. By appealing to analysis (1′′), it follows that there is a way to deny (1) without being committed to the existence of a present King of France, namely by changing the scope of the negation operator and thereby accepting that “It is not the case that there exists a present King of France who is bald” is true.

The second puzzle concerns the Law of Identity as it operates in (so-called) opaque contexts. Even though “Scott is the author of Waverley ” is true, it does not follow that the two referring terms “Scott” and “the author of Waverley ” need be interchangeable in every situation. Thus, although “George IV wanted to know whether Scott was the author of Waverley ” is true, “George IV wanted to know whether Scott was Scott” is, presumably, false.

Russell’s distinction between the logical forms associated with the use of proper names and definite descriptions again shows why this is so. To see this, we once again let s abbreviate the name “Scott.” We also let w abbreviate “ Waverley ” and A abbreviate the two-place predicate “is the author of.” It then follows that the sentence

is not at all equivalent to the sentence

(4) ∃ x [( Axw & ∀ y ( Ayw → y=x )) & x=s ].

Sentence (3), for example, is a necessary truth, while sentence (4) is not.

The third puzzle relates to true negative existential claims, such as the claim “The golden mountain does not exist.” Here, once again, by treating definite descriptions as having a logical form distinct from that of proper names, Russell is able to give an account of how a speaker may be committed to the truth of a negative existential without also being committed to the belief that the subject term has reference. That is, the claim that Scott does not exist is false since

(5) ~∃ x ( x=s )

is self-contradictory. (After all, there must exist at least one thing that is identical to s since it is a logical truth that s is identical to itself!) In contrast, the claim that a golden mountain does not exist may be true since, assuming that G abbreviates the predicate “is golden” and M abbreviates the predicate “is a mountain,” there is nothing contradictory about

(6) ~∃ x ( Gx & Mx ).

Russell’s most important writings relating to his theory of descriptions include not only “On Denoting” (1905), but also The Principles of Mathematics (1903), Principia Mathematica (1910) and Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919). (See too Kaplan 1970, Kroon 2009 and Stevens 2011.)

Yet another of Russell’s major contributions is his defence of neutral monism , the view that the world consists of just one type of substance which is neither exclusively mental nor exclusively physical. Like idealism (the view that nothing exists but the mental) and physicalism (the view that nothing exists but the physical), neutral monism rejects dualism (the view that there exist distinct mental and physical substances). However, unlike both idealism and physicalism, neutral monism holds that this single existing substance may be viewed in some contexts as being mental and in others as being physical. As Russell puts it,

“Neutral monism”—as opposed to idealistic monism and materialistic monism—is the theory that the things commonly regarded as mental and the things commonly regarded as physical do not differ in respect of any intrinsic property possessed by the one set and not by the other, but differ only in respect of arrangement and context. (CP, Vol. 7, 15)

To help understand this general suggestion, Russell introduces his analogy of a postal directory:

The theory may be illustrated by comparison with a postal directory, in which the same names come twice over, once in alphabetical and once in geographical order; we may compare the alphabetical order to the mental, and the geographical order to the physical. The affinities of a given thing are quite different in the two orders, and its causes and effects obey different laws. Two objects may be connected in the mental world by the association of ideas, and in the physical world by the law of gravitation. … Just as every man in the directory has two kinds of neighbours, namely alphabetical neighbours and geographical neighbours, so every object will lie at the intersection of two causal series with different laws, namely the mental series and the physical series. ‘Thoughts’ are not different in substance from ‘things’; the stream of my thoughts is a stream of things, namely of the things which I should commonly be said to be thinking of; what leads to its being called a stream of thoughts is merely that the laws of succession are different from the physical laws. (CP, Vol. 7, 15)

In other words, when viewed as being mental, a thought or idea may have associated with it other thoughts or ideas that seem related even though, when viewed as being physical, they have very little in common. As Russell explains, “In my mind, Caesar may call up Charlemagne, whereas in the physical world the two were widely sundered” (CP, Vol. 7, 15). Even so, it is a mistake, on this view, to postulate two distinct types of thing (the idea of Caesar and the man Caesar) that are composed of two distinct substances (the mental and the physical). Instead, “The whole duality of mind and matter, according to this theory, is a mistake; there is only one kind of stuff out of which the world is made, and this stuff is called mental in one arrangement, physical in the other” (CP, Vol. 7, 15).

Russell appears to have developed this theory around 1913, while working on his Theory of Knowledge manuscript and on his 1914 Monist article, “On the Nature of Acquaintance.” Decades later, in 1964, he remarked that “I am not conscious of any serious change in my philosophy since I adopted neutral monism” (Eames 1967, 511). Even so, over the next several decades Russell continued to do a large amount of original work, authoring such important books as The Analysis of Mind (1921), The Analysis of Matter (1927a), An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940) and Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948).

Today several authors, including David Chalmers (1996, 155) and Thomas Nagel (2002, 209), have shown renewed interest in considering Russell’s general approach to the mind.

In addition to the above titles by Russell, Russell’s most influential writings relating to his theories of metaphysics and epistemology include Our Knowledge of the External World (1914a), “The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics” (1914c), “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” (1918, 1919), “On Propositions: What They Are and How They Mean” (1919b) and An Outline of Philosophy (1927b).

Russell’s significant social influence stems from three main sources: his long-standing social activism, his many writings on the social and political issues of his day as well as on more theoretical concerns, and his popularizations of numerous technical writings in philosophy and the natural sciences.

Among Russell’s many popularizations are his two best-selling works, The Problems of Philosophy (1912) and A History of Western Philosophy (1945). Both of these books, as well as his numerous books popularizing science, have done much to educate and inform generations of general readers. His History is still widely read and did much to initiate twentieth-century research on a wide range of historical figures from the presocratics to Leibniz . His Problems is still used as an introductory textbook over a century after it was first published. Both books can be read by the layman with satisfaction. Other popular books, particularly those relating to developments in modern science such as The ABC of Atoms (1923a) and The ABC of Relativity (1925), are now of more historical interest. Even so, they continue to convey something of the intellectual excitement associated with advances in twentieth-century science and philosophy.

Naturally enough, Russell saw a link between education in this broad sense and social progress. As he put it, “Education is the key to the new world” (1926, 83). Partly this is due to our need to understand nature, but equally important is our need to understand each other:

The thing, above all, that a teacher should endeavor to produce in his pupils, if democracy is to survive, is the kind of tolerance that springs from an endeavor to understand those who are different from ourselves. It is perhaps a natural human impulse to view with horror and disgust all manners and customs different from those to which we are used. Ants and savages put strangers to death. And those who have never traveled either physically or mentally find it difficult to tolerate the queer ways and outlandish beliefs of other nations and other times, other sects and other political parties. This kind of ignorant intolerance is the antithesis of a civilized outlook, and is one of the gravest dangers to which our overcrowded world is exposed. (1950, 121)

It is in this same context that Russell is famous for suggesting that a widespread reliance upon evidence, rather than superstition, would have enormous social consequences: “I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration,” says Russell, “a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true” (A1928, 11).

Unlike Russell’s views about the importance of education, the precise connection between Russell’s political activism and his more theoretical work has been more controversial. In part, this has been because Russell himself repeatedly maintained that he saw no significant connection between his philosophical work and his political activism. Others have seen things differently. One of the best summaries is given by Alan Wood:

Russell sometimes maintained, partly I think out of perverseness, that there was no connection between his philosophical and political opinions. … But in fact I think there are perfectly obvious connections between Russell’s philosophical and other views. … To begin with, it is natural enough to find an analytic anti-monist philosopher like Russell upholding the individual against the state, whereas Hegel did the reverse … [In addition, the] whole bent of Russell’s mind in philosophy was an attempt to eliminate the a priori and to accentuate the empirical; and there was exactly the same trend in his political thinking … Unless it is realized that Russell’s approach to political questions was usually empirical and practical, based on the evidence of the moment and not on a priori principles and preconceptions, it is quite impossible to understand why his views appeared to vary so much. This was perfectly legitimate, and even praiseworthy, in a world which never stays the same, and where changing circumstances continually change the balance of arguments on different sides. (Wood 1957, 73–4)

Thus, in addition to Russell’s numerous contributions to the politics of his day, he also contributed significantly to our understanding of the social world around us. Among Russell’s more theoretical contributions were his anticipation of John Mackie’s error theory in ethics, the view that moral judgments are cognitive (that is, they are either true or false), but because of their content they are in fact inevitably false. (Mackie’s paper “The Refutation of Morals” appeared in 1946; Russell’s paper “Is There an Absolute Good?”, although not published until 1988 was first delivered in 1922.)

Russell also anticipated the modern theory of emotivism (as introduced by A.J. Ayer in his 1936 Language, Truth and Logic ), arguing that “Primarily, we call something ‘good’ when we desire it, and ‘bad’ when we have an aversion from it” (1927b, 242), a view that “he had been flirting with since 1913” (see the entry on Russell’s Moral Philosophy in this encyclopedia; see too Schilpp 1944, 719f). Even so, Russell remained less than satisfied with his views on meta-ethics for most of his life (CP, Vol. 11, 310).

This dissatisfaction appears not to have extended to his work in political theory. There Russell focused primarily on the notion of power, or what he called “the production of intended effects” (1938, 35). As a result, as V.J. McGill writes, “The concept of power overshadows all of Russell’s political and economic writings” (Schilpp 1944, 581). As Russell summarizes, “The laws of social dynamics are – so I shall contend – only capable of being stated in terms of power in its various forms” (1938, 15). As a result, it is only by understanding power in all its human instantiations that we understand the social world around us.

Russell’s cataloging of the perceived evils of his age are well known. Even so, underlying his criticism of both the political left and the political right lies a common worry: the unequal distribution of power. As McGill sums up, “Evidently he has become convinced that the thirst for Power is the primary danger of mankind, that possessiveness is evil mainly because it promotes the power of man over man” (Schilpp 1944, 581). The problem with this analysis and of Russell’s desire for a more equitable distribution of power is that any proposed solution appears to lead to paradox:

Suppose certain men join a movement to disestablish Power, or to distribute it more equally among the people! If they are successful, they carry out the behest of Power, becoming themselves as powerful, in terms of Mr. Russell’s definition, as any tyrant. Even though they spread the good life to millions, the more successful they are, the more usurpatious and dangerous. (Schilpp 1944, 586)

More than any of his other books, it was Russell’s writings in ethics and politics that brought him to the attention of non-academic audiences. His most influential books on these topics include his Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916), On Education (1926), Why I Am Not a Christian (1927c), Marriage and Morals (1929), The Conquest of Happiness (1930), The Scientific Outlook (1931), and Power: A New Social Analysis (1938).

Since his death in 1970, Russell’s reputation as a philosopher has continued to grow. This increase in reputation has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in scholarship. Older first-hand accounts of Russell’s life, such as Dora Russell’s The Tamarisk Tree (1975, 1981, 1985), Katharine Tait’s My Father Bertrand Russell (1975) and Ronald Clark’s The Life of Bertrand Russell (1975), have been supplemented by more recent accounts, including Caroline Moorehead’s Bertrand Russell (1992), John Slater’s Bertrand Russell (1994) and Ray Monk’s Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude (1996) and Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Maddness (2000).

This increase in scholarship has benefited greatly from the existence of the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University, where the bulk of Russell’s library and literary estate are housed, and from the Bertrand Russell Research Centre , also housed at McMaster. Books such as Nicholas Griffin’s Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell (1992, 2001), Gregory Landini’s Russell’s Hidden Substitutional Theory (1998) and Bernard Linsky’s The Evolution of Principia Mathematica (2011) have all helped make public archival material that, in the past, has been available only to specialists. Since 1983 the Bertrand Russell Editorial Project , initiated by John Slater and Kenneth Blackwell, has also begun to release authoritative, annotated editions of Russell’s Collected Papers . When complete, this collection will run to over 35 volumes and will bring together all of Russell’s writings, other than his correspondence and previously published monographs.

Recent scholarship has also helped remind readers of the influence Russell’s students had on Russell’s philosophy. Ludwig Wittgenstein and Frank Ramsey especially presented Russell with helpful criticisms of his work and new problems to solve. Both men pushed Russell to develop new theories in logic and epistemology. Despite the fact that Wittgenstein was less than satisfied with Russell’s Introduction to his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), Michael Potter’s Wittgenstein’s Notes on Logic (2009) and the introductory materials published in Russell’s Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript (CP, Vol. 7) show the extent and fruitfulness of the interaction between teacher and student.

Since Russell’s death, debate has also taken place over the ultimate importance of Russell’s contributions, not just to philosophy, but to other disciplines as well. Advocates of Russell’s inclusion in the canon remind readers that few have done more to advance both formal logic and analytic philosophy. Critics of his inclusion, or at least of his canonization, remind readers of Russell’s early enthusiasm for British imperialism (Russell 1967, 134) and of his controversial comments about eugenics and race (Russell 1929, 259, 266). Others have noted his apparent early antisemitism and his advocacy of a preemptive nuclear war against the Soviet Union following World War II (Hook 1976, Stone 1981, Perkins 1994, Blitz 2002). On the issue of a preemptive war, Russell himself later denied he had ever advocated such a course of action. However, after reviewing carefully the historical record, biographer Ronald Clark comes to a different conclusion. Clark is also unequivocal about Russell’s lack of sincerity on the issue: “If the suggestion that he deliberately tried to conceal his earlier views is repugnant, the record does not really allow any other conclusion to be drawn” (Clark 1975, 530). Perhaps as a result of such observations, many readers remain undecided when attempting to evaluate Russell’s overall contribution to the intellectual life of the twentieth century.

Monk’s two volumes are a significant case in point. In addition to his ground-breaking biographical work, Monk relates Wittgenstein’s humorous suggestion that all of 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” (Monk 2000, 278). Others, such as Peter Stone, have argued that such caricatures are based on “a misunderstanding of the nature of Russell as a political figure” (2003, 89) and that “Whatever one thinks of Russell’s politics, he was one of the few public figures in the west to stand against capitalism without succumbing to illusions about Stalinist Russia. If for no other reason than this, Russell deserves some credit for his political instincts” (2003, 85). (See, for example, Russell 1920 and 1922b.)

How is the ordinary reader to decide between such conflicting evaluations? Unlike the many logical advances Russell introduced, in politics he is still usually understood to be more an advocate than a theoretician. As a result, his reputation as a political thinker has not been as high as his reputation in logic, metaphysics and epistemology.

Even so, regardless of his many particular contributions, Russell’s lasting reputation has also benefited significantly from his constant willingness to abandon unsupported theories and outdated beliefs. To his great credit, when new evidence presented itself, Russell was always among the first to take it into account: “Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect,” says Russell, “my travels were very useful to me” (1967, 133).

A short anecdote recounted in Russell’s Autobiography is also typical. As a young man, he says, he spent part of each day for many weeks

reading Georg Cantor, and copying out the gist of him into a notebook. At that time I falsely supposed all his arguments to be fallacious, but I nevertheless went through them all in the minutest detail. This stood me in good stead when later on I discovered that all the fallacies were mine. (1967, 127)

Major Books and Articles by Russell

Major anthologies of russell’s writings, the collected papers of bertrand russell.

• 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.
• 1901, “Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics,” International Monthly , 4: 83–101; repr. as “Mathematics and the Metaphysicians,” in Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays , New York, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918, 74–96; also appearing in Collected Papers , Vol. 3.
• 1903, The Principles of Mathematics , Cambridge: At the University Press.
• 1905, “On Denoting,” Mind , 14: 479–493; repr. in Bertrand Russell, Essays in Analysis , London: Allen and Unwin, 1973, 103–119; and in Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge , London: George Allen and Unwin, 1956, 41–56; also appearing in Collected Papers , Vol. 4.
• 1907, “The Regressive Method of Discovering the Premises of Mathematics,” in Bertrand Russell, Essays in Analysis , London: Allen and Unwin, 1973, 272–283; also appearing in Collected Papers , Vol. 5.
• 1908, “Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types,” American Journal of Mathematics , 30: 222–262; repr. in Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge , London: Allen and Unwin, 1956, 59–102; also appearing in Collected Papers , Vol. 5.
• 1910, 1912, 1913 (with Alfred North Whitehead), Principia Mathematica , 3 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2nd edn, 1925 (Vol. 1), 1927 (Vols 2, 3); abridged as Principia Mathematica to *56 , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.
• 1911, “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 11: 108–128; repr. in Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays , New York, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918, 209–232; also appearing in Collected Papers , Vol. 6.
• 1912a, The Problems of Philosophy , London: Williams and Norgate; New York: Henry Holt and Company.
• 1912b, “On the Relations of Universals and Particulars,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 12: 1–24; repr. in Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge , London: Allen and Unwin, 1956, 105–124; also appearing in Collected Papers , Vol. 6.
• 1914a, Our Knowledge of the External World , Chicago and London: The Open Court Publishing Company.
• 1914b, “On the Nature of Acquaintance,” Monist , 24: 1–16, 161–187, 435–453; repr. in Logic and Knowledge , London: George Allen and Unwin, 1956, 127–174; also appearing in Collected Papers , Vol. 7.
• 1914c, “The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics,” Scientia , 16: 1–27; repr. in Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays , New York, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918, 145–179; also appearing in Collected Papers , Vol. 8.
• 1916, Principles of Social Reconstruction , London: George Allen and Unwin; repr. as Why Men Fight , New York: The Century Company, 1917.
• 1917, Political Ideals , New York: The Century Company.
• 1918, 1919, “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism,” Monist , 28: 495–527; 29: 32–63, 190–222, 345–380; repr. in Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge , London: Allen and Unwin, 1956, 177–281; also appearing in Collected Papers , Vol. 8.
• 1919a, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: The Macmillan Company.
• 1919b, “On Propositions: What They Are and How They Mean,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , Supplementary Volume 2: 1–43; also appearing in Collected Papers , Vol. 8.
• 1920, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism , London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
• 1921, The Analysis of Mind , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: The Macmillan Company.
• 1922a, “Is There an Absolute Good?”, in Collected Papers , Vol. 9.
• 1922b, The Problem of China , London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
• 1923a, The ABC of Atoms , London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.
• 1923b, A Free Man’s Worship , Portland, Maine: Thomas Bird Mosher; repr. as What Can A Free Man Worship? Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1927.
• 1924, “Logical Atomism,” in J.H. Muirhead, Contemporary British Philosophers , London: Allen and Unwin, 1924, 356–383; repr. in Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge , London: Allen and Unwin, 1956, 323–343; also appearing in Collected Papers , Vol. 9.
• 1925, The ABC of Relativity , London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.
• 1926, On Education, Especially in Early Childhood , London: George Allen and Unwin; repr. as Education and the Good Life , New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926; abridged as Education of Character , New York: Philosophical Library, 1961.
• 1927a, The Analysis of Matter , London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner; New York: Harcourt, Brace.
• 1927b, An Outline of Philosophy , London: George Allen and Unwin; repr. as Philosophy , New York: W.W. Norton, 1927.
• 1927c, Why I Am Not a Christian , London: Watts; New York: The Truth Seeker Company.
• 1929, Marriage and Morals , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Horace Liveright.
• 1930, The Conquest of Happiness , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Horace Liveright.
• 1931, The Scientific Outlook , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: W.W. Norton.
• 1938, Power: A New Social Analysis , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: W.W. Norton.
• 1940, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: W.W. Norton.
• 1945, A History of Western Philosophy , New York: Simon and Schuster; London: George Allen and Unwin, 1946; rev. edn, 1961.
• 1948, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
• 1949a, Authority and the Individual , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
• 1949b, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism , Minneapolis, Minnesota: Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota; repr. as Russell’s Logical Atomism , D.F. Pears (ed.), Oxford: Fontana/Collins, 1972.
• 1954, Human Society in Ethics and Politics , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
• 1959, My Philosophical Development , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
• 1961, Has Man a Future? , London: Allen and Unwin.
• 1963, Unarmed Victory , London: Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
• 1967, 1968, 1969, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell , 3 vols, London: George Allen and Unwin; Boston: Little Brown and Company (Vols 1 and 2), New York: Simon and Schuster (Vol. 3).
• 1967a, War Crimes in Vietnam , London: Allen and Unwin; New York: Monthly Review Press.
• A1910, Philosophical Essays , London: Longmans, Green.
• A1918, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays , New York, London: Longmans, Green & Co.; repr. as A Free Man’s Worship and Other Essays , London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1976.
• A1928, Sceptical Essays , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: W.W. Norton.
• A1935, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: W.W. Norton.
• A1950, Unpopular Essays , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
• A1956a, Logic and Knowledge: Essays, 1901–1950 , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: The Macmillan Company.
• A1956b, Portraits From Memory and Other Essays , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
• A1957, Why I am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
• A1961a, The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903–1959 , London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
• A1961b, Fact and Fiction , London: Allen and Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962.
• A1968, The Art of Philosophizing and Other Essays , New York: Philosophical Library.
• A1969, Dear Bertrand Russell , London: George Allen and Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• A1973, Essays in Analysis , London: George Allen and Unwin.
• A1992, The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1 , London: Allen Lane, and New York: Houghton Mifflin.
• A1999a, Russell on Ethics , London: Routledge.
• A1999b, Russell on Religion , London: Routledge.
• A2001, The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 2 , London: Routledge.
• A2003, Russell on Metaphysics , London: Routledge.
• CP, Vol. 1, Cambridge Essays, 1888–99 , London, Boston, Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1983.
• CP, Vol. 2, Philosophical Papers, 1896–99 , London and New York: Routledge, 1990.
• CP, Vol. 3, Toward the Principles of Mathematics, 1900–02 , London and New York: Routledge, 1993.
• CP, Vol. 4, Foundations of Logic, 1903–05 , London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
• CP, Vol. 5, Toward Principia Mathematica, 1905–08 , London and New York: Routledge, in press.
• CP, Vol. 6, Logical and Philosophical Papers, 1909–13 , London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
• CP, Vol. 7, Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript , London, Boston, Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1984; paperbound, 1992.
• CP, Vol. 8, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism and Other Essays, 1914–19 , London: George Allen and Unwin, 1986.
• CP, Vol. 9, Essays on Language, Mind and Matter, 1919–26 , London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.
• CP, Vol. 10, A Fresh Look at Empiricism, 1927–42 , London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
• CP, Vol. 11, Last Philosophical Testament, 1943–68 , London and New York: Routledge, 1997.
• CP, Vol. 12, Contemplation and Action, 1902–14 , London, Boston, Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1985.
• CP, Vol. 13, Prophecy and Dissent, 1914–16 , London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.
• CP, Vol. 14, Pacifism and Revolution, 1916–18 , London and New York: Routledge, 1995.
• CP, Vol. 15, Uncertain Paths to Freedom: Russia and China, 1919–22 , London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
• CP, Vol. 21, How to Keep the Peace: The Pacifist Dilemma, 1935–38 , London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
• CP, Vol. 28, Man’s Peril, 1954–55 , London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
• CP, Vol. 29, Détente or Destruction, 1955–57 , London and New York: Routledge, 2005.
• Vol. 16, Labour and Internationalism, 1922–25.
• Vol. 17, Authority versus Enlightenment, 1925–27.
• Vol. 18, Behaviourism and Education, 1927–31.
• Vol. 19, Science and Civilization, 1931–33.
• Vol. 20, Fascism and Other Depression Legacies, 1933–34.
• Vol. 22, The CCNY Case, 1938–40.
• Vol. 23, The Problems of Democracy, 1941–44.
• Vol. 24, Civilization and the Bomb, 1944–47.
• Vol. 25, Defense of the West, 1948–50.
• Vol. 26, Respectability—At Last, 1950–51.
• Vol. 27, Culture and the Cold War, 1952–53.
• Vol. 30, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1957–59.
• Vol. 31, The Committee of 100, 1960–62.
• Vol. 32, A New Plan for Peace and Other Essays, 1963–64.
• Vol. 33, The Vietnam Campaign, 1965–66.
• Vol. 34, International War Crimes Tribunal, 1967–70.
• Vol. 35, Newly Discovered Papers.
• Vol. 36, Indexes.
• Ayer, A.J., 1971, Russell and Moore , Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 1972a, “Bertrand Russell as a Philosopher,” Proceedings of the British Academy , 58: 127–151; repr. in A.D. Irvine (ed.) (1999) Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments , 4 vols, London: Routledge, vol. 1, 65–85.
• –––, 1972b, Russell , London: Fontana/Collins.
• Blackwell, Kenneth, 1983, “‘Perhaps You will Think Me Fussy …’: Three Myths in Editing Russell’s Collected Papers ,” in H.J. Jackson (ed.), Editing Polymaths , Toronto: Committee for the Conference on Editorial Problems, 99–142.
• –––, 1985, The Spinozistic Ethics of Bertrand Russell , London: George Allen and Unwin.
• –––, and Harry Ruja, 1994, A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell , 3 vols, London: Routledge.
• Blitz, David, 2002, “Did Russell Advocate Preventive Atomic War Against the USSR?” Russell , 22: 5–45.
• Bostock, David, 2012, Russell’s Logical Atomism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Broad, C.D., 1973, “Bertrand Russell, as Philosopher,” Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society , 5: 328–341; repr. in A.D. Irvine (ed.) (1999) Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments , 4 vols, London: Routledge, vol 1, 1–15.
• Burke, Tom, 1994, Dewey’s New Logic: A Reply to Russell , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Carnap, Rudolf, 1931, “The Logicist Foundations of Mathematics,” Erkenntnis , 2: 91–105; repr. in Paul Benacerraf, and Hilary Putnam (eds), Philosophy of Mathematics , 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, 41–52; repr. in E.D. Klemke (ed.), Essays on Bertrand Russell , Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970, 341–354; and repr. in David F. Pears (ed.), Bertrand Russell: A Collection of Critical Essays , Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, 175–191.
• Chalmers, David J., 1996, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Chomsky, Noam, 1971, Problems of Knowledge and Freedom: The Russell Lectures , New York: Vintage.
• Church, Alonzo, 1974, “Russellian Simple Type Theory,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association , 47: 21–33.
• –––, 1976, “Comparison of Russell’s Resolution of the Semantical Antinomies with That of Tarski,” Journal of Symbolic Logic , 41: 747–760; repr. in A.D. Irvine, Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments , vol. 2, New York and London: Routledge, 1999, 96–112.
• Clark, Ronald William, 1975, The Life of Bertrand Russell , London: Jonathan Cape and Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
• –––, 1981, Bertrand Russell and His World , London: Thames and Hudson.
• Copi, Irving, 1971, The Theory of Logical Types , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Demopoulos, William, 2013, Logicism and Its Philosophical Legacy , London and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Dewey, John, and Horace M. Kallen (eds.), 1941, The Bertrand Russell Case , New York: Viking.
• Doxiadis, Apostolos, and Christos Papadimitriou, 2009, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth , New York: St Martin’s Press.
• Duffy, Bruce, 1987, The World as I Found It , New York: Ticknor & Fields.
• Eames, Elizabeth R., 1967, “The Consistency of Russell’s Realism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 27: 502–511.
• –––, 1969, Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Knowledge , London: George Allen and Unwin.
• –––, 1989, Bertrand Russell’s Dialogue with his Contemporaries , Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
• Eliot, T.S., 1917, “Mr Apollinax”, Prufrock and Other Observations , London: Egoist Press.
• Feinberg, Barry, and Ronald Kasrils (eds.), 1969, Dear Bertrand Russell , London: George Allen and Unwin.
• –––, 1973, 1983, Bertrand Russell’s America , 2 vols, London: George Allen and Unwin.
• Gabbay, Dov M., and John Woods (eds.), 2009, Handbook of the History of Logic: Volume 5 — Logic From Russell to Church , Amsterdam: Elsevier/North Holland.
• Galaugher, Jolen, 2013, Russell’s Philosophy of Logical Analysis , London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Gandon, Sébastien, 2012, Russell’s Unknown Logicism , New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Gandy, R.O., 1973, “Bertrand Russell, as Mathematician,” Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society , 5: 342–348; repr. in A.D. Irvine, Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments , vol. 1, New York and London: Routledge, 1999, 16–23.
• Gödel, Kurt, 1944, “Russell’s Mathematical Logic,” in Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell , 3rd edn, New York: Tudor, 1951, 123–153; repr. in Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam (eds), Philosophy of Mathematics , 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, 447–469; repr. in David F. Pears (ed.) (1972) Bertrand Russell: A Collection of Critical Essays , Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 192–226; and repr. in A.D. Irvine (ed.) Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments , vol. 2, New York and London: Routledge, 1999, 113–134.
• Grattan-Guinness, I., 1977, Dear Russell, Dear Jourdain: A Commentary on Russell’s Logic, Based on His Correspondence with Philip Jourdain , New York: Columbia University Press.
• –––, 2000, The Search for Mathematical Roots, 1870–1940 , Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press.
• Griffin, Nicholas, 1991, Russell’s Idealist Apprenticeship , Oxford: Clarendon.
• ––– (ed.), 2003, The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• ––– (ed.), 2014, Bertrand Russell, A Pacifist at War: Letters and Writings 1914–1918 , Nottingham: Spokesman Books.
• –––, and Dale Jacquette (eds), 2009, Russell vs. Meinong: the Legacy of “On Denoting” , New York: Routledge.
• –––, and Bernard Linsky (eds.), 2013, The Palgrave Centenary Companion to Principia Mathematica , London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• –––, and Bernard Linsky and Kenneth Blackwell (eds.), 2011, Principia Mathematica at 100 , Hamilton, ON: Bertrand Russell Research Centre; also published as Special Issue vol. 31, no. 1 of Russell .
• Hager, Paul J., 1994, Continuity and Change in the Development of Russell’s Philosophy , Dordrecht: Nijhoff.
• Hardy, Godfrey H., 1942, Bertrand Russell and Trinity , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
• Hintikka, Jaakko, 2009, “Logicism”, in A.D. Irvine (ed.), Philosophy of Mathematics , Amsterdam: Elsevier/North Holland, 271–290.
• Hochberg, Herbert, 2001, Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein , New York: Hansel-Hohenhausen.
• Hook, Sidney, 1966, “Lord Russell and the War Crimes Trial”, The New Leader , 49 (24 October); repr. in A.D. Irvine (ed.) (1999) Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments , 4 vols, London: Routledge, vol. 4, 181.
• –––, 1976, “Bertrand Russell the Man”, Commentary , July 1976, 52–54.
• Huxley, Aldous, 1921, Chrome Yellow , London: Chatto & Windus.
• Hylton, Peter W., 1990a, Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy , Oxford: Clarendon.
• –––, 1990b, “Logic in Russell’s Logicism,” in David Bell and Neil Cooper (eds), The Analytic Tradition: Philosophical Quarterly Monographs , Vol. 1, Cambridge: Blackwell, 137–172.
• Ironside, Philip, 1996, The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand Russell: The Development of an Aristocratic Liberalism , London: Cambridge University Press.
• Irvine, A.D., 1989, “Epistemic Logicism and Russell’s Regressive Method,” Philosophical Studies , 55: 303–327.
• –––, 1996, “Bertrand Russell and Academic Freedom,” Russell , 16: 5–36.
• ––– (ed.), 1999, Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments , 4 vols, London: Routledge.
• –––, 2004, “Russell on Method,” in Godehard Link (ed.), One Hundred Years of Russell’s Paradox , Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 481–500.
• ––– (ed.), 2009, Philosophy of Mathematics , Amsterdam: Elsevier/North Holland.
• –––, and G.A. Wedeking (eds.), 1993, Russell and Analytic Philosophy , Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Jager, Ronald, 1972, The Development of Bertrand Russell’s Philosophy , London: George Allen and Unwin.
• Kaplan, David, 1970, “What is Russell’s Theory of Descriptions?” in Wolfgang Yourgrau and Allen D. Breck, (eds), Physics, Logic, and History , New York: Plenum, 277–288; repr. in David F. Pears (ed.), Bertrand Russell: A Collection of Critical Essays , Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, 227–244.
• Klement, Kevin C., 2001, “Russell’s Paradox in Appendix B of the Principles of Mathematics: Was Frege’s Response Adequate?” History and Philosophy of Logic , 22: 13–28.
• –––, 2003, “Russell’s 1903–05 Anticipation of the Lambda Calculus,” History and Philosophy of Logic , 24: 15–37.
• –––, 2010, “The Functions of Russell’s No Class Theory,” Review of Symbolic Logic , 3–4: 633–664.
• –––, 2012, “Neo-logicism and Russell’s Logicism,” Russell , 32: 127–59.
• Klemke, E.D. (ed.), 1970, Essays on Bertrand Russell , Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• Korhonen, Anssi, 2013, Logic as Universal Science: Russell’s Early Logicism and Its Philosophical Context , London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Kreisel, Georg, 1973, “Bertrand Arthur William Russell, Earl Russell: 1872–1970,” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society , 19, 583–620; repr. in A.D. Irvine (ed.) (1999) Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments , 4 vols, London: Routledge, vol. 1, 24–64.
• Kroon, Fred W., 2006, “Russellian Descriptions and Meinongian Assumptions,” in A. Bottani and R. Davies (eds), Modes of Existence: Papers in Ontology and Philosophical Logic , Heusenstamm: Ontos Verlag, 83–106.
• –––, 2009, “Existence in the Theory of Definite Descriptions,” Journal of Philosophy , 106: 365–389.
• Landini, Gregory, 1998, Russell’s Hidden Substitutional Theory , New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2011, Russell , London and New York: Routledge.
• Leithauser, Gladys Garner, and Nadine Cowan Dyer, 1982, “Bertrand Russell and T.S. Eliot: Their Dialogue,” Russell , 2: 7–28.
• Link, Godehard (ed.), 2004, One Hundred Years of Russell’s Paradox , Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
• Linsky, Bernard, 1990, “Was the Axiom of Reducibility a Principle of Logic?” Russell , 10: 125–140; repr. in A.D. Irvine (ed.), Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments , 4 vols, London: Routledge, 1999, vol. 2, 150–264.
• –––, 1999, Russell’s Metaphysical Logic , Stanford: CSLI Publications.
• –––, 2002, “The Resolution of Russell’s Paradox in Principia Mathematica ,” Philosophical Perspectives , 16: 395–417.
• –––, 2011, The Evolution of Principia Mathematica: Bertrand Russell’s Manuscripts and Notes for the Second Edition , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, and Guido Imaguire (eds.), 2005, On Denoting 1905–2005 , Munich: Philosophia-Verlag.
• Lycan, William, 1981, “Logical Atomism and Ontological Atoms,” Synthese , 46: 207–229.
• Maclean, Gülberk Koç, 2014, Bertrand Russell’s Bundle Theory of Particulars , New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
• Mares, Edwin, 2007, “The Fact Semantics for Ramified Type Theory and the Axiom of Reducibility” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic , 48 (2): 237–251.
• Mayo-Wilson, Conor, 2011, “Russell on Logicism and Coherence,” in Nicholas Griffin, Bernard Linsky and Kenneth Blackwell (2011) Principia Mathematica at 100 , in Russell (Special Issue), 31(1): 63–79.
• Monk, Ray, 1996, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude , London: Jonathan Cape.
• –––, 2000, Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness , London: Jonathan Cape.
• –––, and Anthony Palmer (eds.), 1996, Bertrand Russell and the Origins of Analytic Philosophy , Bristol: Thoemmes Press.
• Monro, D.H., 1960, “Russell’s Moral Theories,” Philosophy , 35: 30–50; repr. in David F. Pears (ed.), Bertrand Russell: A Collection of Critical Essays , Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, 325–355; and repr. in A.D. Irvine, Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments , vol. 4, New York and London: Routledge, 1999, 65–85.
• Moorehead, Caroline, 1992, Bertrand Russell , New York: Viking.
• Nagel, Thomas, 2002, Concealment and Exposure and Other Essays , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Nakhnikian, George (ed.), 1974, Bertrand Russell’s Philosophy , London: Duckworth.
• Nasim, Omar W., 2012, “The Spaces of Knowledge: Bertrand Russell, Logical Construction, and the Classification of the Sciences,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy , 20: 1163–1182.
• Ongley, John, and Rosalind Carey, 2013, Russell: A Guide for the Perplexed , London: Bloomsbury.
• Park, Joe, 1963, Bertrand Russell on Education , Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
• Patterson, Wayne, 1993, Bertrand Russell’s Philosophy of Logical Atomism , New York: Lang.
• Pears, David F., 1967, Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition in Philosophy , London: Collins.
• ––– (ed.), 1972, Bertrand Russell: A Collection of Critical Essays , New York: Doubleday.
• Perkins, Ray, Jr, 1994, “Bertrand Russell and Preventive War,” Russell , 14: 135–53.
• Potter, Michael, 2009, Wittgenstein’s Notes on Logic , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Potter, Michael K., 2006, Bertrand Russell’s Ethics , London: Continuum Books.
• Proops, Ian, 2006, “Russell’s Reasons for Logicism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy , 44: 267–292.
• Putnam, Hilary, 1967, “The Thesis that Mathematics is Logic,” in Ralph Schoenman (ed.), Bertrand Russell: Philosopher of the Century , London: Allen and Unwin, 273–303; repr. in Hilary Putnam, Mathematics, Matter and Method , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975, 12–42.
• Quine, W.V., 1938, “On the Theory of Types,” Journal of Symbolic Logic , 3: 125–139.
• –––, 1960, Word and Object , Cambridge: MIT Press.
• –––, 1966a, Selected Logic Papers , New York: Random House.
• –––, 1966b, Ways of Paradox , New York: Random House.
• –––, 1966c, “Russell’s Ontological Development,” Journal of Philosophy , 63: 657–667; repr. in E.D. Klemke, Essays on Bertrand Russell , Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press, 3–14.
• Ramsey, Frank P., 1931, The Foundations of Mathematics , London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• –––, 1990, Philosophical Papers , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Roberts, George W. (ed.), 1979, Bertrand Russell Memorial Volume , London: Allen and Unwin.
• Rodríguez-Consuegra, Francisco A., 1991, The Mathematical Philosophy of Bertrand Russell: Origins and Development , Basel: Birkhauser; repr. 1993.
• Russell, Dora, 1975, 1981, 1985, The Tamarisk Tree , 3 vols, New York: Putnam.
• Ryan, Alan, 1988, Bertrand Russell: A Political Life , New York: Hill and Wang.
• Savage, C. Wade, and C. Anthony Anderson (eds.), 1989, Rereading Russell: Essays on Bertrand Russell’s Metaphysics and Epistemology , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.), 1944, The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell , Chicago: Northwestern University.
• Schoenman, Ralph (ed.), 1967, Bertrand Russell: Philosopher of the Century , London: Allen and Unwin.
• Schultz, Bart, 1992, “Bertrand Russell in Ethics and Politics,” Ethics , 102: 594–634.
• Shapiro, Stewart (ed.), 2005, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Slater, John G., 1994, Bertrand Russell , Bristol: Thoemmes.
• Stevens, Graham, 2005, The Russellian Origins of Analytical Philosophy , London and New York: Routledge.
• –––, 2011, The Theory of Descriptions , London: Palgrave.
• Stone, I.F., 1981, “Bertrand Russell as a Moral Force in World Politics,” Russell , 1: 7–25.
• Stone, Peter, 2003, “Ray Monk and the Politics of Bertrand Russell,” Russell , 23: 82–91.
• Strawson, Peter F., 1950, “On Referring,” Mind , 59: 320–344; repr. in Anthony Flew (ed.), Essays in Conceptual Analysis , London: Macmillan, 1960, 21–52, and repr. in E.D. Klemke (ed.), Essays on Bertrand Russell , Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970, 147–172.
• Sullivan, Arthur, 2013, Reference and Structure in the Philosophy of Language: A Defense of the Russellian Orthodoxy , London and New York: Routledge.
• Swanson, Carolyn, 2011, Reburial of Nonexistents: Reconsidering the Meinong-Russell Debate , Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.
• Tait, Katharine, 1975, My Father Bertrand Russell , New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Thomas, John E., and Kenneth Blackwell (eds.), 1976, Russell in Review , Toronto: Samuel Stevens, Hakkert and Company.
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• Urquhart, Alasdair, 1988, “Russell’s Zig-Zag Path to the Ramified Theory of Types,” Russell , 8: 82–91.
• Vellacott, Jo, 1980, Bertrand Russell and the Pacifists in the First World War , Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press.
• Wahl, Russell, 2011, “The Axiom of Reducibility,” in Nicholas Griffin, Bernard Linsky and Kenneth Blackwell (2011) Principia Mathematica at 100 , in Russell (Special Issue), 31(1): 45–62.
• Weidlich, Thom, 2000, Appointment Denied: The Inquisition of Bertrand Russell , Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books.
• Weitz, Morris, 1944, “Analysis and the Unity of Russell’s Philosophy,” in Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell , 3rd edn, New York: Tudor, 1951, 55–121.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1921, Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung ; trans. as Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1922.
• –––, 1956, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Wilczek, Gerhard, 2010, Important Scientists and Philosophers of Our Times , Munich: Buch & Media.
• Wood, Alan, 1957, Bertrand Russell: The Passionate Sceptic , London: Allen and Unwin.

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descriptions | Frege, Gottlob | Gödel, Kurt | knowledge: by acquaintance vs. description | logic: classical | logical atomism: Russell's | logical constructions | logicism and neologicism | mathematics, philosophy of | Moore, George Edward | neutral monism | Principia Mathematica | Principia Mathematica : notation in | propositional function | Russell, Bertrand: moral philosophy | Russell's paradox | type theory | Whitehead, Alfred North | Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Kenneth Blackwell, Francisco Rodríguez-Consuegra, Fred Kroon, Jim Robinson, Russell Wahl, John Woods and several anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this material.

Copyright © 2017 by Andrew David Irvine < andrew . irvine @ ubc . ca >

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Works by Bertrand Russell

A History of Western Philosophy

64 pages • 2 hours read

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Book 1, Introductory

Book 1, Part 1

Book 1, Part 2, Chapters 11-18

Book 1, Part 2, Chapters 19-24

Book 1, Part 3

Book 2, Introduction and Part 1

Book 2, Part 2, Chapters 7-10

Book 2, Part 2, Chapters 11-15

Book 3, Part 1, Chapters 1-5

Book 3, Part 1, Chapters 6-11

Book 3, Part 1, Chapters 12-17

Book 3, Part 2

Key Figures

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

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Summary and Study Guide

Published in 1945, Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy is still one of the most widely-read texts on philosophical history. Russell himself was one of the 20th century’s most noted philosophers and was at the height of his fame and notoriety when the History was published. The book evolved from lectures Russell had given at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. The History is organized into three Books corresponding to what Russell sees as the three main periods of Western philosophy: Ancient, Catholic, and Modern. Each of the Books is further divided into Parts and Chapters, with each chapter generally dealing with a single philosopher, a particular area of a philosopher’s work, or a historical period or movement. Although critical reaction was mixed, the book was a great popular and commercial success, becoming one of the factors in Russell’s attainment of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.

As Russell acknowledges in the Preface to the book, his wife Patricia Russell assisted in research, and she may have edited or even written portions of the book.

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In Book 1: “Ancient Philosophy,” Russell traces the origins of philosophy in ancient Greek civilization, starting with the Mediterranean peoples that preceded the rise of Greece. Greek philosophy began with the Pre-Socratics, who were mainly concerned with explaining the physical universe. Pythagoras was the main thinker in this school, and his thought influenced Socrates and Plato.

In his teaching, Socrates combined mystical insights with an endless curiosity about the world as expressed in the Socratic method . Although Socrates was executed for his beliefs, his thought lived on in the writings of his student Plato, whose dialogue-style works dealt with topics ranging from the theory of knowledge and cosmogony to political philosophy. Plato’s student Aristotle continued his teacher’s thought in some respects and departed from it in others. His treatise-style writings on ethics, metaphysics , and physical science emphasize the empirical observation of the world more than Plato had done.

Both Plato and Aristotle exerted a profound influence on later Western thought. After Aristotle and Plato, philosophy took on a more otherworldly and mystical emphasis, influenced in part by religion. Stoicism was the most enduring new philosophy developed during this period, which preceded the rise of Christianity.

Book 2: “Catholic Philosophy” covers the thousand-year period from the Christian church fathers through the Schoolmen, or Scholastic philosophers. Christianity and the Catholic Church were the main influences upon thinkers during this period, who often concentrated on creating a harmonious synthesis of secular and Christian teaching. The Dark Ages, one of the most difficult periods in Europe’s history, gradually gave way to a period of revival of learning and culture which counted St. Thomas Aquinas as its major philosopher and theologian.

Book 3: “Modern Philosophy” traces the evolution of thought from the Renaissance to the early 20th century, in which science became an increasingly prominent influence in Western thinking. Russell divides this period into two sections, with Part 1 covering the Renaissance to Hume and Part 2 covering Rousseau to the present day (1945).

In Part 1, religious turmoil caused by the Reformation led to skepticism about older religious systems and spawned a new secular emphasis on using philosophy as a tool to gain power, as seen in the thought of Hobbes and Machiavelli. At the same time, traditional religious and political questions were examined in a new light by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Locke, with special emphasis on empirical observation. In the 18th century, David Hume’s empirical skepticism questioned a number of traditional beliefs.

In Part 2, Romanticism and the sociopolitical theories of Rousseau ushered in a new age in which the rational tradition of the Enlightenment was often questioned. Kant steered rationalism in the direction of Idealism , a development then continued by Hegel, who analyzed history as a predetermined scheme leading to a final synthesis. Hegel’s ideas about history influenced the sociopolitical thought of Marx, who advocated for social and economic revolution.

The Romantic emphasis on the heroic rebel informed the philosophy of Nietzsche, which put into question the entire Western moral tradition, while the Utilitarians and Marx continued the tradition of empirical thought. The Americans William James and John Dewey transformed empiricism into pragmatism and brought philosophy into the 20th century. Russell ends the book with a look at one of the most recent (for 1945) schools of thought: logical positivism , the philosophical school to which Russell himself belonged. Russell favors this school because of its rational, scientific, and problem-solving emphasis, which he believes will resolve the chaos of modern intellectual and political anarchy.

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