Although scholars from many disciplines have turned their attention to Russell’s work and appraised its significance for a number of fields, and an extensive literature on him emerged, until this book, first published in 1963, no thorough study on Russell’s contribution to education – an area to which he devoted no small part of his energies – had yet appeared. The book is based on interviews with Russell as well as diligent research in his writings and the sources of his (...) thought and will enlighten all who think seriously about education. It addresses specifically the usefulness of Russell’s thought for American educators, which was challenging as Russell dared to question traditional ends and means of education at the time. (shrink)

Katharine Tait, daughter of Bertrand and Dora Russell, here vividly portrays the extraordinary and stimulating environment she grew up in. In refreshing contrast to the interpretation of Russell as philosopher and public figure, Tait's is a close personal account of her deep love and admiration for her father and its gradual tempering by the imperfections she came to see in him. Touchingly written and beautifully described, the book shows Russell to be a man of great warmth, charm and humour, but (...) is also a testament to the traumas created when he applied his views on marriage and education to his own home. My Father Bertrand Russell is essential reading for those seeking to understand the private background to Russell's ideas, the personal effects of his lifestyle prescriptions, and what it was like to live with a man of such genious. (shrink)

Contents: Introduction / Naïve Logicism / Restricted Logicism / Metaphysics (Early, Middle, Late) / Knowledge (Early, Middle, Late) / Language (Early, Middle, Late) / The Infinite.

The book revives the neutral monism of Mach, James, and Russell and applies the updated view to the problem of redefining physicalism, explaining the origins of sensation, and the problem of deriving extended physical objects and systems from an ontology of events.

What Russell regarded to be the ‘chief outcome’ of his 1914 Lowell Lectures at Harvard can only be fully appreciated, I argue, if one embeds the outcome back into the ‘classificatory problem’ that many at the time were heavily engaged in. The problem focused on the place and relationships between the newly formed or recently professionalized disciplines such as psychology, Erkenntnistheorie, physics, logic and philosophy. The prime metaphor used in discussions about the classificatory problem by British philosophers was a spatial (...) one, with such motifs as ‘standpoints’, ‘place’ and ‘perspectives’ in the space of knowledge. In fact, Russell’s construction of a perspectival space of six-dimensions was meant precisely to be a timely solution to the widely discussed classificatory problem. (shrink)

Landini discusses the second edition of Principia Mathematica, to show Russella (TM)s intellectual relationship with Wittgenstein and Ramsey.

From interpreting the world to changing it, this book is a synthesis of Chomsky's early work on philosophy, linguistics, and politics.

Bertrand Russell ranks as one of the giants of 20th century philosophy. This Companion focuses on Russell's contributions to modern philosophy and, therefore, concentrates on the early part of his career. Through his books, journalism, correspondence and political activity he exerted a profound influence on modern thought. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Russell available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Russell.

Analytic philosophy has become the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. This book illuminates that tradition through a historical examination of a crucial period in its formation: the rejection of Idealism by Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the subsequent development of Russell's thought in the period before the First World War.

Bertrand Russell boldly declared that all religions were “both untrue and harmful.” His concerns went beyond the historical inaccuracies of particular scriptures; he regarded even the fundamental beliefs, in God or eternal souls, as unfounded and implausible. And the church, he thought, had no final authority over morals, especially with its superstitious taboos. But apart from questioning its tenets, Russell wished to further expose religion as a dangerous social force – one that fostered anti‐intellectual thinking and discriminated against its dissenters. (...) For these reasons and more, he poured scorn on the holy institutions that were part of almost every society. But beneath that scorn, oddly, he had an ardent admiration of religious feelings or sentiments – a seriousness about life and a concern for universal good. But whether he continued to see those feelings as “religious” is a matter of some debate. (shrink)

The paper traces the development of Russell’s thinking about relations in 1898. Central to the story is what Russell called “the contradiction of relativity” which he thought to be endemic in the mathematical sciences. Through most of the year he tried to deal with it within the constraints of the neo-Hegelian doctrine of internal relations until, towards the end of the year, he abandoned the doctrine and with it neo-Hegelianism. Most importantly, he came to see that the contradiction of relativity (...) showed that it was impossible to treat transitive, asymmetrical relations as internal. The paper also throws new light on Russell’s earliest debts to G. E. Moore. (shrink)

Logic as Universal Science offers a detailed reconstruction of the underlying philosophy in The Principles of Mathematics showing how Russell sought to deliver a death blow to the dominant Kantian view that formal logic is a concise and dry science and unable to enlarge our understanding.

A founder of modern analytic philosophy and one of the most important logicians of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell has influenced generations of philosophers. The Bloomsbury Companion to Bertrand Russell explores this influence in detail and responds to renewed interest in Russell's philosophical approach, presenting the best guide to research in Russell studies today. -/- Bringing new insights into Russell's relationship with his contemporaries, a team of experts explore his life-long battles with important philosophical issues. They consider how he influenced (...) thinkers and schools of thought, from Schröder, Frege and Meinong to Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, while also covering his impact on individual issues in epistemology, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and political philosophy. Importantly this companion discusses often overlooked topics. Focusing on Russell's later views, including his moral philosophy and his politics, reveals that Russell did make significant contributions to ethics - both theoretical and practical - in the course of his career. -/- Through a combination of enlightening historical background and sustained focus on Russell's impact on contemporary areas of philosophy, The Bloomsbury Companion to Bertrand Russell demonstrates why Russell continues to influence philosophers of language, mathematics, epistemology and metaphysics. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell and the Nature of Propositions offers the first book-length defence of the Multiple Relation Theory of Judgement (MRTJ). Although the theory was much maligned by Wittgenstein and ultimately rejected by Russell himself, Lebens shows that it provides a rich and insightful way to understand the nature of propositional content. In Part I, Lebens charts the trajectory of Russell’s thought before he adopted the MRTJ. Part II reviews the historical story of the theory: What led Russell to deny the (...) existence of propositions altogether? Why did the theory keep evolving throughout its short life? What role did G. F. Stout play in the evolution of the theory? What was Wittgenstein’s concern with the theory, and, if we can’t know what his concern was exactly, then what are the best contending hypotheses? And why did Russell give the theory up? In Part III, Lebens makes the case that Russell’s concerns with the theory weren’t worth its rejection. Moreover, he argues that the MRTJ does most of what we could want from an account of propositions at little philosophical cost. This book bridges the history of early analytic philosophy with work in contemporary philosophy of language. It advances a bold reading of the theory of descriptions and offers a new understanding of the role of Stout and the representation concern in the evolution of the MRTJ. It also makes a decisive contribution to philosophy of language by demonstrating the viability of a no-proposition theory of propositions. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell sat in the House of Lords as the third Earl Russell from 1931 to 1970. In these nearly 40 years as a Labour peer, Russell proved to be a fitful attender and infrequent participant in the upper house—speaking only six times. This paper examines each of these interventions—studying not just the speeches themselves but also their genesis and impact within Parliament and without. Of all the controversial and important foreign and domestic issues faced by Parliament over these four (...) decades, it was matters of peace and war which prompted Russell to take advantage of his hereditary position and, more importantly, of the national forum which the Lords' chamber provided him. (shrink)

Russell's statements in the immediate post-World War II period about war with the Soviet Union have generated considerable controversy. Some commentators interpret his declarations as if he advocated a preventive war against the Soviet Union. To the contrary, Russell advanced a strategy of conditional threat of war with the aim not of provoking war, but of preventing it. However, Russell was unable to satisfy his critics. Despite initial accuracy in his restatements of what he had originally said, Russell erred in (...) later affirmations, lending credence to the erroneous view that he had something to hide. (shrink)

According to Quine, Charles Parsons, Mark Steiner, and others, Russell’s logicist project is important because, if successful, it would show that mathematical theorems possess desirable epistemic properties often attributed to logical theorems, such as aprioricity, necessity, and certainty. Unfortunately, Russell never attributed such importance to logicism, and such a thesis contradicts Russell’s explicitly stated views on the relationship between logic and mathematics. This raises the question: what did Russell understand to be the philosophical importance of logicism? Building on recent work (...) by Andrew Irvine and Martin Godwyn, I argue that Russell thought a systematic reduction of mathematics increases the certainty of known mathematical theorems (even basic arithmetical facts) by showing mathematical knowledge to be coherently organized. The paper outlines Russell’s theory of coherence, and discusses its relevance to logicism and the certainty attributed to mathematics. (shrink)

‘Fascinating’, ‘brilliant’, ‘oddly moving’, ‘a warm human picture’ – this biography was enthusiastically received when it came out in 1957. And no wonder. It is not only the lively story of a distinguished man but a lucid account of his work and its significance. The author, who was himself a philosopher and journalist, has followed the bright thread of Russell’s personality with affectionate insight, from the three-day-old baby who looked about him ‘in a very energetic way’, and the boy who (...) jibbed at taking Euclid on trust, through the many turns of his life, to the undimmed octogenarian, still questioning and still deeply concerned. The subject is a great one and the biographer has matched it. (shrink)

Explores Russell's activities as a polemicist, agitator, educator, and popularizer and discusses the evolution of his moral philosophy and its application, including his final battle against American intervention in Vietnam.

All these specialist aspects of one life are different facets of the intellectual diamond which scintillates in the huge quarry of The Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. This is the quintessential man, the bundle of contradictions passionately dedicated to intellect, at times carrying the rational argument to irrational extremes; the natural-born emotional adventurer forever hampered by orphaned youth and too-early marriage. This Russell in the round is greater than the sum of his constituent parts, a man of (...) epic proportions, struggling through a lifetime beset with frustration and near-disaster; in youth the constitutional sceptic, in old age the sometimes splendid figure with "courage never to submit or yield.". (shrink)

Wittgenstein's work remains, undeniably, now, that off one of those few philosophers who will be read by all future generations.

The scope and method of logic as we know it today eminently reflect the ground-breaking developments of set theory and the logical foundations of mathematics at the turn of the 20th century. Unfortunately, little effort has been made to understand the idiosyncrasies of the philosophical context that led to these tremendous innovations in the 19thcentury beyond what is found in the works of mathematicians such as Frege, Hilbert, and Russell. This constitutes a monumental gap in our understanding of the central (...) influences that shaped 19th-century thought, from Kant to Russell, and that helped to create the conditions in which analytic philosophy could emerge. -/- The aim of Logic from Kant to Russell is to document the development of logic in the works of 19th-century philosophers. It contains thirteen original essays written by authors from a broad range of backgrounds—intellectual historians, historians of idealism, philosophers of science, and historians of logic and analytic philosophy. These essays question the standard narratives of analytic philosophy’s past and address concerns that are relevant to the contemporary philosophical study of language, mind, and cognition. The book covers a broad range of influential thinkers in 19th-century philosophy and analytic philosophy, including Kant, Bolzano, Hegel, Herbart, Lotze, the British Algebraists and Idealists, Moore, Russell, the Neo-Kantians, and Frege. (shrink)

This Oxford Handbook covers the current state of the art in the philosophy of maths and logic in a comprehensive and accessible manner, giving the reader an overview of the major problems, positions, and battle lines. The 26 newly-commissioned chapters are by established experts in the field and contain both exposition and criticism as well as substantial development of their own positions. Select major positions are represented by two chapters - one supportive and one critical. The book includes a comprehensive (...) bibliography. (shrink)

The axiom of reducibility plays an important role in the logic of Principia Mathematica, but has generally been condemned as an ad hoc non-logical axiom which was added simply because the ramified type theory without it would not yield all the required theorems. In this paper I examine the status of the axiom of reducibility. Whether the axiom can plausibly be included as a logical axiom will depend in no small part on the understanding of propositional functions. If we understand (...) propositional functions as constructions of the mind, it is clear that the axiom is clearly not a logical axiom and in fact makes an implausible claim. I look at two other ways of understanding propositional functions, a nominalist interpretation along the lines of Landini and a realist interpretation along the lines of Linsky and Mares. I argue that while on either of these interpretations it is not easy to see the axiom as a non-logical claim about the world, there are also appear to be difficulties in accepting it as a purely logical axiom. (shrink)

The idea that mathematics is reducible to logic has a long history, but it was Frege who gave logicism an articulation and defense that transformed it into a distinctive philosophical thesis with a profound influence on the development of philosophy in the twentieth century. This volume of classic, revised and newly written essays by William Demopoulos examines logicism's principal legacy for philosophy: its elaboration of notions of analysis and reconstruction. The essays reflect on the deployment of these ideas by the (...) principal figures in the history of the subject - Frege, Russell, Ramsey and Carnap - and in doing so illuminate current concerns about the nature of mathematical and theoretical knowledge. Issues addressed include the nature of arithmetical knowledge in the light of Frege's theorem; the status of realism about the theoretical entities of physics; and the proper interpretation of empirical theories that postulate abstract structural constraints. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell’s professional philosophical reputation rests mainly on his mathematical logic and theory of knowledge. In this study, first published in 1985, however, Kenneth Blackwell considers Russell’s writings on ethics and metaethics and uncovers the conceptual unity in Russell’s normative ethic. He traces that unity to the influence of Spinoza’s central ethical concept, the ‘intellectual love of God’, and then evaluates the ethic which he terms ‘impersonal self-enlargement’. The introduction discusses the metaethical background to Russell’s ethic and the difficulties inherent (...) in Russell’s view that ethical knowledge is not possible. The first section then examines Russell’s writings on Spinoza from 1894 to 1964, dividing them into three periods, the second part analyzes Russell’s two interpretations of the main concept, traces 'impersonal self-enlargement' in Russell’s own ethical writings, and evaluates the ethic in relation to other ethical theories and on its own merits as a ‘way of living’. This book provides a foundation for a positive re-evaluation of Russell’s status in the major philosophical field of ethics and will be welcomed by students of moral philosophy as well as those interested in Bertrand Russell’s works. (shrink)

This pioneering study of Bertrand Russell's social and political thought deals with the years 1896 to 1938, and is the first book to embark on a thorough investigation of the intellectual and cultural context out of which Russell's ideas emerged. Maintaining a sympathetic but critical stance towards Russell's almost innumerable political postures, and focusing in particular on his concern with the intellectual elite, the author renders that thought both plausible and coherent by placing its development against a significant historical background. (...) As well as giving attention to the aspects of Russell's private life which helped determine the direction of his thought, Dr Ironside undertakes an enlightening exploration of the individuals, groups and beliefs by which he was successively influenced. The result is a wide-ranging and highly original view of an important and enduring figure. (shrink)

The paper argues that Donnellan’s distinction between the referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions, whilst a genuine feature of language, does not count against Russell’s Theory of Descriptions where Russell’s theory is regarded as a theory of the semantics of descriptions and not the pragmatics of individual uses on a particular occasion. The argument I shall present is simple but decisive and ought to resolve once and for all the debate about the significance of Donnellan’s distinction for Russell’s theory, (...) provided of course that Russell’s theory really does concern the semantics of definite descriptions rather than their use on particular occasions. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive critical survey of issues of historical interpretation and evaluation in Bertrand Russell's 1918 logical atomism lectures and logical atomism itself. These lectures record the culmination of Russell's thought in response to discussions with Wittgenstein on the nature of judgement and philosophy of logic and with Moore and other philosophical realists about epistemology and ontological atomism, and to Whitehead and Russell’s novel extension of revolutionary nineteenth-century work in mathematics and logic. Russell's logical atomism lectures have had (...) a lasting impact on analytic philosophy and on Russell's contemporaries including Carnap, Ramsey, Stebbing, and Wittgenstein. Comprised of 14 original essays, this book will demonstrate how the direct and indirect influence of these lectures thus runs deep and wide. (shrink)

This volume is one of the most significant documents on the thought of the giant of the twentieth-century philosophy. Russell's 'Reply to Criticisms, ' supplemented by a 1971 'Addendum, ' displays his unrivalled clarity, perceptiveness, and scalpel-like wit, on topics ranging from mathematical logic to political philosophy, from epistemology to philosophy of history.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.