Bertrand Russell Biography

Philosopher, Anti-War Activist, Journalist, Mathematician (1872–1970)

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NAME
Bertrand Russell

OCCUPATION
Philosopher, Anti-War Activist,Journalist, Mathematician

BIRTH DATE
May 18, 1872

DEATH DATE
February 2, 1970

EDUCATION
University of Cambridge

PLACE OF BIRTH
Trelleck, Wales

PLACE OF DEATH
Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales

FULL NAME
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell of Kingston Russell, Viscount Amberley
of Amberley and of Ardsalla
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Despite being a renowned philosopher, Bertrand Russell is perhaps best
known for his political activism and altercations with the British government.
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 FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO DIED IN 1970
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Synopsis

Considered a pioneer in the field of philosophy, Bertrand Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1950 for his numerous writings. He is perhaps better known, though, for his
political activism. A prominent anti-war activist, he has been imprisoned twice by the British
government.

http://www.biography.com/people/bertrand-russell-40493

Russell's Paradox

Russell's paradox represents either of two interrelated

logical antinomies. The most commonly discussed form is a contradiction arising in the logic of
sets or classes. Some classes (or sets) seem to be members of themselves, while some do not.
The class of all classes is itself a class, and so it seems to be in itself. The null or empty class,
however, mustnot be a member of itself. However, suppose that we can form a class of all classes
(or sets) that, like the null class, are notincluded in themselves. The paradox arises from asking
the question of whether this class is in itself. It is if and only if it is not. The other form is a
contradiction involving properties. Some properties seem to apply to themselves, while others
do not. The property of being a property is itself a property, while the property of being a cat is not
itself a cat. Consider the property that something has just in case it is a property (like that
of being a cat) that does not apply to itself. Does this property apply to itself? Once again, from
either assumption, the opposite follows. The paradox was named after Bertrand Russell (1872-
1970), who discovered it in 1901.
Table of Contents
1. History
2. Possible Solutions to the Paradox of Properties
3. Possible Solutions to the Paradox of Classes or Sets
4. References and Further Reading
1. History
Russell's discovery came while he was working on his Principles of Mathematics. Although Russell
discovered the paradox independently, there is some evidence that other mathematicians and
set-theorists, including Ernst Zermelo and David Hilbert, had already been aware of the first
version of the contradiction prior to Russell's discovery. Russell, however, was the first to
discuss the contradiction at length in his published works, the first to attempt to formulate
solutions and the first to appreciate fully its importance. An entire chapter of the Principles was
dedicated to discussing the contradiction, and an appendix was dedicated to the theory of types
that Russell suggested as a solution.
Russell discovered the contradiction from considering Cantor's power class theorem: the
mathematical result that the number of entities in a certain domain is always smaller than the
number of subclasses of those entities. Certainly, there must be at least as many subclasses of
entities in the domain as there are entities in the domain given that for each entity, one subclass
will be the class containing only that entity. However, Cantor proved that there also cannot be
thesame number of entities as there are subclasses. If there were the same number, there would
have to be a 1-1 function f mapping entities in the domain on to subclasses of entities in the
domain. However, this can be proven to be impossible. Some entities in the domain would be
mapped by fon to subclasses that contain them, whereas others may not. However, consider the
subclass of entities in the domain that are not in the subclasses on to which f maps them. This is
itself a subclass of entities of the domain, and thus, f would have to map it on to some particular
entity in the domain. The problem is that then the question arises as to whether this entity is in
the subclass on to which f maps it. Given the subclass in question, it does just in case it does not.
The Russell paradox of classes can in effect be seen as an instance of this line of reasoning, only
simplified. Are there more classes or subclasses of classes? It would seem that there would have
to be more classes, since all subclasses of classes are themselves classes. But if Cantor's theorem
is correct, there would have to be more subclasses. Russell considered the simple mapping of
classes onto themselves, and invoked the Cantorian approach of considering the class of all
those entities that are not in the classes onto which they are mapped. Given Russell's mapping,
this becomes the class of all classes not in themselves.
The paradox had profound ramifications for the historical development of class or set theory. It
made the notion of a universal class, a class containing all classes, extremely problematic. It also
brought into considerable doubt the notion that for every specifiable condition or predicate, one
can assume there to exist a class of all and only those things that satisfy that condition. The
properties version of the contradiction--a natural extension of the classes or sets version--raised
serious doubts about whether one can be committed to objective existence of a property or
universal corresponding to every specifiable condition or predicate. Indeed, contradictions and
problems were soon found in the work of those logicians, philosophers and mathematicians who
made such assumptions. In 1902, Russell discovered that a version the contradiction was
expressible in the logical system developed in Volume I of Gottlob Frege's Grundgesetze der
Arithmetik, one of the central works in the late-19th and early-20th century revolution in logic. In
Frege's philosophy, a class is understood as the "extension" or "value-range" of a concept.
Concepts are the closest correlates to properties in Frege's metaphysics. A concept is presumed
to exist for every specifiable condition or predicate. Thus, there is a concept of being a class that
does not fall under its defining concept. There is also a class defined by this concept, and it falls
under its defining concept just in case it does not.
Russell wrote to Frege concerning the contradiction in June of 1902. This began one of the most
interesting and discussed correspondences in intellectual history. Frege immediately recognized
the disastrous consequences of the paradox. He did note, however, that the properties version of
the paradox was solved in his philosophy by his distinction between levels of concepts. For him,
concepts are understood as functions from arguments to truth-values. Some concepts, "first-level
concepts", take objects as arguments, some concepts, "second-level concepts" take these
functions as arguments, and so on. Thus, a concept can never take itself as argument, and the
properties version cannot be formulated. However, classes, or extensions or concepts, were all
understood by Frege to be of the same logical type as all other objects. The question does arise,
then, for each class whether it falls under its defining concept.
When he received Russell's first letter, the second volume of Frege's Grundgesetze was already in
the latter stages of the publication process. Frege was forced to quickly prepare an appendix in
response to the paradox. Frege considers a number of possible solutions. The conclusion he
settles on, however, is to weaken the class abstraction principle in the logical system. In the
original system, one could conclude that an object is in a class if and only if the object falls under
the concept defining the class. In the revised system, one can conclude only that an object is in a
class if and only if the object falls under the concept defining the class and the object is not
identical to the class in question. This blocks the class version of the paradox. However, Frege
was not entirely happy even with this solution. And this was for good reason. Some years later
the revised system was found to lead to a more complicated form of the contradiction. Even
before this result was discovered, Frege abandoned it and seems to have concluded that his
earlier approach to the logic of classes was simply unworkable, and that logicians would have to
make do entirely without commitment to classes or sets.
However, other logicians and mathematicians have proposed other, relatively more successful,
alternative solutions. These are discussed below.

2. Possible Solutions to the Paradox of Properties

The Theory of Types. It was noted above that Frege did have an adequate response to the
contradiction when formulated as a paradox of properties. Frege's response was in effect a
precursor to what one of the most commonly discussed and articulated proposed solutions to
this form of the paradox. This is to insist that properties fall into different types, and that the
type of a property is never the same as the entities to which it applies. Thus, the question never
even arises as to whether a property applies to itself. A logical language that divides entities into
such a hierarchy is said to employ the theory of types. Though hinted at already in Frege, the
theory of types was first fully explained and defended by Russell in Appendix B of the Principles.
Russell's theory of types was more comprehensive than Frege's distinction of levels; it divided
not only properties into different logical types, but classes as well. The use of the theory of types
to solve the other form of Russell's paradox is described below.
To be philosophically adequate, the adoption of the theory of types for properties requires
developing an account of the nature of properties such that one would be able to explain why
they cannot apply to themselves. After all, at first blush, it would seem to make sense to
predicate a property of itself. The property of being self-identical would seem to be self-
identical. The property of being nice seems to be nice. Similarly, it seems false, not nonsensical, to
say that the property of being a cat is a cat. However, different thinkers explain the justification
for the type-division in different ways. Russell even gave different explanations at different parts
of his career. For his part, the justification for Frege's division of different levels of concepts
derived from his theory of theunsaturatedness of concepts. Concepts, as functions, are essentially
incomplete. They require an argument in order to yield a value. One cannot simply predicate
one concept of a concept of the same type, because the argument concept still requires its own
argument. For example, while it is possible to take the square root of the square root of some
number, one cannot simply apply the function square root to the function square root and arrive
at a value.
Conservatism about Properties. Another possible solution to the paradox of properties would
involve denying that a property exists corresponding to any specifiable conditions or well-
formed predicate. Of course, if one eschews metaphysical commitment to properties as objective
and independent entities altogether, that is, if one adopts nominalism, then the paradoxical
question is avoided entirely. However, one does not need to be quite so extreme in order to solve
the antinomy. The higher-order logical systems developed by Frege and Russell contained what
is called the comprehension principle, the principle that for every open formula, no matter how
complex, there exists as entity a property or concept exemplified by all and only those things
that satisfy the formula. In effect, they were committed to attributes or properties for any
conceivable set of conditions or predicates, no matter how complex. However, one could instead
adopt a more austere metaphysics of properties, only granting objective existence to simple
properties, perhaps including redness, solidity and goodness, etc. One might even allow that such
properties can possibly apply to themselves, e.g. that goodness is good. However, on this
approach one would deny the same status to complex attributes, e.g. the so-called "properties"
as having-seventeen-heads, being-a-cheese-made-England, having-been-written-underwater, etc. It is
simply not the case that any specifiable condition corresponds to a property, understood as an
independently existing entity that has properties of its own. Thus, one might deny that there is a
simple propertybeing-a-property-that-does-not-apply-to-itself. If so, one can avoid the paradox
simply by adopting a more conservative metaphysics of properties.
3. Possible Solutions to the Paradox of Classes or Sets
It was mentioned above that late in his life, Frege gave up entirely on the feasibility of the logic
of classes or sets. This is of course one ready solution to the antinomy in the class or set form:
simply deny the existence of such entities altogether. Short of this, however, the following
solutions have enjoyed the greatest popularity:

The Theory of Types for Classes: It was mentioned earlier that Russell advocated a more
comprehensive theory of types than Frege's distinction of levels, one that divided not only
properties or concepts into various types, but classes as well. Russell divided classes into classes
of individuals, classes of classes of individuals, and so on. Classes were not taken to be
individuals, and classes of classes of individuals were not taken to be classes of individuals. A
class is never of the right type to have itself as member. Therefore, there is no such thing as the
class of all classes that are not members of themselves, because for any class, the question of
whether it is in itself is a violation of type. Once again, here the challenge is to explain the
metaphysics of classes or sets in order to explain the philosophical grounds of the type-division.
Stratification: In 1937, W. V. Quine suggested an alternative solution in some ways similar to
type-theory. His suggestion was rather than actually divide entities into individuals, classes of
individuals, etc., such that the proposition that some class is in itself is always ill-formed or
nonsensical, we can instead put certain restrictions on what classes are supposed to exist.
Classes are only supposed to exist if their defining conditions are so as to not involve what
would, in type theory, be a violation of types. Thus, for Quine, while "x is not a member of x" is a
meaningful assertion, we do not suppose there to exist a class of all entities x that satisfy this
statement. In Quine's system, a class is only supposed to exist for some open formula A if and
only if the formulaA is stratified, that is, if there is some assignment of natural numbers to the
variables in A such that for each occurrence of the class membership sign, the variable preceding
the membership sign is given an assignment one lower than the variable following it. This blocks
Russell's paradox, because the formula used to define the problematic class has the same
 variable both before and after the membership sign, obviously making it unstratified. However,
it has yet to be determined whether or not the resulting system, which Quine called "New
Foundations for Mathematical Logic" or NF for short, is consistent or inconsistent.
Aussonderung: A quite different approach is taken in Zermelo-Fraenkel (ZF) set theory. Here too,
a restriction is placed on what sets are supposed to exist. Rather than taking the "top-down"
approach of Russell and Frege, who originally believed that for any concept, property or
condition, one can suppose there to exist a class of all those things in existence with that
property or satisfying that condition, in ZF set theory, one begins from the "bottom up". One
begins with individual entities, and the empty set, and puts such entities together to form sets.
Thus, unlike the early systems of Russell and Frege, ZF is not committed to a universal set, a set
including all entities or even all sets. ZF puts tight restrictions on what sets exist. Only those sets
that are explicitly postulated to exist, or which can be put together from such sets by means of
iterative processes, etc., can be concluded to exist. Then, rather than having a naive class
abstraction principle that states that an entity is in a certain class if and only if it meets its
defining condition, ZF has a principle of separation, selection, or as in the original German,
"Aussonderung". Rather than supposing there to exist a set of all entities that meet some
condition simpliciter, for each set already known to exist, Aussonderung tells us that there is a
subset of that set of all those entities in the original set that satisfy the condition. The class
abstraction principle then becomes: if set A exists, then for all entities x in A, x is in the subset of
A that satisfies condition C if and only if xsatisfies condition C. This approach solves Russell's
paradox, because we cannot simply assume that there is a set of all sets that are not members of
themselves. Given a set of sets, we can separate or divide it into those sets within it that are in
themselves and those that are not, but since there is no universal set, we are not committed to
the set of all such sets. Without the supposition of Russell's problematic class, the contradiction
cannot be proven.
There have been subsequent expansions or modifications made on all these solutions, such as
theramified type-theory of Principia Mathematica, Quine's later expanded system of
hisMathematical Logic, and the later developments in set-theory made by Bernays, Gödel and von
Neumann. The question of what is the correct solution to Russell's paradox is still a matter of
debate.
See also the Russell-Myhill Paradox article in this encyclopedia.
4. References and Further Reading
 Coffa, Alberto. "The Humble Origins of Russell's Paradox." Russell nos. 33-4 (1979): 31-7.
 Frege, Gottlob. The Basic Laws of Arithmetic: Exposition of the System. Edited and translated by Montgomery Furth.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964.
 Frege, Gottlob. Correspondence with Russell. In Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence. Translated by Hans
Kaal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
 Geach, Peter T. "On Frege’s Way Out." Mind 65 (1956): 408-9.
 Grattan-Guinness, Ivor. "How Bertrand Russell Discovered His Paradox." Historica Mathematica 5 (1978): 127-37.
 Hatcher, William S. Logical Foundations of Mathematics. New York: Pergamon Press, 1982.
 Quine, W. V. O. "New Foundations for Mathematical Logic." In From a Logical Point of View. 2d rev. ed. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1980. (First published in 1937.)
 Quine, W. V. O. "On Frege’s Way Out." Mind 64 (1955): 145-59.
 Russell, Bertrand. Correspondence with Frege. In Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence, by Gottlob Frege.
Translated by Hans Kaal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
 Russell, Bertrand. The Principles of Mathematics. 2d. ed. Reprint, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. (First
published in 1903.)
 Zermelo, Ernst. "Investigations in the Foundations of Set Theory I." In From Frege to Gödel, ed. by Jean van Heijenoort.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. (First published in 1908.)
Author Information
Kevin C. Klement
Email: klement@philos.umass.edu
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
U. S. A.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/par-russ/

Bertrand Arthur William Russell

(1872-1970)
Orphaned at the age of four, Bertrand Russell studied
both mathematics and philosophy (with McTaggart) at Life and Works
Cambridge University, where he later taught. As the . . Mathematics
grandson of a British prime minister, Russell devoted . . Descriptions
. . Logical Atomism
much of his public effort to matters of general social . . Social Concerns
concern. He was jailed for writing a pacifist pamphlet Bibliography
during the First World War and attacked Bolshevism and Internet Sources
Stalin in 1920, after visiting the Soviet Union. Russell
supported the battle against Fascism during World War II
but continued to protest Western colonialization and publicly deplored the
development of weapons of mass destruction, as is evident in "The Bomb and
Civilization" (1945), New Hopes for a Changing World (1951),
and his untitled last essay. Throughout his life, Russell was an
outspoken critic of organized religion as both unfounded and
deceptive; he detailed its harmful social consequences in "Why I
Am Not a Christian" (1927) and defended an agnostic alternative
in "A Free Man's Worship" (1903). His Marriage and
Morals(1929), an attack upon the repressive character of
conventional sexual morality, was a central focus in the legal
action that prevented him from accepting a teaching post at the City College of
New York in 1940. Russell's Autobiography (1967-69) is an excellent source of
information, analysis, and self-congratulation regarding his interesting life. Its
pages include his eloquent statements of "What I Have Lived For" and "A
Liberal Decalogue." Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950.

Through an early appreciation of the philosophical work of Leibniz,

published in A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (1900), Russell
came to regard logical analysis as the crucial method for
philosophy. In Principia Mathematica (1910-13), written jointly
with Alfred North Whitehead, he showed that all of arithmetic
could be deduced from a restricted set of logical axioms, a thesis
 presented and defended in less technical terms in Russell's Introduction to
Mathematical Philosophy (1919). Applying simlarly analytical methods to
philosophical problems, Russell believed, could resolve disputes and provide
an adequate account of human experience. Indeed, his A History of Western
Philosophy (1946) tried to demonstrate that the philosophical tradition,
properly understood, had moved slowly but steadily toward just such a
culmination.

The attempt to account clearly for every constituent of ordinary assertions

soon proved problematic, however. Russell proposed a ramified theory of
types in order to avoid the self-referential paradoxes that might otherwise
emerge from such abstract notions as "the barber who shaves all but only those
who do not shave themselves" or "the class of all classes that are not members
of themselves." In the theory of descriptions put forward in On
Denoting (1905), Russell argued that proper analysis of denoting
phrases enables us to represent all thought symbolically while
avoiding philosophical difficulties about non-existent
objects. As his essay on "Vagueness" (1923) shows, Russell
long persisted in the belief that adequate explanations could
provide a sound basis for human speech and thought.

In similar fashion, the analysis of statements attributing a

common predicate to different subjects in "On the Relations of
Universals and Particulars" (1911) convinced Russell that both
particulars and universals must really exist. He developed this realistic view
further in The Problems of Philosophy (1912). Our Knowledge of the External
World (1914) continues this project by showing how Russell's philosophy
of logical atomism can construct a world of public physical objects using
private individual experiences as the atomic facts from which one could
develop a complete description of the world. Although Russell's philosophical
positions were soon eclipsed by those of Wittgenstein and the logical
positivists, his model of the possibilities for analytic thought remains
influential.

Recommended Reading:
 Primary sources:

 Bertrand Russell, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz: With an Appendix of

Leading Passages (Routledge, 1993)
 Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Arthur Russell, Principia Mathematica to *
56 (Cambridge, 1997)
 Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics (Norton, 1996)
 Bertrand Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (Dover, 1993)
 Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, ed. by David Pears (Open Court,
1985)
 Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford, 1998)
 Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, and Other Essays on Religion and Related
Subjects (Simon & Schuster, 1977)
 Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection With Political and
Social from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (Simon & Schuster, 1975)
 The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (Routledge, 2000)

Secondary sources:

 Ray Monk, Russell (Routledge, 1999)

 Essays on Bertrand Russell, ed. by E. D. Klemke (Illinois, 1971)
 John G. Slater, Bertrand Russell (St. Augustine, 1994)
 Peter Hylton, Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford,
1992)
 Jan Dejnozka, Bertrand Russell on Modality and Logical Relevance (Ashgate, 1999)

Additional on-line information about Russell includes:

 McMaster University's * The Bertrand Russell Archives.

 * The Bertrand Russell Society Home Page, hosted by John Lenz.
 articles in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on:
o Bertrand Russell by A. D. Irvine.
o Principia Mathematica by A. D. Irvine.
o Russell's Paradox by A. D. Irvine.
o Russell's moral philosophy by Charles Pigden
 The full article available at Encyclopædia Brittanica Online.
 The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
 Eric Weisstein's discussion at World of Scientific Biography.
 Discussion of Russell's logical treatment of mathematics from Mathematical MacTutor.

http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/russ.htm

Bertrand Russell
First published Thu Dec 7, 1995; substantive revision Tue Mar 10, 2015
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 onPrincipia 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
  Bibliography
o Primary Literature
o Secondary Literature
 Academic Tools
 Other Internet Resources
 Related Entries

1. Russell’s Chronology
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.
 (1878) Death of grandfather; Russell’s grandmother, Lady Russell, supervises
Russell’s upbringing.
 (1890) Enters Trinity College, Cambridge; meets Whitehead.
 (1893) Awarded first-class B.A. in Mathematics.
 (1894) Completes the Moral Sciences Tripos (Part II); marries Alys Pearsall
Smith.
 (1896) Appointed lecturer at the London School of Economics; travels to the
United States.
 (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) Reappointed lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge.
 (1911) Meets Wittgenstein; elected President of the Aristotelian Society.
 (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.
 (1921) Divorce from Alys and marriage to Dora Black.
 (1922) Runs for parliament and is defeated.
 (1923) Runs for parliament and is defeated.
 (1927) Opens experimental school with Dora.
 (1931) 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.
 (1942) Dismissed from Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania, but wins a lawsuit
against the Foundation for wrongful dismissal.
 (1944) Reappointed a Fellow of Trinity College.
 (1949) Awarded the Order of Merit; elected a Lifetime Fellow at Trinity College.
 (1950) Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.
 (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.

2. Russell’s Work in Logic

Russell’s main contributions to logic and the foundations of mathematics include his
discovery ofRussell’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 zis 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.

3. Russell’s Work in Analytic Philosophy

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, includingmetaphysics, 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 inCollected 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).

4. Russell’s Theory of Definite Descriptions

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 ofWaverley,” “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
ofWaverley” 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 ofWaverley” 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

i. Kx,
ii. for any y, if Ky then y=x, and
iii. 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
(3) s=s
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.)

5. Russell’s Theory of Neutral Monism

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) andHuman 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).

6. Russell’s Social and Political Philosophy

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 1936Language, 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 hisPrinciples 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).
7. Contemporary Russell Scholarship
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)

Bibliography
Primary Literature
 Major Books and Articles by Russell
 Major Anthologies of Russell’s Writings
  The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell
Major Books and Articles by 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 inCollected 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 inCollected 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. asEducation 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.
Major Anthologies of Russell’s Writings
 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.
The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell
In Print

 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.
Planned

 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.

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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 © 2015 by
Andrew David Irvine <andrew.irvine@ubc.ca>
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/

Bertrand Russell
BRITISH LOGICIAN AND PHILOSOPHER
WRITTEN BY:
Ray Monk
LAST UPDATED:
3-24-2016
Alternative Title: Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell of Kingston Russell, Viscount Amberley of
Amberley and of Ardsalla

Bertrand Russell
BRITISH LOGICIAN AND PHILOSOPHER

ALSO KNOWN AS

 Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell of Kingston Russell, Viscount Amberley of

Amberley and of Ardsalla

BORN

May 18, 1872

Trelleck, Wales

DIED

February 2, 1970

Merioneth, Wales

SIMILAR PEOPLE
  Aristotle
 David Hume
 George Berkeley
 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
 Willard Van Orman Quine
 John Stuart Mill
 Alfred North Whitehead
 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
 John Locke
 Stanisław Leśniewski

Bertrand Russell, in full Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell of
Kingston Russell, Viscount Amberley of Amberley and of Ardsalla (born May
18, 1872, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales—diedFeb. 2, 1970,
Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth) British philosopher, logician, and social reformer,
founding figure in the analytic movement in Anglo-Americanphilosophy, and
recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Russell’s contributions
to logic, epistemology, and the philosophy of mathematicsestablished him as one of
the foremost philosophers of the 20th century. To the general public, however, he
was best known as a campaigner for peace and as a popular writer on social,
political, and moral subjects. During a long, productive, and often turbulent life, he
published more than 70 books and about 2,000 articles, married four times, became
involved in innumerable public controversies, and was honoured and reviled in
almost equal measure throughout the world. Russell’s article on the philosophical
consequences of relativity appeared in the 13th edition of the Encyclopædia
Britannica.


Bertrand Russell.
Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Russell was born in Ravenscroft, the country home of his parents, Lord and Lady
Amberley. His grandfather, Lord John Russell, was the youngest son of the 6th
Duke of Bedford. In 1861, after a long and distinguished political career in which he
served twice as prime minister, Lord Russell was ennobled by Queen Victoria,
becoming the 1st Earl Russell. Bertrand Russell became the 3rd Earl Russell in
1931, after his elder brother, Frank, died childless.

Russell’s early life was marred by tragedy and bereavement. By the time he was
age six, his sister, Rachel, his parents, and his grandfather had all died, and he and
Frank were left in the care of their grandmother, Countess Russell. Though Frank
was sent to Winchester School, Bertrand was educated privately at home, and his
childhood, to his later great regret, was spent largely in isolation from other children.
Intellectually precocious, he became absorbed in mathematics from an early age
and found the experience of learning Euclidean geometry at the age of 11 “as
dazzling as first love,” because it introduced him to the intoxicating possibility of
certain, demonstrable knowledge. This led him to imagine that all knowledge might
be provided with such secure foundations, a hope that lay at the very heart of his
motivations as a philosopher. His earliest philosophical work was written during
 his adolescence and records the skeptical doubts that led him to abandon the
Christian faith in which he had been brought up by his grandmother.

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
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In 1890 Russell’s isolation came to an end when he entered Trinity

College,University of Cambridge, to study mathematics. There he made lifelong
friends through his membership in the famously secretive student society
the Apostles, whose members included some of the most influential philosophers of
the day. Inspired by his discussions with this group, Russell abandoned
mathematics for philosophy and won a fellowship at Trinity on the strength of a
thesis entitled An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, a revised version of which
was published as his first philosophical book in 1897. Following Kant’s Critique of
Pure Reason (1781, 1787), this work presented a sophisticated idealist theory that
viewed geometry as a description of the structure of spatial intuition.

In 1896 Russell published his first political work, German Social Democracy.Though
sympathetic to the reformist aims of the German socialist movement, it included
some trenchant and farsighted criticisms of Marxist dogmas. The book was written
partly as the outcome of a visit to Berlin in 1895 with his first wife, Alys Pearsall
Smith, whom he had married the previous year. In Berlin, Russell formulated an
ambitious scheme of writing two series of books, one on the philosophy of the
sciences, the other on social and political questions. “At last,” as he later put it, “I
would achieve a Hegelian synthesis in an encyclopaedic work dealing equally with
theory and practice.” He did, in fact, come to write on all the subjects he intended,
but not in the form that he envisaged. Shortly after finishing his book on geometry,
he abandoned the metaphysical idealism that was to have provided the framework
for this grand synthesis.

T YOUR KNOWLEDGE
bers and Mathematics

Russell’s abandonment of idealism is customarily attributed to the influence of his

friend and fellow Apostle G.E. Moore. A much greater influence on his thought at
this time, however, was a group of German mathematicians that included Karl
Weierstrass,Georg Cantor, and Richard Dedekind, whose work was aimed at
providing mathematics with a set of logically rigorous foundations. For Russell, their
success in this endeavour was of enormous philosophical as well as mathematical
significance; indeed, he described it as “the greatest triumph of which our age has to
boast.” After becoming acquainted with this body of work, Russell abandoned all
vestiges of his earlier idealism and adopted the view, which he was to hold for the
rest of his life, that analysis rather than synthesis was the surest method of
philosophy and that therefore all the grand system building of previous philosophers
was misconceived. In arguing for this view with passion and acuity, Russell exerted
a profound influence on the entire tradition of English-speaking analytic philosophy,
bequeathing to it its characteristic style, method, and tone.

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Inspired by the work of the mathematicians whom he so greatly admired, Russell

conceived the idea of demonstrating that mathematics not only had logically rigorous
foundations but also that it was in its entirety nothing butlogic. The philosophical
case for this point of view—subsequently known aslogicism—was stated at length
in The Principles of Mathematics (1903). There Russell argued that the whole of
mathematics could be derived from a few simple axioms that made no use of
specifically mathematical notions, such as number and square root, but were rather
confined to purely logical notions, such as proposition and class. In this way not only
could the truths of mathematics be shown to be immune from doubt, they could also
be freed from any taint of subjectivity, such as the subjectivity involved in Russell’s
earlier Kantian view that geometry describes the structure of spatial intuition. Near
the end of his work on The Principles of Mathematics, Russell discovered that he
had been anticipated in his logicist philosophy of mathematics by the German
mathematician Gottlob Frege, whose book The Foundations of Arithmetic (1884)
contained, as Russell put it, “many things…which I believed I had invented.” Russell
quickly added an appendix to his book that discussed Frege’s work, acknowledged
Frege’s earlier discoveries, and explained the differences in their respective
understandings of the nature of logic.

The tragedy of Russell’s intellectual life is that the deeper he thought about logic, the
more his exalted conception of its significance came under threat. He himself
described his philosophical development after The Principles of Mathematics as a
“retreat from Pythagoras.” The first step in this retreat was his discovery of a
contradiction—now known as Russell’s Paradox—at the very heart of the system of
logic upon which he had hoped to build the whole of mathematics. The contradiction
arises from the following considerations: Some classes are members of themselves
(e.g., the class of all classes), and some are not (e.g., the class of all men), so we
ought to be able to construct the class of all classes that are not members of
themselves. But now, if we ask of this class “Is it a member of itself?” we become
enmeshed in a contradiction. If it is, then it is not, and if it is not, then it is. This is
rather like defining the village barber as “the man who shaves all those who do not
shave themselves” and then asking whether the barber shaves himself or not.

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At first this paradox seemed trivial, but the more Russell reflected upon it, the
deeper the problem seemed, and eventually he was persuaded that there was
something fundamentally wrong with the notion of class as he had understood it
in The Principles of Mathematics. Frege saw the depth of the problem immediately.
When Russell wrote to him to tell him of the paradox, Frege replied, “arithmetic
totters.” The foundation upon which Frege and Russell had hoped to build
mathematics had, it seemed, collapsed. Whereas Frege sank into a deep
depression, Russell set about repairing the damage by attempting to construct a
theory of logic immune to the paradox. Like a malignant cancerous growth, however,
the contradiction reappeared in different guises whenever Russell thought that he
had eliminated it.

Eventually, Russell’s attempts to overcome the paradox resulted in a complete

transformation of his scheme of logic, as he added one refinement after another to
the basic theory. In the process, important elements of his “Pythagorean” view of
logic were abandoned. In particular, Russell came to the conclusion that there were
no such things as classes and propositions and that therefore, whatever logic was, it
was not the study of them. In their place he substituted a bewilderingly complex
theory known as the ramifiedtheory of types, which, though it successfully avoided
contradictions such asRussell’s Paradox, was (and remains) extraordinarily difficult
to understand. By the time he and his collaborator, Alfred North Whitehead, had
finished the three volumes of Principia Mathematica (1910–13), the theory of
types and other innovations to the basic logical system had made it unmanageably
complicated. Very few people, whether philosophers or mathematicians, have made
the gargantuan effort required to master the details of this monumental work. It is
nevertheless rightly regarded as one of the great intellectual achievements of the
20th century.

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Principia Mathematica is a herculean attempt to demonstrate mathematically

what The Principles of Mathematics had argued for philosophically, namely that
mathematics is a branch of logic. The validity of the individual formal proofs that
make up the bulk of its three volumes has gone largely unchallenged, but the
philosophical significance of the work as a whole is still a matter of debate. Does it
demonstrate that mathematics is logic? Only if one regards the theory of types as a
logical truth, and about that there is much more room for doubt than there was about
the trivial truisms upon which Russell had originally intended to build mathematics.
Moreover, Kurt Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem (1931) proves that there
cannot be a single logical theory from which the whole of mathematics is derivable:
all consistent theories of arithmetic are necessarily incomplete.Principia
Mathematica cannot, however, be dismissed as nothing more than a heroic failure.
Its influence on the development of mathematical logic and the philosophy of
mathematics has been immense.

Despite their differences, Russell and Frege were alike in taking an essentially
Platonic view of logic. Indeed, the passion with which Russell pursued the project of
deriving mathematics from logic owed a great deal to what he would later somewhat
scornfully describe as a “kind of mathematical mysticism.” As he put it in his more
disillusioned old age, “I disliked the real world and sought refuge in a timeless world,
without change or decay or the will-o’-the-wisp of progress.” Russell, like Pythagoras
and Plato before him, believed that there existed a realm of truth that, unlike the
messy contingencies of the everyday world of sense-experience, was immutable
and eternal. This realm was accessible only to reason, and knowledge of it, once
attained, was not tentative or corrigible but certain and irrefutable. Logic, for Russell,
was the means by which one gained access to this realm, and thus the pursuit of
logic was, for him, the highest and noblest enterprise life had to offer.

In philosophy the greatest impact of Principia Mathematica has been through its so-
called theory of descriptions. This method of analysis, first introduced by Russell in
his article “On Denoting” (1905), translates propositions containing definite
descriptions (e.g., “the present king of France”) into expressions that do not—the
purpose being to remove the logical awkwardness of appearing to refer to things
(such as the present king of France) that do not exist. Originally developed by
Russell as part of his efforts to overcome the contradictions in his theory of logic,
this method of analysis has since become widely influential even among
philosophers with no specific interest in mathematics. The general idea at the root of
Russell’s theory of descriptions—that the grammatical structures of
ordinary languageare distinct from, and often conceal, the true “logical forms” of
expressions—has become his most enduring contribution to philosophy.

Russell later said that his mind never fully recovered from the strain of
writing Principia Mathematica, and he never again worked on logic with quite the
same intensity. In 1918 he wrote Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, which
was intended as a popularization of Principia, but, apart from this, his philosophical
work tended to be on epistemology rather than logic. In 1914, in Our Knowledge of
the External World, Russell argued that the world is “constructed” out of sense-data,
an idea that he refined in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918–19). In The
Analysis of Mind (1921) andThe Analysis of Matter (1927), he abandoned this notion
in favour of what he called neutral monism, the view that the “ultimate stuff” of the
world is neither mental nor physical but something “neutral” between the two.
Although treated with respect, these works had markedly less impact upon
subsequent philosophers than his early works in logic and the philosophy of
mathematics, and they are generally regarded as inferior by comparison.

Connected with the change in his intellectual direction after the completion
of Principia was a profound change in his personal life. Throughout the years that he
worked single-mindedly on logic, Russell’s private life was bleak and joyless. He had
fallen out of love with his first wife, Alys, though he continued to live with her. In
1911, however, he fell passionately in love with Lady Ottoline Morrell. Doomed from
the start (because Morrell had no intention of leaving her husband), this love
nevertheless transformed Russell’s entire life. He left Alys and began to hope that
he might, after all, find fulfillment in romance. Partly under Morrell’s influence, he
also largely lost interest in technical philosophy and began to write in a different,
more accessible style. Through writing a best-selling introductory survey called The
Problems of Philosophy(1911), Russell discovered that he had a gift for writing on
difficult subjects for lay readers, and he began increasingly to address his work to
them rather than to the tiny handful of people capable of understanding Principia
Mathematica.

In the same year that he began his affair with Morrell, Russell met Ludwig
Wittgenstein, a brilliant young Austrian who arrived at Cambridge to study logic with
Russell. Fired with intense enthusiasm for the subject, Wittgenstein made great
progress, and within a year Russell began to look to him to provide the next big step
in philosophy and to defer to him on questions of logic. However, Wittgenstein’s own
work, eventually published in 1921 as Logisch-philosophische
Abhandlung (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,1922), undermined the entire approach
to logic that had inspired Russell’s great contributions to the philosophy of
mathematics. It persuaded Russell that there were no “truths” of logic at all, that
logic consisted entirely of tautologies, the truth of which was not guaranteed by
eternal facts in the Platonic realm of ideas but lay, rather, simply in the nature of
language. This was to be the final step in the retreat from Pythagoras and a further
incentive for Russell to abandon technical philosophy in favour of other pursuits.

During World War I Russell was for a while a full-time political agitator, campaigning
for peace and against conscription. His activities attracted the attention of the British
authorities, who regarded him as subversive. He was twice taken to court, the
second time to receive a sentence of six months in prison, which he served at the
end of the war. In 1916, as a result of his antiwar campaigning, Russell was
dismissed from his lectureship at Trinity College. Although Trinity offered to rehire
him after the war, he ultimately turned down the offer, preferring instead to pursue a
career as a journalist and freelance writer. The war had had a profound effect on
Russell’s political views, causing him to abandon his inherited liberalism and to
adopt a thorough-going socialism, which he espoused in a series of books
includingPrinciples of Social Reconstruction (1916), Roads to Freedom (1918),
and The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923). He was initially sympathetic to
the Russian Revolution of 1917, but a visit to the Soviet Union in 1920 left him with a
deep and abiding loathing for Soviet communism, which he expressed in The
Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920).

In 1921 Russell married his second wife, Dora Black, a young graduate of Girton
College, Cambridge, with whom he had two children, John and Kate. In the interwar
years Russell and Dora acquired a reputation as leaders of a progressive socialist
movement that was stridently anticlerical, openly defiant of conventional sexual
morality, and dedicated to educational reform. Russell’s published work during this
period consists mainly of journalism and popular books written in support of these
causes. Many of these books—such as On Education (1926), Marriage and
Morals (1929), and The Conquest of Happiness (1930)—enjoyed large sales and
helped establish Russell in the eyes of the general public as a philosopher with
important things to say about the moral, political, and social issues of the day. His
public lecture “Why I Am Not a Christian,” delivered in 1927 and printed many times,
became a popular locus classicus of atheistic rationalism. In 1927 Russell and Dora
set up their own school, Beacon Hill, as a pioneering experiment in
primary education. To pay for it, Russell undertook a few lucrative but exhausting
lecture tours of the United States.

During these years Russell’s second marriage came under increasing strain, partly
because of overwork but chiefly because Dora chose to have two children with
another man and insisted on raising them alongside John and Kate. In 1932 Russell
left Dora for Patricia (“Peter”) Spence, a young University of Oxford undergraduate,
and for the next three years his life was dominated by an extraordinarily acrimonious
and complicated divorce from Dora, which was finally granted in 1935. In the
following year he married Spence, and in 1937 they had a son, Conrad. Worn out by
years of frenetic public activity and desiring, at this comparatively late stage in his
life (he was then age 66), to return to academic philosophy, Russell gained a
teaching post at theUniversity of Chicago. From 1938 to 1944 Russell lived in the
United States, where he taught at Chicago and the University of California at Los
Angeles, but he was prevented from taking a post at the City College of New York
because of objections to his views on sex and marriage. On the brink of financial
ruin, he secured a job teaching the history of philosophy at theBarnes
Foundation in Philadelphia. Although he soon fell out with its founder, Albert C.
Barnes, and lost his job, Russell was able to turn the lectures he delivered at the
foundation into a book, A History of Western Philosophy (1945), which proved to be
a best-seller and was for many years his main source of income.

In 1944 Russell returned to Trinity College, where he lectured on the ideas that
formed his last major contribution to philosophy, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and
Limits (1948). During this period Russell, for once in his life, found favour with the
authorities, and he received many official tributes, including the Order of Merit in
1949 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. His private life, however, remained
as turbulent as ever, and he left his third wife in 1949. For a while he shared a house
in Richmond upon Thames, London, with the family of his son John and, forsaking
both philosophy and politics, dedicated himself to writing short stories. Despite his
famously immaculate prose style, Russell did not have a talent for writing great
fiction, and his short stories were generally greeted with an embarrassed and
puzzled silence, even by his admirers.

In 1952 Russell married his fourth wife, Edith Finch, and finally, at the age of 80,
found lasting marital harmony. Russell devoted his last years to campaigning
against nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War, assuming once again the role of
gadfly of the establishment. The sight of Russell in extreme old age taking his place
in mass demonstrations and inciting young people to civil disobedience through his
passionate rhetoric inspired a new generation of admirers. Their admiration only
increased when in 1961 the British judiciary system took the extraordinary step of
sentencing the 89-year-old Russell to a second period of imprisonment.
When he died in 1970 Russell was far better known as an antiwar campaigner than
as a philosopher of mathematics. In retrospect, however, it is possible to see that it
is for his great contributions to philosophy that he will be remembered and honoured
by future generations.

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ADDITIONAL MEDIA
MORE ABOUT Bertrand Russell
52 REFERENCES FOUND IN BRITANNICA ARTICLES
Assorted Reference
 relationship to Smith (in Hannah Whitall Smith)
association with
 Frege (in Gottlob Frege: System of mathematical logic.)
 Husserl (in Edmund Husserl: Lecturer at Halle.)
 Leśniewski (in Stanisław Leśniewski: Life)
 Moore (in G. E. Moore)
 Strawson (in Sir Peter Strawson)
 Whitehead (in Alfred North Whitehead: Background and schooling)
 Wiener (in Norbert Wiener)
 mathematics and logic
o axiom of choice (in axiom of choice)
o axiomatization (in axiomatic method)
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bertrand-Russell

Bertrand Russell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Bertrand Russell

Born Bertrand Arthur William Russell

18 May 1872

Trellech, Monmouthshire,[1]United Kingdom

Died 2 February 1970 (aged 97)

Penrhyndeudraeth,Caernarfonshire, United Kingdom

Residence United Kingdom

Nationality British

Alma mater Trinity College, Cambridge (BA, 1893)

Spouse(s) Alys Pearsall Smith (m. 1894–1921)

Dora Black (m. 1921–1935)

Marjorie "Patricia" Spence (m. 1936–1952[2])

Edith Finch (m. 1952–1970; his death)

Awards De Morgan Medal (1932)

Sylvester Medal (1934)

Nobel Prize in Literature (1950)

Kalinga Prize (1957)

Jerusalem Prize (1963)

Era 20th-century philosophy

Region Western philosophy

School Analytic philosophy

Linguistic turn

Logicism

Institutions Trinity College, Cambridge


Main interests Epistemology

 Ethics

 Logic

 Mathematics

 Metaphysics

 History of philosophy

 Philosophy of language

 Philosophy of logic

 Philosophy of mathematics

 Philosophy of mind

 Philosophy of perception

 Philosophy of religion

 Philosophy of science

Notable ideas
[show]

Influences[show]

Influenced[show]
 Signature

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS[57] (/ˈrʌsəl/; 18 May 1872 – 2 February
1970) was a British philosopher,logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political
activist and Nobel laureate.[58][59] At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist,
and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had "never been any of these things, in any profound
sense".[60] He was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in
the United Kingdom.[61]
In the early 20th century, Russell led the British "revolt against idealism".[62] He is considered one of
the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E.
Moore, and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th century's
premier logicians.[59] With A. N. Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a
logical basis for mathematics. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a
"paradigm of philosophy".[63] His work has had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set
theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science (see type
theory and type system), and philosophy, especially the philosophy of language, epistemology,
and metaphysics.
Russell mostly was a prominent anti-war activist; he championed anti-imperialism.[64][65] Occasionally,
he advocated preventive nuclear war, before the opportunity provided by the atomic monopoly is
gone, and "welcomed with enthusiasm" world government.[66] He went to prison for his pacifism
during World War I.[67] Later, he campaigned against Adolf Hitler, then
criticisedStalinist totalitarianism, attacked the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War,
and was an outspoken proponent ofnuclear disarmament.[68] In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions
humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".[69][70]

Contents
[hide]

 1Biography
o 1.1Early life and background
o 1.2Childhood and adolescence
o 1.3University and first marriage
o 1.4Early career
o 1.5First World War
o 1.6G. H. Hardy on the Trinity Controversy and Russell's personal life
o 1.7Between the wars
o 1.8Second World War
o 1.9Later life
o 1.10Political causes
o 1.11Final years and death
o 1.12Titles and honours from birth
 2Views
o 2.1Philosophy
o 2.2Religion
o 2.3Society
 3Ancestry
 4Selected bibliography
 5See also
 6References
o 6.1Russell
o 6.2Secondary references
o 6.3Books about Russell's philosophy
o 6.4Biographical books
 7External links
o 7.1Other writings available online
o 7.2Audio

Biography[edit]
Early life and background[edit]

Russell as a four year-old

Childhood home, Pembroke Lodge

Bertrand Russell was born on 18 May 1872 at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire, into an
influential and liberal family of theBritish aristocracy.[71] His parents, Viscount and Viscountess
Amberley, were radical for their times. Lord Amberley consented to his wife's affair with their
children's tutor, the biologist Douglas Spalding. Both were early advocates of birth control at a time
when this was considered scandalous.[72] Lord Amberley was an atheist and his atheism was evident
when he asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Russell's secular godfather.[73] Mill died the
year after Russell's birth, but his writings had a great effect on Russell's life.
His paternal grandfather, the Earl Russell, had been asked twice by Queen Victoria to form a
government, serving her as Prime Minister in the 1840s and 1860s.[74] The Russells had been
prominent in England for several centuries before this, coming to power and the peerage with the
rise of the Tudor dynasty (see: Duke of Bedford). They established themselves as one of the leading
BritishWhig families, and participated in every great political event from the Dissolution of the
Monasteries in 1536–40 to the Glorious Revolution in 1688–89 and the Great Reform Act in
1832.[74][75]
Lady Amberley was the daughter of Lord and Lady Stanley of Alderley.[68] Russell often feared the
ridicule of his maternal grandmother,[76] one of the campaigners for education of women.[77]
Childhood and adolescence[edit]
Russell had two siblings: brother Frank (nearly seven years older than Bertrand), and sister Rachel
(four years older). In June 1874 Russell's mother died of diphtheria, followed shortly by Rachel's
death. In January 1876, his father died of bronchitis following a long period of depression. Frank and
Bertrand were placed in the care of their staunchly Victorian paternal grandparents, who lived
at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park. His grandfather, former Prime Minister Earl Russell, died in
1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kindly old man in a wheelchair. His grandmother,
the Countess Russell (née Lady Frances Elliot), was the dominant family figure for the rest of
Russell's childhood and youth.[68][72]
The countess was from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and successfully petitioned the Court of
Chancery to set aside a provision in Amberley's will requiring the children to be raised as agnostics.
Despite her religious conservatism, she held progressive views in other areas
(acceptingDarwinism and supporting Irish Home Rule), and her influence on Bertrand Russell's
outlook on social justice and standing up for principle remained with him throughout his life. (One
could challenge the view that Bertrand stood up for his principles, based on his own well-known
quotation: "I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong".) Her favourite Bible verse,
'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil' (Exodus 23:2), became his motto. The atmosphere at
Pembroke Lodge was one of frequent prayer, emotional repression, and formality; Frank reacted to
this with open rebellion, but the young Bertrand learned to hide his feelings.
Russell's adolescence was very lonely, and he often contemplated suicide. He remarked in his
autobiography that his keenest interests were in religion and mathematics, and that only his wish to
know more mathematics kept him from suicide.[78] He was educated at home by a series of
tutors.[79] When Russell was eleven years old, his brother Frank introduced him to the work of Euclid,
which transformed his life.[72][80]
During these formative years he also discovered the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In his
autobiography, he writes: "I spent all my spare time reading him, and learning him by heart, knowing
no one to whom I could speak of what I thought or felt, I used to reflect how wonderful it would have
been to know Shelley, and to wonder whether I should meet any live human being with whom I
should feel so much sympathy".[81] Russell claimed that beginning at age 15, he spent considerable
time thinking about the validity of Christian religious dogma, which he found very unconvincing.[82] At
this age, he came to the conclusion that there is no free will and, two years later, that there is no life
after death. Finally, at the age of 18, after reading Mill's "Autobiography", he abandoned the "First
Cause" argument and became an atheist.[83][84]
University and first marriage[edit]
Russell won a scholarship to read for the Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, and
commenced his studies there in 1890,[85] taking as coach Robert Rumsey Webb. He became
acquainted with the younger George Edward Moore and came under the influence of Alfred North
Whitehead, who recommended him to the Cambridge Apostles. He quickly distinguished himself in
mathematics and philosophy, graduating as seventh Wrangler in the former in 1893 and becoming a
Fellow in the latter in 1895.[86][87]
Russell first met the American Quaker Alys Pearsall Smith when he was 17 years old. He became a
friend of the Pearsall Smith family—they knew him primarily as 'Lord John's grandson' and enjoyed
showing him off—and travelled with them to the continent; it was in their company that Russell
visited the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and was able to climb the Eiffel Tower soon after it was
completed.[88]
He soon fell in love with the puritanical, high-minded Alys, who was a graduate of Bryn Mawr
College near Philadelphia, and, contrary to his grandmother's wishes, married her on 13 December
1894. Their marriage began to fall apart in 1901 when it occurred to Russell, while he was cycling,
that he no longer loved her.[89] She asked him if he loved her and he replied that he did not love her.
Russell also disliked Alys's mother, finding her controlling and cruel. It was to be a hollow shell of a
marriage and they finally divorced in 1921, after a lengthy period of separation.[90] During this period,
Russell had passionate (and often simultaneous) affairs with a number of women, including Lady
Ottoline Morrell[91] and the actress Lady Constance Malleson.[92] Some have suggested that at this
point he had an affair with Vivienne Haigh-Wood, the English governess and writer, and first wife
of T. S. Eliot.[93]
Early career[edit]

Russell in 1907

Russell began his published work in 1896 with German Social Democracy, a study in politics that
was an early indication of a lifelong interest in political and social theory. In 1896 he taught German
social democracy at the London School of Economics.[94] He was a member of theCoefficients dining
club of social reformers set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb.[95]
He now started an intensive study of the foundations of mathematics at Trinity. In 1898 he wrote An
Essay on the Foundations of Geometry which discussed the Cayley–Klein metrics used for non-
Euclidean geometry.[96] He attended the International Congress of Philosophy in Paris in 1900 where
he met Giuseppe Peano and Alessandro Padoa. The Italians had responded to Georg Cantor,
making a science of set theory; they gave Russell their literature including the Formulario
mathematico. Russell was impressed by the precision of Peano's arguments at the Congress, read
the literature upon returning to England, and came upon Russell's paradox. In 1903 he
published The Principles of Mathematics, a work on foundations of mathematics. It advanced a
thesis of logicism, that mathematics and logic are one and the same.[97]
At the age of 29, in February 1901, Russell underwent what he called a "sort of mystic illumination",
after witnessing Whitehead's wife's acute suffering in an angina attack. "I found myself filled with
semi-mystical feelings about beauty... and with a desire almost as profound as that of theBuddha to
find some philosophy which should make human life endurable", Russell would later recall. "At the
end of those five minutes, I had become a completely different person."[98]
In 1905 he wrote the essay "On Denoting", which was published in the philosophical journal Mind.
Russell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1908.[57][68] The three-volume Principia
Mathematica, written with Whitehead, was published between 1910 and 1913. This, along with the
earlier The Principles of Mathematics, soon made Russell world-famous in his field.
In 1910 he became a lecturer in the University of Cambridge, where he was approached by the
Austrian engineering student Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became his PhD student. Russell viewed
Wittgenstein as a genius and a successor who would continue his work on logic. He spent hours
dealing with Wittgenstein's various phobias and his frequent bouts of despair. This was often a drain
on Russell's energy, but Russell continued to be fascinated by him and encouraged his academic
development, including the publication of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in
1922.[99] Russell delivered his lectures on Logical Atomism, his version of these ideas, in 1918,
before the end of the First World War. Wittgenstein was, at that time, serving in the Austrian Army
and subsequently spent nine months in an Italian prisoner of war camp at the end of the conflict.
First World War[edit]
During the First World War, Russell was one of the few people to engage in active pacifist
activities and in 1916, he was dismissed from Trinity College following his conviction under
the Defence of the Realm Act 1914.[100] Russell played a significant part in the Leeds Convention in
June 1917, a historic event which saw well over a thousand "anti-war socialists" gather; many being
delegates from the Independent Labour Party and the Socialist Party, united in their pacifist beliefs
and advocating a peace settlement.[101] The international press reported that Russell appeared with a
number of Labour MPs, including Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden, as well as
former Liberal MP and anti-conscription campaigner, Professor Arnold Lupton. After the event,
Russell told Lady Ottoline Morrell that, "to my surprise, when I got up to speak, I was given the
greatest ovation that was possible to give anybody".[102][103]
The Trinity incident resulted in Russell being fined £100, which he refused to pay in hopes that he
would be sent to prison, but his books were sold at auction to raise the money. The books were
bought by friends; he later treasured his copy of the King James Bible that was stamped
"Confiscated by Cambridge Police".
A later conviction for publicly lecturing against inviting the US to enter the war on the United
Kingdom's side resulted in six months' imprisonment in Brixton prison (see Bertrand Russell's views
on society) in 1918.[104] While in prison, Russell read enormously and wrote the book Introduction to
Mathematical Philosophy.
I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make,
no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work. I read enormously; I wrote a book, "Introduction to
Mathematical Philosophy"... and began the work for "Analysis of Mind"

— The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell[105]

Russell was reinstated in 1919, resigned in 1920, was Tarner Lecturer 1926 and became a Fellow
again in 1944 until 1949.[106]
In 1924, Bertrand again gained press attention when attending a "banquet" in the House of
Commons with well-known campaigners, including Arnold Lupton, who had been aMember of
Parliament and had also endured imprisonment for "passive resistance to military or naval
service".[107]
G. H. Hardy on the Trinity Controversy and Russell's personal life [edit]
In 1941, G. H. Hardy wrote a 61-page pamphlet titled Bertrand Russell and Trinity—published later
as a book by Cambridge University Press with a foreword by C. D. Broad—in which he gave an
authoritative account about Russell's 1916 dismissal from Trinity College, explaining that a
reconciliation between the college and Russell had later taken place and gave details about
Russell's personal life. Hardy writes that Russell's dismissal had created a scandal since the vast
majority of the Fellows of the College opposed the decision. The ensuing pressure from the Fellows
induced the Council to reinstate Russell. In January 1920, it was announced that Russell had
accepted the reinstatement offer from Trinity and would begin lecturing from October. In July 1920,
Russell applied for a one year leave of absence; this was approved. He spent the year giving
lectures in Chinaand Japan. In January 1921, it was announced by Trinity that Russell had resigned
and his resignation had been accepted. This resignation, Hardy explains, was completely voluntary
and was not the result of another altercation.
The reason for the resignation, according to Hardy, was that Russell was going through a
tumultuous time in his personal life with a divorce and subsequent remarriage. Russell contemplated
asking Trinity for another one-year leave of absence but decided against it, since this would have
been an 'unusual application' and the situation had the potential to snowball into another
controversy. Although Russell did the right thing, in Hardy's opinion, the reputation of the College
suffered due to Russell's resignation since the 'world of learning' knew about Russell's altercation
with Trinity but not that the rift had healed. In 1925, Russell was asked by the Council of Trinity
College to give the Tarner Lectures on the Philosophy of the Sciences; these would later be the
basis for one of Russell's best received books according to Hardy: The Analysis of Matter, published
in 1927.[108] In the preface to this pamphlet, Hardy wrote:
I wish to make it plain that Russell himself is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for the writing of
the pamphlet...I wrote it without his knowledge and, when I sent him the typescript and asked for his
permission to print it, I suggested that, unless it contained misstatement of fact, he should make no
comment on it. He agreed to this...no word has been changed as the result of any suggestion from
him.
Between the wars[edit]

Russell in 1938
Russell with his children, John and Kate

In August 1920, Russell traveled to Russia as part of an official delegation sent by the British
government to investigate the effects of theRussian Revolution.[109] He wrote a four-part series of
articles, titled "Soviet Russia—1920", for the US magazine The Nation.[110][111] He met Vladimir
Lenin and had an hour-long conversation with him. In his autobiography, he mentions that he found
Lenin disappointing, sensing an "impish cruelty" in him and comparing him to "an opinionated
professor". He cruised down the Volga on a steamship. His experiences destroyed his previous
tentative support for the revolution. He wrote a book The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism[112] about
his experiences on this trip, taken with a group of 24 others from the UK, all of whom came home
thinking well of the régime, despite Russell's attempts to change their minds. For example, he told
them that he heard shots fired in the middle of the night and was sure these were clandestine
executions, but the others maintained that it was only cars backfiring.[citation needed]
Russell's lover Dora Black, a British author, feminist and socialist campaigner, visited Russia
independently at the same time; in contrast to his reaction, she was enthusiastic about the
revolution.[112]
The following autumn Russell, accompanied by Dora, visited Peking (as it was then known in the
West) to lecture on philosophy for a year.[79] He went with optimism and hope, seeing China as then
being on a new path.[113] Other scholars present in China at the time included John
Dewey[114] and Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian Nobel-laureate poet.[79] Before leaving China, Russell
became gravely ill with pneumonia, and incorrect reports of his death were published in the
Japanese press.[114] When the couple visited Japan on their return journey, Dora took on the role of
spurning the local press by handing out notices reading "Mr. Bertrand Russell, having died according
to the Japanese press, is unable to give interviews to Japanese journalists".[115][116] Apparently they
found this harsh and reacted resentfully.[citation needed]
Dora was six months pregnant when the couple returned to England on 26 August 1921. Russell
arranged a hasty divorce from Alys, marrying Dora six days after the divorce was finalised, on 27
September 1921. Their children were John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell, born on 16 November
1921, and Katharine Jane Russell (now Lady Katharine Tait), born on 29 December 1923. Russell
supported his family during this time by writing popular books explaining matters of physics, ethics,
and education to the layman.
From 1922 to 1927 the Russells divided their time between London and Cornwall, spending
summers in Porthcurno.[117] In the 1922 and1923 general elections Russell stood as a Labour
Party candidate in the Chelsea constituency, but only on the basis that he knew he was extremely
unlikely to be elected in such a safe Conservative seat, and he was not on either occasion.
Together with Dora, Russell founded the experimental Beacon Hill School in 1927. The school was
run from a succession of different locations, including its original premises at the Russells' residence,
Telegraph House, near Harting, West Sussex. On 8 July 1930 Dora gave birth to her third child
Harriet Ruth. After he left the school in 1932, Dora continued it until 1943.[118][119]
On a tour through the USA in 1927 Russell met Barry Fox (later Barry Stevens) who became a well-
known Gestalt therapist and writer in later years.[120] Russell and Fox developed an intensive
relationship. In Fox's words: "... for three years we were very close."[121] Fox sent her daughter Judith
to Beacon Hill School for some time.[122] From 1927 to 1932 Russell wrote 34 letters to Fox.[123]
Upon the death of his elder brother Frank, in 1931, Russell became the 3rd Earl Russell.
Russell's marriage to Dora grew increasingly tenuous, and it reached a breaking point over her
having two children with an American journalist, Griffin Barry.[119] They separated in 1932 and finally
divorced. On 18 January 1936, Russell married his third wife, an Oxford undergraduate
named Patricia ("Peter") Spence, who had been his children's governess since 1930. Russell and
Peter had one son, Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, 5th Earl Russell, who became a prominent
historian and one of the leading figures in the Liberal Democratic party.[68]
Russell returned to the London School of Economics to lecture on the science of power in 1937.[94]
During the 1930s, Russell became a close friend and collaborator of V. K. Krishna Menon, then
secretary of the India League, the foremost lobby in the United Kingdom for Indian self-rule.[vague]
Second World War[edit]
Russell opposed rearmament against Nazi Germany, but in 1940 he changed his view that avoiding
a full-scale world war was more important than defeating Hitler. He concluded that Adolf Hitler taking
over all of Europe would be a permanent threat to democracy. In 1943, he adopted a stance toward
large-scale warfare, "Relative Political Pacifism": War was always a great evil, but in some
particularly extreme circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils.[124][125]
Before World War II, Russell taught at the University of Chicago, later moving on to Los Angeles to
lecture at the UCLA Department of Philosophy. He was appointed professor at the City College of
New York (CCNY) in 1940, but after a public outcry the appointment was annulled by a court
judgment that pronounced him "morally unfit" to teach at the college due to his opinions—notably
those relating to sexual morality, detailed in Marriage and Morals (1929). The protest was started by
the mother of a student who would not have been eligible for his graduate-level course in
mathematical logic; many intellectuals, led by John Dewey, protested at his treatment.[126] Albert
Einstein's oft-quoted aphorism that "great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from
mediocre minds" originated in his open letter, dated 19 March 1940, to Morris Raphael Cohen, a
professor emeritus at CCNY, supporting Russell's appointment.[127] Dewey and Horace M.
Kallen edited a collection of articles on the CCNY affair in The Bertrand Russell Case. He soon
joined the Barnes Foundation, lecturing to a varied audience on the history of philosophy; these
lectures formed the basis of A History of Western Philosophy. His relationship with the
eccentric Albert C. Barnes soon soured, and he returned to the UK in 1944 to rejoin the faculty of
Trinity College.[128]
Later life[edit]
Russell participated in many broadcasts over the BBC, particularly The Brains Trust and the Third
Programme, on various topical and philosophical subjects. By this time Russell was world-famous
outside academic circles, frequently the subject or author of magazine and newspaper articles, and
was called upon to offer opinions on a wide variety of subjects, even mundane ones. En route to one
of his lectures in Trondheim, Russell was one of 24 survivors (among a total of 43 passengers) of
an aeroplane crash in Hommelvik in October 1948. He said he owed his life to smoking since the
people who drowned were in the non-smoking part of the plane.[129][130] A History of Western
Philosophy (1945) became a best-seller and provided Russell with a steady income for the
remainder of his life.
In 1942 Russell argued in favour of a moderate socialism, capable of overcoming its metaphysical
principles, in an inquiry on Dialectical Materialism, launched by the Austrian artist and
philosopher Wolfgang Paalen in his journal DYN, saying, "I think the metaphysics of
both Hegel and Marx plain nonsense – Marx´s claim to be 'science' is no more justified than Mary
Baker Eddy´s. This does not mean that I am opposed to socialism."[131] In 1943, Russell expressed
support for Zionism: "I have come gradually to see that, in a dangerous and largely hostile world, it is
essential to Jews to have some country which is theirs, some region where they are not suspected
aliens, some state which embodies what is distinctive in their culture".[132]
In a speech in 1948, Russell said that if the USSR's aggression continued, it would be morally worse
to go to war after the USSR possessed an atomic bomb than before it possessed one, because if
the USSR had no bomb the West's victory would come more swiftly and with fewer casualties than if
there were atom bombs on both sides.[133] At that time, only the United States possessed an atomic
bomb, and the USSR was pursuing an extremely aggressive policy towards the countries in Eastern
Europe which were being absorbed into the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. Many understood
Russell's comments to mean that Russell approved of a first strike in a war with the USSR,
including Nigel Lawson, who was present when Russell spoke of such matters. Others, including
Griffin, who obtained a transcript of the speech, have argued that he was merely explaining the
usefulness of America's atomic arsenal in deterring the USSR from continuing its domination of
Eastern Europe.[129] However, just after the atomic bombs exploded overHiroshima and Nagasaki,
Russell wrote letters, and published articles in newspapers from 1945 to 1948, stating clearly that it
was morally justified and better to go to war against the USSR using atomic bombs while the USA
possessed them and before the USSR did. After the USSR carried out its nuclear bomb tests,
Russell changed his position and advocated for the total abolition of atomic weapons.[134]
In 1948, Russell was invited by the BBC to deliver the inaugural Reith Lectures[135]—what was to
become an annual series of lectures, still broadcast by the BBC. His series of six broadcasts,
titled Authority and the Individual,[136] explored themes such as the role of individual initiative in the
development of a community and the role of state control in a progressive society. Russell continued
to write about philosophy. He wrote a foreword to Words and Things by Ernest Gellner, which was
highly critical of the later thought ofLudwig Wittgenstein and of ordinary language philosophy. Gilbert
Ryle refused to have the book reviewed in the philosophical journal Mind, which caused Russell to
respond viaThe Times. The result was a month-long correspondence in The Times between the
supporters and detractors of ordinary language philosophy, which was only ended when the paper
published an editorial critical of both sides but agreeing with the opponents of ordinary language
philosophy.[137]
In the King's Birthday Honours of 9 June 1949, Russell was awarded the Order of Merit,[138] and the
following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.[68][79] When he was given the Order of
Merit, George VI was affable but slightly embarrassed at decorating a former jailbird, saying, "You
have sometimes behaved in a manner that would not do if generally adopted".[139] Russell merely
smiled, but afterwards claimed that the reply "That's right, just like your brother" immediately came to
mind. In 1952 Russell was divorced by Spence, with whom he had been very unhappy. Conrad,
Russell's son by Spence, did not see his father between the time of the divorce and 1968 (at which
time his decision to meet his father caused a permanent breach with his mother).
Russell married his fourth wife, Edith Finch, soon after the divorce, on 15 December 1952. They had
known each other since 1925, and Edith had taught English at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia,
sharing a house for 20 years with Russell's old friend Lucy Donnelly. Edith remained with him until
his death, and, by all accounts, their marriage was a happy, close, and loving one. Russell's eldest
son John suffered from serious mental illness, which was the source of ongoing disputes between
Russell and his former wife Dora.
In September 1961, at the age of 89, Russell was jailed for seven days in Brixton Prison for "breach
of peace" after taking part in an anti-nuclear demonstration in London. The magistrate offered to
exempt him from jail if he pledged himself to "good behaviour", to which Russell replied: "No, I
won't."[140][141]
In 1962 Russell played a public role in the Cuban Missile Crisis: in an exchange of telegrams with
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev assured him that the Soviet government would not be
reckless.[142] Russell sent this telegram to President Kennedy:
YOUR ACTION DESPERATE. THREAT TO HUMAN SURVIVAL. NO CONCEIVABLE
JUSTIFICATION. CIVILIZED MAN CONDEMNS IT. WE WILL NOT HAVE MASS MURDER.
ULTIMATUM MEANS WAR... END THIS MADNESS.[143]
According to historian Peter Knight, after JFK's assassination, Russell, "prompted by the emerging
work of the lawyer Mark Lane in the US ... rallied support from other noteworthy and left-leaning
compatriots to form a Who Killed Kennedy Committee in June 1964, members of which
included Michael Foot MP, Caroline Benn, the publisher Victor Gollancz, the writers John
Arden and J. B. Priestley, and the Oxford history professor Hugh Trevor-Roper. Russell published a
highly critical article weeks before the Warren Commission Report was published, setting forth 16
Questions on the Assassination and equating the Oswald case with the Dreyfus affair of late 19th-
century France, in which the state wrongly convicted an innocent man. Russell also criticised the
American press for failing to heed any voices critical of the official version.[144]
Political causes[edit]

Russell (centre) alongside his wife Edith, leading a CND anti-nuclear march in London, 18 February 1961

Russell spent the 1950s and 1960s engaged in political causes primarily related to nuclear
disarmament and opposing the Vietnam War. The 1955 Russell–Einstein Manifesto was a document
calling for nuclear disarmament and was signed by eleven of the most prominent nuclear physicists
and intellectuals of the time.[145] In 1966–67, Russell worked with Jean-Paul Sartre and many other
intellectual figures to form the Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal to investigate the conduct of the
United States in Vietnam. He wrote a great many letters to world leaders during this period.
In 1956, immediately before and during the Suez Crisis, Russell expressed his opposition to what he
viewed as European imperialism in the Middle East. He viewed the crisis as another reminder of
what he saw as a pressing need for a more effective mechanism for international governance, and to
restrict national sovereignty to places such as the Suez Canal area "where general interest is
involved". At the same time the Suez Crisis was taking place, the world was also captivated by
the Hungarian Revolution and the subsequent crushing of the revolt by intervening Soviet forces.
Russell attracted criticism for speaking out fervently against the Suez war while ignoring Soviet
repression in Hungary, to which he responded that he did not criticise the Soviets "because there
was no need. Most of the so-called Western World was fulminating". Although he later feigned a lack
of concern, at the time he was disgusted by the brutal Soviet response, and on 16 November 1956,
he expressed approval for a declaration of support for Hungarian scholars which Michael
Polanyi had cabled to the Soviet embassy in London twelve days previously, shortly after Soviet
troops had already entered Budapest.[146]
In November 1957 Russell wrote an article addressing US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, urging a summit to consider "the conditions of co-existence".
Khrushchev responded that peace could indeed be served by such a meeting. In January 1958
Russell elaborated his views in The Observer, proposing a cessation of all nuclear-weapons
production, with the UK taking the first step by unilaterally suspending its own nuclear-weapons
program if necessary, and with Germany "freed from all alien armed forces and pledged to neutrality
in any conflict between East and West". US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles replied for
Eisenhower. The exchange of letters was published as The Vital Letters of Russell, Khrushchev, and
Dulles.[147]
Russell was asked by The New Republic, a liberal American magazine, to elaborate his views on
world peace. He suggested that all nuclear-weapons testing and constant flights by planes armed
with nuclear weapons be halted immediately, and negotiations be opened for the destruction of
all hydrogen bombs, with the number of conventional nuclear devices limited to ensure a balance of
power. He proposed that Germany be reunified and accept the Oder-Neisse line as its border, and
that a neutral zone be established inCentral Europe, consisting at the minimum of
Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, with each of these countries being free of foreign
troops and influence, and prohibited from forming alliances with countries outside the zone. In the
Middle East, Russell suggested that the West avoid opposing Arab nationalism, and proposed the
creation of a United Nations peacekeeping force to guard Israel's frontiers to ensure that Israel was
protected from aggression and prevented from committing it. He also suggested Western recognition
of the People's Republic of China, and that it be admitted to the UN with a permanent seat on
the UN Security Council.[147]
He was in contact with Lionel Rogosin while the latter was filming his anti-war film Good Times,
Wonderful Times in the 1960s. He became a hero to many of the youthful members of the New Left.
In early 1963, in particular, Russell became increasingly vocal in his disapproval of the Vietnam War,
and felt that the US government's policies there were near-genocidal. In 1963 he became the
inaugural recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, an award for writers concerned with the freedom of the
individual in society.[148] In 1964 he was one of eleven world figures who issued an appeal
to Israel and the Arab countries to accept an arms embargo and international supervision of nuclear
plants and rocket weaponry.[149] In October 1965 he tore up his Labour Party card because he
suspected Harold Wilson's Labour government was going to send troops to support the United
States in Vietnam.[68]
Final years and death[edit]

Bust of Russell in Red Lion Square

Russell published his three-volume autobiography in 1967, 1968, and 1969. Russell made a cameo
appearance playing himself in the anti-war Hindi film Aman which was released in India in 1967. This
was Russell's only appearance in a feature film.[150]
On 23 November 1969 he wrote to The Times newspaper saying that the preparation for show trials
in Czechoslovakia was "highly alarming". The same month, he appealed to Secretary General U
Thant of the United Nations to support an international war crimes commission to investigate alleged
torture and genocide by the United States in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The following
month, he protested to Alexei Kosygin over the expulsion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the Soviet
Union of Writers.
On 31 January 1970 Russell issued a statement condemning "Israel's aggression in the Middle
East", and in particular, Israeli bombing raids being carried out deep in Egyptian territory as part of
the War of Attrition. He called for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-Six-Day Warborders. This was
Russell's final political statement or act. It was read out at the International Conference of
Parliamentarians in Cairo on 3 February 1970, the day after his death.[151]
Russell died of influenza on 2 February 1970 at his home, Plas Penrhyn,
in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, Wales. His body was cremated in Colwyn Bay on 5 February
1970. In accordance with his will, there was no religious ceremony; his ashes were scattered over
the Welsh mountains later that year. He left an estate valued at £69,423.[152] In 1980 a memorial to
Russell was commissioned by a committee including the philosopher A. J. Ayer. It consists of a bust
of Russell in Red Lion Square in London sculpted by Marcelle Quinton.[153]
Titles and honours from birth[edit]
Russell held throughout his life the following styles and honours:

 from birth until 1908: The Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell
 from 1908 until 1931: The Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell, FRS
 from 1931 until 1949: The Right Honourable The Earl Russell, FRS
 from 1949 until death: The Right Honourable The Earl Russell, OM, FRS

Views[edit]
Part of a series on

Bertrand Russell
 Russell in 1916

 Views on philosophy
 Views on society
 Russell's paradox
 Russell's teapot
 Theory of descriptions
 Logical atomism

 v
 t
 e

Philosophy[edit]
Main article: Bertrand Russell's views on philosophy

Russell is generally credited with being one of the founders of analytic philosophy. He was deeply
impressed by Gottfried Leibniz(1646–1716), and wrote on every major area of philosophy
except aesthetics. He was particularly prolific in the field of metaphysics, the logic and the
philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, ethics and epistemology. When Brand
Blanshard asked Russell why he did not write on aesthetics, Russell replied that he did not know
anything about it, "but that is not a very good excuse, for my friends tell me it has not deterred me
from writing on other subjects".[154]
On ethics, Russell considered himself a utilitarian.[155]
Religion[edit]
Russell described himself as an agnostic, "speaking to a purely philosophical audience", but as
an atheist "speaking popularly", on the basis that he could not disprove the Christian God – similar to
the way that he could not disprove the Olympic gods either.[156]For most of his adult life, Russell
maintained that religion is little more than superstition and, despite any positive effects that religion
might have, it is largely harmful to people. He believed that religion and the religious outlook serve to
impede knowledge and foster fear and dependency, and are responsible for much of our world's
wars, oppression, and misery. He was a member of the Advisory Council of the British Humanist
Association and President of Cardiff Humanists until his death.[157]
Society[edit]
Main article: Bertrand Russell's views on society

Political and social activism occupied much of Russell's time for most of his life. Russell remained
politically active almost to the end of his life, writing to and exhorting world leaders and lending his
name to various causes.
Russell argued for a "scientific society", where war would be abolished, population growth would be
limited, and prosperity would be shared.[158] He suggested the establishment of a "single supreme
world government" able to enforce peace,[159] claiming that "the only thing that will redeem mankind is
co-operation".[160]
Russell was an active supporter of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, being one of the
signatories of A. E. Dyson's 1958 letter to The Times calling for a change in the law regarding male
homosexual practices, which were partly legalised in 1967, when Russell was still alive.[161]
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".[162]

Ancestry[edit]
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[show]Ancestors of Bertrand Russell

Selected bibliography[edit]
A selected bibliography of Russell's books in English, sorted by year of first publication:

 1896. German Social Democracy. London: Longmans, Green.

 1897. An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry.[163] Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 1900. A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
 1903. The Principles of Mathematics.[164] Cambridge University Press.
 1903 A Free man's worship, and other essays.[165]
 1905. "On Denoting", Mind, Vol. 14. ISSN 0026-4423. Basil Blackwell.
 1910. Philosophical Essays. London: Longmans, Green.
 1910–1913. Principia Mathematica[166] (with Alfred North Whitehead). 3 vols. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
 1912. The Problems of Philosophy.[167] London: Williams and Norgate.
 1914. Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in
Philosophy.[168] Chicago and London: Open Court Publishing.
 1916. Principles of Social Reconstruction.[169] London, George Allen and Unwin.
 1916. Why Men Fight. New York: The Century Co.
 1916. The Policy of the Entente, 1904-1914 : a reply to Professor Gilbert Murray. Manchester:
The National Labour Press
 1916. Justice in War-time. Chicago: Open Court.
 1917. Political Ideals.[170] New York: The Century Co.
 1918. Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1918. Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism.[171] London: George
Allen & Unwin.
 1919. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy.[172][173] London: George Allen & Unwin. (ISBN 0-
415-09604-9 for Routledge paperback)[174]
 1920. The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism.[175] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1921. The Analysis of Mind.[176] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1922. The Problem of China.[177] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1923. The Prospects of Industrial Civilization, in collaboration with Dora Russell. London:
George Allen & Unwin.
 1923. The ABC of Atoms, London: Kegan Paul. Trench, Trubner.
 1924. Icarus; or, The Future of Science. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
 1925. The ABC of Relativity. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
 1925. What I Believe. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
 1926. On Education, Especially in Early Childhood. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1927. The Analysis of Matter. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
 1927. An Outline of Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1927. Why I Am Not a Christian.[178] London: Watts.
 1927. Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell. New York: Modern Library.
 1928. Sceptical Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1929. Marriage and Morals. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1930. The Conquest of Happiness. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1931. The Scientific Outlook,[179] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1932. Education and the Social Order,[180] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1934. Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1935. In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays.[181] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1935. Religion and Science. London: Thornton Butterworth.
 1936. Which Way to Peace?. London: Jonathan Cape.
 1937. The Amberley Papers: The Letters and Diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley, with Patricia
Russell, 2 vols., London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press.
 1938. Power: A New Social Analysis. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1940. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
 1945. A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social
Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day[182] New York: Simon and Schuster.
 1948. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1949. Authority and the Individual.[183] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1950. Unpopular Essays.[184] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1951. New Hopes for a Changing World. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1952. The Impact of Science on Society. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1953. Satan in the Suburbs and Other Stories. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1954. Human Society in Ethics and Politics. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1954. Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories.[185] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1956. Portraits from Memory and Other Essays.[186] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1956. Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950, edited by Robert C. Marsh. London: George
Allen & Unwin.
 1957. Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, edited by
Paul Edwards. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1958. Understanding History and Other Essays. New York: Philosophical Library.
 1959. Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare.[187] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1959. My Philosophical Development.[188] London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1959. Wisdom of the West, edited by Paul Foulkes. London: Macdonald.
 1960. Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind, Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company.
 1961. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, edited by R. E. Egner and L. E. Denonn. London:
George Allen & Unwin.
 1961. Fact and Fiction. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1961. Has Man a Future? London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1963. Essays in Skepticism. New York: Philosophical Library.
 1963. Unarmed Victory. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1965. Legitimacy Versus Industrialism, 1814–1848. London: George Allen & Unwin (first
published as Parts I and II of Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914, 1934).
 1965. On the Philosophy of Science, edited by Charles A. Fritz, Jr. Indianapolis: The Bobbs–
Merrill Company.
 1966. The ABC of Relativity. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1967. Russell's Peace Appeals, edited by Tsutomu Makino and Kazuteru Hitaka. Japan:
Eichosha's New Current Books.
 1967. War Crimes in Vietnam. London: George Allen & Unwin.
 1951–1969. The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell,[189] 3 vols., London: George Allen & Unwin.
Vol. 2, 1956[189]
 1969. Dear Bertrand Russell... A Selection of his Correspondence with the General Public
1950–1968, edited by Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Russell also wrote many pamphlets, introductions, articles, and letters to the editor. One pamphlet
titled, 'I Appeal unto Caesar': The Case of the Conscientious Objectors, ghostwritten for Margaret
Hobhouse, the mother of imprisoned peace activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse, allegedly helped
secure the release of hundreds of conscientious objectors from prison.[190]
His works can be found in anthologies and collections, perhaps most notably The Collected Papers
of Bertrand Russell, which McMaster University began publishing in 1983. This collection of his
shorter and previously unpublished works is now up to 18 volumes,[191] and several more are in
progress. A bibliography in three additional volumes catalogues his publications. The Russell
Archives held by McMaster's William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections possess
over 40,000 of his letters.[192]

See also[edit]
 Russell's teapot
 Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club
 Criticism of Jesus
 Doctrine of internal relations
 List of peace activists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell