The second volume of Ray Monk's biography of Bertrand Russell focuses on Russell's tragic and moving relationship with his first son John. It uses the relationship as a centerpoint to expound on Russell's public achievements, such as his political campaigning for peace.

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

Russell's avant-garde philosophy of free love combined with his principled pacificism would make him an icon of the international Left in the 1960s.".

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

"The chief thesis I have to maintain", Bertrand Russell once wrote, "is the legitimacy of analysis". His reputation as the founder of the analytic tradition, secure for many decades, has come under some attack recently from the emphasis placed by Michael Dummett and others on the role played by Gottlob Frege. This collection of new essays from distinguished philosophers and Russell scholars explores Russell's own unique and enduringly important contribution to shaping the concerns and the methods of contemporary analytical (...) philosophers. It includes both general discussions of the nature of analytical philosophy and minutely detailed analyses of Russell's own arguments, and covers the whole range of Russell's famously varied output. (shrink)

"In the second half of his life, Bertrand Russell transformed himself from a major philosopher, whose work was intelligible to a small elite, into a political activist and popular writer, know to millions throughout the world. Yet his life is the tragic story of a man who believed in a modern, rational approach to life and who, though his ideas guided popular opinion throughout the twentieth century, lost everything." "Drawing on thousands of documents collected at the Russell archives in (...) Canada, Monk steers through the turbulence of Russell's public activities, scrutinizing his sometimes paradoxical and often outrageous pronouncements. Monk's focus, however, is on the tragedy of Russell's personal life, and in revealing this inner drama Monk has relied heavily on the cooperation of Russell's surviving relatives and access to previously unexamined legal and private correspondence."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Review of Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude.

This paper attempts to summarise the philosophical career of Bertrand Russell, concentrating in particular on his contributions to logic and the philosophy of mathematics. It takes as its starting point Russell's conception of philosophy as the search for foundations upon which certain knowledge might be built, a search which Russell, at the end of his career, declared to be fruitless. In pursuing this search, however, Russell was led to develop lines of thought and techniques of analysis that have had (...) a profound and lasting influence on the philosophy of the twentieth century. (shrink)

To really appreciate the range of his achievements, we need an interdisciplinary effort; we need a carefully researched definitive edition of Russell's work, edited by a team consisting of, among others, philosophers and historians, a journal devoted to studying the various aspects of his activities and a whole army of researchers with access to a well-catalogued archive of his papers.

This article contains a detailed discussion of the friendship and the intellectual collaboration between D. H. Lawrence and Bertrand Russell during the spring and summer of 1915. The questions it seeks to answer are why Russell initially was inclined to treat Lawrence's philosophical thought with respect, even to the extent of becoming an evangelist on its behalf; why he subsequently rejected Lawrence's outlook and distanced himself from Lawrence's political program; and what similarities and dissimilarities exist in Russell's thought and (...) Lawrence's as represented by Russell's Principles of Social Reconstruction and Lawrence's essays "Study of Thomas Hardy" and "The Crown." Both writers, it is suggested, were centrally concerned with the possibility of transcending the "prison" of the self, but the ideas each developed as to how this should be done were radically divergent, so much so that each could, in the end, regard the other as the very personification of the kind of egoism they sought to transcend. (shrink)

Review of BERTRAND RUSSELL: THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE, the first volume of Ray Monk's biography of Russell.

‘Poor Bertie’ Beatrice Webb wrote after receiving a visit from Bertrand Russell in 1931, ‘he has made a mess of his life and he knows it’. In the 1931 version of his Autobiography, Russell himself seemed to share Webb’s estimate of his achievements. Emotionally, intellectually and politically, he wrote, his life had been a failure. This sense of failure pervades the second volume of Ray Monk’s engrossing and insightful biography. At its heart is the failure of Russell’s marriages (...) to Dora Black and Patricia (Peter) Spence, his poor relationships with his children John and Kate, and the decline in his reputation as a philosopher. Russell, who had changed the direction of philosophy irrevocably, was in later years unable to find permanent academic employment in Britain, ousted from his professorship at the City College of New York because of his views on sex and marriage, and was reduced to giving nonspecialist lectures at a foundation established by the Philadelphia philanthropist Albert C. Barnes. Eventually in 1944 he returned to Cambridge, but by then the philosophical world was in the grip of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas, and Russell was largely ignored. (shrink)

"Yet Russell was more than a great intellect; he was also a political animal. From the beginning of his long professional life he emphasized the importance of practice as well as theory. He was twice imprisoned by the British government for his political utterances. With his razor-sharp irony and morally impassioned rhetoric, Russell took on the forces of injustice, ignorance, and cruelty; one of his chief weapons was the letter to the editor.".

Ludwig Wittgenstein is perhaps the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most original in the entire Western tradition. Given the inaccessibility of his work, it is remarkable that he has inspired poems, paintings, films, musical compositions, titles of books -- and even novels. In his splendid biography, Ray Monk has made this very compelling human being come alive in a way that perfectly explains the fascination he has evoked. Wittgenstein's life was one of great (...) moral and spiritual depth. Although his work addresses problems of logic, language, mind, and knowledge, he often described it as having an ethical point, and once said that he "could not help seeing every problem from a religious point of view." In successfully bridging the gap assumed by many to exist between Wittgenstein's life and his work, Monk's biography helps to explain the interest in Wittgenstein's later philosophy on the part of Buddhist scholars. (shrink)

This article discusses recent attempts to provide the genre of biography with a philosophical, theoretical foundation and attempts to show that such efforts are fundamentally misguided. Biography is, I argue, a profoundly nontheoretical activity, and this, precisely, makes it philosophically interesting. Instead of looking to philosophy to provide a theory of biography, we should, I maintain, look to biography to provide a crucially important example and model of what Ludwig Wittgenstein called "the kind of understanding that (...) consists in seeing connections." This kind of understanding stands in sharp contrast to the theoretical understanding provided by science and is, Wittgenstein maintained, what we as philosophers are, or should be, striving for. (shrink)

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

In the growing body of academic literature on biography that has developed in the last few decades, Virginia Woolf's essay, "The New Biography,"1 has come to occupy a central place—mentioned, discussed and quoted from, I would estimate, more often than any other piece of writing on the subject. Virginia Woolf's distinctive view of the nature and limitations of biography has thus had, and continues to have, a deep and wide-ranging influence on the way the genre is discussed (...) by critics and theorists. My aim in this essay is to present a detailed analysis of Virginia Woolf's thinking about biography in order to make clear why I believe its influence on contemporary theorising about biography is, on the whole, a misfortune. As is often pointed out, Virginia Woolf's views on biography are closely connected with—indeed, to an extent that I hope to make clear, they are simply an application of—her views on fiction. In the light of this, I have tried to trace some of the most striking features of her thinking about biography back to her earlier thoughts on fiction, as presented in both her novels and her essays. The result, I hope, will be that, while the attractions of her way of looking at fiction and biography are recognised and revealed, the manifest flaws in her thinking on these subjects are clearly exposed. (shrink)

Biography need not be reductive; it need not seek to explain the work of a writer through an appeal to a psychological or sociological theory, neither need it treat all the work of a writer as disguised autobiography. It can simply, like Boswell’s life of Johnson, seek to enable us to get to know someone.

This monumental collection of new and recent essays from an international team of eminent scholars represents the best contemporary critical thinking relating to both literary and philosophical studies of literature. Helpfully groups essays into the field's main sub-categories, among them ‘Relations Between Philosophy and Literature’, ‘Emotional Engagement and the Experience of Reading’, ‘Literature and the Moral Life’, and ‘Literary Language’ Offers a combination of analytical precision and literary richness Represents an unparalleled work of reference for students and specialists alike, ideal (...) for course use. (shrink)

PORTRAITS FROM MEMORY and Other Essays by BERTRAND RUSSELL SIMON AND SCHUSTER NEW YORK 1956 VI CONTENTS PAGE Mind and Matter 1 45 The Cult of Common Usage 1 66 ...

Abstract:In his biography, Ray Monk expresses surprise and disgust that Bertrand Russell should have included a discussion of eugenics in his famous book on marriage and sexual morality, Marriage and Morals (1929). Monk is especially horrified that Russell advocated the sterilization of the “mentally defective”. He draws the conclusion that such views must have been due to a combination of Russell’s negative feelings about his second wife, Dora, and his life-long fear of insanity. In fact Russell came to (...) his views in dialogue with the dominant scientific and political communities of his day. Russell’s position was the logical consequence of his fear of the rise of State intervention in society and the erosion of individual rights. When put into proper historical context, it is clear that it was Russell’s engagement with early twentieth-century politics and science, not personal or psychological demons, that was the motive force behind his views on marriage and eugenics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:178 Reviews c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3302\rj 33,2 113 red.docx 2014-01-15 10:04 THE EARLY MOORE AND RUSSELL Ray Perkins, Jr. Philosophy / Plymouth State U. Plymouth, nh 03264 1600, usa [email protected] G. E. Moore. Early Philosophical Writings. Edited and with an Introduction by Thomas Baldwin and Consuelo Preti. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge U. P., 2011. Pp. lxxxv, 251. isbn: 978-0521190145. £68.00; us$114.00. aldwin and Preti have put together a very nice book (...) which gives us G. E. Moore’s 1897 and 1898 Trinity College dissertations and an informative look at the historical context in which they were written. This story—including information about Moore’s early life, the philosophical influences at Cambridge and a critical commentary on his dissertations and readers’ reports— is clearly and carefully presented in their 78-page introduction.1 The book is a valuable addition to the history of analytic philosophy and will be of special interest to Moore (and Russell) scholars and to historians generally who wish to know more about the genesis of the ideas shaping the new analytic philosophy at the end of the century. Moore entered Trinity in 1892 to study classics. There he met Russell (who was in his third year) and took his advice to study philosophy in his last two years and take his final exams (Tripos, Part ii) in both disciplines, which he did successfully in 1896. And like Russell—who had won a Trinity prize fellowship in 1895 (with a dissertation on the foundations of geometry2 ) only one year after his graduation—he submitted a dissertation (1897) in hopes of winning a prize fellowship. Moore’s first attempt failed, but his 1898 version was successful. And not only did the success of the 1898 dissertation launch Moore’s career as a professional philosopher, it also paved the way for the new analytic philosophy of the next century. Moore’s dissertations and his Trinity examiners’ reports (by Caird, Sidgwick, Ward and Bosanquet3 ) are fascinating reading, and it’s a great convenience to have them handy in a single volume. But the editors deserve special 1 Hereafter I shall use the editors’ convention of referring to the pagination of their introduction with roman numerals and to Moore’s dissertations (plus examiners’ reports) with arabic numerals. 2 Russell’s dissertation was published in 1897 as An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry. 3 Edward Caird was an idealist and highly respected Kant scholar at Oxford. Henry Sidgwick was one of Moore’s teachers at Cambridge and author of the influential _= Reviews 179 c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3302\rj 33,2 113 red.docx 2014-01-15 10:04 praise for not only giving the reader an astute critical summary of the dissertations, but also for their skillful reconstruction of Moore’s surviving, but incomplete, 1898 manuscript from which parts of the early chapters had been removed. The editors make a good case (pp. lxxv–lxxix) that those pages became the basis of Moore’s 1899 Mind article, “The Nature of Judgment”. (Those familiar with Russell’s early work may recall it as an article that Russell claimed as of paramount importance for his own early work.4 I’ll return to the question of Russell and Moore and this article’s significance.) the dissertations, 1897 and 1898 Moore’s dissertations reveal a young Moore with remarkable powers of analysis and more than a hint of the careful, courageous scepticism and intellectual honesty for which he later became known. But as the editors make clear, their main importance is the record they reveal of the transition away from Kant and Hegel to the new philosophy, which put a premium on conceptual analysis and metaphysics without Kantian or neo-Hegelian idealism. The 1897 dissertation (“The Metaphysical Basis of Ethics”) is an analysis of the basic concepts of ethics with considerable critical discussion of Kant, especially concerning freedom and reason, and Moore’s attempt to fashion his own good-based ethics utilizing a little from Kant and much from Bradley (p. l). At this time both Moore and Russell were still under the influence of Kant... (shrink)

Abstract:Recent Russell scholarship has made clear the importance of Russell’s contributions to ethical theory. But his provocative two-page 1922 paper, “Is There an Absolute Good?”, anticipating by two decades what has come to be called “error theory”, is still little known and not fully understood by students of Russell’s ethics. In that little paper, never published in Russell’s lifetime, he criticizes the “absolutist” view of G. E. Moore; and, with the help of his own 1905 theory of descriptions, he exposes (...) what he takes to be the fallacy underlying Moore’s (and his own earlier) arguments regarding value judgments and puts forward a new analysis which preserves the “absolutist” meaning at the cost of rendering all value judgments false. This article attempts to: (1) make clear just what Russell was doing in his little paper and how to understand it in the evolution of his metaethical thinking, (2) defend his 1922 theory against some recent criticisms, and (3) suggest the most likely reasons why he so quickly abandoned his new theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 33 (summer 2013): 59–94 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036–01631; online 1913–8032 oeviews PRINCIPIA’S SECOND EDITION Russell Wahl English and Philosophy / Idaho State U. Pocatello, id 83209, usa [email protected] Bernard Linsky. The Evolution of Principia Mathematica: Bertrand Russell’s Manuscripts and Notes for the Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2011. Pp. vii, 407; 2 (...) plates. isbn: 978-1-10700-327-9. £96; us$159. ussell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica was a pioneering work which was in many ways overtaken by the success of the new discipline it helped found. There is little doubt that Principia Mathematica was one of the most important works in the development of symbolic logic, as even Quine, one of the critics of the foundations proposed in it, said: “This is the book that has meant the most to me.”Yet few mathematicians or logicians follow the theory of types proposed in Principia as the foundation of mathematics, nor the logicist project of which it is a variant. While much of Principia ’s notation has been incorporated into modern formal logic and set theory, much of it also is dated and not easy for contemporary mathematicians and logicians to read. Among those who were dissatisfied with the philosophical foundations of the first edition were the authors themselves.1 During 1923 and 1924 Russell revised and updated Principia, and the second edition of the first volume appeared in 1925 with the other two volumes appearing in 1927. What resulted was a new edition with the philosophical underpinning modi- fied, but with the superstructure, that is, the resulting theorems of the three volumes, unchanged. Russell wrote a new Introduction and added three Appendices, but other than that made only minor changes.The new philosophy of logic had as its core idea a principle of extensionality which Russell expressed as the view that “functions of propositions are always truth-functions and a function can only occur in a proposition through its values” (PM2 1: ______ 1 Russell wrote the new material for the second edition, but it is clear from a letter to him byWhitehead on 24 May 1923, quoted by Linsky, that he, too, thought the foundational system needed tweaking: “I don’t think that ‘types’ are quite right” (p. 16). o= 60 Reviews xiv). It is interesting that at times Russell seems to have been hesitant about even endorsing this change.2 The second edition of Principia has not been well received; by and large it has either been ignored or scorned. Linsky cites especially negative remarks by Monk, but others have dismissed the second edition additions and it has generally been thought a failure since 1944, when Gödel pointed out an error in the Appendix B proof that mathematical induction can be “rectified” even without the axiom of reducibility. The Evolution of Principia Mathematica makes available to scholars Russell’s notes and manuscripts of the new material added to the second edition. Linsky also seeks to redress the indifference to the second edition, to set the record straight about several misunderstandings, and to give an account of the new material.The book he has produced will be very valuable to scholars of Russell and to anyone interested in the development of type theory and indeed of logic as a whole during this time. This is also a difficult book, both because the material can get quite technical at times and also because the new material included in the introduction to the second edition is somewhat sketchy, and there are philosophical and technical points about which Russell himself is less than clear. As a result there have been disagreements about how the second edition is best to be interpreted. Linsky recognizes that the interpretive issues are under-determined by the text and wants to stay relatively neutral with respect to the different alternatives about the various controversies. At times it can be difficult to keep the various positions straight.The difficulty lies with the material, and Linsky does a very good job of explaining the issues to the layman. The work is divided into... (shrink)

Early in Principia Mathematica Russell presents an argument that "‘the author of Waverley’ means nothing", an argument that he calls a "definite proof". He generalizes it to claim that definite descriptions are incomplete symbols having meaning only in sentential context. This Principia "proof" went largely unnoticed until Russell reaffirmed a near-identical "proof" in his philosophical autobiography nearly 50 years later. The "proof" is important, not only because it grounds our understanding of incomplete symbols in the Principia programme, but also because (...) failure to understand it fully has been a source of much unjustified criticism of Russell to the effect that he was wedded to a naive theory of meaning and prone to carelessness and confusion in his philosophy of logic and language generally. In my paper, I (1) defend Russell’s "proof" against attacks from several sources over the last half century, (2) examine the implications of the "proof" for understanding Russell’s treatment of class symbols in Principia, and (3) see how the Principia notion of incomplete symbol was carried forward into Russell’s conception of philosophical analysis as it developed in his logical atomist period after 1910. (shrink)