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- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Graphic Guides
- Sprache: Englisch
Bertrand Russell changed Western philosophy forever. He tackled many puzzles--how our minds work, how we experience the world, and what the true nature of meaning is. In "Introducing Bertrand Russell "we meet a passionate eccentric, active in world politics, who had outspoken views on sex, marriage, religion, and education.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DPEmail: [email protected]
ISBN: 978-178578-008-0
Text copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd
Illustrations copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd
The author and illustrator has asserted their moral rights
Originating editor: Richard Appignanesi
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Russell, the Militant Philosopher
Russell’s Upbringing
Fear of Madness
The Geometry Lesson
A Pure and Perfect World
The Quest For Reason
Free at Last…
The Platonist View of Mathematics
The Reality of Numbers
The Formalist View
Three Kinds of Knowledge
Against Idealism
G.E. Moore and Propositions
The Foundations of Mathematics
What is Mathematics?
The Breakthrough
The Logic of Classes
The Eureka Moment
Mathematics as an Escape
Russell’s Devastating Paradox
A Sense of Disillusionment
Principia Mathematica
Types, Functions and Levels
How Certain is Certainty?
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem
Conclusions Thus Far
The Strange World of Logic
Analytic Questions of Logic
What is Logic?
Lady Ottoline Morell
Empiricism and British Empiricists
Descartes, Locke and Empirical Truth
Berkeley, the Idealist Sceptic
Hume on Impressions
Mill’s Phenomenalism
Russell’s Theory of Knowledge
A Logical Hypothesis
On Denoting
Language and Reality
Definite Descriptions
Paradoxes and Puzzles
Russell’s Solution
The Conclusion About Words and Referring
Grammatical Existence
Logical Atomism as a System
What Can be Referred to?
Russell and Berkeley
A Pure Logical Language
Analytic Philosophy
Wittgenstein: Benign or Malign Influence?
The Mystery of Names and Objects
But is it True?
Russell’s Theories of Meaning
The Ideational or Mentalist Theory
The Atomist Theory
Behavioural Theory
Frege’s Sense and Reference
Wittgenstein’s “Ghost” of Meaning
The Problems of Philosophy
Two Kinds of Knowledge
The Other Problems of Philosophy
Universals and Particulars
Are Universals Real?
What is Truth?
Seeing as God Might See
Wittgenstein, the Prodigal Son
The Ferocious Student
Parting of the Ways
Joseph Conrad
The First World War
The Conscription Issue
The Pacifist Russell
Prison
Theories of Mind
The Idealist Theory of Mind
The Materialist Answer
Double Aspect Theory
Russell’s Neutral Monism
Evaluation of Russell’s Theory
A Satisfactory War
A Bitter Turn
Dora and the Russian Revolution
Experience of Bolshevism
A Visit to China
Failure and Renewal
Russell and Science
The New Physics
Philosophy and Science After Russell
The Beacon Hill Experiment
Sexual Freedom, Almost
Russell’s Politics
The Anarchist View of Power
Socialism and the State
The Threat of Nationalism
World Government
Naïve About Politics
Not Completely a Goose
The Prophet’s Blind Spot
Scandal in America
Russell and Religion
No Proof or Disproof of God
The Enemy of Christianity
Russell in the Nuclear Age
The Peril of Nuclear Holocaust
The Nobel Prize
Pugwash and CND
Committee of 100
Schoenman and the Prophet
The Viper
The Closing Years
The End
Assessments of Russell’s Work
Philosophical Descendants
The Linguistic Analysis School
The Deeper Aim of Philosophy
The Failure of Empiricism
Russell, the Intellectual Icon
Further Reading
About the Author and Artist
Acknowledgements
Index
Russell, the Militant Philosopher
Everyone has heard of Bertrand Russell. He was a great thinker, an agitator imprisoned for his beliefs, and a man who changed Western philosophy for ever. He was a profound sceptic who refused to take anything for granted and protested all his life – against the senseless slaughter of the First World War, against the evils of all kinds of totalitarian dictatorship, and against nuclear weapons which he thought would eventually destroy us all. He wrote on a huge range of subjects and his work has influenced large numbers of people – from stuffy academics to scruffy anarchists.
“IF A MAJORITY IN EVERY CIVILIZED COUNTRY SO DESIRED, WE COULD, WITHIN 20 YEARS, ABOLISH ALL ABJECT POVERTY, QUITE HALF THE ILLNESS IN THE WORLD, THE WHOLE ECONOMIC SLAVERY WHICH BINDS DOWN NINE TENTHS OF OUR POPULATION; WE COULD FILL THE WORLD WITH BEAUTY AND JOY, AND SECURE THE REIGN OF UNIVERSAL PEACE.”
Russell’s Upbringing
Bertrand Russell was born in 1872 into a famous and wealthy English aristocratic family. His father was Viscount Amberley and his grandfather was the retired Prime Minister, Lord John Russell. England’s most famous philosopher at that time, John Stuart Mill (1806–73), was his agnostic “Godfather”. His parents were radical supporters of the Liberal Party and both advocated votes for women. They were shadowy figures in his life because his mother died of diphtheria when he was two and his father of bronchitis shortly afterwards. His main memories of childhood were of his grandmother, Lady Russell, and the oppressive atmosphere in her house – Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park.
SHE WAS A RESOLUTE PRESBYTERIAN AND A VERY VICTORIAN GUARDIAN. I HAVE FIRM IDEAS ABOUT THE UPBRINGING OF CHILDREN. HER NICKNAME WAS “DEADLY NIGHTSHADE”.
Bertie and his elder brother Frank were rigorously educated to be upstanding young gentlemen with a strong sense of religious and social duty. Neither boy was encouraged to think or talk about his dead, radical parents. Lady Russell also insisted that both boys receive regular lectures on personal conduct and avoid all talk of sexuality and bodily functions. Frank finally rebelled against his grandmother, but Bertie simulated obedience and, as a result, became a rather isolated, lonely and inauthentic child, acting out his grandmother’s image of the perfectly obedient “angel”.
THE MOST VIVID PART OF MY EXISTENCE WAS SOLITARY… THROUGHOUT MY CHILDHOOD I HAD AN INCREASING SENSE OF LONELINESS. I SELDOM MENTIONED MY MORE SERIOUS THOUGHTS TO OTHERS, AND WHEN I DID I REGRETTED IT. IT BECAME SECOND NATURE TO ME TO THINK THAT WHATEVER I WAS DOING HAD BETTER BE KEPT TO MYSELF.
Fear of Madness
It was a feeling of alienation that Russell found hard to shake off. He often felt like a “ghost” – unreal and insubstantial compared to other people. He had nightmares of being trapped behind a pane of glass, excluded for ever from the rest of the human race. He was also terrified of going mad. His uncle Willy was incarcerated in an asylum (for murdering a tramp in a workhouse infirmary) and his maiden Aunt Agatha was mentally unstable.
MY GRANDMOTHER TOLD ME… IT WOULD BE UNWISE FOR YOU TO HAVE ANY CHILDREN, AS THEY WOULD ALSO PROBABLY BE DERANGED.
Many of Russell’s friends and colleagues found him wonderfully amusing and compelling, but also strangely lacking in human warmth. His early days in Pembroke Lodge may have had a negative influence on his ability to relate to others, as well as explaining his powerful feelings of isolation.
The Geometry Lesson
Russell was educated privately by a series of often bizarre and eccentric tutors. (One did experiments on “imprinting” baby chickens, which consequently followed him all around the house.) Frank decided that it was time to teach his 11-year-old brother some geometry. It was a formative experience for Russell.
HE FELL IN LOVE – HE WAS ASTONISHED TO SEE HOW EUCLID COULD DEMONSTRATE AND THEN PROVE HIS WHOLE SYSTEM OF SPATIAL GEOMETRY. I HAD NOT IMAGINED THAT THERE WAS ANYTHING SO DELICIOUS IN THE WORLD…
A Pure and Perfect World
It certainly looks as if Russell’s brain was uniquely “wired up” for mathematical reasoning from an early age. But there was a problem. Like all knowledge systems, Euclidean geometry begins with a few “axioms” – statements that you just have to accept as true. (“A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.” “All right angles are equal to one another.”) The pragmatic Frank explained that it is impossible to generate a body of certain knowledge out of thin air. You have to start somewhere. But young Bertie had deep reservations.
HE WANTED GEOMETRY TO BE BEAUTIFULLY PERFECT AND TOTALLY TRUE. PERHAPS THERE IS A WAY OF PROVING THE FOUNDATIONS OF GEOMETRY?
Mathematics offered Russell a pure and perfect world into which he could escape – a world that he spent much of his early life attempting to make even more perfect and true than it already was. Then, one of his well-informed private tutors told Russell of the existence of newly discovered alternative “non-Euclidean” geometries.
THESE ALSO WORK PERFECTLY WELL, EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE BASED ON WHOLLY DIFFERENT SETS OF AXIOMS.
THE UNIVERSE, AND THE SPACE OF WHICH IT IS MADE, IS NOT NECESSARILY “EUCLIDEAN”.
So perhaps the young Bertie had been right to withhold his assent to Euclidean geometry after all.
The Quest For Reason
Russell subsequently came to believe that reason was the best way to solve all sorts of problems, not just mathematical ones. It was a view that he held for the rest of his life. He soon came to realize that the people he knew (his grandmother especially) maintained all sorts of beliefs that they could not justify. Russell soon began to have severe doubts about his own religious beliefs, and to experience feelings of sexual desire.
I COULD NOT POSSIBLY ADMIT TO EITHER OF THESE IN THE CLOYING VICTORIAN ATMOSPHERE OF PEMBROKE LODGE.
But even though he gradually lost all of his Christian faith, Russell remained a deeply spiritual individual. Much of his life seems to have been an almost spiritual quest for understanding and certainty. Sometimes he found it in his academic work. Sometimes he searched for it in the form of a perfect human companion who would totally comprehend him and so expel his constant feelings of isolation. Russell was also a prodigious and energetic walker, loved wild places and was, at times, a bit of a nature mystic.
THE SEA, THE STARS, THE NIGHT WIND IN WASTE PLACES, MEAN MORE TO ME EVEN THAN THE HUMAN BEINGS I LOVE BEST…
Free at Last…
As soon as he arrived at Cambridge University, Russell felt intellectually liberated. He could talk openly at last about everything – mathematics, metaphysics, theology, politics, history – and make numerous friendships. He was soon invited to join the “Apostles” – an exclusive debating society made up of intellectually élitist young men. Here he met G.E. Moore (1873–1958), another great English philosopher-to-be.
AND I FELL IN LOVE – WITH A FEMINIST SCHOLAR AND CAMPAIGNER ON “WOMEN’S ISSUES”, ALYS PEARSALL SMITH.
The Russell family doctor (heavily influenced by Lady Russell) tried to dissuade him from the idea of marriage.
YOUR CHILDREN WILL BE BORN LUNATICS, AND BIRTH CONTROL IS A WELL-KNOWN CAUSE OF EPILEPSY! NEVERTHELESS, I RISKED BOTH AND MARRIED ALYS ON 13 DECEMBER 1894.
The Platonist View of Mathematics
Russell impressed everyone with his mathematical mind. He was “Seventh Wrangler” in mathematics, and emerged with a “starred first” which enabled him to become a Fellow of Trinity College on graduating. By this time, his interest in mathematics was almost wholly theoretical and philosophical. This inevitably happens to anyone who starts to think about mathematics seriously. You soon find yourself asking some very odd questions – which make you into a philosopher.
IS MATHEMATICS SOMETHING MYSTERIOUSLY JUST “OUT THERE” IN THE UNIVERSE WAITING FOR US TO DISCOVER IT? this is what PYTHAGORAS AND PLATO THOUGHT. BOTH BELIEVED THAT MATHEMATICS IS SOMEHOW “ENCODED” INTO THE UNIVERSE.
The Reality of Numbers
Many other philosophers, including Russell, agreed with Plato’s idea that numbers are “real”. But this view leads to strange problems about numbers. If numbers are “out there”, how are they?
ARE THEY REAL IN THE WAY THAT DOGS AND SAUCEPANS ARE – OR ARE THEY REAL IN A DIFFERENT SORT OF WAY?
NUMBERS ARE “MORE REAL” THAN EVERYDAY OBJECTS.
Other philosophers, like Russell, maintained that numbers have an odd kind of “being” but not “existence”, in the same way as some other entities do – like relations: “To the left of”, “bigger than”, etc.
The Formalist View
Some philosophers and mathematicians, usually known as “Formalists”, claim that mathematics is a wholly human invention that is simply a construction of all that follows from a few axioms.
MATHEMATICS IS MERELY A KIND OF EMPTY GAME, LIKE CHESS, WITH CERTAIN RULES AND CONVENTIONS.
IT CANNOT TELL YOU ANYTHING ABOUT TRUTH, REALITY OR HOW THE UNIVERSE IS CONSTRUCTED, ALTHOUGH IT MAY PRODUCE VERY USEFUL “MODELS” OF WHAT THE UNIVERSE MIGHT BE LIKE.
Platonists think that mathematicians are uncovering the truth, Formalists that they are constructing interesting self-contained patterns that may eventually have some kind of practical application.
Three Kinds of Knowledge
PHILOSOPHERS CALL THIS A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE.
Some philosophers and mathematicians believe that mathematics can give us very real and new information about the world.
PHILOSOPHERS CALL THIS SYNTHETIC KNOWLEDGE.
PHILOSOPHERS CALL THIS ANALYTIC KNOWLEDGE.
Most philosophers and mathematicians agree that mathematics is “necessary” – the truth of it is constant, wherever and whenever. So 2+2 always equals 4, no matter where or when you live.
THIS KIND OF GUARANTEED TRUTH HAS ALWAYS ATTRACTED PHILOSOPHERS – AND IT WAS THIS MAGIC OF CERTAINTY THAT CAPTIVATED ME.
Mathematics may be the only really useful tool that we have if we are to investigate the deep structures of the universe, perhaps only because our minds are “wired up” to think mathematically. And this, in turn, raises yet more questions about the universe and the human minds that try to understand it.
Against Idealism
When Russell arrived at Cambridge, the “Idealist” philosophy of F.H. Bradley (1846–1924) held sway. Idealist philosophy claims that, if you are to understand the world and all that it contains, you have to recognize that everything is interconnected, and that separateness and contradictions are mere illusions. Idealist philosophers can find themselves in the end wallowing in a mystical vision of a harmonious whole, the “Absolute”. The universe and its contents are all one thing.
For some Idealist PHILOSOPHERS, THIS “ONE THING” IS SOMETHING VERY LIKE GOD.
