All about Bertrand Russell
By Students’ Academy
Copyright@2011Students’ Academy
First Edition
Smashwords Edition
Chapter 1
Introduction
The most widely read and studied philosopher, mathematician, and writer, Bertrand Arthur William Russell was born on 18 May, 1872, at Cleddon Hall, Trellech, Monmouthshire, Wales, into a liberal family of the British aristocracy.
British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, socialist, pacifist, and social critic, Bertrand Russell spent most of his life in England; he died in Wales at the age of 97.
The Revolt against Idealism started in 1900s. Bertrand Russell led this revolution.
Gottlob Frege was his predecessor and Ludwig Wittgenstein was his protégé. Russell is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy; he is declared to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. Bertrand Russell’s philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy." His work has had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, and philosophy, especially philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.
Russell was a pacifist by nature and he never advocated the philosophy of war; he was a prominent anti-war activist; he supported the cause of free trade and anti-imperialism. Russell went to prison for his pacifist activism during World War I. Later, he campaigned against Adolf Hitler, then criticized Stalinist totalitarianism, attacked the United States of America's involvement in the Vietnam War, and finally became an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament.
His emphatic and powerful writings brought him the highest of honour, the Nobel Prize in Literature in the year 1950. In his writings, Bertrand Russell championed humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."
Chapter 2
Family Background
1st Earl John Russell was Bertrand Russell’s paternal grandfather; he was the third son of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford, and had twice been asked by Queen Victoria to form a government, serving her as Prime Minister in the 1840s and 1860s.
The Russells were a very prominent family in England. They had been prominent in England for several centuries before this, coming to power and the peerage with the rise of the Tudor dynasty. The Russells established themselves as one of Britain's leading Whig (Liberal) families, and participated in every great political event from the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536–40 to the Glorious Revolution in 1688–89 to the Great Reform Act in 1832.
Katharine Louisa was Russell's mother; she was the daughter of Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley, and was the sister of Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle.
His parents were known for their unorthodox and unconventional ideas. They were said to be radical for their times. Russell's father, Viscount Amberley, was an atheist and 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. John Russell's atheism was evident when he asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Russell's secular godfather. Mill died the year after Russell's birth, but his writings had a great effect on Russell's life.
Chapter 3
Early Life
Russell’s brother Frank was about seven years older than him and his sister Rachel was four years older. After the death of his sister Rachel, in the month of June 1874 Russell's mother died of diphtheria, followed shortly by Rachel's death. Only after two years of that, unfortunately, in January 1876, his father also died of bronchitis following a long period of depression. Frank and Bertrand were placed in the care of their staunchly Victorian grandparents, who lived at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park. John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, his grandfather, who had been Prime Minister, died in 1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kindly old man in a wheelchair. As a result, his widow, the Countess Russell (née Lady Frances Elliot), was the dominant family figure for the rest of Russell's childhood and youth.
The countess was from a Scottish Presbyterian family so she successfully filed a petition in a British Court 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 (accepting Darwinism 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 — 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.
During his adolescent age, Russell mostly remained lonely, and he often thought of committing suicide. In his autobiography Russell has mentioned that his keenest interests were in sex, religion and mathematics, and that only the wish to know more mathematics kept him from suicide. He was educated at home by a series of tutors. His brother Frank introduced him to the work of Euclid, which transformed Russell's life.
When his young mind was taking a definite shape, Bertrand Russell discovered P. B. Shelly and began to read his works minutely. 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." Russell claimed that beginning at age 15; he spent considerable time thinking about the validity of Christian religious dogma, and by 18 had decided to discard the last of it.
Chapter 4
University and Marriage
Bertrand Russell succeeded in winning a scholarship to read for the Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, and commenced his studies there in 1890. He became acquainted with the younger G.E. 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 a high Wrangler in 1893 and becoming a Fellow in the latter in 1895.
At the age of seventeen, Bertrand Russell first met the American Quaker Alys Pearsall Smith. Russell befriended 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.
Russell met Alys there. She was a high minded puritan, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia. Russell fell in love with her and, contrary to his grandmother's wishes; he married her on 13 December 1894. Their marriage began to fall apart in 1901 when it occurred to Russell, while he was out on his bicycle, that he no longer loved her. She asked him if he loved her and he replied that he didn't. 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. During this period, Russell had passionate (and often simultaneous) affairs with a number of women, including Lady Ottoline Morrell and the actress Lady Constance Malleson.
Chapter 5
Early Career
Russell’s first published work appeared in 1896. It was 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, where he also lectured on the science of power in the autumn of 1937. He was also a member of the Coefficients dining club of social reformers set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
Russell now submerged himself in the serious study of the foundations of mathematics at Trinity. Russell's paradox challenged the foundations of set theory. In 1903 he published his first important book on mathematical logic, The Principles of Mathematics. Russell’s logic was that mathematics could be deduced from a very small number of principles, contributing significantly to the cause of logicism.
His essay On Denoting was published in the philosophical journal Mind in 1905. Russell became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1908. The first of three volumes of Principia Mathematica, written with Whitehead, was published in 1910, which, along with the earlier The Principles of Mathematics, soon made Russell world famous in his field.
In the year 1910, Russell took up the post of a lecturer in the University of Cambridge. Only after a short period, Ludwig Wittgenstein became his PhD student. Russell immediately recognized his talent and viewed him 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.
Before the end of the First World War, Russell delivered his lectures on Logical Atomism, his version of these ideas.