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WHO SAYS THAT PHILOSOPHY HAS TO BE DULL, AND POORLY-WRITTEN?
Not without reason was Bertrand Russell given the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950; a rather unusual honor for a modern philosopher---and particularly one known for his work in mathematical logic---but then, Russell was not your "typical" philosopher.He actually supported himself by his writing at many periods in his life (such as when he was running a "Free School" with his wife), rather than as a professor of philosophy (whichi is the norm, these days), and so he continually honed and refined his writing style over the years, so that it is always a pleasure to read.Even his self-described "potboilers"---which he admittedly wrote for the money---such as "The Conquest of Happiness" are a pleasure to read, for Russell's delightful prose style.

It should also be noticed that Russell was often FUNNY---at times, devastatingly so, with an acerbic wit combined with a keen philosophical intellect that effectively skewered his target.This collection consists of short (ranging from "one-liners" to several long paragraphs) excerts from the full spectrum of Russell's huge output of books over an enormously long (he died at age 97) and productive career.

Topics include Politics, Ethics, Education, Religion, and of course Sex.It's remarkable to see that Russell's once-horrifyingly controversial comments on such topics as what we would now call "Serial Monogamy" now seem almost genteel.

This collection makes for a marvelous introduction to Russell, and will surely whet one's appetite to read at least some of the books these excerpts were taken from.

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In addition to the essays ennumerated in the catalog, there are several in this collection dealing with the ramifications of atomic physics on such philosophic concepts as materialism, idealism, determinism, and faith. ... Read more

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Originally published 1972.

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A survey such as this by one of the world's leading thinkers of his entire philosophical canon, is clearly as important as it is fascinating. It is a masterpiece of philosophical autobiography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

I felt an aching compassion for young men embarking in troop trains to be slaughtered
Bertrand Russell was an utmost clinical analyzer of the scriptures of his colleague-philosophers. With his penetrating mathematical insights he could easily translate their often dark and contorted formulations into plain comprehensible sentences and expose the real meaning and/or the inner contradictions of their highbrow wordings.

In this book, he exposes harshly the morass of linguistics and Wittgenstein's `Philosophical Investigations', demolishes William James, tells how he destroyed unintentionally Frege's life work and gives insightful comments on Tarski, Ryle and his own struggle with induction.

Astonishingly, the main influence on his life as a philosopher was not a philosophic problem, but World War I: `One effect of that war was to make it impossible for me to go on living in a world of abstraction.' It turned him away from pure mathematics.

Morass of linguistics
Bertrand Russell had no `sympathy with those who treat language as an autonomous province.' For him, `the essential thing about language is that it has meaning, that it is related to something non-linguistic.'
As Karl Popper said, linguistics is nothing more than cleaning one's spectacles.

Wittgenstein
Bertrand Russell was extremely harsh for Wittgenstein's second philosophical period (the `Philosophical Investigations'), where `we are now told that it is not the world that we are to try to understand but only sentences', nor the separation of `what may count as knowledge from what must be rejected as unfounded opinion.'
`The positive doctrines seem to me trivial and its negative doctrines unfounded.'

William James
B. Russell explains that for William James, `a belief is rendered true by the excellence of its effects'. More, William James `says that what he means is not that the consequences of the belief are good, but that the believer thinks they will be.'!

Ryle, Tarski
B. Russell doesn't agree with Ryle (`philosophy cannot be fruitful if divorced from empirical science'), but he agrees with Tarski `that truth consists in one sort of relation to facts, while falsehood consists in another sort of relation.'

In his characteristic sarcastic and vitriolic style, Bertrand Russell torpedoes in this book big chunks of modern `philosophy'. It is a must read for all those interested in philosophy and the way of the world.
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An Unabridged, Digitally Enlarged Printing Of Volume II Of III With Additional Errata To Volume I: Part III - CARDINAL ARITHMETIC - Definition And Logical Properties Of Cardinal Numbers - Addition, Multiplication And Exponentiation - Finite And Infinite - Part IV - RELATION ARITHMETIC - Ordinal Similarity And Relation-Numbers - Addition Of Relations, And The Product Of Two Relations - The Principle Of First Differences, And The Multiplication And Exponentiation Of Relations - Arithmetic And Relation-Numbers - Part V -SERIES - General Theory Of Series - On Sections, Segments, Stretches, And Derivatives - On Convergence, And The Limits Of Functions ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Socialism; Anarchism; Syndicalism; Guild socialism; Anarchism and anarchists; Gild socialism; Anarchists; Philosophy / General; Philosophy / History ... Read more

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"Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education."

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

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An Appropiate Selection of Topics
This volume is, in my view, an excellent introduction to its subject, namely Bertrand Russell. The introduction by Nicholas Griffin is superb, and indeed has suggested to me new avenues for the investigation of Russell's thought (such as the controversy between realists and anti-realists regarding the Law of the Excluded Middle, or his definition of Scepticism in AMa as a boundary problem), it then goes on, to examine the place of Mathematics in Russell's thought and Russell's contributions to Mathematics, it then sketches the young Russell's views regarding Idealism and his rejection of Kant and Hegel as well as his short-lived partnership with G.E. Moore, it then goes on to give an account of his Logicism (the view which takes mathematics to be in some sense reducible to logic) of his Theory of Types for solving the paradox which bears his name and his Theory of Definite Descriptions in an excellent paper by Peter Hylton which shows ways to evade Kripke's criticisms of the russellian analysis of proper names in terms of definite descriptions. Michael Beaney, editor of The Frege Reader, also contributes with an splendid 70 page paper on the philosophies of Frege and Russell. There is a complicated paper in the jargon of mathematical logic dealing with one of Russell's attempts, a sophisticated one, to deal with the paradoxes in set theory, namely the Substitutional Theory, but it is mostly here, and a bit in the paper on Types where mathematical logic features more proficiently. Most of the papers in the book are quite intelligible without much knowledge of logic. The second part of the book deals mostly with Russell's Metaphysics and his Theory of Knowledge, kudos to Grayling and Demopoulos on two astonishing papers, by the former on Russell's desire to explain the relation of individual phenomenal experience to science and by the latter on an account of Russell's view of physics as something which gives structural knowledge of the world by applying to the interpretation of said science the relation-arithmetic which he worked out in Principia Mathematica. As is well known Russell gave an account of the structure of the world around 1918 which purported to explain the sort of facts, qualities and relations that should exist on account of logic, a paper by Bernard Linsky deals with this. The volume ends brilliantly with a well-thought out and philosophically exciting paper by Charles Pigden in which he sketches out for criticism some of Russell's views regarding world government (in the way making some enlightening comparisons with Thomas Hobbes), and suggests that Russell's ethical philosophy is much more original and important than what is generally thought, for he invented Error theory and Emotivism.


Anyone who knows of Russell's place in philosophy will not be surprised to see that more or less half of this book deals with topics in logic and the philosophy of mathematics. The birth of so-called Analytic Philosophy can be traced down to the philosophico-mathematical investigations of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, and Russell's place in philosophy as one of the greatest philosophers of the XX century is firmly grounded in his philosophical work during the first twenty years of the twentieth century where such books as Principia Mathematica and The Principles of Mathematics occupy a prominent place. Indeed, a great deal of analytic philosophy is concerned with language and philosophical logic where topics such as reference (which greatly occupied Russell's thought) hold an important place. It was Russell who said that his greatest accomplishment was his theory of definite descriptions, this theory, as Russell understood it, was valuable not only for its logical or linguistic applications but mainly for its applications in areas such as Epistemology, the Philosophy of Mathematics and Metaphysics. Whomever has read some of Russell's later works, for instance Human Knowledge, won't be surprised by the extent in which in that book he investigates what sort of thing is a Proper Name. Indeed throughout his philosophy Russell held that one could be misled by the grammar of natural language in assuming certain features of the world which logic showed to be in principle disposable. For instance one may assume that the sentences "Greeks are Men" and "Socrates is a Man" attribute a predicate to a subject and thus think that the world must contain only properties and particulars whereas in fact "Greeks are Men" is logically extremely different from "Socrates is a Man", the first says that if anything is a greek that is a man, the second that something unique Socrates has the property of being a man. These sort of things are puzzling and extremely important and relevant to debates about Existence, the Structure of the World, the sort of things the World contains, the sort of thing that is mathematics, the relation of language to fact, and of mental acts (belief, desire, etc) to language and to facts. Indeed much muddleheadedness in philosophy, as Russell tried in his life to make us see, is a consequence of neglecting the logic of our language. The puzzle about "The Present King of France is bald" is extremely relevant to all this, for how are such sentences significant when there is no such thing as a Present King of France ? To what are we attributing such a property ? How can we say anything about non-existent things ? If there is a non-existent King of France are there other non-existents and if so, what sort of existential status do they have since they do not exist ? All of these are tremendously important philosophical enigmas which Russell's theory of descriptions answers swiftly. It is important to realize that Russell's most striking and original contributions are in the abstract fields of logic, philosophical logic and the philosophy of mathematics; indeed though he wrote an enormous amount of books on religion and politics, most of them, though superbly written and provocative, where written for the purpose of rational persuasion rather than philosophicalinvestigation, indeed much of what Russell says on religion has been said by others, like Voltaire for instance, and his disposal of the arguments for the existence of God is of course not novel, as is well known Kant smashed all philosophico-theological arguments for the existence of God in his Critique in the eighteenth century; it is therefore no surprise that a volume which deals with Russell as a philosopher focuses, like this one, where it does; since it is those abstract problems in mathematics, language, the philosophy of physics, epistemology, scientific inference and metaphysics which Russell saw as the proper domain of philosophy and where his mark is still most felt. Regrettably this book does not mention the Russellian solution to the mind-body problem which has featured prominently in contemporary works in the philosophy of Mind such as Chalmers (1996) and Lockwood (1989); an article about the philosophies of Russell and Wittgenstein would have been welcome too. This book is not for everyone, but undergraduate students of philosophy, specialists and people interested in the most abstract features of Russell's thought will benefit greatly from studying this elegant, sharp and thought-provoking volume.

Reflecting Russell's True Legacy
There are at least four Bertrand Russells:The English aristocrat whose values were forged during the Edwardian revolt against Victorianism, the mathematical logician, the Nobel Prize winning popular author and the radical activist.The authors of this collection have obviously decided to focus on Russell the mathematical logician of the period between 1900-1920, with a little attention to some of his later work in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of science.Undoubtedly, this reflects Russell's true legacy to philosophy and his ongoing influence in that discipline.Unfortunately, most people know Russell from his popular writings, which, though they often deal with topics discussed by philosophers (such as God and morality) are hardly distinguished by the sort of rigor or seriousness that a genuinely philosophical discussion of these questions deserve.Most of his essays on these topics date badly and are of no more than sociological interest today; the views he expresses, however radical they may have been at the time, have become (even if true - and that is certainly debateable) either banal through repetition or long since bypassed in the course of philosophical discussion.They may still be read with pleasure by some but not to much profit by anyone who has kept abreast of philosophical developments in these areas.Russell's genius in mathematics and logic (like Einstein's in physics) was not reflected in most of the other areas to which he turned his active mind, such as religion, politics and educational theory despite the fact that his authority was often accepted in these areas as well.As such, his popular influence is well out of proportion to his actual contribution to the philosophical discussion of these questions.His writings on these topics can be and are increasingly being ignored by serious philosophers, a fact mirrored by the composition of this collection.Nevertheless, since the questions to which Russell's work is still relevant are abstract, complex and of interest largely to specialists, this emphasis means that a collection of this sort is only going to have limited accessibility to and interest for the reader whose main entree to Russell is something like The ABC of Relativity, Marriage and Morals or Why I am not a Christian.

Excellent Book
Very helpful.Deals with Russell's work in modern philosophy (and, so, his earlier writings), rather than his activities as a political activist.

How could Cambridge do this to one of their own
I have never felt compelled to review any book before. I have read 14 of the Cambridge Companions, some of them have been spotty but this one should be thrown out and the second edition let out to a new editor.

The biographical introduction explains Russell's long varied and interesting career. It then spends the first half of the book on articles on his logic. Most of these articles are not written in English but in an academic jargon of symbolic logic, pages and pages of it. (If you buy the book read chapter 3 and skip the rest.) The book then goes on to be a little more interesting concerning his epistomology and metaphysics.

The final chapter concerns whether he was a moral philospher and I believe justifies that he was.

But the book barely notes what his moral philosphy was, anything about his political philosophy and nothing about his comments on religion. Russell spent a large part of his life expressing couragious and unpopular ideas. This volume totally ignores this aspect of his works and concentrates on how one might legitimately say "The current King of France is bald" (hint- there is no current King of France)While this is an interesting logical question, it is not worth 300 pages. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1914.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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Book Summary -- Our Knowledge of the External World
"Our Knowledge of the External World" first appeared as a series of lectures delivered by Bertrand Russell while in Boston in the early spring of 1914. Fifteen years passed before Russell published these Lowell Lectures with the goal of introducing his "logical-analytic method" to the wider general public with the express purpose of finding "whatever objective scientific knowledge it is possible to obtain" (v). In writing this book Russell also hoped to stake a future claim for philosophy.

The barrage of scientific and mathematical discoveries during the early 20th century brought into question the future relevancy and legitimacy of philosophy. For Russell, philosophy found itself at a critical juncture, "Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning," with Russell's position being, "The problems and the method of philosophy have, I believe, been misconceived by all schools, many of its traditional problems being insoluble with our means of knowledge, while other more neglected but not less important problems can, [through Russell's Logical Atomism], be solved with all the precision and certainty to which the most advanced sciences have attained" (11). Russell envisioned a very specific purpose for philosophy, but realized that his brand of "Logical Atomism" would have to first overcome the entrenched "classical tradition" of Immanuel Kant and "evolutionism" of Herbert Spencer that was popular at the time.

Russell wrote that his interpretation of what philosophy should be "is to help us to understand the general aspects of the world and the logical analysis of familiar but complex things" (22). Philosophy's success in achieving these ends may then provide an ancillary boon to the other sciences. Russell writes, "The philosophy, therefore, which is to be genuinely inspired by the scientific spirit, must deal with somewhat dry and abstract maters, and must not hope to find an answer to the practical problems of life" (31).

In Russell's opinion both the classical tradition and evolutionism erred by presuming that either reason or intuition provided the path to truth. Concerning this false demarcation Russell writes,"insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth...insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes(24-25)," and finally "It is neither intellect nor intuition, but sensation, that supplies new data...intellect is much more capable of dealing with [sensations] than intuition" (28). In contrast, Logical Atomism rejected the classical notion of a priori reasoning in favor of a deductive science based raw sense-data.

The basic premise of Logical Atomism is that all knowledge is ultimately reducible to problems of logic. According to Russell we build this stock of "common knowledge" through either acquaintance (i.e. direct experience) or description (i.e. vicarious experience). While he concedes that his Logical Atomism originated in the field of mathematical logic, Russell argues that it has since developed into its own discipline of philosophical logic, quite distinct from its mathematical origins. Russell's philosophical logic is primarily concerned with the misunderstandings that occur as a result of not clearly differentiating between the logical "form" of a sentence and its "constituent" parts. Russell writes, "In order to understand a sentence, it is necessary to have knowledge both of the constituents and of the particular instance of the form" (41). Simply, this is the task of philosophical logic-to realize that all sentences do not conform to the subject-predicate form.

Russell stated his philosophical methodology as follows:

"We start from a body of common knowledge, which constitutes our data. On examination, the data are found to be complex, rather vague, and largely interdependent logically. By analysis we reduce them to propositions which are as nearly as possible simple and precise, and we arrange them in deductive chains, in which a certain number of initial propositions form a logical guarantee for all the rest" (163).

Through this process Russell believed a higher degree of exactitude could be achieved, and the gap between the world of physics and the world of sensation could be bridged. This was the intellectual climate at Cambridge University during the early 20th century that would later influence others, specifically Wittgenstein, to take the "linguistic turn" in philosophy.

Masterpiece
This book is like a sculpture. Think of Russell as a Michelangelo of analytic philosophy and think of this book as one of his sculptures. You will be looking at his work from different angles, from the distance or from close vicinity, and you will appreciate its many aspects, you will go back and notice details that you missed, and, most important of all, when Russell will comment on the limits of his investigation, you will learn to love the imperfection of his masterpiece. This book is clear and well written, but that doesn't come as a surprise, knowing the author. Russell will capture the reader in his thoughts. His main point throughout the book is giving a logically sound account of reality. The three main arguments are about space, time and infinity. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading a logical, accurate, elementary clear and well written account of the reality that surrounds us. Those readers who have, once in their lives, wondered if time exists, if there can be a definition of "number" and if infinity can be described, will think of this book as a treasure. ... Read more

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In Bertrand Russell in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Russell's life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes criticisms and comments on Russell's writings; a brief list of suggested reading for those who wish to push further; and chronologies that place Russell within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy. ... Read more

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90 Minutes with Bertrand Russell
This short book of 92 pages is one of the entries in Strathern's 90 Minutes series. If you know absolutely nothing about Russell you could begin with this book-- but you will need more than it provides to really understand this major philosopher. The heart of this book is the 63 page essay "Russell's Life and Works." Strathern describes how Russell revolted against the prevailing neo-Hegelian idealism he found at Cambridge as a student and developed a philosophy based on logical analysis which he later called "logical atomism" because it stressed the discreteness of things rather than seeing them as all interelated parts of the neo-Hegelian "Absolute." The best part of the book is the non-technical explanation of "Russell's Paradox" and his "Theory of Types." Unfortunately, Strathern does not present Russell's mature philosophy. He gives an overview of Russell's thoufgr based on works from which he later diverged. Strathern should have consulted Russell's 1959 "My Philosopical Development" where he gives his final views on many of the topics discussed in this small book. Russell may need more than ninety minutes! ... Read more

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No online description is currently available. If you would like to receive information about this title, please email Routledge at info@routledge-ny.com ... Read more

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WAIT!This is not what it appears to be!
The advertising makes this appear to be a new printing of a wonderful old book that has gone out of print.That isn't what it is at all.

An outfit called General Books took an old copy of this out-of-print book, scanned it, used a computer program to covert it into text, and then printed it out (with new pagination, bearing no relation whatever to the original pagination) and bound it.The result is a complete mess.There are misspelled words everywhere (the software apparently isn't so good at recognizing letters in older fonts); the footnotes and chapter headings were absorbed into the text; the original page numbers are lost; the table of contents is completely useless because it gives page numbers corresponding to the original pagination.There are also many apparently meaningless long strings of characters.

For example, here is how the book begins:

ffamititrge:PBINTED BY J. and O. F. OLAT AT THE TJNIVEBSITT PRESS.PEEFACE.The history of philosophy is a study which proposes to itself two somewhat "different objects, of which

and here's a randomly selected passage from page 85:

It remains to say something concerning time and change.Here we have fewer passages to refer to, and so far as I know no thoTOugh discussion after Leibniz's philoso phy i s matare.

What a mess!
This is probably the worst produced and printed book I've seen in many years.Typos, misprints, paragraphs separated.

Note that I'm not talking about the content, which remains to be read, but rather about the production itself.It is so bad that even glancing through it immediately highlights problems - no need to look hard.

Historically important work, but dismissible for its contents
Russell's famous work is of great importance historically because it set the tone for Leibniz study for a generation. Today this tone has been completely rejected by modern Leibniz scholars. Russell's work says more about Russell than Leibniz. Russell uses Leibniz as a punching bag to push his dogma. I recommend the many papers and journal entries written over the last 100 years which basically have proven almost every major attack Russell made on Leibniz to be unjustified. Still, this book is a must read for any serious Leibniz scholar for its historical importance alone and to understand why so many scholars after Russell had the narrow interpretation of Leibniz that they did.

Important for the history of predicate logic crtiques
As Russell lays out Leibniz' system giving five axioms and critiques two as false, we have an interesting historical analysis of predicate logic as well as the analytic - synthetic distinction both pre-Kant, and a la Russell. This is certainly bound to interest logicians and historians of logic as well as Leibniz students. ... Read more

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PREFACE. THE present work is based on a dissertation submitted at the Fellowship Examination of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the year 1895. Section B of the third chapter is in the main a reprint, with some serious alterations, of an article in Mind (New Series, No. 17). The substance of the book has been given in the form of lectures at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. My chief obligation is to Professor Klein. Throughout the first chapter, I have found his " Lectures on non-Euclidean Geometry " an invaluable guide; I have accepted from him the division of Metageometry into three periods, and have found my historical work much lightened by his references to previous writers. In Logic, I have learnt most from Mr Bradley, and next to him, from Sigwart and Dr Bosanquet. On several important points, I have derived useful suggestions from Professor James's " Principles of Psychology." My thanks are due to Mr G. F. Stout and Mr A.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.

Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the difficult to read text. Read books online for free at http://www.forgottenbooks.org ... Read more

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This is the third volume of Russell's autobiographies. It concerns principally the struggles for world peace and nuclear disarmament. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Russell's post-WW2 postbag, through Jewish filter
About 175 edited letters to Russell, and his edited replies, from 1957 to 1965 mostly - extracted from 'about 25,000'. Interesting and I thought the book could be twice as long - and more - without any diminution in impact.

Sorted roughly into main sections such as religion, philosophy, politics, war; plus 'anekdota' - the latter referring to Whitehead, Tagore, D H Lawrence, Sinclair Lewis, Gissing, Wells, Carpenter, T S Eliot, Vaughan Williams, H J Mackinder... not to mention Shelley, Castlereagh, Tom Paine...

The philosophy section incldues what must be the sharpest put-down of existentialism - '.. pure nonsense, based intellectually upon errors of syntax and emotionally upon exasperation.' There are letters referring readers to his own books - 'Human Knowledge..', 'Power', 'Human Society in Ethics and Politics'

The War and peace section looks at Cuba, Khrushchev etc and nuclear matters - Russell spent a lot of time on 'current nuclear writings'. He states his view on the First World War - it was a disaster and he'd have preferred Germany to win a quick victory - then Communists, Nazis, and Fascists would not have existed. He replies to a pacifist re WW2 to the effect that the correspondent hadn't seen 'innocent Jews herded into gas chambers' - a rather odd justification since the story wasn't made up for some years after the war was started.

Russell is of course a rationalist, though I don't think he ever got the feel of tribal systems, such as modern Judaism and Islam. He has one letter on Islam, replying to someone who disliked the picture (supposedly?) of Mohammed in 'Wisdom of the West'. Most of the religious letters are anti-Christian. This is no doubt where the Jewish editing comes in; most or all the letters promote the Jewish pressure-group attitudes - e.g. there's a pro-immigration into Britain reply to a south African. In fact, one of the editors, Kasrils, ended in the ANC - strangely, the mineral wealth in south Africa appears to remain in Jewish hands.

Anyway - an interesting if too short collection. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Philosophy; Science; Mathematics; Philosophy / General; Philosophy / Logic; Body, Mind ... Read more

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Let us reject power from our hearts
While the essays on physics are rather outdated, Russell's sarcastic comments on the philosophy of Bergson, education, ethics or vegetarianism are still well worth reading.

Bergson
Bergson's crucial idea of `durée' is an error: `Since the past has effects now, it must still exist in some sense. The mistake in this maxim consists in the supposition that causes `operate'. The belief that causes `operate', results from assimilating them to volitions.'

Ethics
For B. Russell, `ethics is essentially a product of the gregarious instinct, that is to say, of the instinct to co-operate with those who are to form our own group against those who belong to other groups. Those who belong to our own group are good; those who belong to hostile groups are wicked,'

Education
`The endeavor to teach virtue has led to the production of stunted and contorted hypocrites instead of full-grown human beings"

Vegetarians
`Even vegetarians do not hesitate to save the life of a man in a fever, although in doing so they destroy the lives of many millions of microbes.'

Philosophy and man's place in the universe
`No heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system. All these things are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.'

These almost `lyrical' essays are a must read for all fans of the superb free mind of Bertrand Russell.
... Read more

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First published in 1954, Human Society in Ethics and Politics is Bertrand Russell’s last full account of his ethical and political positions relating to both politics and religion. Ethics, he argues, are necessary to man because of the conflict between intelligence and impulse – if one were without the other, there would be no place for ethics. Man’s impulses and desires are equally social and solitary. Politics and ethics are the means by which we as a society and as individuals become socially purposeful and moral codes inculcate our rules of action.

Customer Reviews (2)

Not earth-shaking, but perhaps worth reading
This book is probably best used as a place to mine some good Bertrand Russell quotes on issues of humankind and the good society, particularly at the end of chapters, where he tends to get up a head of rhetorical steam.It is not a very deep or probing analysis of any particular problem, nor a carefully researched or detailed account; moreso it is the well-intentioned pontifications of an preternaturally rational and brilliant man with an abiding compassion for humankind.It's more "Uncle Bertie weighs in on the problems of humanity".

Some say Russell's heavy lifting is really only done in his works on math and logic, and this is probably true.This book I think would support that claim.Still, there are some pleasant reflections in it for all it's glosses and generalizations.

consqentlst&positivist, good analysis X-tian moral history
Most Americans would see Lord Russell's work in ethics as viewed from the right. Russell is forthright in his consequentialism harkening all the way back to Bentham in his preferred treatment of criminals almost as irritating entities that merely need correction.From the left, I suppose he would look like a generic J.S. Mill echo chamber but with more data perhaps. He is clearly a British aristocrat which makes his view somewhat biased. Having seldomly seen what it is like among the lower classes who scramble for what they get, Russell tends to underemphasize "the rules of the game," as a more Hobbesian perspective would indicate.The book is extremely concise, given its breadth and scope. Russell has demonstrated lexical efficiency that is almost shocking, given his other works.If you major in philosophy, or if you have liberal humanist politics, the book is worth the time it takes to read. Just don't expect it to be a "be all, end all" sort of work. In other words, it is not ... Read more