Bertrand Russell
AnalyticModernBritish
He spent the first half of his career inventing analytic philosophy and the second half annoying governments. Both projects lasted.
Russell spent the first half of his career inventing analytic philosophy and the second half annoying governments. His Principia Mathematica, written with Whitehead over ten years, attempted to derive all of mathematics from logic. His theory of descriptions showed how language can mislead us into thinking names always name things that exist. He was jailed during World War One for pacifism, stripped of his Cambridge fellowship, won the Nobel Prize for Literature, founded a progressive school, campaigned against nuclear weapons, corresponded with Einstein, and debated the existence of God on the BBC. He remained a defender of reason and individual liberty from the Victorian age to the 1960s without ever quite fitting into either. He lived to ninety-seven, changed his mind repeatedly, and trusted the evidence each time. His discovery of the paradox in Frege's system was delivered in a polite letter, which Frege received on the eve of the book's publication.
Places
Ideas
Words
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
“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.”
Works
Life & Moments
Principia Mathematica with Whitehead
Russell and Alfred North Whitehead spent ten years writing Principia Mathematica, published in three volumes from 1910 to 1913. It was an attempt to derive all of mathematics from logical axioms. Russell said the work had nearly destroyed his mind. The project was ultimately challenged by Gödel's incompleteness theorems in 1931.
Imprisoned for anti-war activism
Russell opposed the First World War publicly and persistently. In 1918 he was imprisoned for six months in Brixton Prison for writing that American troops would be used to break British strikes. He spent the imprisonment reading and writing, completing a study of mathematical philosophy. He remained unrepentant.
Russell-Einstein Manifesto for nuclear disarmament
In July 1955, Russell and Einstein jointly published a manifesto urging the world's nations to resolve disputes peacefully rather than risk nuclear war. It was one of Einstein's last public acts; he signed it two weeks before his death. The manifesto led directly to the Pugwash Conferences on science and world affairs.
Influence
Influenced by
- Gottlob Frege
Russell discovered Frege's Begriffsschrift in 1900 and recognized it as the most important work in logic since Aristotle. He then sent Frege the letter describing the paradox that broke the Basic Laws.
Influenced
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Russell recognized Wittgenstein's genius from their first meetings at Cambridge and introduced the Tractatus to the English-speaking world. He later found he could not follow where Wittgenstein went next.
- A.N. Whitehead
Russell and Whitehead spent over a decade co-writing Principia Mathematica, attempting to derive all of mathematics from logic — a partnership that shaped Whitehead's rigorous approach even after he turned from mathematics to metaphysics.
- W.V.O. Quine
Quine was trained in and initially worked within the logicist program Russell and Whitehead had built in Principia Mathematica, before his mature work turned a skeptical eye on some of the very distinctions that program depended on.
