Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell was a philosopher, logician, and mathematician, who became a world-famous popular writer on religion, marriage, pacifism, nuclear disarmament, and many other important topics. He’s one of my all-time favourite philosophers.
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00:00 - Intro
00:56 - Russell’s family
02:05 - University
02:57 - Foundations of Mathematics
03:30 - On Denoting and Principia Mathematica
04:09 - Wittgenstein and War
05:17 - Russia and Dora Black
05:38 - Experiments in education
07:00 - Lecturing in the US
09:10 - Pacifism and WW2
10:01 - UK public intellectual
11:30 - Nuclear disarmament and Vietnam
12:54 - Autobiography and Israel
13:24 - Russell on Death and Dying
If there’s a topic you’d like to see covered, leave me a comment below.
Links:
My academic philosophy page: markjago.net
My book What Truth Is: bit.ly/JagoTruth
Most of my publications are available freely here: philpapers.org/s/Mark%20Jago
Get in touch on Social media!
Twitter: / philosophyattic
#BertrandRussell #philosophy

[@judygoddard3869]

His popular essays are wonderful - wise, funny, cheerful, brave, compassionate, and written in a crystal clear prose that is a pleasure to read. Re-reading him is like meeting up with a much loved old friend.

[@nikolasmakiyavichi5928]

I read "The Problems of Philosophy" from Russel and liked it very much but didn't went on for reading more of his work. Now I'm curious. Thank you!

[@frederiquecouture3924]

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[@cosmicwakes6443]

Keep these biographies coming, I truly love it. That passage on death by Russell made me teary eyed. I can sense that Russell had a deep and profound love for humankind.

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Thanks, same here! His autobiography is a great read.

[@rastgo4432]

He's one of my heros that inspired me, hope you do more videos on famous philosophical figures and mathematicians. Thank you ❤️

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Same here, maybe my favourite historical philosopher. I’ll definitely do more videos like this!

[@frederiquecouture3924]

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[@frankavocado]

Cambridge University Press, which published the Principia, has its own small museum containing a letter from Russell querying how much he was being paid for the work. Everyone thought it would lose money. Russell originally paid 100 pounds of his own to get it published but the CUP ‘omitted’ to pay any royalties until the late 40’s, which, typically, was when Russell realised he might be owed something.

[@AtticPhilosophy]

I once tried to buy a copy, it was something like £100, and this was back in 1998!

[@johncrwarner]

@@AtticPhilosophy For getting a scholarship to Oxford my mother said she'd buy me a book and I asked for and got Principia Mathematica which cost over 100 GBP in early 1980

[@mtoufali]

Thank you for your videos. they are really exciting and clear. I end up watching this episode on Russell by following you on other videos about logic, language and Wittgenstein. My question on this that relates Russell and Wittgenstein their argument for and against the argument of a function. Can a function be its own argument ? Russell says yes but Wittgenstein says No Can you elaborate on this. Thank you again

[@filosofardeinmediato]

Animal filosófico! Tienes buen pelaje! Pura sangre

[@johncrwarner]

Whoops! I think you misspoke about the reason for leaving the Labour Party and that was that he thought Harold WILSON, the Labour Prime Minister of the time, not Harold Macmillan who was the conservative prime minister until 1963. I think it is really important to acknowledge he could write well and though his philosophical work was over by about 1912 he had a huge impact on later generations. I discovered him in the philosophy section of the public library when I was a teenager and he was one of the clearest writers I met. I read his "A History of Western Philosophy" and though very partial it was a gateway to other philosophers It is a book however I would say is a text I wouldn't start with of his.

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Ah yes, Wilson, this is why I should stick to my notes! His Problems of Philosophy was the first philosophy book that really worked for me - the problems came across so clearly & really grabbed me.

[@johncrwarner]

@@AtticPhilosophy As a philosophic work I would also true that his Problems of Philosophy is a more philosophical work rather than what he called a "social history" and has much more philosophical meat in it and it is shorter! My philosophical journey (as an amateur - I studied Quantum Chemistry at University and taught mathematics in schools) started with Machiavelli's The Prince so I came from a very different angle.

[@nisse91]

Look at us!

[@travisporco]

People always say that Principia Mathematica is not worth reading because the program was overthrown by Godel, but is that really true? Isn't type theory still valuable in many ways? Aren't the theorems proven in PM valid? Why shouldn't we study it?

[@AtticPhilosophy]

There's lots of good reasons to study PM. Mainly, to see what it achieves - an axiomatic reconstruction of huge parts of mathematics. And yes, type theory is hugely valuable in proof theory & theoretical computer science - although the modern version isn't exactly Russell's. But reading PM directly is very hard work, as most of it is just axiom-chopping. And often, with axiomatic proofs, it's enough to know that axioms X and Y prove Z - you don't need to see the whole 100-page proof!

[@travisporco]

@@AtticPhilosophy If there were a digitized version it is probably possible to electronically convert it to modern notation instead of the dots. That might ease the lift a little.

[@frederiquecouture3924]

Now, Young 🐥🐣🐥🐣🐣🐣🐣🐥. Now, what do you say?

[@kmerczerwony1739]

I have mixed thoughts on Russell. Essentially since he painfully misrepresented many very good philosophers, e.g. Kant, Leibniz (arguably, Aristotle-the-logician and Hegel), to push his own points. Especially his reading of Leibniz is horrendous, for example, which is even more sad since it turned out that the concept of a possible world, which is due to Leibniz, proved invaluable for the development of modal logic and thus philosophy in the 20th century. Russell rather reinterpreted Leibniz in the light of his own, rather naive, view of the new logical calculus instead of appreciating Leibniz's unique insights. He also started the unfortunate trend of disregarding nineteenth century (with the exception of people like Bolzano, Frege and Peirce on the "analytic" side) in history of philosophy. This was especially destructive especially for our understanding of Kant, since he's the root of all nineteenth century philosophy, and nowadays most theses which were developed to "correct" Kant's theory are ascribed directly to Kant. E.g. Poincare's conventionalism. So, while nowadays saying that "X is a Kantian" or "thesis X has Kantian roots" is quite widespread, this is usually not due to its affinity with one of Kant's own theses (on which there is little agreement for some reason), but due to its historical links to some positions which aimed at being "Kantian in spirit", but weren't the historical Kant's theses. Russell also - and this is a very good thing - often changed his mind on various topics, often due to Wittgenstein's critique of his previous position. But he never, it seems, made an effort to explain the evolution of his views in order to justify the new ones. Especially due to Wittgenstein's not always transparent influence, only now are we often learning what caused Russell to abandon some of his positions. This caused some confusion, especially in regards to the relation of logical calculus to philosophical inquiry (e.g. the picture that logical calculus somehow trivially determines philosophical results, requiring only thorough analysis, of course benefited Russell's program of logical analysis etc., but also caused some understandable opposition among, e.g. phenomenologists, widening the analytic/continental gap - I'm not sure if Russell is solely responsible, but he's partially responsible). But Russell also nearly single-handedly established a philosophical tradition, which, with some struggle, carefully reconstructed the insights of past thinkers whose importance Russell failed to acknowledge or misrepresented to better fit his logicist agenda. Perhaps this was a necessary move afterall, I have no idea. Definitely British neohegelianism was such a degenerate research program that it had to be replaced, sooner or later, by something else. It's a miracle that analytic philosophy was able to take its place.

[@AtticPhilosophy]

I still think of History of Western Philosophy as a big achievement, despite the errors. My least favourite bits are actually where he insists on his own analysis of meaning - he’s better where he’s just explaining ideas. And HoWP is just one small part of Russell’s overall contribution. I’m still amazed that, alongside all his contributions in logic, language, phil maths, mind etc, he managed to attempt such a full history, eg not skimping on the Middle Ages.

[@kmerczerwony1739]

@@AtticPhilosophy I don't mean just the HoWP (which has it's good sides, I don't deny that), but his various writings, where he speaks of other philosophers. His book on Leibniz, for example, is very bad (Couturat's and Cassirer's books written at approximately the same time are also not great, but Russell's still manages to be more detached from what Leibniz actually thought). Most of his (mostly critical) remarks on Kant (e.g. that he had a pre-modern understanding of mathematics as science of number or that he endorsed Newtonian absolute space) are trivially incorrect and in a way where they're refuted by citing one or two passages from Kant's text and don't require any advanced exegesis. His accusation against Hegel that he confused the 'is' of predication and the 'is' of identity is also obviously false, and, from what I've heard (I haven't actually read Hegel, so this might be somewhat off), Hegel begins his discussion of judgement by exactly distinguishing these senses of 'is'. So this shows that Russell didn't seriously engage with texts of either thinkers. I agree that the main fault of Russell's writings is that he tries to correct other people in light of his own ideas. One could call this "speculative history of philosophy" - where someone ascribes his own concerns to another thinker and then explains divergence of opinions between them and oneself by confusion or insufficient (for example) logical/mathematical resources (Leibniz is a good example) instead of looking at what they actually wrote. Not only is this biased, but tends to be terribly historically inaccurate. In cases where this doesn't happen Russell's commentary (here I mean specifically the HoWP) can be intellectually stimulating.

[@WilfridSeibt]

A History of Western Philosophy is criminally bad

[@AtticPhilosophy]

Well, it’s definitely not the work of a historian, but it is interesting & introduced many people to philosophy, which can’t be a bad thing.

[@studiouspanda7183]

To know he was a Zionist is quite disappointing. What was his justification for taking the homes of Palestinians?

[@AtticPhilosophy]

“Zionism” can mean different things to different people. He supported the existence of Israel, but also was vocal in his criticism of Israel’s military aggression.

[@studiouspanda7183]

@@AtticPhilosophy can you explain the different things it can mean?

[@AtticPhilosophy]

@@studiouspanda7183 One is that there should be a permanent home for Jews, somewhere in the world. (That meaning was much more prominent when Russell was young, virtually lost now.) Another is that there should be a permanent home for Jews, specifically in historical Israel. Another is that the Israel of 1948 should be expanded. Another is that Israeli settlers can take land in the West Bank by whatever means. These are not the same, and the moral arguments are different in each case. I'm pretty sure Russell would have been horrified both by the Hamas attacks in Israel and by the Israeli siege of Gaza. He would likely have been one of the few prominent western voices calling for a ceasefire to avoid the humanitarian disaster.

[@frederiquecouture3924]

Press. F.

[@frederiquecouture3924]

No Foreskin Equals No Paradise.