Bertrand Russell (1872--1970)
14 Jul 2022 10:45
I first read Russell when I was nine: my parents had copies of his books in the old Simon and Schuster editions, with the attractive abstract covers, which were left on a low shelf near the science fiction. Furthermore, the back cover blurbs quoted Russell himself on how he wrote Human Knowledge so it could be understood by "an unusually bright child of ten." I neither could nor did resist the temptation, and was thoroughly imprinted. I have recently noticed that Nietzsche and Althusser live on the same shelf in my parents' home: and what might have happened, if their books had had more interesting-looking exteriors, is not pleasant to contemplate. There, but for the grace of some long-forgotten cover designer, go I...
See my on-line collection of Russell's writings.
See also: Analytical Philosophy; Causality; the Left; Logical Positivism; Mathematical Logic; Alfred North Whitehead; Norbert Wiener
- Recommended (logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, etc.):
- The Analysis of Matter
- A History of Western Philosophy
- Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits
- Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
- Logic and Knowledge: Essays, 1901--1950
- Our Knowledge of the External World
- Whitehead and Russell, Principia Mathematica [I've read all of the abridgement, "to *56" of the second edition, plus the stuff about relation-numbers and abstract structure in vol. II. Scanned images of the full text of all three volumes of the first edition are available via the University of Michigan: I, II, III.]
- Recommended (essays, politics, ethics, etc.):
- Sceptical Essays
- In Praise of Idleness
- Unpopular Essays
- Why I Am Not a Christian
- Icarus, or, the Future of Science
- The Impact of Science on Society
- Authority and the Individual
- Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism [Full text via Project Gutenberg]
- Freedom and Organization, 1814--1914
- Human Society in Ethics and Politics
- My Philosophical Development
- Autobiography
- Recommended, about Russell (very misc.):
- Kenneth Blackwell, The Spinozistic Ethics of Bertrand Russell
- Richard F. Kitchener, "Bertrand Russell's Naturalistic Epistemology", Philosophy 82 (2007): 115--146
- To read:
- Peter H. Denton, The ABC of Armageddon: Bertrand Russell on Science, Religion, and the Next War, 1919--1938
- Philip Ironside, The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand Russell: The Development of an Aristocratic Liberalism [blurb]
- W. C. Lubenow, The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life
- Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872--1921
- BR, The Analysis of Mind [Full text via Project Gutenberg]
- BR, Inquiry into Meaning and Truth
