BERTRAND
RUSSELL, THE MAN
AND
HIS WORK
P. NAGARAJA RAO, M.A., D.
Litt.
Tagore Professor of
Philosophy,
The
death of Bertrand.Russel is a great event which
leaves a gap few can fill. He lived almost a century’s span of long life, full
of vivid and varied intellectual activities amidst humanist problems. He was
the most authentic natural representative of the British philosophers of today
and the recent past who received the Nobel Prize for literature. He was one of
the chief architects of the revolution in British philosophy in the course of
the present century. Some may hold that his influence among professional
philosophers is not as much as that of Moore or the genius of Wittgenstein, but
it must not be forgotten that Wittgenstein was Russell’s pupil and that Moore
confessed to have spent more time in studying what Russel
had written than in studying the works of any other single philosopher. Russell
stood firm as one of the masters of broad
As
for the place and status of Russell in philosophy of the century none can equal
him. None has made himself talked of so much or raised so great a cloud of dust
by his writings, opinions and life. He is the most controversial and
problematic figure standing in the focus of contemporary English philosophical
interest and inquiry for over seven decades. Generations of students have been
instructed by his ideas, delighted by his wit, stirred by his integrity and
independence and not infrequently spanked by him for lack of it.
Russell’s
output of publications is large. His books go into three divisions: (1)
pertaining to Mathematics, (2) technical philosophy, and (3) books on general
social and political life. His contributions to the field of mathematics is formulated
in his books (1) The Principles of Mathematics (an elaboration of Peano’s notation). In collaboration with A.N. Whitehead he
wrote The Principial Mathematical, a product
of ten years labour and it represented the crown of
Russell’s and his friends’ concerted attack on complex questions, e.g., Definition
of Series, Cardinals, ordinals and reduction of arithmetic to Logic. No
part of this great book is wholly due to either. Towards the end of 1913
Russell comments on completion of the exacting task “We both turned aside from
mathematical logic with a kind of nausea.”
His
books on technical philosophy are Outlines of Philosophy, Our knowledge of
the External World, Problems of Philosophy, Lectures on Logical Atomism,
Analysis of Matter, Analysis of Mind, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy
of Leibniz, (an early book and a revised edition) Human Knowledge: Its
Scope and Limits, and History of Western Philosophy. In these
volumes we get an account of the evolution of his philosophical system, describing
his analytical techniques and metaphysical commitments.
Russell
has not been content to be the author or a competent system of metaphysics for
he was a crusader for a rational, scientific and humanistic outlook on life. He
sought to educate his fellowmen through a number of books, his outlook on life
and social questions. The books that seek to achieve this aim are The
Conquest of Happiness, Marriage and Morality, Scientific Outlook, Science and
Religion, Evolution and Social Order, Evolution, Roads to Freedom, Social
Reconstruction, New Hopes for a Chinging World, The
Impact of Science on Society, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, The Future
of man, Power -Analysis, Why I am not a Christian and other Essays, Vietnam and
the War Criminal.
By these popular and educative
volumes he wanted to teach men that “good life is one which is guided by
knowledge and inspired by love.” He stood for a sane view of life and sought to
remove hate and jealousy from the lives of men. His active and persistent efforts to put an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons is
no small service.
He
was opposed to communism for he was too much of an individualist. He believed
in individual liberty and manifold diversity. Russell has left us a well
documented autobiography in three volumes. A decade ago he has given us an
account of the evolution of his thought in his book “My Philosophical
Development.” It gives a good deal of information about the growth of his
ideas. He lived a full length life. He was born on May 18, 1872; the son of
Viscount Amberly and the grandson of Lord Russell,
the minister who introduced the Reform Bill in 1832. He lost his parents before
he was four years old and he grew up under the care of his paternal
grandmother. His early training was puritanic and spartan. The austere discipline sought to high-light
virtues of “private judgment and the supremacy of the individual conscience.”
The early life of Russell was
largely in
Russell
had a free and fruitful life at
He
is in the right line of the British Empiricists tradition of Locke Berkeley and
Hume and his god-father John Stuart Mill. Among the Empiricists Hume has
closest affinity to Russell’s way of thinking. There is much common between
them, e.g., empiricist outlook, the
regularity theory of causation, the rejection of the idea of the substantial
self, his distrust of metaphysics, his hostility to common forms of religion,
his readiness to question common-sensical beliefs,
exceptional interest in wide range of subjects and, above all, in their elegant
style. There are a few
differences which we should not lose sight of. Hume is a Tory, Russell is a
radical. The diagnosis of human wickedness and folly is similar and Hume
reconciled to it and lived quietly. Russell’s passion for social justice and
his tradition of political responsibility made him all his life a crusader for
the values of individual liberty and social
justice and for peace and disarmament in the last phase of his life.
Russell entertained for a very long life in an almost romantic faith in the
efficacy of reason and its power to reform men from their outmoded ways of life
to social and rational walks.
Russell’s
popularity is in no small measure due to his superb style. He is undoubtedly
one of the great masters of English prose which rises on occasions to great
heights of sublimity and wisdom. He is an unrepentant rationalist who worked in
the daylight of his analytic consciousness, not forgetting the nuances and
half-lights. His glittering brain dazzles us all the time. His paradoxes stun
us and his ruthless logic devastates us. Irony and argument have been his chief
weapons in all his talks and writings. There is always an undiminished vigour in his thought and an arresting originality and
genius to explain clearly the most abstract and difficult questions in a
striking manner. He was the most brilliant, gifted broadcaster of our times to
listen to whom is a pleasure. His unique style,
splendid capacity of composition, his examples from the world of common-sense,
his gay light-heartedness and quips and sentence-accent all make listening to
him as pleasant as reading him aloud. His uncommitted mind sallies forth
criticism on current beliefs, institutions, creeds, etc., in a spirit of
irreverent detachment. There are few equals to him in the power of his mind and
the fineness of expression. In short, his style is a strange mixture of
acuteness, depth and frivolity.
He
declared once “that Aristotle is one of the great misfortunes of the human race”.
Commenting on Bergson’s intuition, he described, “Intuition
is common to birds, beasts and Bergson.” His quips
are withering in their effect. He was the man with no inhibitions and was not
troubled by fixations. He had a free and active mind and genius for
choice expression.
During
the first world war (1918) he was sent to prison for
Pacifist Propaganda. In his period of imprisonment he wrote his Analysis of
Mind and introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. He visited
Between
1920 and 1930 he produced about two dozen books. He spent six years in
The
philosophy of Russell has two sides to it. There is his technical system of Neutral
monism, worked out through different stages. His contribution to the
theory of knowledge and logic are substantial. He began with the sense-data
theory, moved on to the theory of description, and gave us the type-forms
and also an account in terms of Logical atomism. There is a second
line to Russell’s thought, his humanism and social concern for the well-being
of humanity. He expressed the goal and aim of his life in the first volume of
his autobiography: “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have
governed my life, the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and
the unbearable pity for suffering man- kind. These passions, like great winds,
have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of
anguish reaching the verge of despair. Love and knowledge, so far as they were
possible, land upwards towards the heavens. But always pity brought me back to
the earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine,
victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their
sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty and pain make mockery of what
human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too
suffer.”
The
quest was always there in Russell. He wanted to find a
unassailable certainty in Logic, Mathematics, and Ethical Principles and
carried the inquiry with unabated zeal and the completest
objectioning possible for men. He believed in the
greatness or possibilities of goodness in man. To him the entire cosmos is an
accident and its workings are the results of fortuitous circumstances resulting
from the collocation of clouds with no known or knowable plan, but that did not
deter him from proclaiming unhesitatingly the great values of life, human
freedom, reason, humanity and the quest for knowledge and the evils of
violence and war. To him man was the bearer of values. In the concluding
chapters in his book Scientific Outlook, he pleads for the pursuance of
values which he holds scarce cannot discover. He did not want man to have
fixations and cherish intolerance and aggressive impulses to others. With matchless
clarity he educates the average man the way to the Conquest of Happiness. In
his book “Education and the New Social Order” he addresses himself to plan
education and lay down the psychological principles that should govern the
blueprint of new social order that has to be constructed in the image of
charity and social justice. He has affirmed his faith in men’s freedom in the
realm of ideas, accepting the physical conditions that determine him in his
celebrated essay The Free man’s worship. Man is yet free and has a
future according to Russell in the exercise of his ideals. He composes
autobiographies in condemned cells, cuts jokes on the cross and lays down his
life in the pursuit of his cherished values. After an earnest life long work on
theory of knowledge and logic he confesses. towards
the conclusion of his book Human Knowledge, its Scope and Limits “that
all human knowledge is un-certain, inexact and partial.”
In
many of his works Russell discloses his concept of man as a composite of two
factors, the aggressive and the co-operative instincts. By a
process of rational and humanist form of education, he felt for a long time man’s
aggressive, violent and anti-social impulses could be held in check and to
bring the rational, co-operative impulses into play. He pleads for such a
rational social order where poorer impulses are tarred and kept effectively in
check. Even in the dire hour of despair, amidst the mounting, alarming nuclear
weapons and their proliferation, Russell holds out that the future of man is in
his hands, he can avert the evil by his intelligence
or go to ashes by his folly. His unparalleled humanism is blazing forth in the
third volume of his autobiography. In his powerful analysis of the concept of power,
in his book Power, a New Social Analysis he explains how power takes on
three forms, Kingly, revolutionary and priestly and how it makes
men monsters. In his books Principles of Social Reconstruction and Roads
to Freedom we have a deep psychological study of man and his different
impulses and the way they align themselves and the mode to train them and
counteract their latter effect is constructively described. We have again and
again, sometimes after a decade or two, a restatement of his position in the
light of contemporary knowledge. We have such three books: New hope for a
changing world, Authority and the Individual, Science and its impact on Society
and the Future of man. They all plead for a life of reason and
understanding, not underscoring at the same time the mighty influence of
passions and emotions.
Russell’s
political and social writings disclose an intense and deep concern for human
welfare and a fierce moral indignation at the social evils that frustrate man.
His criticism goes home because of its lucidity and charming sarcasm. Among the
human values he looks upon liberty and Justice as merely utilitarian art as
intrinsic to human nature. He detests cruelty, humbug, caste and hypocricy as evils in themselves. He has an instinctive
repulsion for them. Russell’s faith in reason as Professor Keynes pointed out
is paradoxical. He writes: “Russell is in the awkward position of holding both
that human affairs are conducted irrationally and it needs only a dose of
reason to put them right. These propositions are formally compatible but
practically in conflict. ‘Reason’, Russell forgets, can never give us the ends,
but can only serve as an instrument. It is a moral which can be used for
good as well as bad ends. It is in the words of Hume, Russell’s master, ‘a
slave of passion’.” To know a thing is not necessarily to do it, mere knowledge
is not virtue, for we need a will to translate the knowledge into action. To do
the good, we must not only to know the good, but also have the firmness of will
to will it with action.
Russell’s
criticism of religion in general and Christianity in particular arises not so
much from the irrationality in its theology as from the abuse of the powers of
Church by its ministers. Russell by dint of his singular endeavour
and fearless advocacy of his view in inimitable and effective style,
undelivered by persecution has carved for himself a high place in the republic
of letters. It would be harder to find his better in our century.