Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (May 18, 1872 - February 2, 1970) was one of the most influential mathematicians, philosophers and logicians working mostly in the 20th century. A prolific writer, Russell was also a populariser of philosophy and a commentator on a large variety of topics, ranging from very serious issues to the mostly mundane. Russell's elegant prose, clarity of expression, and his biting wit were widely admired. Continuing a family tradition in political affairs, he was an influential liberal activist for most of his long life. Millions looked up to Russell as a prophet of the creative and rational life; at the same time, his stance on many topics was extremely controversial. He was born in 1872, at the height of Britain's economic and political ascendancy, and he died of influenza in 1970, when Britain's empire had all but vanished and her power had been drained in two victorious but debilitating world wars. At his death, however, Russell's voice still carried moral authority, for he was one of the world's most influential proponents of nuclear disarmament and critics of the American war in Vietnam.

In 1950, Russell was made Nobel Laureate in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".

Russell's work on philosophy, logic, and other subjects

Analytical philosophy

Russell is generally recognized as one of the founders of analytic philosophy, indeed, even of its several branches. Alongside G. E. Moore, he was largely responsible for the "revolt against Idealism" in British philosophy at the beginning of the century, a philosophy greatly influenced by Georg Hegel and his British apostle, F. H. Bradley. This revolt was echoed thirty years later in Vienna by the logical positivists' "revolt against metaphysics". Russell was particularly appalled by the idealist doctrine of internal relations, which held that in order to know any particular thing, we must know all of its relations. Russell showed that this would make space, time, science and the concept of number unintelligible. Russell's logical work with Whitehead continued this project.

Russell and Moore strove to eliminate what they saw as meaningless and incoherent philosophy, and they sought clarity and precision in argument by the use of exact language and by breaking down philosophical propositions into their simplest components. Russell, in particular, saw logic and science as the principal tools of the philosopher. Indeed, unlike most philosophers who preceded him and his early contemporaries, Russell did not believe there was a separate method for philosophy. He believed that the main task of the philosopher was to illuminate the most general propositions about the world and to eliminate confusion. In particular, he wanted to end what he saw as the excesses of metaphysics. Russell adopted William of Occam's principle against multiplying unnecessary entities, Occam's Razor, as a central part of the method of analysis.

Epistemology

Russell's epistemology went through many phases. Once he shed Hegalianism in his early years, Russell remained a philosophical realist for the remainder of his life, believing that our direct experiences have primacy in the acquisition of knowledge. While some of his views have lost favor, his influence lingers on in the distinction between two ways in which we can be familiar with objects: "knowledge by acquaintance" and "knowledge by description." For a time, Russell thought that we could only be acquainted with our own sense data, momentary perceptions of colours, sounds, and the like, and that everything else, including the physical objects that these were sense data of, could only be reasoned to__known by description__and not known directly. This distinction has gained much wider application, though Russell eventually rejected the idea of an intermediate sense datum.

In his later philosophy, Russell subscribed to a kind of neutral monism, maintaining that the distincitons between the material and mental worlds, in the final analysis, were arbitrary, and that both can be reduced to a neutral property, a view similar to one held by the American philosopher, William James, and one that was first formulated by Baruch Spinoza, whom Russell greatly admired.

Ethics

While Russell wrote a great deal on ethical subject matters, he did not believe that the subject belonged to philosophy or that when he wrote on ethics that he did so in his capacity as a philosopher. In his earlier years, Russell was greatly influenced by G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica. Along with Moore, he then believed that moral facts were objective, but only known intuitively, and that they were simple properties of objects, not equivalent to the natural objects to which they are often ascribed (see Naturalistic fallacy). In time, however, he came to agree with his philosophical hero, David Hume, who belived that ethical terms dealt with subjective values that cannot be verified in the same way that matters of fact are. Coupled with Russell's other doctrines, this influenced the logical positivists, who formulated the theory of emotivism, which states that ethical propositions (along with those of metaphysics) were essentially meaningless and nonsensical or, at best, little more than expressions of attitudes and preferences. Notwithstanding his influence on them, Russell himself did not construe ethical propositions as narrowly as the positivists, for he believed that ethical considerations are not only meaningful, but that they are of vital importance. Indeed, though Russell was often characterized as a kind of patron saint of rationality, he agreeed with Hume, who said that reason ought to be subordinate to ethical considerations.

Logical atomisim

Perhaps Russell's most systematic, metaphysical treatment of philsophical analysis and his empiricist_centric logicism is evident in what he called Logical atomism, which is explicated in a set of lectures, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, which he gave in 1918. In these lectures, Russell sets forth his concept of an ideal, isomorphic language, one that would mirror the world, whereby our knowldege can be reduced to terms of atomic propositions and their truth-functional compounds. Logical atomism is a form of radical empiricism, for Russell believed the most important requirement for such an ideal language is that every meaningful proposition must consist of terms referring directly to things with which we are acquainted, or that they are defined by other terms referring to objects with which we are acquainted. Russell excluded certain formal, logical terms such as all, the, is, and so forth, from his isomorphic requriement, but he was never entirely satisfied about our understanding of such terms. One of the central themes of Russell's atomism is that the world consists of logically independent facts, a plurality of facts, and that our knowledge depends on the data of our direct experience of them. In his later life, Russell came to doubt aspects of logical atomism, especially his principle of isomorphism, though he continued to believe that the process of philosophy ought to consist of breaking things down into their most simple components, even though we might not ever fully arrive at them.

Logic and mathematics

Many if not most mathematicians and logicians would argue Russell was without peer in his contributions to modern mathematical logic. The American logician, Willard Quine, said Russell's work represented the greatest influence on his own work. While subsequent systems have improved upon Russell's work in several areas (though certainly not all), modern logic rests largely on Russell's foundational work in the early part of the 20th Century.

Russell's first mathematical work, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, was published in 1897. This work was heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant. Russell soon realized that the conception it laid out would have made Albert Einstein's schema of space-time impossible, which he realized was superior to his own system. Thenceforth, he rejected the entire Kantian program as it related to mathematics and geometry, and he maintained his own earliest work on the subject was nearly wholly without value.

Interested in the definition of number, Russell studied the work of George Boole, Georg Cantor, and Augustus de Morgan, and became convinced that the foundations of mathematics were tied to logic. In 1900 he attended a philosophical congress in Paris where he became familiar with the work of the Italian mathematician, Giuseppe Peano. He mastered Peano's new symbolism and his set of axioms for arithmetic. Peano was able to define logically all of the terms of these axioms with the exception of 0, number, successor, and the singular term, "the." Russell took it upon himself to find logical definitions for each of these. He eventually discovered that Gottlob Frege had arrived at equivalent definitions for 0, successor, and number, and the definition of number is now usually referred to as the Frege_Russell definition.

In 1903, Russell published The Principles of Mathematics, in which the concept of class is inextricably tied to the definition of number. In writing Principles, Russell came across Cantor's proof that there was no greatest cardinal number, which Russell believed was mistaken. This caused him to analyze classes, for it was known that the given any number of elements, the number of clases they result in is greater than their number. In turn, this led to the discovery of a very interesting class, namely, the class of all classes, which consists of two kinds of classes: classes that are members of themselves, and classes that are not members of themselves, which led him to find that the so-called principle of extentionality, taken for granted by logicians of the time, was fatally flawed, and that it resulted in a contradiction, whereby Y is a member of Y, if and only if, Y is not a member of Y. This has become known as Russell's Paradox, the solution to which he outlined in an apendix to Principles, and which he later developed into a complete theory, the Theory of types. Aside from exposing a major inconsistency in naive set theory, Russell's work led directly to the creation of modern axiomatic set theory. It also crippled Frege's project of reducing arithmetic to logic. The Theory of Types and much of Russell's subsequent work have also found practical applications with computer science and information technology.

Russell continued to defend logicism, the view that mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic, and along with his former teacher, Alfred North Whitehead, wrote the monumental Principia Mathematica, an axiomatic system on which all of mathematics can be built. The the first volume of the Principia was published in 1910, which is largely ascribed to Russell. More than any other single work, it established the specialty of mathematical or symbolic logic. Two more volumes were published, but their original plan to incorporate geometry was never realized, and Russell never felt up to improving the original works, though he referenced new developments and problems in his preface to the second edition. Upon completing the Principia, three volumes of extraordinarliy abstract and complex reasoning, Russell was exhuasted, and he never felt his intellectual faculties fully recovered from the effort. Although the Principia did not fall prey to the paradoxes in Frege's approach, it was later proven by Kurt Gödel that—for exactly that reason—neither Principia Mathematica nor any other consistent logical system could prove all mathematical truths; hence, Russell's project was necessarily incomplete.

Russell's last significant work in mathematics and logic, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, was written, actually, dictated to a secretary, while he was in jail for his pacifist activities during World War I. This was largely an explication of his previous work and its philosophical significance.

Philosophy of language

Perhaps Russell's most significant contribution to philosophy of language is his theory of descriptions. It is normally illustrated using the phrase "the present King of France", as in "The present king of France is bald." What object is this sentence about, given that there is not, at present, a king of France? Alexius Meinong had suggested that we must posit a realm of "nonexistent entities" that we can suppose we are referring to when we use expressions such as this; but this would be a strange theory, to say the least. Frege seemed to think we could dismiss as nonsense any sentences whose words apparently referred to objects that didn't exist. Among other things, the problem with this solution is that some such sentences, such as "If the present king of France is bald, then the present king of France has no hair on his head," not only do not seem nonsensical but appear to be obviously true. Roughly the same problem would arise if there were two kings of France at present: which of them does "the king of France" denote?

The problem is general to what are called "definite descriptions." Normally this includes all terms beginning with "the", and sometimes includes names, like "Walter Scott." (This point is quite contentious: Russell sometimes thought that the latter terms shouldn't be called names at all, but only "disguised definite descriptions," but much subsequent work has treated them as altogether different things.) What is the "logical form" of definite descriptions: how, in Frege's terms, could we paraphrase them in order to show how the truth of the whole depends on the truths of the parts? Definite descriptions appear to be like names that by their very nature denote exactly one thing, neither more or less. What, then, are we to say about the sentence as a whole if one of its parts apparently isn't working right?

Russell's solution was, first of all, to analyze not the term alone but the entire sentence that contained a definite description. "The present king of France is bald," he then suggested, can be reworded to "There is an x such that x is a present king of France, nothing other than x is a present king of France, and x is bald." Russell claimed that each definite description in fact contains a claim of existence and a claim of uniqueness which give this appearance, but these can be broken apart and treated separately from the predication that is the obvious content of the sentence. The sentence as a whole then says three things about some object: the definite description contains two of them, and the rest of the sentence contains the other. If the object does not exist, or if it is not unique, then the whole sentence turns out to be false, not meaningless.

One of the major complaints against Russell's theory, due originally to P. F. Strawson, is that definite descriptions do not claim that their object exists, they merely presuppose that it does.

Russell's student, Ludwig Wittgenstein, later achieved even greater prominence in the philosophy of language. Russell thought Wittgenstein's elevation of language as the only reality with which philosophy need be concerned was absurd, and he decried his influence and the influence of his followers, especially members of the so-called Oxford school, who he believed were promoting a kind of mysticism. Russell's belief that there is more to philosophy and knowing the world than simply understanding how we use language has regained prominence in philosophy and eclipsed Wittgenstein's language-centric views.

Religion and theology

Russell's ethical outlook and his personal courage in facing controversies were certainly informed by his religious upbringing, principally by his paternal grandmother, who instructed him with the Biblical injunction, "Do not follow a multitude to do evil," something he said influenced him throughout his life.

For most of his adult life, however, Russell thought it very unlikely that there was a religion is little more than superstition and, despite any positive effects that religion might have, it is largely harmful to people. He believed religion and the religious outlook (he considered communism and other systematic ideologies to be species of religion) serve to impede knowledge, foster fear and dependency, and are responsible for much of the war, oppression, and misery that have beset the world. Technically, Russell was an agnostic, though he leaned towards atheism.

As a young man, Russell had a decidedly religious bent, himself, as is evident in his early Platonism. He longed for eternal truths, as he makes clear in his famous essay, A Free Man's Worship. While he came to reject the supernatural, he freely admitted that he yearned for a deeper meaning to life.

Russell's views on religion can be found in his popular book, Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (ISBN 0671203231), which began as a talk given March 6, 1927 at Battersea Town Hall, under the auspices of the South London Branch of the National Secular Society, England. The speech was published later that year as a pamphlet, which, along with other essays, was eventually published as a book. In the book, Russell considers a number of logical arguments for the existence of God, including the first cause argument, the natural-law argument, the argument from design, and moral arguments. He also goes into specifics about Christian theology.

His final conclusion:

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. ... A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.

Influence on philosophy

It would be difficult to overstate Russell's influence on modern philosophy, especially in the English_speaking world. While others were also influential, notably, Frege, Moore, and Wittgenstein, more than any other person, Russell made analysis the dominant approach to philosophy. Moreover, he is the founder or, at the very least, the prime mover of its major branches and themes, incuding the philosphy of language, formal logical analysis, and the philosophy of science. The various analytical movements throughout the last century all owe something to Russell's earlier works.

Russell's influence on individual philosophers is singular, and perhaps most notably in the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was his student between 1911 and 1914. It should also be observed that Wittgenstein exerted considerable influence on Russell, especially in leading him to conclude that mathematical truths were trivial, tautological truths. Evidence of Russell's influence on Wittegenstein can be seen throughout the doctorate and a faculty position at Cambridge, along with several fellowships along the way. However, as previously stated, he came to disagree with Wittgenstein's later approach to philosophy, while Wittgenstein came to think of Russell as "superficial and glib," particularly in his popular writings. Russell's influence is also evident in the work of A. J. Ayer, Rudolph Carnap, Kurt Godel, Karl Popper, W. V. Quine, and a number of other philosophers and logicians.

Some see Russell's influence as mostly negative, primarily those who have been critical of Russell's emphasis on science and logic, the consequent diminishment of metaphysics, and of his insistence that ethics lies outside of philosophy. Russell's admirers and detractors are often more acquainted with his prouncements on social and poltical matters, or what some (e.g., Ray Monk) have called his "journalism," than they are with his technical, philosophical work. Among non_philosophers, there is a marked tendency to conflate these matters, and to judge Russell the philosopher on what he himself would certainly consider to be his non_philosophical opinions. Russell often cautioned people to make this distinction.

Russell's activism

Political and social activism occupied much of Russell's time for most of his long life, which makes his prodigious and seminal writing on a wide range of technical and non-technical subjects all the more remarkable. He was an outspoken pacifist during much of the first part of the 20th Century. He opposed British participation in World War I and, as a result, he was first fined, then lost his professorship at Trinity College, Cambridge and was later imprisoned for six months. In the years leading to World War II, he supported the policy of appeasement, but later acknowledged that Hitler had to be defeated.

Russell called his stance "Relative Pacifism"— he held that war was always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances (such as when Adolf Hitler threatened to take over Europe) it might be a lesser of multiple evils.

On November 20, 1948, in a public speech at Westminster School, addressing a gathering arranged by the New Commonwealth, Russell shocked some of his less careful listeners by seeming to advocate a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. Russell argued that war between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed inevitable, so it would be a humanitarian gesture to get it over with quickly. Currently, Russell argued, humanity could survive such a war, whereas a full nuclear war after both sides had manufactured large stockpiles of more destructive weapons was likely to result in the extinction of the human race. Russell later relented from this stance, instead arguing for mutual disarmament by the nuclear powers.

Starting in the 1950s, Russell became a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons. With the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto with Albert Einstein and organized several conferences. In 1961, he was imprisoned for a week in connection with his nuclear disarmament protests. He opposed the Vietnam War and along with Jean_Paul Sartre organized a tribunal intended to expose U.S. war crimes; this came to be known as the Russell Tribunal.

Russell wrote against Victorian notions of morality. His early writings expressed his opinion that sex between a man and woman who are not married to each other is not necessarily immoral if they truly love one another. This might not seem extreme by today's standards, but it was enough to raise vigorous protests and denunciations against him during his first visit to the United States. (Russell's private life was rather more hedonistic than his published writings revealed, but that was not yet well known at the time.)

The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation began work in 1963, in order to carry forward his work for peace, human rights and social justice.

He was an early critic of the official story in the John F. Kennedy assassination; his "16 Questions on the Assassination" from 1964 is still considered a good summary of the apparent inconsistencies in that case.

Politically he envisioned a kind of benevolent democratic socialism, and was extremely critical of the totalitarianism exhibited by Stalin's regime.

Russell's life

A young Russell

Bertrand Russell was from an aristocratic English family. His paternal grandfather Lord John Russell had been a prime minister in the 1840s, and was the second son of the 6th Duke of Bedford, of a leading Whig / Liberal family. His mother Viscountess Amberley (who died when he was 2) was from an aristocratic family, and was the sister of Rosalind, Countess of Carlisle. His parents were extremely radical for their times; his father Viscount Amberley (who died when Bertrand was 4) was an atheist who had consented to his wife's affair with their children's tutor, the biologist Douglas Spalding. His godfather was Utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill. His early years were spent at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park.

Despite this eccentric background, Russell's childhood was relatively conventional. After his parents' death, Russell and his older brother Frank (the future 2nd Earl) were raised by their staunchly Victorian grandparents _ the Earl and Countess Russell (Lord John Russell and his second wife Lady Frances Elliot). However, Russell departed from his grandparents' expectations of him starting with his marriage.

Russell first met the American Quaker, Alys Pearsall Smith, when he was seventeen years old. He fell in love with the puritanical, high_minded Alys who was connected to several educationists and religious activists, and married her in December 1894. Their marriage was ended by separation in 1911. Russell had never been faithful; he had passionate affairs with, among others, Lady Ottoline Morrell (half-sister of the 6th Duke of Portland) and the actress Lady Constance Malleson.

Russell studied philosophy and logic at Cambridge University, starting in 1890. He became a fellow of Trinity College in 1908. In 1920, Russell travelled to Russia and subsequently lectured in Peking on philosophy for one year.

In 1921, after Russell had lost his professorship, he divorced Alys and married Dora Russell nee Dora Black. Their children were John Conrad Russell (who briefly succeeded his father as 4th Earl Russell) and Lady Katherine Russell (now Lady Katherine Tait). Russell supported himself during this time by writing popular books explaining matters of physics, ethics and education to the layman. Together with Dora, he founded the experimental Beacon Hill School in 1927.

Upon the death of his elder brother in 1931, Russell became 3rd Earl Russell. It is, however, quite rare for him to be referred to by this title.

An old Russell

After Russell's marriage to Dora broke up over her adultery with an American journalist, in 1936 he took as his third wife, an Oxford undergraduate named Patricia ("Peter") Spence. She had been his children's governess in the summer of 1930. Russell and Peter had one son, Conrad.

In the spring of 1939, Russell moved to Santa Barbara to lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was appointed professor at the City College of New York shortly thereafter, but after public outcries, the appointment was annulled by the courts: his radical opinions made him "morally unfit" to teach at the college. He returned to Britain in 1944 and rejoined the faculty of Trinity College.

In 1952, Russell divorced Peter and married his fourth wife, Edith (Finch). They had known each other since 1925. Edith had lectured in English at Bryn Mawr College, near Philadelphia.

Bertrand Russell wrote his three volume autobiography in the late 1960s and died in 1970 in Wales. His ashes were scattered over the Welsh mountains.

He was succeeded in his titles by his son by his second marriage to Dora Russell Black, and then by his younger son (by his third marriage to Peter). His younger son Conrad, 5th Earl Russell, was an elected hereditary peer to the British House of Lords, and a respected British academic.

Russell summing up his life

Admitting to failure in helping the world to conquer war and in winning his perpetual intellecutal battle for eternal truths, Russell wrote this in Reflections on my Eightieth Birthday, which also served as the last entry in the last volume of his autobiography, published in his 97th year:

I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken.

Further reading

Selected bibliography of Russell's works by year of publication

• 1896 German Social Democracy, London: Longmans, Green.
• 1897 An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, Cambridge: At the University Press.
• 1903 The Principles of Mathematics, Cambridge: At the University Press.
• 1910 Philosophical Essays, London: Logmans, Green.
• 1910-1913 Principia Mathematica (with Alfred North Whitehead), Cambridge: At the University Press.
• 1912 The Problems of Philosophy, London: William and Norgate.
• 1914 Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy, London: The Open Court Publishing Company.
• 1916 Principles of Social Reconstruction, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1918 Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, London: Longmans, Green.
• 1918 Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1919 Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1920 The Analysis of Mind, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1923 The ABC of Relativity, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• 1926 On Education, Expecially in Early Childhood, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1927 The Analysis of Matter, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• 1927 An Outline of Philosophy, London, George Allen & Unwin.
• 1927 Why I Am Not A Christian, London: Watts.
• 1929 Marriage and Morals, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1930 The Conquest of Happiness, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1931 The Scientific Outlook, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1935 Religion and Science, London: Thornton Butterworth.
• 1938 Power: A New Social Analysis, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1940 An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1945 A History of Western Philosophy: And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, New York: Simon and Schuster.
• 1948 Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1950 Unpopular Essays, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1954 Human Society in Ethics and Politics, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1956 Portraits from Memory and Other Essays, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1967 War Crimes in Vietnam, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1967-1969 The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, Volumes 1, 2 & 3, London: George Allen & Unwin.

Note: this is a mere sampling, for Russell authored many more books and articles, even some fiction. His works also can be found in any number of anthologies and collections, perhaps most notably, the Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, which McMaster University began publishing in 1980. This collection of his shorter and previously unpublished works is now up to 14 volumes, and many more are forthcoming. An additional 3 volumes catalogue just his bibliography. The Russell Archives at McMaster also has more than 40,000 letters that he wrote.

Books about Russell's philosophy

• Theories of Truth, by Richard L. Kirkham (1992). Chapter 4 includes a detailed discussion of Russell's theory of truth.
• Bertrand Russell, John Slater, Thoemmes Press, 1994.
• The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, edited by P.A. Schlipp, Chicago, 1944.

Biographical books

• Bertrand Russell: 1872-1920 The Spirit of Solitude by Ray Monk (1997) ISBN 0099731312
• Bertrand Russell: 1921-70 The Ghost of Madness by Ray Monk (2001) ISBN 009927275X
• Bertrand Russell: Philosopher and Humanist, by John Lewis (1968)
• Russell, by A. J. Ayer (1972) ISBN 0226033430
• The Life of Bertrand Russell, by Ronald W. Clark (1975) ISBN 0394490592
• Bertrand Russell and His World, by Ronald W. Clark (1981) ISBN 0500130701

External links

Online writings

• In Praise of Idleness (1932) (http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)
• Problems of Philosophy (http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/phil/russell/index.php)
• Proposed Roads to Freedom (1918) (http://www.zpub.com/notes/rfree10.html)
• Ideas that Have Harmed Mankind (http://www.threads.name/russell/ideas_harm.html)
• Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic? (http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell8.htm)
• Why I am not a Christian (http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm)
• A Free Man's Worship (http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell1.htm)
• 16 Questions on the Assassination (of President Kennedy) (http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/the_critics/russell/Sixteen_questions_Russell.html)
• The Problems of China (http://www.philosophyarchive.com/text.php?era=1900-1999&author=Russell&text=Problems%20of%20China)
• Political Ideals (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=4776)
• The Analysis Of Mind (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=2529)
• Proposed Roads to Freedom (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=690)
• Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (http://www.threads.name/russell/religionciv.html)
• Nobel Lecture (1950) (http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1950/russell-lecture.html)

Other

• WikiQuote: Quotes by Bertrand Russell
• WikiSource: Works of Bertrand Russell
• The Bertrand Russell Society (http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/brs.html)
• The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (http://www.russfound.org/)
• Biography and quotes of Bertrand Russell (http://atheisme.free.fr/Biographies/Russell_e.htm)
• The Bertrand Russell Gallery (http://desktop12.cis.mcmaster.ca/~bertrand/)
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/)
• The Bertrand Russell Archives (http://www.mcmaster.ca/russdocs/russell.htm)
• Immediate family information (http://desktop12.cis.mcmaster.ca/~bertrand/family.html)
• Resource list (http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/ejournal/russell.htm)