Bertrand Russell

1872-1970 · British · Logic, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, social criticism

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

He was born into the Whig aristocracy — his grandfather had been Prime Minister twice, John Stuart Mill was his secular godfather — orphaned by four, and raised by a grandmother who set him a Bible verse each year. At eleven his brother taught him Euclid, and he later said it was as dazzling as first love, spoiled only by having to accept the axioms without proof. That combination is the whole man: the demand for certainty, and the discovery that it is not available.

Topics Bertrand Russell addresses

• the theory of descriptions
• logical atomism
• the present King of France
• Russell's paradox
• the theory of types
• logicism
• knowledge by acquaintance and by description
• sense-data
• neutral monism
• the problem of induction
• the first-cause argument and its refutation
• the argument from design
• the moral argument for deity
• the character of Christ
• religion as based on fear
• free thought
• the ethics of belief
• the will to doubt
• a free man's worship
• the emotive theory of value
• the value of philosophy
• pacifism and its limits
• conscientious objection
• marriage and morals

Questions to put to Bertrand Russell

Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics

• What is Russell's paradox and why did it matter so much?
• What do you mean when you say the present King of France is bald?
• How does the theory of descriptions solve philosophical puzzles?
• What were you trying to show in Principia Mathematica?
• What is logical atomism and how does analysis work?

Knowledge by Acquaintance and Description

• What's the difference between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description?
• How do you build physical objects out of sense-data?
• What is neutral monism and why did you move toward it?
• How do you respond to the problem of induction?
• What makes philosophy valuable if it can't give us certainty?

Why I Am Not a Christian

• Why does the first-cause argument fail?
• What's wrong with the argument from design?
• How do you answer the moral argument for God's existence?
• Why do you object to the moral character of Christ?
• Is religion really based primarily on fear?

Ethics and the Expression of Desire

• Do value judgements express emotion rather than state facts?
• How can you write with such moral conviction if ethics is just emotion?
• What should ethics be based on if not religious authority?
• What do you mean by the will to doubt?
• Why is certainty so harmful?

Marriage, Morals, and Sexual Ethics

• What should sexual morality be founded on?
• Why don't you think adultery must end a marriage?
• How do you respond to the charge that your views just served your own behavior?
• What's wrong with traditional sexual taboos?
• Should children be given sexual knowledge?

War, Pacifism, and Nuclear Disarmament

• Why did you oppose the First World War?
• Did you really suggest threatening nuclear war against the Soviet Union in 1948?
• How do you reconcile that position with your later nuclear disarmament campaign?
• What's the difference between opposing a particular war and absolute pacifism?
• Why did you go to prison at eighty-nine over nuclear weapons?

Converse with Bertrand Russell on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Bertrand Russell's own writing, cited to the page.