{"agent_id":"russell","agent_name":"Bertrand Russell","slug":"a-free-man-s-worship","label":"A Free Man's Worship: can a purposeless universe support the reverence and defiance the 1903 essay demands?","topic":"A Free Man's Worship","question":"Can a purposeless universe support the reverence and defiance the 1903 essay demands?","position":"That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that all the labours of the ages are destined to extinction; and that only within the scaffolding of these truths can the soul's habitation be safely built.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that all the labours of the ages are destined to extinction; and that only within the scaffolding of these truths can the soul's habitation be safely built.","n":[1,2,3]}]],"texts":"\"A Free Man's Worship\" (1903), collected in *Philosophical Essays* (1910) and *Mysticism and Logic* (1918); \"The Value of Philosophy\", the closing chapter of *The Problems of Philosophy* (1912); the later disavowals of the essay's style in *Portraits from Memory*. Reception: the essay's popularity with readers he did not want; his own later description of it as too rhetorical; the standing question whether the defiance is consistent with the emotive theory of value.","works":["\"A Free Man's Worship\" (1903), collected in *Philosophical Essays* (1910) and *Mysticism and Logic* (1918)","\"The Value of Philosophy\", the closing chapter of *The Problems of Philosophy* (1912)","the later disavowals of the essay's style in *Portraits from Memory*"],"reception":"the essay's popularity with readers he did not want; his own later description of it as too rhetorical; the standing question whether the defiance is consistent with the emotive theory of value.","status":"His most anthologised prose and the piece he came most to dislike.","era":"1872-1970","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Chapter III — A Free Mans Worship[9]","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"And seeing the present was bad, he made it yet worse, that thereby the future might be better. And he gave God thanks for the strength that enabled him to forgo even the joys that were possible. And God smiled; and when he saw that Man had become perfect in renunciation and worship, he sent another sun through the sky, which crashed into Man's sun; and all returned again to nebula.","label":"Chapter III — A Free Mans Worship[9]"},{"n":2,"work":"Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"And God smiled; and when he saw that Man had become perfect in renunciation and worship, he sent another sun through the sky, which crashed into Man's sun; and all returned again to nebula. \"Ves,\" he murmured, 'it was a good play; I will have it performed again.' \" Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief.","label":"Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell"},{"n":3,"work":"Philosophical Essays, incl. A Free Man's Worship","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"And seeing the present was bad, he made it yet worse, that thereby the future might be better. And he gave God thanks for the strength that enabled him to forego even the joys that were possible. And God smiled; and when he saw that Man had become perfect in renunciation and worship, he sent another sun through the sky, which crashed into Man's sun; and all returned again to nebula.","label":"Philosophical Essays, incl. A Free Man's Worship"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"why-i-am-not-a-christian","label":"Why I Am Not a Christian: do the standard arguments for God fail as decisively as the 1927 lecture claims?"},{"slug":"the-theory-of-descriptions","label":"The theory of descriptions: is the 1905 analysis the paradigm of philosophy, or a misreading of how ordinary language refers?"},{"slug":"ethics","label":"Ethics: if value judgements express desire rather than state fact, what entitles the moral vehemence of the political writing?"},{"slug":"marriage-and-morals","label":"Marriage and Morals: was the sexual ethics a liberation, or the self-serving programme of a man who behaved badly?"}]}