Bertrand Russell was one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century, not only in philosophy, math, and logic, but also in pacifism and social reform.
Bertrand Russell is one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, widely recognized worldwide. Over the course of his life, which spanned three generations, he wrote more than 40 books and countless articles and essays. As anyone who has read Russell’s work will tell you, his writing is generally very scientific and logical.
Russell was a philosopher and mathematician who was widely influential in the 20th century, but his writings were not limited to philosophy and mathematics, but also included science, ethics, sociology, education, history, religion, and politics. His writings are always filled with expressions calling for social reform and, by extension, human welfare and world peace. Underneath these expressions, we can see that humanitarian feelings are always inherent. His writings on morality, politics, and pacifism in his middle years were a light and a guide for rebellious laymen, and in his last two decades he provided an inspiration for idealistic young people by opposing the construction of the hydrogen bomb and the Vietnam War.
Bertrand Russell was born in Monmouthshire on May 18, 1872, and grew up in an atmosphere of idealistic sentiment, with little contact with other children and the guidance of a tutor. He disagreed with his family except on politics, and at the age of eleven he had doubts about religion. In 1890, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was immediately recognized for his exceptional intellectual ability. He soon demonstrated an unrivaled talent for mathematics. He then turned his attention to philosophy, where he was influenced by the Cambridge University metaphysician McTaggart and received a degree in moral philosophy in 1894. He married a Puritan woman with progressive views that year. Over the next two years, he lectured on non-Euclidean geometry in the United States, traveled to Germany to study economics, and was appointed a lecturer at the University of London. In 1896, he published his first book, German Social Democracy, in which he expressed orthodox liberal views.
In 1898, together with the philosopher G. E. Moore, he refuted idealism and became an empiricist and positivist. His life is generally thought to have been concerned with three purposes. The most basic of these is to minimize the exaggeration of human knowledge. Perhaps this is in some sense in line with Socrates’ “know thyself”. This purpose was elaborated in two books, An Inquire into Meaning and Truth, published in 1940, and Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits, published in 1948.
His second purpose was related to logic and mathematics, which is described in detail in his book The Principles of Mathematics. His third purpose was analysis, which he believed could be used to deduce things about the world from language. This purpose is represented in his books The Analysis of Matter and The Analysis of Mind.
Over the course of 1910, 1912, and 1913, he and his colleagues wrote a historic work. It was The Principles of Mathematics. It was to have an enormous influence on logicians for many years.
At the turn of the century, Russell experienced a “mystical enlightenment,” as he called it, and became a pacifist. His pacifist stance came to the fore during the Boer War in South Africa, in which he supported the Boers.
In 1907, he ran unsuccessfully for Parliament, advocating for women’s suffrage and free trade. His candidacy was a practical and effective way to put into practice his interest in social reform. In 1908, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
At the outbreak of World War I, Russell became very active as a pacifist, and for this he was fined £100, expelled from Trinity College, and imprisoned for six or seven months in 1918. While in prison, he wrote Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. In 1919 he met Miss Dora Black, and with her he visited Russia in 1920 and wrote The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, in which he sharply criticized the Soviet regime. At the same time, he criticized many aspects of the Russian political system that would later be called Stalinism.
After The Principles of Mathematics, Russell focused primarily on analytic philosophy, which caused him to lose sympathy in the philosophical community. After the 1920s, his works were mainly aimed at the general public. Some of his books that appeared during this period include The ABC of Atomism, The ABC of Relativity, The Scientific Outlook, and Education and Social Order. All of these books were highly influential and contributed to the enlightenment of many people politically, morally, and intellectually.
In 1927, Russell and his wife Dora founded an experimental school, which they continued to operate until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. In 1934, he published Freedom and Organization. As a pacifist, Russell supported Britain’s policy at Munich in 1938. But once war broke out, he believed that Hitler had to be defeated. In 1938 and 1939, he lectured in the United States and was invited to teach at the City University of New York, but his invitation was revoked by a court because he advocated the immorality of sex. Fortunately, Russell was able to escape poverty for a time by receiving a five-year contract from the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania to give lectures. He compiled the material from these lectures and published A History of Western Philosophy (1945), which became a bestseller in both England and the United States and provided him with a large income for many years.
Over the next 15 years, Russell’s reputation grew rapidly: he became a regular lecturer on the BBC, was awarded the Order of Merit in 1949, and in 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
When his book On the Extent and Limits of Human Knowledge came out in 1948, people were not enthusiastic about it because it was thought to be outdated, and because Russell’s philosophical ideas did not resonate with people after World War II, so his ideas were naturally fading from the public consciousness.
In 1954, he delivered his famous “The Human Danger” speech on the BBC, in which he condemned the U.S. hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Island, along with other Nobel Prize-winning physicists. He went a step further and campaigned for a ban on nuclear weapons, and in 1961 he and his wife were imprisoned for two months for staging a sit-in demonstration against nuclear weapons.
In 1962 (Russell was 90 years old at the time), there was the Cuban crisis and a dispute on the Chinese border, which Russell worked with Secretary-General Utant and heads of state to resolve peacefully. After Kennedy’s assassination, when the Warren Report came out, he chaired the Kennedy Assassination Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
He also founded the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, an organization that would help settle the peace issue once and for all. In the late ’60s, he was a fierce opponent of the U.S. policy in Vietnam and, along with others, including the French existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre, the Yugoslav historian Vladimir Didier, and the Polish writer Isaac Deutsch, founded the International War Crimes Tribunal.
He died peacefully on February 2, 1970. After his death, the London Times eulogized him as “a once-in-500-year genius.” Perhaps few figures have exerted such a powerful influence on the 20th century psyche as Russell. Throughout his work, Russell was a pacifist and never prejudiced ideologue. He criticized the evils of established religion, which he saw as poisoning thought with dogma, formality, and custom, and enchanting the faithful with false gods and dogmas. However, he himself had a sincere searching spirit, strictly observed a solemn life, and pursued what was real and vital. He had a deep cosmological view like Einstein and Schweitzer, and practiced love, so it can be said that he practiced a sincere faith that was virtually the ideal of a professional religious person.
It is said that he received an average of more than 100 letters a day, and he always answered every letter he received, regardless of their status or status. In the midst of such a busy life, he was able to surpass other famous philosophers in that he treated all people, black, white, and nationality, regardless of their status, evenly and with sincerity.
