Bertrand Russell : The Spirit of Solitude 1872-1921

Bertrand Russell #1

by Ray Monk

Born in 1872, the third child of Viscount Amberley, heir to the Russell earldom, Bertrand Russell was to become the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century. His early masterpiece Principia Mathematica, written with Alfred North Whitehead, set the course for the modern and post modern preoccupation with language; its philosophical ambitions are what drew Ludwig Wittgenstein from Vienna to Cambridge to study under the already famous Russell. But Russell's interest in philosophy was only one aspect of his prodigious appetite for ideas. His anti-war pamphlets and protests got him expelled from the university and imprisoned - not for the last time.
Russell's personal life was marked by the same promiscuous drive as his public one. The author of Marriage and Morals - a book that received special citation in the award of Russell's 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature - boldly applied his free-thinking principles in his own most intimate relationships. His spectacular success in seducing women, both married and single, constituted a relentless challenge to the Victorian morality that was his aristocratic birthright. Russell's avant-garde philosophy of free love combined with his principled pacificism would make him an icon of the international Left in the 1960s.
In short, Russell's was a protean life so vast in influence, relationships and interests that it is virtually a window on the major historical events of the twentieth century. The Spirit of Solitude is the first biography of this towering figure to go behind Russell's public life and reveal a complex and even contradictory character that has, until now, remained obscure.

Genres: Philosophy, Biography, History, Mathematics, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, British Literature

720 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Ray Monk is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton, where he has taught since 1992.

He won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the 1991 Duff Cooper Prize for Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. His interests lie in the philosophy of mathematics, the history of analytic philosophy, and philosophical aspects of biographical writing. He is currently working on a biography of Robert Oppenheimer. (Source: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Yannis Theocharis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ray Monk’s book is by far the best biography of Bertrand Russell out there. It is also a book that, if you are a great admirer of Russell’s (like I was, and still am), you need to read with your eyes open. What distinguishes this biography from others written about Russell is (except from its size) is (a) the fact that it is written by a philosopher (of mathematics and science), thus offering an insight on how Russell’s personal life influences his scientific thinking and philosophy, but also the reverse, and (b) the presentation of an image of a Russell that is very different from the Russell that probably lives in most people’s imagination; a wise old mathematical genius and pioneer of logic; an immaculate, infallible and morally superior human being who managed to see what is right and wrong in this world ahead of everyone else, and put it into words that captured a generation’s imagination about what a better tomorrow could look like.

Monk’s biography is unique because it doesn’t hide any of this – if anything it makes it all too clear. What it also does, however, is to display – mostly via Russell’s own words through his letters, how his long -- and mostly painful and full of drama -- life came to shape his character, his principles, his philosophy, his understanding of science, society, truth, religion, and logic in ways that are almost directly opposite not only to the philosophy he puts forward but to the advice he directly gives to humanity. Monk must have spent an immense amount of his life with Russell’s innumerable writings (personal or public) and, from his writing, it is evident that he came to know the man as intimately as someone would have if one had actually met him and spent time with him.

It seems to me that Monk entered the immensely difficult task of writing about Russell’s life as a huge admirer of Russell and, in the process, after reading and understanding not only his scientific work, but also his choices in life, his perceptions about others, his ghosts and fears, and his perception about himself, came to slowly disapprove of the man (not to say hate). The change of attitude towards not only Russell the logician, but also Russell the social philosopher, is evident mainly on the second volume of the biography where the reader reads, astonishingly, “how bad Russell’s writing was in the second part of his life”. This generalised critique is, in my view, unfair. Monk spends a good part of his book diminishing the value not only of Russell’s social philosophy but also of Russell’s (scientific, political and social) achievements during the second part of his life mostly on the basis that his arguments – especially when it comes to politics and international issues – were too simplistic. This criticism has much truth in it but then again sometimes neither reality, nor solutions to complex problems need to be too complicated and Russell was a master of conveying difficult ideas in simple and understandable ways.

There is surely much to be said about the poverty of some of Russell’s social philosophy but Russell certainly does not deserve the pure contempt that comes out in much of the book. Looking at the totality of Russell’s life achievements one simply can’t demand or be strict with parts of his life or decisions that did not live up to Godly standards. He was a man, after, all; not only imperfect but with major faults, dark sides, and capable of thinking and doing ugly things as much as any of us is. Moreover, I have to say the constant comparison with Wittgenstein (whose company Monk would, evidently, have enjoyed much more – as far as I can tell from reading his biography of Wittgenstein at this moment) and the reiteration about how much superior the second one was to the first, becomes tiring.

I could probably keep writing for hours but it is too late. In all, despite offering an image of Russell that will make some of us who learned to love the man through his writings think hard about the extent to which his philosophy should, after all, affect crucial decisions in our life, Monk’s biography is our best opportunity to learn the life and deeds of one of the most thrilling human beings that stepped foot on this planet. One whose overwhelming genius, capricious and emotionally unstable character, vanity, personal tragedy but also happiness, ambition to change the world, global influence, and contribution to humanity through science and philosophy epitomises not only the maximum utilisation, but also the exhaustion of human faculties.

[John Harder · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a crummy book. I pick this out of the bargain bin to learn a little of the philosophy and mathematical theory of Mr. Russell. True this is a biography not a dissertation, but a man is his thoughts. So when you tell a man’s life it should be a manifestation of his mind. However after slogging through this poorly written book I still have no idea who this man was – I just know the names of all his girlfriends and his romantic tribulations. Who cares who he was kissing under the bleachers at the sock hop.

[Christine Sandgren · Rating 5 out of 5]

No one can capture the philosopher's life like a fellow philosopher. One of the more interesting character of the 20th century. Russell was a daring thinker and fearlessly applied his conclusions on life to his own-- with disasterous results. Turns out that thousands of years of human mores may have been there for a reason. Now we know.

[Hugh Coverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Making Sense of Bertrand Russell's Complicated Life


I waited a long time to get a hold of this book, and it was definitely worth the wait. Ray Monk presents a detailed life of the great philosopher, including Bertrand Russell's considerable achievements and romantic entanglements. What makes Monk's biography a worthy, albeit time-consuming, read is the amount of material he draws from: Russell's writings and letters, and the letters and memoirs of those who knew him best, his wives and mistresses.

As an atheist I approached this book to better understand how and when Russell began to have doubts and lost his belief in God. Surprisingly, the beginnings of Russell's atheism began when he was a teenager. There is some discussion of Russell's beliefs, but it is not explored as fully as I would like. Russell's own writings could be confusing as he uses phrases like God, religion, heaven and hell, and related terms with his correspondents, and those unfamiliar with his form of atheism might not always realize the context in which he uses these terms.

Indeed, Russell abandoned religious faith just before he went up to Cambridge. To appease his formidable grandmother, whom he justifiable held to be a religious hypocrite, he did not voice his doubts publicly but committed them to his private journal. For the most part, Monk avoids a detailed discussion of Russell's (lack of) religious faith:

. . . For much of his life, Russell's longing for belief in a mysticism akin to Spinoza's
'intellectual love of God' fought a running battle with a corrosive scepticism that he
could not never quite shake off, and in which he often took a certain delight.
(p. 69)

In his first writing on his religion Russell equates his God with Truth, "a stern and pitiless" deity, and the adherents of this "bleak religion" do not seek happiness but wisdom. "The key to wisdom," Monk notes, "is renunciation and fortitude in the face of disillusionment" (p. 160). It can be said that Russell did not hold any value in organized religion, however. Perhaps there will be a more detailed discussion of Russell's lack of religious faith in the Monk's second volume.

Monk undertakes great effort to present Russell's philosophical development without being overly technical; in fact, he takes what really requires specialist knowledge to understand fully and makes it almost intelligible. Ultimately, it is not Russell's deep ideas but his complicated personal life that overtakes the book. The many overlapping ideas that Russell explored in his professional life, many of which Monk demonstrates were demolished by Wittgenstein's devastating analysis, were mirrored by his overlapping romantic relationships.

[Marcus Speh]

i read this book before and i'm reading it again. i don't want to rate it because i do loathe the message of the book as much as i admire the man russell. why am i reading it? because it is after all well written and the spirit of russell comes through anyway. worth getting if, after russell's autobiography, which is marvelous, you want to know more. but monk is a body-stripper, in my view.

[H]

ray monk's vol.1: spirit of solitude

===

"I remember an instant of the same pain at Southgate once in thinking of the sadness which is always suggested by natural beauty, when the idea flashed across my mind that when most in harmony with Nature I felt most sad, and that therefore the spirit of Nature must be sad and the Universe a mistake. Then I could not have borne it another instant, for though it came and went like a flash I felt as though I had been stabbed." (40

"What Spinoza calls the 'intellectual love of God' has seemed to me the best thing to live by, but I have not had even the somewhat abstract God that Spinoza allowed himself to whom to attach my intellectual love. I have loved a ghost, and in loving a ghost my inmost self has itself become spectral . . . my most profound feelings have remained always solitary and I have found in human things no companionship. The sea, the stars, the night wind in waste places, mean more to me than even the human beings (40) I love best, and I am conscious that human affect is to me at bottom n attempt to escape from the vain search for God." (41)

-

The theme of the book [Arthur Hannequin's, on atomism in science] is that science rests on a fundamental contradiction, needing on the one hand to represent everything atomistically -- as a series of discrete, numerically countable 'things' -- in order that mathematics might be brought to bear upon it, and, on the other hand, having to admit that there are in nature things that are not made up of discrete, atomistic components, but are rather continuous. Motion, for example, is the continuous path of an object through space and time, but, if we are to measure velocity, we have to break this continuity down into discrete 'infinitesimal' differentials and pretend that nothing is lost thereby. (109)

A 'concept', in Moore's rather odd use of the word, is neither a word, nor a thought, but a 'possible object of thought', something close to what Russell would later call a 'logical atom'. Concepts are the building-blocks of the world. 'The ultimate elements of everything that is are concepts,' More wrote to Russell, 'and a part of these, hen compounded in a special way, form the existent world.' Thus, for Moore, and, even more crucially, for Russell, analysis is not - as it is commonly understood now -- a linguistic activity, but an ontological one. (117)

-

This feeling was confirmed by his absorption in mathematics, which he had come to believe 'is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music', not because the pleasure it gives is comparable to that of music, 'but because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect and yet true'. (147)

"I wonder whether you realise the degree of self-sacrifice (and too often sacrifice of others), of sheer effort of will, of stern austerity in repressing even what is intrinsically best, that goes into writing a book of any magnitude." (150)

"Of course, self-sacrifice is difficult and very real; it occurs whenever oneself as end has to be sacrificed to oneself as means . . . And it is no use pretending that the sacrifice may not be real and ultimate: the best conduct is very seldom that which would make one the best person."
To act for the best, then, is not the same as being a good person. Indeed, on the contrary, acting for the best, doing the right thing, can often involve destroying, sacrificing what is best in one's nature. (154)

She [Beatrice Webb] was too perceptive an observer, however, to believe that Alys's health was the only thing wrong between them. 'It is quite clear to me', she rote, 'that Bertrand is going through some kind of tragedy of feeling.' (156)

"I am constructing a mental cloister, in which my inner soul is to dwell in peace, while an outer simulacrum goes forth to meet the world. In this inner sanctuary I sit and think spectral thoughts." (158)

A phrase that he wrote at about this time which had special significane for him, seeming to sum up his entire mental outlook, was: 'Our hearts build precious shrines for the ashes of dead hopes.' (158)

'It is ghastly to watch,' he wrote a few days later to Lucy Donnelly, 'in most marraiges, the competition as to which is to be the tortuerer, which tortured; a few years, at most, settle it, and after it is settled, one has happiness and the other has virtue. And the torturer smirks and speaks of matrimonial bliss; and the victim, for fear of worse, smiles a ghastly assent. Marriage, and all such close relations, have quite infinite possibilities of pain.' (169)

-

"I did not mean that the objects of mathematical or other abstract thoughts exist outside us, still less that there is any universal or divine mind whose ideas we are reproducing when we think. What I meant to say was that the object of any abstract thought is not a thought, either of the thinker or of anyone else, and does not exist at all, though it is something. Thus in mathematics a new theorem is a discovery in the sense that the discoverer for the first time apprehends the fact discovered, which fact has a timeless being, not existence." (186)

-

"So much that goes into religion seems to me important, and I want somehow to make people feel what survives dogmas. Most of the people who think as I do about the dogmas seem to be able to live in the everyday world without windows into a greater world beyond. But to me that would be a prison." (210)

"There is a very great deal -- perhaps the most important part -- of what our love gives us, that is quite independent of what others can do. I feel that if we had to part, I should retain all my life the knowledge of what you are, and the knowledge that I have had the perfect and satisfying love which one dreamt of but never hoped to find. That would permanently enrich the world for me, like great poetry or the beauty of nature." (221)

-

In this new paper, Russell sought to define more rigorously these basic metaphysical categories, and to defend the reality of both universals and particulars against those philosophers (like Hume and Berkeley) who insisted that only particulars are real, and those (like, in some interpretations, Bradley and Plato) who insisted that only universals are real. Russell's novel approach to this ancient issue was to give quasi-physical, spatio-temporal definitions of the categories involved. Thus, particulars, the ordinary objects of experience, are defined by the fact that they cannot be in two places at the same time. Universals, in his account, are of two kinds: relations (such as 'to the left of'), which are never in any place at any time, and qualities (such as whiteness) which can be in more than one place at the same time. (234)

When he [Bergson] is better, he conceives life to be essentially like artistic creation, in which a more or less blind impulse urges one towards something, without one's knowing what beforehand; then, what is created, it is seen to be what was wanted." (235)

"But I simply can't stand a view limited to this earth. I feel life so small unless it has windows into other worlds. I feel it vehemently and instinctively and with my whole being. It is what has become of my desire for worship. But I despair of making people see what I mean. I like mathematics largely because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe -- because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return." (248)

"Odd how such passion goes into doing a thing and how cold it is when it is done. A vast amount of various people's solid misery is crystallised in the book, and I wd. have done almost anything to bring about the finishing of it, and now it is a mere moment's interest." (251)

-

'Indeed passion is of God,' Russell wrote to her [Ottoline] afterwards, 'the unquenchable thirst for heaven -- it is the power that drives us on to seek out good. We are all exiles in this nether world, and all passion has something of homesickness.' (257)

Russell was not entirely joking about having a 'morality of passion'. In an unpublished manuscript called 'Dramatic and Utilitarian Ethics' written about this time, he asked why Shakespeare was universally admired, even though, in his depictions of Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, he might be regarded as 'the champion of murderers'. The answer he gave was that 'the average man cares about drama much more than about happiness.' (258)

He and Wittgenstein began to speak of more intimate, even spiritual things, Wittgenstein surprising Russell by saying suddenly how much he admired the text 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul', and how few there were who did not lose their soul: 'I said it depended on having a large purpose that one is true to. He said he thought it depended more on suffering and the power to endure it.' (264)

-

"In this adventure I have learnt that I must be the giver. Bertie thinks he loves me, but what he really loves is a woman to listen to him and to rely on him; but he does not love enough to forget himself ever. I must love him and give to him, it is my work; and not expect anything back, for he cannot (288) deviate a hair's breadth from what he is, or from his self-absorption. I don't believe he is much aware of me, nor does he ever want to follow me in my thoughts and wanderings. He says he does, but I find I cannot talk to him." (289)

-

It was as if he had finally accepted that all she could offer him were 'romantic and sentimental rather than passionate' feelings, 'troubadours and courtly love' rather than earthly passion. He had come to feel, he wrote on 23 July, that it was 'not the actual human beings you love, but the God in them':
"And when the God abandons them, if they care for your love, they feel lost . . . it is what prevents me from feeling yo9u a comrade -- I think of you as my Star, or as the moon sometimes descending from heaven to bring moments of unearthly unquiet joy to Endymion on the cold hill side." (306)

"He is intensely self-centered, poor mn, and says I was selfish because I did not sacrifice more to him. I feel his letter tonight was quite final, and that most probably I shall never see him again. Yes: I feel the poorer a great deal. But I don't think he loved me -- only desired me. Love could not die like that. Desire could." (312)

-

For, with the infallible insight for which Russell revered him, Lawrence had put his finger on the central conflict in Russell's nature: the tension between his feeling of alienation from the rest of humanity and his espousal of a selfless identification with it; and the analogous tension between his fierce, dark hatreds and his ideal of a universal love. (410)

-

As he put it to Lucy Donnelly, 'I want actually to change people's thoughts. Power over people's minds is the main personal desire of my life.' (456)

" . . . but of course none of them are comrades to one's inner life. They have something that is great & vitl & important . . . but not the thirst after perfection -- they see the way out of Hell but not the way into Heaven.' (459)

He also told Ottoline that a 'terrible longing' for her had been growing in him for a long time: 'it is not passion any more -- the war has all but killed that -- it is the hunger for companionship . . . What holds me to you for ever & ever is religion. Everybody else hurts me by lack of reverence.' (485)

-

Konradin still loves him deeply, though one suspects that the 'sudden hostility' towards hiim tht Colette, at this stage in the story, puts into the mind of the T. S. Eliot character, Maynard, was something she herself had felt towards Russell:
"For an instant he saw him as many people saw him: a man exhausting other men by his intellect; exhausting women by his intensity; wearing out his friends, sucking them dry, passing from person to person, never giving any real happiness -- or finding any." (607)

-

"Yes! Paternity is a great experience of which the least that can be said is that it is eminently worth having -- if only for the deepened sense of fellowship with all men it gives one. It is the only experience perhaps whose uniersality does not make it common but invests it with a sort of grandeur on that very account." (612)

[Dozy Pilchard · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times brilliant, at other times tedious. This book lacks consistency. I spotted a couple of local places misnamed which undermined my faith in some of the other information. it is a monumental first part but I would have preferred it with 300 pages edited out. Far too much relationship info. Not needed. Also excessively negative much of the time. Monk being true to his feelings but not the best Russell biog in my opinion. Need a break before I pick up my copy of pt 2.

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ray Monk is very good at what he does. I think this book would have been better if Russell had lived a shorter life. There wasn't that much cross over between the events of Russell's life and his philosophy.

If you are looking for a well written biography that shows how miserable Bertrand Russell was and why then this is the book for you. Unfortunately, that is what it is and it is hard bare.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Großartig, besser noch als die Wittgensteinbiographie, aber Bertie war ja auch der größere Schlawiner.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FIRST VOLUME OF A MASTERFUL BIOGRAPHY OF A TOWERING 20TH CENTURY INTELLECTUAL

Ray Monk lectures in philosophy at the university of Southampton, UK; he has also written 'Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius,' 'Robert Oppenheimer: His Life and Mind,' etc. The successor volume to this 1996 book is 'Bertrand Russell: 1921-1970, The Ghost of Madness.'

He wrote in the Introduction, "The other two biographies of Russell so far published---Ronald Clark's 'The life of Bertrand Russell' and 'Caroline Moorhead's Bertrand Russell: A Life'---are more searching in their exploration of Russell's private life, and their authors less constrained... But both suffer from ... a more or less complete lack of interest in Russell's philosophical work... The aim of this book is ... trying to take into account the full force of each of the 'great winds' that Russell describes: his need for love, his yearning for certain knowledge, and his sometimes overpowering impulse to become involved in the great political issues of his day... But the challenge... is to understand how [these admirable qualities] can coexist with a sometimes quite chilling coldness to those close to him, and a disturbing capacity for deep and dark hatreds." (Pg. xviii-xx)

He observes, "Russell was fond---perhaps over-fond---of presenting his life as a series of epiphanies, many of which, one suspects, were overplayed by him in later life for the sake of lending drama to the facts of his life." (Pg. 137) He suggests, "The sense of loss he had experienced in giving up his religious beliefs had never quite deserted him, but now he began to feel that, in his love for Ottoline [Morrell], he had something that preserved whatever was valuable and beautiful in religious faith without committing him... to any false beliefs." (Pg. 209) He wrote to her, "I shall always be - hungry for your God and blaspheming him. I could pour forth a flood of worship - the longing for religion is at times almost unbearably strong." (Pg. 243) In a later letter, he said, "Indeed passion is of God... the unquenchable thirst for heaven--it is the power that drives us to seek out good. We are all exiles in this nether world, and all passion has something of homesickness.'" (Pg. 257)

He writes perceptively of Russell's relationship with Wittgenstein: "Russell was still inclined to look upon Wittgenstein's work as a kind of 'fine tuning' of his own... Wittgenstein was not repairing it, as Russell continued to think, but was demolishing it altogether." (Pg. 290) He adds, "As Russell was slow to realise (perhaps he never realised it), his relationship with Wittgenstein suffered from the very beginning from his insistence on casting Wittgenstein in a role for which he was unsuited... with Wittgenstein representing the logician, the scientist..." (Pg. 343) He concludes, "[Russell's] refusal to take offense at Wittgenstein's brusque dismissal of his own work... [was] connected with his desire to preserve his own intellectual integrity. Who better than Wittgenstein... to act as his philosophical conscience?" (Pg. 565)

Monk's book is, like his earlier book on Wittgenstein, superb, and is essential reading for anyone wanting to know more about Russell's and his contributions to philosophy.

[MV · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having just turned the final page of Ray Monk's "Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude 1872-1921", I'm struck by the profound depth with which Monk explores the intricate balance between Russell's relentless pursuit of logic and his complex psychological landscape. This biography is not just a chronicle of Russell's contributions to philosophy and mathematics but a vivid portrayal of a man grappling with the very principles he sought to establish.

Monk delves into Russell's early life, shedding light on how personal tragedies and a strict upbringing fueled his desire for certainty and order—a quest that found expression in his groundbreaking work in logic. However, this same quest often led to an internal struggle as Russell tried to apply the precision of logic to the messy realities of human emotion and relationships.

The book highlights Russell's attempts to reconcile his logical ideals with his psychological experiences. His rigorous analytical approach sometimes clashed with his emotional needs, leading to periods of profound isolation and introspection. Monk adeptly illustrates how Russell's personal life, including his relationships and moral beliefs, was deeply intertwined with his intellectual endeavors.

What makes this biography particularly compelling is Monk's ability to humanize a figure often perceived as the epitome of rational thought. He doesn't shy away from exposing Russell's vulnerabilities, contradictions, and the solitude that often accompanied his genius. The result is a nuanced portrait that captures the essence of Russell's internal battle between the desire for logical clarity and the complexities of psychological experience.

In "The Spirit of Solitude", Monk offers more than a mere recounting of Russell's life; he provides a profound insight into the universal struggle to find harmony between our rational aspirations and the depths of our emotional world. It's a thought-provoking read that resonates with anyone interested in the intersection of logic, psychology, and the human condition.

[Dschreiber · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading three hundred pages of rather smallish print, I noticed that World War I hadn't even started. How could Russell's life ever get covered in the remaining 300 pages? Then I noticed that this was just Volume 1. Oops!

So much of this is unnecessary, except perhaps to fulfil some ideal of documenting just about everything that can be documented. The material about Bertie's love life just goes on and on. One wishes he hadn't written so many letters. It seems a nearly week-by-week account of his thoughts and moods about, first, his wife, Alys, then his mistress, Ottoline. At each stage he examines himself and articulates a new ethic based on the current state of his feelings. It holds your interest for a while, sometimes romantically, sometimes pruriently, but finally it just gets boring.

The other main thread is his work in logic and the philosophy of mathematics. The author makes a brave effort to explain what Russell was up to in what was, after all, the most important part of his life, but I doubt that it's an area that can be understood without graduate work in the areas concerned.

Unless you have a deep, deep interest in all things Russell, I'd recommend a biography of a more reasonable length. You might want to have a look a Monk's preface, though, to see what he thinks are the shortcomings of the various books that came before his.

[Arianne X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Epistemological Catastrophe

Russell could not have realized that by starting with the assumption that mathematics and logic were one and the same; that mathematics could be deduced from a few logical axioms was the path to epistemological catastrophe and with it, the realization that truth is not compatible with happiness or the existence of eternal things in which one could take refuge.

The full extent of the catastrophe was confirmed much later in 1931, when Kurt Gödel conclusively proved that what Russell had attempted to do was not possible. As is often the case in the irony of human history, a calamity becomes the cause of a creation. From the epistemological catastrophe came an enormous step forward in the subsequent development of logic, mathematics and philosophy that provided much of the theoretical basis for the theory of computing as later developed by Alan Turning and John von Neumann.

Why did Russell start with the assumption that all of mathematics could be deduced from a few logical axioms? The answer goes back to pre-Socratic Greece. Russell takes up transcendent enframement going back to Parmenides. Parmenides had a definitive influence on Plato, and Plato had a definitive influence on Russell, at least the Russell of the ‘Principia Mathematica’. Parmenides introduced transcendence by arguing that the concept of non-existence is irrevocably confused; that reality has no past or future and is unchanging. It follows from here that the changing world of our observations must be illusory, and that reality had to be reconceived as something which transcends or exists beyond illusory appearances which can only be apprehended by reason. This is the place where Russell thought he would find those abstract objects called numbers and sets. Number of course was thought of as a mathematical notion, but it was set or class that was the all-important logical notion. But the concept set or class is actually a metaphysical characterization smuggled in as a superimposed subjective means of organizing reality rather than objective logical notion welded to reality.

From the time of Plato, transcendence provided the key to determining how we ought to live and proceed. Echoing Parmenides and Plato, Russell came to think of mathematics as the transcendent reality that is apprehended by reason. However, once introduced, the concept of transcendence brings in its wake a host of problems concerning knowledge, representation, truth and the ontological status of appearance and realty which includes numbers. In his work and philosophy, Russell’s approach resembled religion in its aims and science in its approach. But transcendence cannot be investigated empirically. The only path open to Russell was through a priori reasoning employing concepts derived from a tradition of thought that places reality into the context of transcendence, thereby conceptualizing reality in light of possibilities such that the particulars we perceive, e.g., arithmetic being transcended by universals, or that all perceptions are transcended by a mind independent reality with all of the subjectivity that entails as Russell learned but could not admit.

It turns out that logic rests upon arithmetic and arithmetic is empirical, not the other way around which would be metaphysical. Numbers are not defined in logical terms, logic rests on the empirical observations that form the basis of numbers as well as logic. That is, mathematics is not a branch of logic as Russell and Frege thought it to be. Logic is linguistic and arithmetic is pre-linguistic, empirical and based on observations of nature.

The possibility of transcendent enframement raised new and distinctive types of ontological questions concerning whether the physical universe, and empirical observations of it, provide the final context of existence, and whether the basic constituents of the observable physical universe are really the basic constitutes of reality itself. These new ontological questions raised new types of epistemological questions. It is within this framework that questions such as “what are numbers and how do come to know them?” becomes possible.

Russell still shared the same epistemological starting point as Descartes, that of thinking that the world was understood starting from the private data of conscious experience to construct and understanding of the external world. Descartes of course helped himself to the notion of a non-deceiving God to accomplish this task. Subsequent generations of course saw this as gratuitous, but still tried to navigate a route from private sense data to the external world including Russell. It was later that thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Dewey and even Heidegger recognized we must start with the external world and work inward to understand the conscious experience of the external world. That is, we are participants in the external reality first. This was the great influence of Wittgenstein on Russell; that there is no absolute certainty in the human condition including mathematics. Russell later constructed an empirical epistemology that moved from observation to theory. This of course meant that Russell abandoned his Platonic beliefs and his neo-Hegelian training. When we give up on absolute certainty, we must make some assumptions such as the future resembles the past, that the world is casually closed, and that there is a coherence to existence and identity through time - in order to build any kind of useful human knowledge. Russell replaced absolute certainty with optimal certainty, this is now the reduced and more humble realm of mathematics. Much I imagine to eternal disappoint of Russell.

Unrelated, but I must add that by the end of the book, I was becoming fatigued by the rather odd logic of Russellian romantic associations.

[Misha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow just wow.

As a philosopher, Russell is actually not quite one of the greats. This biography shows how inconsistent he was with his theories, and how his mind was troubled with emotional problems from his youth onwards. This book is thus not an elucidation of profound and influential philosophical thinking, at least not in the main.

No, what makes this biography so good, is the emphasis on the life of an extraordinary figure, whose character is extraordinarily interesting. It dives deeper and deeper into Russell's mind. You really know Russell, like really know him, after you've finished this - and it's not even the entire story :0.

Also, Monk makes it a very funny and captivating read, it is nowhere boring, even if it might sometimes be a bit repetitive.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even respected intellectuals are plagued by insecurity and foibles which normal people are. Ray Monk is a master of biography.

[Kumirus · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh he was horny horny

[Matthew Zhu · Rating 5 out of 5]

看完此傳，大概不會對羅素之私生活，有什麼好感了。不過其為哲學家，值得敬佩和喜愛。