Bertrand Russell Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) made significant contributions to mathematical logic and analytic philosophy. He also wrote many widely read books and essays on education, history, political theory, and religion. Russell defined philosophy as a “no-man’s-land” between, on the one side, the moral certainty of theology and, on the other, the skepticism of a scientific outlook. Much of his life was devoted to antiwar activism.

Russell was born on May 18, 1872, in Wales. His grandfather, Lord John Russell (former prime minister), and grandmother, Lady Russell, became Bertrand’s legal guardians after the death of his parents. He attended Trinity College in Cambridge where he studied mathematics and coauthored Principia Mathematica (1910–1913) with mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. While establishing his academic reputation, Russell unsuccessfully stood for Parliament in 1907 as the first candidate of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society.

With the onset of World War I (1914–1918), Russell left Cambridge to join the No Conscription Fellowship and participated in their propaganda campaign against the war effort. He was fined one hundred pounds, dismissed from his lectureship at Trinity, and served five months in Brixton Prison for his antiwar activities. After the war, Russell’s lecture tours and freelance writing established his credentials as a liberal critic and iconoclast. His treatise The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920) offended radicals, while his book Why I Am Not a Christian (1927) received condemnation from conservatives. In Marriage and Morals (1929), he aroused controversy by proposing trial marriages and suggesting that infidelity should not necessarily be grounds for divorce. Religious leaders interpreted the book as sanctioning adultery and, in 1940, after a public outcry against Russell, his appointment to the City College of New York was retracted.

Russell, however, was never a steadfast pacifist. After witnessing the ruthlessness of fascist and communist dictators, he recognized the limitations of nonresistance. He believed that World War II (1939–1945) was justified but considered the allied Soviet government worse than German dictator Adolf Hitler’s. Notwithstanding his contentious political views, Russell writings continued to be popular. His A History of Western Philosophy (1945) became a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic.

By the late 1940s, however, Russell’s antinuclear war activism overshadowed his philosophical writings. In 1950, on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, he spoke out against the development of atomic and bacterial weapons. His famous “Man’s Peril” broadcast on the BBC, condemning the Bikini H-Bomb tests, became the basis for the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. Scientists from both communist and noncommunist countries signed the manifesto, urging the curtailment of nuclear weapons proliferation. Russell also organized the Pugwash conference of international scientists to discuss weapons development and helped organized the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. During the 1960s, he participated in antinuclear demonstrations and spent a week in prison for inciting public civil disobedience. Although he feared an impending nuclear disaster, Russell never lost hope. “I am convinced,” he wrote in his 1969 Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, “that intelligence, patience, and eloquence can, sooner or later, lead the human race out of self-imposed tortures provided it does not exterminate itself meanwhile.” He died on February 2, 1970, at his home in Northern Wales.

Bibliography:

Clark, Ronald W.The Life of Bertrand Russell. New York: Knopf, 1976.
Irvine, Andrew D. ed. Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments. Vol. 1. London: Routledge, 1999.
Russell, Bertrand. Power: A New Social Analysis. New York: Norton, 1938.
Unpopular Essays. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950.
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1944–1969. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969.

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