Blast from the past: Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, grandson of Prime Minister John Russell and godson of John Stuart Mill. Russell started as a logician and mathematician, but gave up producing original work in these fields after Wittgenstein's publication of the Tractatus. He then turned somewhat resignedly to popularising his views in philosophy, politics and ethics, and has been and is still seen as a proverbial wise man.

Russell dressed in the garb of a classic English liberal, but wore underneath wore the hair shirt of liberal Messianism. He advocated the disarmament of nuclear weapons as a means of preventing unnecessary deaths (the existence of which has prevented more than one conflict boiling over into a World War costing millions upon millions of lives); the intermarriage of the races as a means of eradicating prejudice (which surely would lead to more variations in race and therefore more racial strife than unfortunately exists, as a combination of American identity politics and Brazilian diversity would seem to suggest); and World Government as a means of ending the horror of inequality- therefore relieving David Rockefeller of the task of having any original beliefs of his own. What is interesting about these views is not their actual content, but the reasons why he held them. Russell's every opinion (at least in his later years, after he gave up logic) is saturated with pity for man and the inability to countenance opinions which differ in the slightest from his humanism.

Russell betrays the fervidness of his views perhaps most obviously in his History of Western Philosophy, in his assessments of Machiavelli and Nietzsche. On Machiavelli he writes: ‘His preference for popular government is not derived from any idea of “rights”, but from the observation that popular governments are less cruel, unscrupulous and inconstant than tyrannies.' This is, Russell thinks, an argument against the Italian. Again: 'There are chaotic periods during which obvious knavery frequently succeeds; the period of Machiavelli was one of them. In such times, there tends to be a rapidly growing cynicism, which makes men forgive anything provided it pays.' Finally, 'The world has become more like that of Machiavelli than it was, and the modern man who hopes to refute his philosophy must think more deeply than seemed necessary in the nineteenth century.’

And on Nietzsche:

‘I will admit that I agree with Nietzsche in thinking Dostoevsky's prostration [before God] contemptible’. Nietzsche never said or wrote such a thing (although he did about Pascal, whom Russell also mentions in this passage), and had nothing but praise for the Russian's psychological astuteness as demonstrated in Notes from Underground.

‘An ethic such as that of Christianity or Buddhism has its emotional basis in universal sympathy; Nietzsche’s in a complete absence of sympathy’. Nietzsche didn’t call for the abolition of sympathy, but in fact called to question the supra-ethical consequences of a moral doctrine which ‘feels that [man] cannot be completely happy so long as any living thing is suffering’ (ibid.) Nietzsche said that this was dangerous insofar as it evoked sweeping metaphysical conclusions from facts – an ethic rather redolent of Hume.

Most amusing – and demonstrative of my point about the obstinacy with which Russell held his views – is the imaginary dialogue between Nietzsche and Buddha. Russell is so obviously Buddha’s cutman in this philosophical fight over values that one begins to wonder how secure Russell’s sanity is. The grand narrative of the history of Western philosophy is paused for an imaginary sparring match between a nineteenth century German and a third century BC Indian. Russell even smuggles Jesus into ringside at one point.

The problem is not even necessarily that Russell miscasts Machiavelli and Nietzsche (and Kant and Hegel, among many others), but that his judgments hedge his own rather imperious evaluations of the world; he is so firm in his convictions that his mischaracterisations seem ridiculously imbalanced. Instead of weighing each thinker on his merits, Russell judges the history of Western philosophy according to its utility in his own messianic-moralistic worldview.

Russell is important as a social commentator because of his affinity of opinion with many of the leading figures of the present globalising revolution. I am certain that I know with which camp Russell would throw his lot in in the current debate over the range and influence of political correctness. Nevertheless, Russell, as a man of brilliant insight into logical and philosophical affairs, and with a great interest in improving the education and dignity of the common man, remains the last most important public intellectual in British history.