[lit-ideas] Re: Russell and biographers
- From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 05 Aug 2004 17:52:48 PDT
Mike quotes Conant:
Monk's biography helps us to see ways in which Russell's work as
whole is, in some respects, a tragic failure - the ways in which and
the reasons why Russell was unable to think his projects through to a
satisfactory conclusion, so that his entire intellectual life was
marked by his restlessly moving from one project of great promise to
the next, often failing to carry through on them.
*I wasn't impressed by Monk on Russell and must confess I didn't finish it. It
has nowhere near the elan and continuity of his Wittgenstein biography.
Russell's own Autobiography, and his My Philosophical Development are better
reads, philosophically speaking. (Of course, Russell doesn't diagnose his own
failure, although he does admit that he simply burned out after the completion
of vol. I of Principia Mathematica.)
*Russell wanted two usually incompatible things: philosophical mastery, and
popular fame. He was also driven to seek out relationships with women that got
in the way of both. For a time he thought that the fresh, brilliant,
Wittgenstein could more or less take over and carry on the great project of
logicism Russell had imagined; but in fact there was, after the discovery of the
paradox of classes, no more great project of logicism, which had been killed by
it. Morever, Wittgenstein's presence and whim of iron exhausted Russell even
further, and his contempt for Russell's popular writings on top of it all must
have been nearly unbearable.
*I'd disagree with Conant, insofar as I can't really identify any projects 'of
great promise' of Russell's over and beyond a more perspicuous working out of
Frege's logicism (the attempt to ground mathematics in logic), and his work with
reference and denotation in 'On Denoting.' Russell's brilliant philosophical
career was over in the early years of the twentieth century. From then on it was
all intellectual pot-boilers, essays, and Ban the Bomb marches. Was there
genuine promise there, ever? What should one want--failed promise, or doing the
best one can, in spite of it all? In many ways, he seems to have been his own
worst enemy. A British childhood can do that to you.
Robert Paul
Reed College
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
