Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a British-born analytic philosopher, logician, essayist and political activist. His primary philosophical work was in mathematical philosophy, where he argued that mathematics could be reduced to logic (logicism). Russell was also imprisoned for his opposition to the First World War, and was the founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Russell wrote voluminously, including a lengthy History of Western Philosophy, essays on his attitude to religion including Sceptical Essays and Why I Am Not A Christian (a talk given in 1927 at Battersea Town Hall).

Philosophy

One of Russell's primary contributions in philosophy, mathematics and set theory is Russell's Paradox, which he discovered in 1901. The paradox is that the set of all sets which are not members of themselves is a member of itself is itself a member of that set. The significance of this is that all logical sentences are based on a contradiction.

Another important contribution that Russell made to philosophy was that of his theory of definite descriptions, which attempt to provide a rigorous analysis of statements of the form 'the F is G' - such as 'the King of France is bald'. The question of importance is whether or not the sentence 'the King of France is bald' has any meaning, and since there is no King of France, it makes little sense to talk about him being bald. Before Russell, this problem was solved by positing 'nonexistent entities', entities that exist in place. Russell analysed the truth conditions of 'the King of France is bald' as the conjoint of the following propositions:

1. There is at least one King of France.
2. There is at most one King of France.
3. All things that are Kings of France are bald.

If any one of these three is false, then the statement 'the King of France is bald' is false. If all three are true, then the statement is true.

Social activism

Russell was a pacifist, opposing both the first and second world wars. In 1954, he broadcast on BBC radio a lecture entitled Man's Peril which condemned the Bikini H-bomb tests. In 1955, he collaborated with Albert Einstein in writing the Russell-Einstein Manifesto which called for the curtailment of nuclear weapons. Russell's anti-nuclear activism led to the foundation of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Russell organised a tribunal - the Russell Tribunal, sometimes known as the International War Crimes Tribunal - which was hosted by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. This investigated the actions of American forces in Vietnam. This was preceded by a book entitled War Crimes in Vietnam. The tribunal had as members a variety of scientists, philosophers and other intellectuals, as well as political representatives, artists and lawyers. The tribunal concluded that the United States government had committed genocide in Vietnam. Following this, the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation organized the Citizens Commissions of Inquiry, which held similar hearings across the United States.

Views on religion

Russell's views on religion were atheistic, and anti-religious:

I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them.

Russell responded to many of the arguments of religious apologists, and debated with the Jesuit priest Frederick Copleston on BBC radio in 1948. In 1952, Russell wrote an article for Illustrated Magazine which was not published, in which he drew an analogy of God to a teapot, arguing that the burden of proof should be on the religious believer to prove his claims, rather than the skeptic having to disprove claims which are either wildly improbable or not falsifiable:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

City College controversy

In 1940, Bertrand Russell was nominated for appointment as a philosophy lecturer at City College in New York City. His appointment was blocked by a lobbying campaign led by religious groups.

Russell was teaching at the University of California when the administration of City College approved his appointment, followed by the Board of Higher Education who voted unanimously in favour of his appointment. He was to teach courses on logic, the philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science.

Bishop Mannning of the Protestant Episcopal Church was the first to protest, writing to newspapers across New York, noting Russell is a "recognised propagandist against both religion and morality, and who specifically defends adultery". This was followed by villifying letters in The Tablet, the weekly Jesuit journal America, William Randolph Hearst's newspapers Journal and American and a number of other religious publications.

In response, academics, liberal religious groups, philosophers, scientists, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Committee for Cultural Freedom and former students came to Russell's defense, as did those in charge of scholarly societies like the American Mathematical Association, American Sociological Association, American Historial Association, American Philosophical Association and the American Association of University Professors. A group of academics wrote to the mayor of New York, Follette LaGuardia, urging him not to take the side of the protestors, arguing that not doing so would put in perl "the whole structure of intellectual freedom upon which American university life rests".

A lawsuit was also led by Mrs Jean Kay, a parent of a City College student, claiming that Russell's lax and atheistic views on sex and marriage put her daughter in danger (despite women not being allowed to take day courses in the liberal arts at the time). The lawyer representing her wrote in a brief that Russell's work was "lecherous, libidinous, lustful, venerous, erotomaniac, aphrodisiac, irreverent, narrow-minded, untruthful, and bereft of moral fiber", and that Russell was a sophist, a nudist, a homosexual sympathiser, a writer of obscene poetry and had run a nudist colony in England.

Russell's appointment was eventually rejected by the courts.