“If you can fall in love again and again,” Henry Miller wrote as he contemplated the measure of a life well lived on the precipice of turning eighty, “if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical… you’ve got it half licked.” Seven years earlier, the great British philosopher, mathematician, historian, and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) considered the same abiding question at the same life-stage in a wonderful short essay……Continue reading….
By: Maria Popova
Source: The Marginalian
.
Critics:
Russell participated in many broadcasts over the BBC, particularly The Brains Trust and for the Third Programme, on various topical and philosophical subjects. By this time Russell was known outside academic circles, frequently the subject or author of magazine and newspaper articles, and was called upon to offer opinions on a variety of subjects, even mundane ones.
En route to one of his lectures in Trondheim, Russell was one of 24 survivors (out of 43 passengers) of an aeroplane crash in Hommelvik in October 1948. He said he owed his life to smoking since the people who drowned were in the non-smoking part of the plane. A History of Western Philosophy (1945) became a best-seller and provided Russell with a steady income for the remainder of his life.
In 1942, Russell argued in favour of a moderate socialism, capable of overcoming its metaphysical principles. In an inquiry on dialectical materialism, launched by the Austrian artist and philosopher Wolfgang Paalen in his journal DYN, Russell said: “I think the metaphysics of both Hegel and Marx plain nonsense—Marx’s claim to be ‘science’ is no more justified than Mary Baker Eddy’s. This does not mean that I am opposed to socialism.”
In 1943, Russell expressed support for Zionism: “I have come gradually to see that, in a dangerous and largely hostile world, it is essential to Jews to have some country which is theirs, some region where they are not suspected aliens, some state which embodies what is distinctive in their culture”.
In a speech in 1948, Russell said that if the USSR’s aggression continued, it would be morally worse to go to war after the USSR possessed an atomic bomb than before it possessed one, because if the USSR had no bomb the West’s victory would come more swiftly and with fewer casualties than if there were atomic bombs on both sides.
At that time, only the United States possessed an atomic bomb, and the USSR was pursuing an aggressive policy towards the countries in Eastern Europe which were being absorbed into the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. Many understood Russell’s comments to mean that Russell approved of a first strike in a war with the USSR, including Nigel Lawson, who was present when Russell spoke of such matters. Others, including Griffin, who obtained a transcript of the speech, have argued that he was explaining the usefulness of America’s atomic arsenal in deterring the USSR from continuing its domination of Eastern Europe.
Just after the atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Russell wrote letters, and published articles in newspapers from 1945 to 1948, stating clearly that it was morally justified and better to go to war against the USSR using atomic bombs while the United States possessed them and before the USSR did.
In September 1949, one week after the USSR tested its first A-bomb, but before this became known, Russell wrote that the USSR would be unable to develop nuclear weapons because following Stalin’s purges only science based on Marxist principles would be practised in the Soviet Union. After it became known that the USSR had carried out its nuclear bomb tests, Russell declared his position advocating the total abolition of atomic weapons.
In 1948, Russell was invited by the BBC to deliver the inaugural Reith Lectures what was to become an annual series of lectures, still broadcast by the BBC. His series of six broadcasts, titled Authority and the Individual, explored themes such as the role of individual initiative in the development of a community and the role of state control in a progressive society. Russell continued to write about philosophy.
He wrote a foreword to Words and Things by Ernest Gellner, which was highly critical of the later thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and of ordinary language philosophy. Gilbert Ryle refused to have the book reviewed in the philosophical journal Mind, which caused Russell to respond via The Times. The result was a month-long correspondence in The Times between the supporters and detractors of ordinary language philosophy, which was ended when the paper published an editorial critical of both sides but agreeing with the opponents of ordinary language philosophy.
In the King’s Birthday Honours of 9 June 1949, Russell was awarded the Order of Merit and the following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. When he was given the Order of Merit, George VI was affable but embarrassed at decorating a former jailbird, saying, “You have sometimes behaved in a manner that would not do if generally adopted”. Russell merely smiled, but afterwards claimed that the reply “That’s right, just like your brother” immediately came to mind.
In 1952, Russell was divorced by Spence, with whom he had been very unhappy. Conrad, Russell’s son by Spence, did not see his father between the time of the divorce and 1968 (at which time his decision to meet his father caused a permanent breach with his mother). Russell married his fourth wife, Edith Finch, soon after the divorce, on 15 December 1952.
They had known each other since 1925, and Edith had taught English at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, sharing a house for 20 years with Russell’s old friend Lucy Donnelly. Edith remained with him until his death, and, by all accounts, their marriage was a happy, close, and loving one. Russell’s eldest son John suffered from mental illness, which was the source of ongoing disputes between Russell and his former wife Dora.
In 1962 Russell played a public role in the Cuban Missile Crisis: in an exchange of telegrams with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev assured him that the Soviet government would not be reckless. According to historian Peter Knight, after JFK’s assassination, Russell, “prompted by the emerging work of the lawyer Mark Lane in the US .
Rallied support from other noteworthy and left-leaning compatriots to form a ‘Who Killed Kennedy committee’ in June 1964, members of which included Michael Foot MP, Caroline Benn (wife of Tony Benn MP), the publisher Victor Gollancz, the writers John Arden and J. B. Priestley, and the Oxford history professor Hugh Trevor-Roper.” Russell published a highly critical article in The Minority of One weeks before the Warren Commission report was published, setting forth 16 Questions on the Assassination.
Russell equated the Oswald case with the Dreyfus affair of late 19th-century France, in which the state convicted an innocent man. Russell also criticised the American press for failing to heed any voices critical of the official version.
Online Marketing Scoops 
Leave a Reply