John Ongley investigates what Bertrand Russell thought about human reason. The economist John Maynard Keynes once said of his Cambridge friends in the years before World War I – including the philosophers Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore – that while their conversations were all bright, amusing and clever, there was “no solid diagnosis of human …
Tony Simpson tells us how the Russell-Einstein manifesto led to Pugwash. “He was not only a great scientist but a great man, a man whom it is good to have known and consoling to contemplate.” With these words Bertrand Russell concluded his Preface to Einstein on Peace (1960). Down the years, Russell and Albert Einstein …
Tim Delaney finds joy in Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness. In 1930, Bertrand Russell published The Conquest of Happiness, a book that predates the contemporary fascination with self-help publications by decades. It was described by Russell in the Preface as “not addressed to highbrows, or to those who regard a practical problem merely as …
Vincent Kavaloski reviews both Tolstoy’s insights and his oversight. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”(United States Declaration of Independence, 1776) Do we all pursue happiness? Should …
John R. Lenz tells us why Russell thought philosophy worthwhile. Bertrand Russell did a disservice to philosophy by defining the word. Early in his career he defined philosophy as the logical-analytic method. This definition was so restricting that although he spent the next fifty years writing one book after another on topics such as war, …
Bertrand Russell on The Value of Philosophy for Life Read More »
Peter Stone reveals the deep and varied passions of the analytic philosopher. Philosophy today is intimately associated with the life of the mind – with intellect, thought, and reason. Because of this, it is often thought to be opposed to emotion, feeling, spirit – to passion. It is thought to be a bloodless occupation, practiced …
Francis Akpata explains how Schiller saw art as a path to utopia. The Athenian soldier and statesman Themistocles (523-458 BC) once said, “I cannot fiddle but I can build a great state out of a little city.” How do we build, better than a great state, a beautiful society? When one hears the term ‘beautiful …
Trevor Pateman makes the case for the prosecution. Sara Baume’s A Line Made By Walking (2017) is an impressive piece of recent autobiographical fiction. In it, the narrator repeatedly sets herself the task of identifying a work of art – usually a work of conceptual art – which relates to whatever topic she’s currently thinking …
Tim Weldon detects links between Sherlock Holmes and Blaise Pascal in the operation of intuition. How did the most famous fictional detective in history triumph over evil in over fifty celebrated cases? To what – or to whom – might we attribute his success? Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle self-admittedly modelled Holmes’ manner and …
A Forgiving Reason: The Secret of Sherlock Holmes’ Success Read More »
Carol Nicholson looks at philosophical themes in The Name Of The Rose. (WARNING: CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS.) Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose (1980) was an international bestseller that sold fifty million copies “which puts it in the league of Harry Potter, and ahead of Gone with the Wind, Roget’s Thesaurus, and To Kill …