Bertrand Arthus WillamRussel, 3rd Earl Russel. (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British nobleman, philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these in any profound sense. He was born in Monmouthshire, into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Britain. Russel led the British “revolt against idealism” in the early 20th Century. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege and his protege Ludwig Wittgenstein. His widely held to be one of the 20th century’s premier logicians. He co-authored, with A.N.Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay “On Denoting” has been considered a “paradigm of philosophy”. Russel was a prominent anti-war activist; he championed anti-imperialism and went to prison for his pacifism during World War I. Later, he campaigned against Adolf Hitler, then criticized Stalinist totalitarianism, attached the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War, and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament. In 1950 Russel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature :in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought. At the age of 29, in February 1901, Russel underwent what he called a “sort of mystic illumination”, after witnessing Whitehead’s wife’s acute suffering an angina attack. “I found myself filled with semi-mystical feelings about beauty…and with a desire almost as profound as that of the Buddha to find some philosophy which should make human life endurable”, Russel would later recall. “At the end of those five minutes, I had become a completely different person.” In 1910 he became a lecturer in the University of Ambridge, where he was approached by the Austrian engineering student Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became his PhD student. Russel viewed Wittgenstein as a Genius and a successor who would continue his work on logic. A later conviction for publicly lecturing against inviting the US to enter the was on Britain’s side resulted in six month’s imprisonment in Brixton prison in 1918. While in prison, Russel read enormously, and wrote the book introduction to Mathematical philosophy. He was reinstated in 1919, resigned in n1920, was Tarner Lecturer 1926, and became a fellow again in 1044-49.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 03:51:52 +0000
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