Overview
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) was a British philosopher, logician, and public intellectual who helped found analytic philosophy. With A. N. Whitehead he pursued logicism in Principia Mathematica; “On Denoting” transformed theory of reference. He wrote accessible books on knowledge, religion, and happiness alongside technical work. Pacifism in World War I cost him Cambridge employment; later he campaigned against nuclear weapons. Handbook dates: 1872–1970. Nobel Prize in Literature (1950) recognized his philosophical prose and advocacy.
Main ideas
Logicism holds that mathematics is reducible to logic; type theory aimed to block paradoxes such as Russell’s own. The theory of descriptions analyzes definite descriptions so that empty reference need not posit nonexistent entities. Knowledge by acquaintance versus description structures his early epistemology. Logical atomism sought to map language onto simple facts—later modified under criticism. Ethically and politically he defended liberalism, scientific temper, and anti-authoritarian education. Clarity and argumentative charity were methodological ideals as much as doctrines.
Major works
- Principia Mathematica
- On Denoting
- The Problems of Philosophy
- History of Western Philosophy
Legacy
His technical methods and public intellectual role shaped modern analytic philosophy and popular philosophy writing. Students including Wittgenstein transformed, then contested, his program. Activism linked logical rigor to civic courage in the nuclear age.
Themes in this archive
Happiness (1) · Love (1) · Morality (1) · Knowledge (1)
Quotes by theme
Bertrand Russell on happiness · Bertrand Russell on fear · Bertrand Russell on love · Bertrand Russell on knowledge