Who was Bertrand Russell?
Bertrand Russell was born in 1872 in Trellech, Wales, into an aristocratic Liberal family. He helped found analytic philosophy. He ran for Parliament as a supporter of votes for women in 1907, and for Labour in 1922 and 1923. He spoke out against the First World War, lost his post at Trinity College and was held in Brixton Prison for five months in 1918. He inherited an earl's title in 1931 and won the 1950 Nobel Prize for literature. In old age he became a figurehead of the anti-nuclear and anti-Vietnam War movements, and he died at his home in Wales in 1970.
Political views
- His 1920 trip to Soviet Russia ended his sympathy for Bolshevism. Later he condemned Stalin's totalitarian rule.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- He backed guild socialism, a system run by workers' guilds, and a democratic world government.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- He opposed Britain's part in the First World War. In 1918 he went to prison over an article suggesting US troops could be used against British strikers.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- He said organized religion is untrue and harmful to society. He also wanted children taught about sex and looser sexual rules.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- In 1955 he put his name to the Russell-Einstein Manifesto on the danger of nuclear war. In 1958 he became founding president of CND, Britain's anti-nuclear group.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- In 1961 he served a week in jail because he would not stop organizing a huge sit-down protest against nuclear weapons.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- He spoke out against the Vietnam War and in 1966 set up an international tribunal to judge American conduct in it.Source: plato.stanford.edu
Legacy
Russell is remembered as a great logician and as one of the best known public rebels of his century. Admirers praise his bravery in standing against the 1914-18 war, his defence of free thought and his early leadership against nuclear arms. Critics call his political judgment uneven. They point to his backing of appeasement in the 1930s, his disputed 1948 remarks that seemed to favor a preventive war against Moscow, and his willingness to lend his name to campaigns that treated American policy harshly. In 1940 a court in New York blocked his job at City College, calling him morally unfit because of his writing on sex and marriage.
In their own words
“I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.”