Bertrand Russell and His Critics
MURPHY, ARTHUR E.
The New Leader Book Page Bertrand Russell and His Critics By ARTHUR E. MURPHY de.cripthr« and critical essays by experts on one phase or another of Russell's philosophy to a "ejly by...
...To turn from a nearlycompleted three-volume classic in mathematical logic to a political campaign is an attempted "union of theory and practice" of a drastic sort...
...There is no genuine meeting of minds on fundamental issues and ?ery little is brought to light with which a careful student will not already have been familiar...
...There it no other way of getting thst match fun for so little flnsncisl investment...
...Very nearly all of these essays will be studied with profit by specialists en the topics with which they deal...
...The seventeenth century v*as the great age of intellectual and social ferment: the rising bourgeoisie were establishing commerce rather than land as the source of wealth...
...There are tome eminent contributors: Reichenbach aad Gddel on Russell's logic...
...This part of the book is for reference and study, not—save in rare cases—for the non-fictional entertainment of the general reader...
...Readers of The New Leader who know Major Armour st his social snd subtle best will want to learn what these roundelays tell us about army psychology...
...Whst hints—It'any—can we find of the til'* subconscious, tuperconscious or unconscious...
...Just s goodnstured snd rather longsuffering chap in uniform emerges—taking life's slings and arrows with a patient grin./ The slick perfection of Richard Armour's technique—at well at the sum of all hi* attitudes—appears at its high point In the Anal quatrain: This is tht brief epitome Of all you need to know: A private hat no privacy, A doughboy hat no dough...
...however, the Haller-Davies volume presents the important Declaration of Some Proceedings by Lillburne, Lillburne's Just Defence and excerpts from Legall Fundamental Liberties of the People of England, which are missing from the former volume...
...The pictures, drawn by H. Middleeamp, sre s delicious dividend...
...Vin/i and ita nrvarnrr in tha --¦—_ at* ita kind and ita pretence in the volume it enough to lend it genuine philosophical dittinction...
...Not only has it kept him, during most of his life, from the position in a British or American university which his intellectual attainments so obviously merit, but it has also left him isolated from the chief left-wing intellectual oi-thodosies of the time...
...Some srs dissppointing...
...And it was not Russell's fault that it did not succeed...
...The New Leader Book Page Bertrand Russell and His Critics By ARTHUR E. MURPHY de.cripthr« and critical essays by experts on one phase or another of Russell's philosophy to a "ejly by the ft^J^Lt??i« ?-^Ve tht mirderstandingS *nd meet the ob^tio"» o?hi...
...Their manifestoes, forceful in- their assertions and' vibrant in tone, el ill strike responsive cWer-ds today...
...Columbia University Press...
...Lindemsn, Bode and Hook en aspects of his social philosophy, and Brigktman en his philosophy of religion, sa welt ss some less well-known writers, bringing the total of papers to twentyone and covering fairly completely the topics on which even to versatile a philosopher as Bertrand Russell has found time to express his convictions...
...Thomas Nelson and Sons...
...history not in the dull fashion of "showing the errors" of the pttt, but as a re-creation of the past to vivify snd inspire the people who read it, history which can be relived snd ran provide examples in the sacrifices and dreams of other generations...
...Weber snd Tawney have shown the role of Protestantism in the rise of Capitalism...
...These volumes under review, reproducing the pamphlets of the Leveller movements, show how the strujfgte^for democracy and social and economic e?rtt*ljty was an integral factor in the emancipation from feudalism...
...Wolfe has written a longer and more comprehensive introduction which is of value for persons seeking a grounding in the period...
...If you want to read a lot of other veries as smart at these, buy the book...
...By Richard Ar...
...Here are 39 snappy snd clicking rhymed compositions...
...A sentence from "My Mental Development" seems to me to sum up in a striking *«y the unique combination of interests that has characterized hit life, and the response to it of his contemporaries...
...It has slso bssn a life of rich and enduring achievement and of high intellectusl courage...
...For democrats ' and socialists, the struggles of generations past, of Spartacus, the Gracchi, the Ciumpi,,the Levellers, the Owenites and Revolutionists of '48 have meaning and content...
...Arthur E. Murphy It Profettor of Philotophy at the Univtrtity of lllineit...
...He welcomes agreement and support where he finds it (and there is an impressive amount of it in these essays), corrects what he takes to be misunderstandings en a number of miscellaneous points, and indicates once more with commendable courtesy the grounds on which he continues to dissgree with men like Brightmsn snd McGill, whose respective theologies are obviously remote from his own way of thinking...
...The Major at the Typewriter By WILLIAM E. BOHN PRIVATES' LIVES...
...Even the most ardent hero-worshiper will fnd it difficult to get much out of Einstein's brief but i-ambling remarks, for example...
...s and tracts are the first eloquent voices for democracy...
...440 pages...
...In 1910, Prtnctpto A/ot/iemnfico being practically finished, I wished to stand for Parliament and should have done so if the Selection Committee had not been shocked to discover that 1 was a free thinker...
...Foreword by Charles Beard...
...Here Russell has been, on the whole, polite, peripheral and perfunctory...
...Writers in the past three decades have be^un to explore those times, (i...
...Edited by Don M. Wolfe...
...AbH becomes a serious journal, I give you a statistical report on Richard Armour's funny book...
...critks ThVbo^J WWlU^«rnhlln,nTar ^ . ™l.^ .1'°*™^ °f " WriUn*8 »"d » USeful indeX' T*" P1™ °f objecting «, eminent philosopher to a really thoroughgoing critical examination while he is still in a position to «peak for himself in reply seemed admirable when Professor...
...5.00...
...Brace Humphries, Inc...
...Russell s autobiographical sketch, "My Mental Development" is a masterpiece -a...
...T *HE appearance of this volume, and especially of the autobiographical essay *>th which it opens, invites some overall comment on the life and work of a philosopher who for almost half a century (hit firtt book appeared in 1896) has been an outstanding and courageous "lure in Anglo-American thought...
...He it an outstanding spokesman of the scientific and democratic tekool of American philotophy, opposing tht obscurantists and neo-medi*vali$tS.} Seeds of Revolt By DANIEL BELL LEVELLER MANIFESTOS OF THE PURITAN REVOU'TIAN...
...The strongest snd truest voices were those of The Levellers and The Diggers (or True Levellers...
...The critical essays are of uneven quality...
...The basic importance of the Leveller doctrines was the insistence on the inalienable nature of individual rights and the sovereignty of the people...
...Ten show him having fun...
...the thinking of such philosophers as Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, and scientists such as Boyle, were destroying the Aristotelian system which had held sway in the later middle ages...
...Only in his reply to Bode does he discover an opponent whom he takes to be "(in an impersonal sense) an enemy," and for this, as an impartial reader of Bodes essay will be likely to agree, he has considerable provocation...
...inour...
...For the free thinker, at his best, is also an intellectual pioneer, carrying the methods of rational inquiry Into new territory and finding the justification for his work not in the cheers of his psrty but in the discoversble truth of hit findings—a truth on which who coma after him ran build and in whose extension and clarification men of good will can freely work together...
...And thirdly, because they feared the concentration of controls, the Levellers advocated the separation of powers in government...
...The Deweyites will never quite forgive him for his irreverent (and sometimes inaccurate) remarks about their doctrines, nor the Stalinists for laying profane hands on the ark of dialectical materialism...
...But the reader who attempts to go through them in sequence and to gain from them a composite picture of Russell's philosophy is as likely to be bewildered as enlightened...
...The spokesmen fpr the Levellers, John Lillburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn, were skilled pamphleteers and agitators, forerunners of Tom Paine a century later...
...They are written by a soldier about soldiers...
...No trace of hate or figure of feartomonett...
...Einstein en his philosophy of science...
...The seventeenth century, preeminently the age of the beginnings of science, was also the age of the beginnings of democracy...
...The book on Russell is not, I think, quite up to the standard of some of the earlier volumes, though it inchi les some very valuable essays...
...Vet their petitions, manifesto...
...Schilpp proposed it and has been worked out by him with remarkable industry and considerable success in volumes on Dewey, Santayana, Whitehead and G. E. Moore...
...He has remained, therefore, unattached and independent in an age of "isms" and crusades, and one sees st once the point of Llndeman's remark that "here is a social philosopher for whom society failed to provide a suitable role and a drama big enough for hit acting talents...
...Their program too radical for the heads of the Long Parliament, the Levellers were dispersed and their leaders jailed...
...THE LEVELLER TRACTS, 1647 1668...
...Seme of these studies sre notably good —those of Nagel, Black and Chisholm, for example...
...the emerging national states were undercutting the political power of the feudal lords...
...But it need not be chauvinism...
...the Haller-Davies volume will be of greater service to students and libraries for its complete annotation and reference to other sources...
...481 pages...
...N. Clark and Robert Meiton have traced the growth of science as the product of secular thinking...
...This extension of the sphere of reason to new provinces," Russell tells us, "is something that I vslus very highly...
...G. E. Moore, Nsgel snd Black in the field of philosophical analysis...
...Two exhibit him as a butt ef ridicule...
...And one—yet, jutt 1— shows him making fun of sn officer...
...The crucial section of a work of this tort, however, is the author's reply...
...In this respect, my philosophic life hat been a happy one...
...Edited by William Halter and Godfrey Dnvies...
...From this conception came a second Leveller doctrine of reserved powers, "powers so fundamental and sacred that they must be removed from the control of the elected assembly...
...In a possibly unintended way, the two volumes are an example of a new use for history which we are just beginning to appreciate...
...In the fluid, shifting society of that era, where men no longer were bound by fixed status, voices arose which proclaimed the importance and dignity of man...
...No sticking out of chest* or clicking of heels...
...Well, til you seriout teekers of significance, 26 out of the .19 pay-off poems will show you the fierce fighting man as * sorry sail sack...
...Prof...
...Professor Wolfe and Messers 11h Her and Davies have done a distinct service in collecting these Leveller tracts in annotated form...
...Nineteen documents are presented in the first, sixteen in the second, with duplication only in four...
...Thit is, you will sec, an utterly unmilitaristic volume...
...Among living philosophers there are few indeed to whom as high a tribute can be paid...
...This is history as heroicism...
...Laird, Stare snd Boedin en Russell's treatment of more traditional Issues in epistemology snd metaphysics...
...The Mallei collection omits the important Agreement of the People, a basic document in constitutional history, which is reproduced in the Wolfe text...
...And If you wsnt to give some soldier of yours something which he will really sppreciate, send him these snspshots of Privates' Livtt...
...Philosophic rationality may be choked in the shocks of war and the welter of new persecuting superstitions, but One msy hope thst it will not be lost utterly or for more then a few centuries...
...Yet, if society failed to provide him with a suitable role, he hat not failed to find one for himtelf, nor is the drama in which he has played his part a minor one in the development of the human spirit...
...This "Reply to Crtlicitm" cannot, therefore, be counted as a msjor contribution to Russell's philosophy, though, like almost everything he writes, >t sometimes tays with remarkable felicity something that only a really first-rate philosopher could have said...
...6.60...
...The Levellers, a part of the Puritan movement of Cromwell, went even further than the demands of the Protector and advocated the levelling of all ranks...
...11.26...
...The shock of discovering that he ia a free-thinker has by no means been confined to British selection committees...
...The Levellers with their emphasis on political reforms, and the Diggers, led by Gerrad Winstanley, with their insistence on the social and economic j ights of the people, were the first radical movement of modern times._____¦ They planted the "seeds of revolt...
...Drawings by Middleeamp...
Vol. 27 • December 1944 • No. 48
