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Bertrand Russell: 1921-1970, The Ghost of Madness

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When great and important people merge productively, then fall out bitterly, the reverberations often last for generations. Their admirers continue the quarrel long after the original protagonists are dead, often with more passion than the protagonists themselves. Plato and Aristotle?s respective followers engaged in passionate mutual denunciation from medieval times to the C19th, though they couldn?t raise much heat now. Wagner and Nietzsche provide a 19th century example, Lennon and McCartney a twentieth century one. The Wittgenstein-Russell break-up has to date bubbled under with fewer publicly noticeable manifestations (an example before Monk's book is the portrayal of Russell in Derek Jarman's entertaining film "Wittgenstein"), but we will hear more of it.

The breakup was really not that dramatic. Russell recognised Wittgenstein's brilliance and persuaded him to take up philosophy, treating him with considerable and apparently typical generosity at both a material and intellectual level. For a while the two men were colleagues and friends, until Wittgenstein broke away on finding his own philosophical direction. Russell admired Wittgenstein's early work but was dismayed by the rest, considering it a journey into mysticism. (And indeed Wittgenstein is one pavingstone on the road that led to Derrida, though fortunately he is much more than that.)

Their friendship ended with some anger and mutual disappointment but no real scenes, no dramatic denunciations. Wittgenstein and Russell attended the same social events long after the breakup, including the famous incident where Wittgenstein waved a poker, threateningly in some accounts, at Karl Popper. (Russell's stern, "Wittgenstein, put that poker down!" was easily the most sensible and ethically incisive remark made during that infamous meeting of minds, and Wittgenstein?s acquiescence suggests some lingering respect for Russell.)

The relative lack of heat between the actual protagonists has not prevented their followers from carrying on the dispute, though more on the Wittgensteinian than the Russellian side. Wittgenstein founded a cult based around himself, and to some extent that cult-like aura remains, while Russell's style and fortunes were different. Russell was the world's best-known philosopher and a leader of the world peace movement. His reputation and renown were vast in the 1950s and 1960s until his death in 1970. As a result, by the 1980s Russell was as unfashionable as flared trousers. Russell had no "cult" except in the different sense that mass phenomena like U2 or Madonna were "cult figures". Instead, Russell inspired one generation and was forgotten by the next. Russell's philosophical reputation is only recovering now from that late-twentieth century nadir (as are flared trousers). Meanwhile Wittgenstein's cult grew steadily, while remaining in many respects cult-like.

Monk?s book appears to be part of the Wittgenstein-Russell fall-out. Monk is the author of a very good and sympathetic biography of Wittgenstein, which does all the things that his two-volume biography of Russell (of which this is the second volume) fails to do. Wittgenstein was an impossible man who caused enormous damage to many of his followers. But Monk's biography rightly shows that Wittgenstein's worst is balanced by his best, and tries to reveal the human beneath the sometimes arrogant or vindictive or destructive behaviour. Similarly, Monk gives a sympathetic account of Wittgenstein's philosophy, showing why it is of enduring value.

His biography of Russell has none of these merits, and of the two volumes the second ("The Ghost of Madness") is far the worse. Monk presents us with Russell's vices (his vanity, his failures to see or sometimes sympathise with the human feelings of those around him, including his lovers and his family, who he on occasion treated appallingly badly), but with little or no attempt at understanding, or placing these faults in perspective. This is not to say that I think that any of the facts Monk has chosen to present are incorrect, or that there are not incidents here that make me think less of Russell. But I have read other accounts of what Russell was like, and it is clear that Monk has selected fiercely, avoiding stories that show Russell as funny, or decent, or kind. Monk's Russell is simply a monster with none of the roundness of a human being: not a portrait but a caricature.

Monk's antipathy to Russell is so strong that he even despises Russell's virtues, inviting us to do the same. Russell turned to popular writing partly because he had given his money away to various good causes, from women's suffrage to the peace movement. He lost his Cambridge post after being jailed for speaking against the First World War. Monk tries to present Russell's courage in the cause of peace (he went to jail again, in that cause, in old age the 1960s), the generosity that made him poor, and his response to financial privation by writing, as faults: not merely valueless but actually disgraceful. That won't do.

Similarly, Monk's account of Russell's philosophical work, after the split with Wittgenstein, is not explication but dismissal. To Monk, Russell did some interesting but failed work in _Principia Mathematica_ and _The Principles of Mathematics_, which Monk presents rather as half-blind precursors to Wittgenstein. Monk's Russell, unlike the real one, soon abandoned serious philosophical work. In reality Russell's later work, on epistemology rather than mathematics, on the resigned compromises we must engage in when we say we "know" something, is (I observe and predict) leading the revival of interest in and appreciation of Russell. Monk sees no value in this work, and indeed from a Wittgensteinian point of view it _has_ no value.

AJ Ayer concludes his own book on Russell as person and philosopher (recommended) by describing Russell as "not a saint, but a good man". With all his faults and weaknesses, Russell deserved better than this book, in which Monk descends from biography to partisan hatchet job. We still need a good, balanced, life of Russell using material that couldn't be used while key people were alive. The time for hagiography is past; but there is no real need for demonography either.

Cheers!

Laon

Don't get me wrong, I am a serious Ray Monk fan, and a serious Russell devotee, but that's just the problem.

Ray Monk, although he puts Russell's mathematical achievements at the pinnacle of human endeavour, finds everything else about Russell to be pathetic and disgusting.

This book, which is about the second half of Russell's life (and Ray Monk has written a biography of the first half called 'The Spirit Of Solitude' which is equally compulsive reading, but suffers from the same love-hate relationship with Russell) has much more biographical material than any previous book on Russell BUT almost every new fact is framed from Ray Monk's perspective of disdain and contempt.

Russell had a traumatic childhood, with the death of his sister (diphtheria) then that of his mother and father coming in rapid succession at about the age of four, followed by a mostly isolated upbringing by his grandparents.

Instead of finding this tragic early influence a basis for sympathy and understanding, Monk uses it as a basis for finding a river of underlying insanity and evil flowing beneath the actions and writings of what he considers to be a monster who should not have lived past the completion of his mathematical masterpiece.

Just as it is important to have a biography written by someone who is not blind to the faults of their subject, it is also important to have the biographer not hate their subject, or have some kind of grudge against them or some aspect of their lives.

Monk cannot bear the fact that Russell does not live up to Monk's lofty expectations, that a god of mathematics, a subject of absolute moral purity, has human frailties and imperfections.

Consequently, despite the fact that Russell did an enormous number of interesting things in the second five decades of his life, in literature, philosophy, politics, science, mathematics, logic, education and psychology, this is all not good enough for Monk, who sees anything short of the stature of Russell's greatest work as being an example of Russell's decline.

There is so much detail in Russell's life, and so much analysis by Monk, that even if you question Monk's almost exclusively unfavourable conclusions, you will find this book an extraordinarily mesmerising helter-skelter ride through humanity's most dramatic period of change, as seen through the life of one of its most active and influential participants, even if that life is itself viewed through exceptionally unsympathetic eyes.

I wanted to name my son "Russell" (if I had a son), at one point. In college and (philosophy) grad school I was a tremendous admirer of Russell, in particular his "On Denoting" and other explications of how language and logic works. As a college student in the late '60s I was also impressed and influenced by his staunch (and early) opposition to the Viet Nam war.

So reading The Ghost of Madness was a sad revelation. I had already read, with great enjoyment, Monk's Duty of Genius and Spirit of Solitude, but this volume took me quite a while to get through, cause on nearly every page there was another revelation of Russell's pettiness, and just-plain-meanness, especially to his schizophrenic son and granddaughter, Lucy.

Monk's other 2 main works deserve 5 stars, this one one less cause he lost any semblance of an "objective" biographer's stance (I know I know "objectivity" is problematic...), starting with the preface and acknowledgements.

Ray Monk's biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his first volume of Bertrand Russell, are two of the finest biographies of the twentieth century. While this second volume of Bertrand Russell's life covers the period after his great work in logic and mathematics (and may thus be less fascinating to readers primarily interested in this work), it still has much to offer. This is the fullest treatment to date of Russell's complicated and tragic family life: of the impact which his life had on those around him.

Russell is often thought of as a great campaigner for peace: Ray Monk shows what was left aside when Russell devoted himself to that campaign. The biography, though, is not merely an exposure of the private flaws of a great public figure: there are moments of charm and comedy within the family life too, as when Katherine describes her father on the beach looking "a little like a cockatoo", with his big red sunburned nose, twinkling eyes, crest of white hair and abrupt laughter. There is also a comic side to a hysterical campaign against Russell in America in 1940, when he was denied a lecturing position (in mathematics and logic) because he was alleged to be " lecherous, salacious, libidinous, lustful, venerous, erotomaniac, aphrodisiac, atheistic, irreverent, narrow-minded, bigoted and untruthful", a description more remarkable for its love of adjectives than for its acuity.

Much of the book, however, is harrowing reading: all the more so because some of Russell's best intended initiatives (his conviction that he must not let his baby son see that he adored him) had predictably disastrous results. The most tragic life in the Russell family, and the one which Ray Monk is the first to do full justice to, though, is that of Lucy Russell, Russell's granddaughter. Reading the last pages of this book, it is difficult not to agree with Monk that Russell (and his entire family) was, indeed, haunted by the ghosts of madness.

Having read "Wittgenstein", then vol 1 of this biography, this was a natural and exciting follower. I certainly have to wonder what connection there is to a life associated, at least ab initio, with mathematics and failure in one's personal life. Considering the connection between logic, mathematics, and reasoning, and our need for success with those to be successful in one's life in general, this certainly brings up an issue of a golden mean between extremes. It perhaps also brings up an issue of autism and the genetic predisposition to autism as a range of autism might on one hand lead to outstanding mathematical accomplishment accompanied by outstanding social failure.

It is such a shame that such a great mind would give up such important work for lack of - self discipline? Self control? A family madness? Most telling I thought was the quote given in response to the question "Why did you give up philosophy?" Since his response is shocking but stabs to the heart of the personal difficulties experienced by BR and successfully passed on to almost all of his children and grandchildren one has to wonder was this nurture or nature. A clue seems to be the success of those who had the earliest and longest break in contact. The less contact the more success?

Perhaps an errata sheet should be made available regarding the apparent deleted words. One sentence especially seemed to need "not" to make sense in context, but in general I found my reading to be abruptly halted with the awareness of a word missing - in a context where I could know precisely what word would have been right. I half wonder if RM was using a new word processor or something? I did not notice this at all with vol. 1.

Regardless, of all the things worth reading this will always be high on my recommend list. Great philosophers are easier to understand when we know as much as we can about them as persons. Thanks Ray! Eternally grateful.

As other reviews point out, Monk, who worships Wittgenstein and was generally sympathetic in treating the first half of Russell's life, turns totally negative in the second volume. He criticizes Russell's popular hack-work writing, his radical politics, and his chaotic sexual and family life. Even if one were to share Monk's politics and prudery, one would have to admit that Monk overgeneralizes his attack on Russell.

Monk's criticisms of Russell go beyond the personal and political vendetta even to Russell's technical work. An example of this is Monk's treatment of Russell's book "The Analysis of Matter." (Monk, pp.71-3.) Monk dismisses Russell's structural account of physics, and backs his rejection by citing Russell's own premature acceptance of the thrust of the critical review by the topologist Newman. Russell, despite his apparent vanity and enormous ego tended to overly quickly accept criticism of others, for instance Wittgenstein's criticism of the early manuscript of Russell's theory of knowledge, which the latter did not himself publish. Ironically structuralism or structural realism is a major contender in the philosophy of contemporary theoretical physics. Many cutting edge philosophers of modern physics, for instance Steven French and James Ladyman, treat this approach as a live and serious option. Others, such as Thomas Ryckman treat it as an opposing view worthy of counter-argument. Monk, driven by his anti-Russell animus gone wild, casually dismisses this approach as worthless, ignorant of more recent developments in the philosophy of physics.

Another example is in Monk's treatment of Russell's more serious historical and political writings. Monk dismisses Russell's work "Power" (pp. 212-14) as simply an emotive and banal piece of sermonizing, devoid of any theoretical analysis. It is odd then that Steven Lukes, for instance, includes Russell, along with theorists such as Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, Georg Simmell, Habermas, John Kenneth Garlbraith, and Foucault, in his anthology on "Power."

Similarly Monk dismisses Russell's "Freedom and Organization 1814-1914" as "amateurish" and "not a serious contribution to the historical literature" because it does not contain historical research based on original documents. He ignores that it might be a useful and insightful summary of the main trends of the period.

These are just three examples of the way that Monk in his vendetta against Russell and in some ways understandable dislike of Russell's personality has to discredit even Russell's more serious contributions of his later period.

The book is essentially a form of ?tabloid scholarship.? Mr. Monk is more interested in bedroom tales than with the impact of the awe-inspiring humanism of Earl Russell. The fabrications and mischievous assertions appear to be inspired by some right wing streak which results in a lack of a modicum of integrity and honesty.

Russell?s work as a mathematician, a philosopher and as a humanist, towers above such sensational publications, and of course, outlasts them many generations to come.

This exceptional book is a sequel to The Spirit of Solitude, written by Ray Amok, which covers the first 50 years of Russell's life, and which could be summarized by achieving world fame and academic glory by means of his early work as a philosophical mathematician, specially trough his "Principia Matematica",a monumental theoretical work, with the co-authorship of Whitehead.

Ray Monk magistrally portrays Russell as facing now the challenge of taking a new direction to his life, trying to achieve the same level of academical glory when entering into new fields of knowledge. The story is of a genius who had to prove to himself that he had not lost his intelectual vigour in the ageing proccess and at the same time , balancing his mundane needs trough popular texts written to readers not specialized in philosophy and mathematics, and many other areas where he was proficient.

He marriages now for the second time in his life, with Dora, with he would generate a son (John) and a daughter (Kate), began for him a new era as an educator and as a mass-comunicator, where he approached all the available means (newspapers, magazines, radio panels and lectures) in order to make money thus providing the material means for his special ideas on how to educate his children. He wrote many books on the subject and even inaugurated a special school where his two children where educated along with the children of some upper-class Englishmen and Americans.

He was two be married again twice and to have more children with Peter (yes, a very special nickname of his third wive). In terms of the outcome he got, it was nothing anyone could foresee at the beginning.

To sum it up, the book is a faithful portrait of a tormented man, surrounded by all kinds of people who loved/hated him, and who seems to destroy every inch of happiness one could have before getting to know him. Strange as it seems, the man who was trying to save the world with his pacifist stand against nazism, and later comunism, and all forms of totalitarianism, was incapable of understand the human nature of all people who lived with him.

This is a good book to read to everyone interested in philosophy and in the life of the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.

Because of Russell's political views (his opposition to war and U.S. imperialism) he has always been the subject of attacks by other intellectuals (the late Sidney Hook is a prime example). One only has to compare Monk's work on Russell to his biography of Wittgenstein ("The Duty of Genius" says it all). The interesting thing about each of Monk's biographies is that while both men led solitary lives and maintained erratic beliefs and behavior, Russell is castigated as a "madman" while Wittgenstein is a "genius." It is far too easy as a biographer to portray intellectual celebrities as either geniuses or madman. If you want to hear from the person, Bertie Russell, read his biography instead.

The chilling story of Bertrand Russell's disastrous later life: his ferocious battles with his children, wives and mistresses, his financial needs covered by second-rate newspaper articles and American lectures for older women, his sometimes quite naive political struggles on the side of socialism (all land and capital must be the property of the State) and the peace movement. At the end of his life, he allowed himself to be totally neutralized by an American CIA agent (I quote Bryan Magee). For the author, the reason for these disasters were two fundamental traits of Russell's character: a deep seated fear of madness (a constant in his family) and a quite colossal vanity.
The big shock of his life was the destructive First World War. He became a profound misanthrope, who lost all confidence in humanity. It put nearly an end to all serious philisophical and mathematical work.
Thoroughly documented and extremely well narrated work. The author is very good acquainted with philosophy and mathematics. I miss one name in this provoking work: Karl Popper.