Customer Reviews

Russell: The Great Philosophers (The Great Philosophers Series)

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Ray Monk makes it clear in this book that he dislikes Russell.

As a hitherto ardent Russophile, this ought to have given me cause for concern that I would find problems with this book.

I nonetheless recommend it to even those of a similar disposition to myself, it is probably the best biography (of any subject) that I have ever read.

It attempts to be more probing and insightful (and thus results in being more contentious) than anything I have ever read concerning Russell's motivations, both conscious and otherwise.

For someone who has taken us so far towards appreciating the tragic explanations for their subject's weaknesses, Ray Monk himself perhaps needs to explain why dislike has emerged rather than sysmpathy.

Or perhaps answering this question is ultimately a job for this biographer's biographer?

This tiny book amazes me. Rather than attempt a biography, Monk focuses on one theme of Russell's life: his adventure with mathematics and the drive to reduce all of mathematics to logic, crystallized as a pristine whole of pure beauty -- the ultimate achievement of rational thought. Retracing the inspiration, successes, and ultimate defeat of that program, interpolating through the stages of Russell's own writings, Monk provides us with a glimpse of the integrity of a life committed to taking a major philosophical inquiry to an honest but unwanted and discouraging conclusion. In retracing the path of Russell's mathematical passion, Monk provides brief thumbnails of the major concepts that illuminated the route to today's mathematical logic and its foundational construction: one that in itself demonstrates the impossibility of a purely logical system that resolves all of mathematics as a wonder of deductive reasoning.

Question: How would Ray Monk follow his wildly successful biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein? Answer: He takes on the life of Wittgenstein's teacher, and the most public philosopher of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell.

There are a myriad of biographies of Russell in and out of print; even the most ardent Russell admirer could easily admit burnout on this score. Russell himself penned an autobiography that lends itself more to literature than fact. Why should one spend money and time on yet another biography?

Two reasons should suffice, I hope. Monk is a thorough biographer, but not an adoring one. Although some others have also been critical, none brings to the subject the background in analytical philosophy that Monk does, and this is an important factor when discussing the life and thought of a philosopher, for both are obviously and subtly interwined in the subject.

Secondly, Russell was more than an academic philosopher, he was a public figure who was more well known than his philosophy. His life was lived in the pages of the press and made great fodder for the newshounds. Whether it was his many love affairs (including a disastrous one with poet T.S. Eliot's unstable wife Vivian) or his peace campaign during the first World War that led to his jailing by the English government, Russell always made good copy. Monk takes the reader behind the headlines to the events and forces that shaped the young Russell's life and philosophy. His partnership with Alfred North Whitehead in the co-authorship of Principia Mathematica is expertly handled, as is Russell's later dalliance with the Bloomsbury Group.

This is the first of two projected volumes and I can't wait to read Part Two.

This is really a great book. It has everything a book should have, a good plot, interesting characters (or character, as the case may be), topology, set theory, Hegelianism, and a fight with Goedel. Monk is amazingly good at explaining complicated things but also at getting across to the reader why the complicated things are so important. I should really stop repeating myself, but what is amazing about this book is its marriage of detail and plain good writing. It is a model of how this sort of thing (exposition of ideas) ought to be done. Kudos to Monk for a great book.

I can only agree with what has gone before. A truly wonderful "book", if that's what you call these short 58 page things. Takes the view that the "fall" from Platonism to nominalism in mathematics is the key to Russell's development as a philosopher. I don't know if it's true or not, since Russell had such a complicated life, but it is an utterly fascinating hypothesis, and completely accessible, as Monk unfolds the account. The writing is so smooth I could barely tell when Monk transitioned to new topics.

After finishing Ray Monk's brilliant _Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius_, I rushed to order his more recent bio of Bertrand Russell from Amazon. The good news is that Monk applies the same scrupulous research, insight, and objectivity to Russell as he did to Wittgenstein. The bad news is that, to me at least, Russell was so much less of an interesting figure than Wittgenstein, that the hundreds of pages of careful Russell biography (covering only the first half of his long life, mind you!) get tiresome pretty quickly. Monk manages to convey the stark contrast between Russell's public and private lives, and how acutely Russell felt this difference, but mostly what this book is about is whose wife Russell is sleeping with at a given time (R. seems to have been interested only in married women), with excerpts from the embarrassingly heart-felt letters he writes when he dumps one of these femmes fatales for the next one. Ray Monk has probably written the definitive long biography on the younger Bertrand Russell. The question is, do you really want to read it?

Strange as it may seem, I began to read this book after reading its sequel, but got the same good impression of it all, because what counts most is both the stature of Bertrand Russel and the way it is portrayed by Ray Monk.
"The Spirit of Solitude" is simply fascinating, covering the years Russell dedicated to the philosophy of Mathematics, a subject that is so complex, that completely absorved him, causing his first marriage to collapse amidst great personnal pain to his wife, making Russell to seek love comfort with women who could fulfill the maternal absence to a man who lost both his parents when a child. The pressure exerted upon him by his grandmother is also elucidative on the ways he chose to mantain his personall life amid a curtain of secrecy, something instrumental in his future evolution as a philosopher.
The apex of his career was hit when he published, along with Whithehead, the voluminous Principia Mathematica, a 4.500 pages book, which took some 10 years of his best efforts, and which was dedicated to the foundations of philosophical thinking in Mathematics. It was such a difficult book to read that even Russell expected that no more than a handfull of great mathematicians could read and understand what was there meant.
This book is a must for everyone interested in Philosophy and the philosophy of mathematical thinking.

This is one of the most stimulating, dazzling, intellectually satisfying, strangely comforting books that I have ever read.

As an academic myself, devoted to the lonely quest for truth, this book was strangely comforting, as I could empathise with some of the struggles Bertrand Russell endured.

This book (along with Lance Armstrong's "It's not about the Bike" and Dag Hammarskjold's "Markings") is very important to me. By reading the many excerpts it includes of Russell's letters and diaries, I have come across many stunningly phrased morsels of eloquence - yes, Russell's behaviour is sometimes horrifying, yet rather than this make the book unpleasant, it actually made it a learning experience. I learnt things about humanity that were meaningful to me, and I experienced (and learnt from) the many exquisite phrases.

Any negativity concerning Russell's character was, from my perspective, *completely* eclipsed by the rewarding, educating and intellectually and emotionally intense experience of reading this remarkable book.
I do not that often discover books that are very meaningful and brilliant; I would be very happy if over the next few years I accidentally stumble upon a *handful* of books that measure up to the standards that my current favourites have achieved. Until then I will just have to re-read my favourites.

(I found this book so dense with insight that I actually started a file on my computer where I type notes from this biography concerning ideas and phrases that were particularly interesting/beautiful.)

This is a very good biography of a very interesting man. (I am merely amused by the previous two readers who say the opposite! It reminds one of the reaction to Russell in his own time...)

Russell's wit, passion, intellect shine through his life. His crusade against religion, superstition and oppression is inspiring. His vision is true and simple. All of these can be much better appreciated by reading this book and seeing the lovable man behind the powerful thoughts!

The first part of Ray Monk's outstanding biography of Bertrand Russell centres more on his love life than on his philosophical or political evolution.

It shows us a restless Russell, fearing (hereditary) madness and becoming a real womanizer after the break-up of his first marriage.

The number of letters which Russell wrote to his (ex-)lovers is truly amazing and Ray Monk quotes profusely from them.

The reactions of the husband of Ottoline Morrell, Russell's lifelong friend and most important mistress, shows that apparently promiscuity in the British High Society was not a problem.

On the philosophical front, Ray Monk doesn't explain very clearly Russell's essential logical discoveries (see B. Magee - Confessions of a philosopher). On the other hand, the importance of Peano's work, his clashes with Wittgenstein (who torpedoed a big part of Russell's work) and D.H. Lawrence (for Russell, a fascist) as well as his questioning of G. Frege (whose work was annihilated by one question by Russell) are very well documented.

Politically, Russell became a utopian socialist (no private property, which was the source of all evil) and later a real liberal fighting for universal suffrage also for women.

A key event in his life was the outbreak of WWI. It shattered definitively his trust in mankind. He became a sceptic and a convinced pacifist for the rest of his life.

Although I found that there were too many love letter excerpts in this book, it remains a fascinating read.