Bertrand Russell On - The Value Of Philosophy For Life

John R. Lenz tells us why Russell thought philosophy worthwhile.

- John R. Lenz

Bertrand Russell did a disservice to philosophy by defining the word. Early in his career he defined philosophy as the logical-analytic method. This definition was so restricting that although he spent the next fifty years writing one book after another on topics such as war, peace, happiness, science and society, and the future of mankind, it forced him to describe most of them as ‘popular’ or ‘nonphilosophical’. In fact, he gradually developed an alternative view of philosophy and its value for humanity.

His many popular books are unfairly ignored by historians of ideas and those interested in Russell as a philosopher. Of course, his many-sided activities, popular writings and work for peace are well-known and beloved. But these are usually left for his biography as opposed to his supposed ‘real’ academically-valid, philosophical work. Pick up a book such as The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell or a recent hundredth anniversary commemoration of The Problems of Philosophy. You would never know from these that Russell held theories of human nature; that he repeatedly (from at least 1916 into the late 1960s) advanced utopian proposals for the future; and that he passionately advocated the value of philosophy and the philosophic life in more traditional terms, that is, as a road to happiness and wisdom. Academic study favors the analytic Russell, especially his work in the first decade of the twentieth century. The academy should be broader than that. He was.