Review: Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude [1872-1921] and Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 1921-1970

Title: Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude [1872-1921]
Author: Ray Monk
Publisher: London: Vintage, 1997
ISBN: 0-09-973131-2

Title: Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 1921-1970
Author: Ray Monk
Publisher: London: Vintage, 2001
ISBN: 0-09-927275-X

In discussing Ray Monk's two volumes of biography of Bertrand Russell, I cannot help but address two distinct referrants: Bertrand Russell himself, and Monk's characterization of him. I will begin briefly with the former. Bertrand Russell was one of the founders, along with Frege (whom he "discovered" and brought from obscurity) and Wittgenstein (Russell's student, later friend, and then quasi-foe) of analytic philosophy. With Russell came symbolic logic, "scientific" philosophy, and a turn in contemporary philosophical studies towards linguistic characterizations.

Russell's life was at once brilliant and tragic or, to put it another way, human. His analysis drove him to a lonely feeling of isolation that manifested itself in an attempt to effect grand solutions to problems of humanity. At the same time, the particulars as it were of the real world were doggedly troublesome and, as Russell might have internally characterized them, petty insignificancies that impeded "real" progress on a larger, meaningful scale. Thus his relations with his wives, his children, and others near him were at times less than noble, the product of a man whose loves had been disillusioned and thereby stripped of meaning.

With Russell's penchant for seeing patterns and connections, then, why did he not see his own repititions of social failures? Why did he not sense, as more of his wives and lovers fell to insanity, that perhaps he was drawn to those with predispositions to mental problems? Why did not he see the problems of his children, the disharmony of his multiple marriages, and the predictable disasters of his relationships as at least sharing some sort of root cause within himself? At one point in his life, he made exactly that realization: "[W]hat a failure I have made of my life, as a husband & as a father. I have tried to think the fault was other people's but the repetition seems to show that it can't be" (The Ghost of Madness, 311). One wonders that Russell was in his late 70s by the time he reached this revelation.

Monk's coverage of Russell's life is comprehensive, taking up two volumes: Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude [1872-1921] and Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 1921-1970. It is enlightening as to the interactions of philosophers as Russell's ideas developed. I had wondered, for example, what Russell's reaction was to the devastating discovery of Gödel that axiomatic logicist projects such as Russell's and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica must be inherently incomplete. Monk's story makes it implicitly evident that by the time Gödel revealed his first theorem, Russell had already become convinced that logic was less useful though its essentially linguistic character, and he and Wittgenstein had come to see logic as producing only different ways of saying the same thing.

Monk stresses throughout both volumes an underlying Russellian fear of insanity, stemming from his youth and pervading his actions for the rest of his life. While it's true Russell's family did have its share of mental problems and his life (especially through his relationships) was repeatedly touched by insanity, the actual facts produced by Monk don't seem to point to an overriding obsession with the possibility of insanity. It's undoubted that Russell did occasionally ponder such a possibility. It's also clear that Russell would at times examine his dreams and write books (as did his children and others during that era) that were allegories. Monk at times however seems to relentlessly pursue the slightest shadows of allusions in chronicled dreams or writings of Russell and those around him in an attempt to find some sort of underlying, unconscious insight on his subject matter. This tendency is easily compensated for by the reader, however, and it doesn't drastically detract from the validity of Monk's analysis.

An in-depth analysis of Russell's life here is therefore inappropriate; Monk has done an adequate job. Russell's philosophical achievements are undisputed. Monk comprehensively chronicles both Russell's philosophical and social contributions, as well as his private relationships and his internal conflicts. Reading Monk's account will provide enough material for one to begin his or her own evaluation of how Russell fared in those other areas, and whether any conclusions can be influential in the reader's own experiences.

Notes: Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude [1872-1921]

When he was young, "Russell began to fantasise about 'how wonderful it would have been to know Shelley', and to wonder 'whether I should ever meet any live human being with whom I should feel so much in sympathy'." (34).
Russell's characterization of the things he loved: "mathematics and the sea, and theology and heraldry, the two former because they are inhuman, the two latter because they are absurd." (84).
Russell gave away the stipend of his first Fellowship to the new London School of Economics (105).
"…but one can with complete confidence, I think, …." Is this an oxymoron?
What is absolutely vital to me is the self-respect I get from work - when (as often) I have done something for which I feel remorse, work restores me to a belief that it is better I should exist than not exist. And another thing I greatly value is the kind of communion with past and future discoverers. I often have imaginary conversations with Leibniz, in which I tell him how fruitful his ideas have proved, and how much more beautiful the result is than he could have foreseen; and in moments of self-confidence, I imagine students hereafter having similar thoughts about me. There is a 'communion of philosophers' as well as a 'communion of saints', and it is largely that that keeps me from feeling lonely. (186).
After Russell had met Wittgenstein (who was really Austrian) several times, he wrote, "My German friend threatens to be an infliction, he came back with me after my lecture & argued till dinner time — obstinate & perverse, but I think not stupid." (237).
Russell: "[T]he love of system, since new facts are the enemies of systems, has to be kept rigidly in check, in spite of being a thing every philosopher ought to have …." (248).
But I simply can't stand a view limited to this earth. I feel life so small unless it has windows into other worlds. I feel it vehemently and instinctively and with my whole being. It is what has become of my desire for worship. (248).
Almost as if roused by the implied challenge in Russell's suggestion that she could not come between him and Helen even if she wanted to, Ottoline set out to win him back and put into motion once more the unfailingly successful 'last meeting9 ruse; only this time, when they met (which they did two days after Russell arrived, when Ottoline — after writing twice to say how much she longed to see him — came to visit him at his flat), she discovered a hitherto unknown sexual passion for him. (358).
When Russell was denied a passport to travel to the U.S. to teach at Harvard because of his anti-war pamphlets, Russell wrote to a friend that it should be noted that "I was going [to the U.S.] to teach logic & that the Govt. thinks logic wd. put America against us." (465).

Notes: Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 1921-1970

It may have afforded some amusement to Russell that the very accusation for which he had been imprisoned in 1918 - that US military might would be used against strikers — was here being made in an absurdly exaggerated form, and, not only was it being taken entirely seriously, but he was being paid handsomely to make it! (38)
After describing the Russells' curing son John of his fear of the sea, Monk remarks, "Thus, perhaps, was John's 'irrational' fear of the sea replaced by an entirely rational fear of his parents." (42).
Why did Russell have such a pessimism of where Europe was headed in the 1920s? Why did he "expect disaster in England before my children are grown up" (70)? This perhaps would be easier to understand if one could have experienced the air at the time between the world wars.
"[O]ne could say that whether Russell found the moral law or the starry heavens more exalted depended upon his mood, but that his misanthropic mood was the one that more frequently took control of him." (74).
Why did several of Russell's lovers, such as Helen and Vivien (84), degenerate into madness? Perhaps Russell was attracted to something in women prone to neurological issues.
But when I am alone and idle, I cannot conceal from myself that my life had no purpose, and that I know of no new purpose to which to devote my remaining years. I find myself involved in a vast mist of solitude both emotional and metaphysical, from which I can see no issue. (125)
Russell never learned how to drive. (229).
Russell: "[W]hat a failure I have made of my life, as a husband & as a father. I have tried to think the fault was other people's but the repetition seems to show that it can't be." (311).