Abstract

This is unarguably the best short introduction to the whole of Bertrand Russell’s philosophical work. I am sure it is the best introduction of any length to Russell, and I suspect that it might serve as one of the best introductions to modern philosophy. Its greatest virtues are conciseness, comprehensiveness, and lucidity: virtues generally associated with Professor Ayer, but here found in unhoped for abundance. Ayer begins with a brief, austere, and balanced account of Russell’s life: as in Russell’s autobiography this means his thought, books, women, and politics. Tacitus would have found the account exemplary. Ayer ends with a sympathetic and surprisingly detailed survey of Russell’s social philosophy. But the bulk of this book consists of a chapter on Russell’s work in logic and the foundations of mathematics, followed by a chapter on his epistemological views and one on metaphysics: descending in that order, also, in length and emphasis. The chapter on philosophical logic manages a clear and comprehensive elucidation of Russell’s "supreme maxim": "Whenever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities." Both the theory of types and of definite descriptions fall into place within this general project; and the reader is given a crisp, though unavoidably rudimentary, account of how the axioms of infinity and reducibility came to seem indispensable if the logical reduction of numbers and classes were to succeed. The chapter on Russell’s theory of knowledge is also admirably comprehensive and concise. One finds here a very striking, sympathetic but critical, account of the attempt to take tables and chairs, etc., as logical constructions out of sense data. Both Quine and Goodman come into the discussion : This attempt to understand and criticize Russell in terms of contemporary philosophical arguments seems to contribute both vitality and clarity to the discussion. I find it impossible to imagine that this book will not remain indefinitely the very best book of its sort.—J. L.