Thinker · 1872 CE–1970 CE

Bertrand Russell

Russell helped found analytic philosophy by using modern logic to examine mathematics, language, knowledge, and the structure of the world.

Intellectual setting

Russell developed his philosophy alongside G. E. Moore, Alfred North Whitehead, Gottlob Frege's logic, and the early Wittgenstein, while also becoming a prominent antiwar and antinuclear activist.

Key ideas

Theory of descriptions

Apparent names such as “the present king of France” can be analyzed as quantified claims, avoiding a commitment to nonexistent objects.

Logical atomism

The world consists of facts, and logically perspicuous analysis can reveal how complex propositions are built from simpler constituents.

Legacy

His work changed logic, philosophy of language, and analytic method; his public writing made him an unusually visible twentieth-century philosopher.

At a glance

Dates: 1872 CE–1970 CE · approximate

Places: Trellech, Cambridge, and London

Connections: 4 influences

Schools: Analytic philosophy

Selected works

The Principles of Mathematics
Principia Mathematica

Connections

Influenced Ludwig Wittgenstein (documented influence): Wittgenstein went to Cambridge in 1911 to study with Russell and worked through logic with him in sustained conversation, and Russell supplied the introduction to the Tractatus; the book is a continuation of and a reaction against Russell's conception of logic and language.
Influenced Saul Kripke (documented influence): Kripke's arguments for rigid designation are aimed at the descriptivism the entry associates with Frege and Russell, and he keeps the Russellian treatment of definite descriptions as quantified expressions while denying that ordinary names work that way.
Influenced by G. E. Moore (documented influence): Moore led Russell away from the McTaggartian idealism then dominant in British philosophy, a break the entry treats as the beginning of Cambridge analysis; the two later disagreed sharply, with Russell criticising Moore's rule consequentialism.
Influenced by Gottlob Frege (documented influence): Russell's logicism began as an attempt to refine Frege's predicate calculus and apply it to mathematics, and the two corresponded from 1902 after Russell found the paradox that broke Frege's system; the calculus Russell refined still underlies most contemporary logic.

Sources

Bertrand Russell , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
A New History of Western Philosophy: Philosophy in the Modern World , Coverage of Bertrand Russell and the surrounding tradition, Oxford University Press