Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Russell was the most important British philosopher of the twentieth century. At the start of the century he helped to develop the new theories that transformed the study of logic at this time, but his greatest contribution was not to logic itself. Instead it lay in developing and demonstrating the philosophical importance of this new logic and thereby creating his “logical-analytic method,” which is the basis of the analytical style of philosophy as we know it today. The result is that we can still read Russell's writings as contributions to contemporary debates. He is not yet someone whose works belong only to the history of philosophy. He lived to be nearly 100 and there is every reason to expect that some of his writings will have an active life and age at least as great as his. A classic instance is provided by his introduction to philosophy, The Problems of Philosophy (his “shilling shocker” as he liked to call it), which, though published in 1912, remains one of the best popular introductions to the subject. Despite the fact that as a philosopher Russell remains almost a contemporary, in other respects his life now seems very distant from us. His family, the Russells, was one of the great Liberal families of British politics: his paternal grandfather, Lord John Russell, had been Prime Minister twice during the first half of the nineteenth century, and Russell describes meeting ... log in or subscribe to read full text