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Unpopular Essays

Bertrand Russell

Paperback | Pages: 196 pages

Rating: 4.12 | 1038 Users | 57 Reviews

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Title	:	Unpopular Essays
Author	:	Bertrand Russell
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 196 pages
Published	:	October 13th 1996 by Routledge (first published January 1st 1901)
Categories	:	Philosophy. Nonfiction. Writing. Essays. Politics

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Bertrand Russell was one of the world’s best known public intellectuals in the latter half of the last century. This fact Britain can be proud of, being a country that has produced few public intellectuals in recent history and which looks unlikely to produce another one ever again.

Despite Russell’s past popularity his star has shone a little less brightly over the past few decades. This is not surprising in our Age of Celebrity, an age when the charms of Kim Kardashian and the brains of Kanye West are what most people aspire to. In this age of glitter and good-looks Russell is especially handicapped; in his later years he had the appearance of a somewhat scrawnier but more human looking version of Gonzo the Muppet.


Left: humanist, philosopher and recipient of the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature, Bertrand Russell. Right: respected actor and stage performer, Gonzo the Muppet.

Although I am willing to bet Russell would have been a demon on Twitter as well, in the first part of this century his thoughtful, rationale and profound essays expressing deeply held humanistic beliefs would be about as welcome to our current leaders as an expert at a Tory Party conference or a ladder at the Mexican border.

That’s a shame, but my sense is that Bertrand Russell’s star is being to shine once more.

It is people like Bertrand Russell that the world needs right now to calmly, rationally and purposefully take the Twitter account, the “alternative facts”, the press briefings and similar dangerous toys away from the children who have got their grubby little hands on them; children who risk hurting themselves and others if they are allowed to carry on playing their games unsupervised.

This book is as full of Russell’s lucid, beautiful writing as any other book that Russell ever wrote. Many of its essays were written at the peak of the cold war when concerns about nuclear weapons were at their height. Russell’s vision of a world government upholding rational and scientific principles to help contain the deadly threat of nuclear weapons seems quaint and ridiculous these days, but remember these are also days when people can be persuaded that the United Nations is a communist plot to take away our guns.

It is worth pausing to think about whether Russell’s vision was essentially right: that the nations of the world need to establish global institutions to collectively address the most serious problems faced by human civilization. A case can be made that all Russell had wrong was the issue. The clearest and most present danger to human civilization may no longer be nuclear weapons, although they are still a risk. The danger Russell underestimated was environmental degradation and man-made climate change.

Let's quote from passages that Russell wrote when the Nazi legacy was still a recent memory and the dangers of authoritarian populism were fresh in everyone's thoughts. Who could have imagined that these quotes would be as relevant today as they were sixty odd years ago?

This first quote goes to the heart of many of our current problems: the GOPs war on science and denial of climate change; UK politician’s insistence that the ‘will of the people’ (no matter how manipulated or lied to) overrides any objective evidence of the impact of their proposed policies:

...the essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment...""

This quote anticipates the age of the re-tweet, that spark of ignorance that has ignited any number of fake news stories. “…Lead astray by cocksure prophets…ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans…”? Just turn on the TV.

..so long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans...""

Was Russell looking into a crystal ball when he wrote this? It's almost uncanny.

"...no one can deny, in face of the evidence [of the Nazis] that it is easy, given military power, to produce a population of fanatical lunatics. It would be equally possible to produce a population of sane and reasonable people, but many governments do not wish to do so, since such people would fail to admire the politicians who are at the head of these governments...""

It’s too much to finish on another depressing quote. Bertrand Russell was right about many things. Let’s hope he is right about this as well:

"...it is said that, in a war between Liberals and fanatics, the fanatics are sure to win, owing to their more unshakable belief in the rightness of their cause [but] all history...is against it. Fanatics have failed...because they have attempted the impossible or....because they were too unscientific to adopt the right means; they have failed also because they roused the hostility of those they wished to coerce...

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Original Title:	Unpopular Essays
ISBN:	0415119634 (ISBN13: 9780415119634)
Edition Language:	English

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Ratings: 4.12 From 1038 Users | 57 Reviews

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"I think that the evils that men inflict on each other, and by reflection upon themselves, have their main source in evil passions rather than in ideas or beliefs. But ideas and principles that do harm are, as a rule, though not always, cloaks for evil passions. In Lisbon when heretics were publicly burned, it sometimes happened that one of them, by a particularly edifying recantation, would be granted the boon of being strangled before being put into the flames. This would make the spectators

It's been several years, but I distinctly recall enjoying this text very much, as I do with just about all of Russell's philosophical works.

This work contains 10 essays written between 1935 and 1950, with the common theme being the pernicious impact of dogmatic, unsupportable beliefs. By and large, Russell is highly effective in making his case across a broad range of topics, from the debunking of philosophy's giants such as Plato ("That Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history."), Aristotle ("Aristotle, in spite of

He predict wrong things about word

I have recently read that the art of short story writing is making a resurgence and so what about the essay ? Surely one of the masters of this was the redoubtable Bertrand Russell. In this collection one will find some dated examples but nonetheless worth reading. Each is the result of a powerful mind giving free range over the analysis of various subjects. He is a rich source of epigram and crystallised logic all written with style and humour. "On being modern minded" was recently the subject

This is kind of like common sense 101 to some, or utter bullshit and the kind of thinking that is wrong with this dirty humanist infected nation of ours 101 to others. I wish I remember where I saw it, I think it was some Christian website, where they mock humanist ideas and have a picture of a very aged Bertrand Russell, which makes him look pretty frail and ridiculous, and it asks would you trust anything something that looks like this said. To be fair whenever I see a picture of that fat fuck

I stumbled on and read a 66 year-old Finnish translation (by Kyllikki Sutinen) of the book and reading it in the old fashioned Finnish language gave the reading experience an authentic feeling.Russel's fight against dogmatism and grim future predictions had timeless wisdom in them. In a way I felt that in a way his future scenario the unification of world powers would bring a lasting peace happened. However, what he didn't see that this unification would be delivered by global capitalism instead