Intellect and Social Conscience: Essays on Bertrand Russell's Early Work

Evan Simpson is a philosophy professor and dean of humanities at
McMaster University and the editor of Anti-foundationalism and Practical
Reasoning: Conversations Between Hermeneutics and Analysis.

These papers are the proceedings of a conference held at McMaster University in 1983. This is their second publication, the essays having also appeared in Russell. The Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives. A new cover transforms the journal into a book.

Three of the essays are by professors of English, three by philosophers, and four by historians. Those on “intellect” consider Russell’s relationship to Bloomsbury, his early infatuation with Shelley’s poetry, his philosophical allegiances, and his views (or lack of them) on aesthetics, moral theory, and religious belief. Those stressing “conscience” address the young Russell’s place in the peace movement, feminism, the Liberal Party, and Victorian England. For the most part the pieces are good scholarly reporting, in which Russell’s “crisis” of 1901 and his essay, “The Free Man’s Worship,” are prominent as focal points. Several of the essays, however, advance specific and sometimes conflicting theses, particularly in connection with the crisis. A. Brink ascribes the episode to a regressive wish to re-experience childhood feelings of loss and grief, K. Willis sees it as the outcome of quandaries about religion, and, in the most original piece, N. Griffin argues that it was a result of Russell’s abandonment of neo-Hegelianism.

The volume is to be welcomed for its contribution to reawakening interest in a remarkable but very human being.