Russell: The Machine in the Ghost

• Published in: Minds and Bodies
• Main Author: Mcginn, Colin
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Oxford University Press 28.08.1997
• Subjects: 20th-Century Philosophy; Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Mind; evaluation; particularly; reflection; comparisons; autobiography
• ISBN: 0195113551; 9780195113556
• DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195113556.003.0007

Reading a biography is always at the same time an act of autobiography-an act of self-reflection and self-evaluation. As one absorbs the life of the subject, one is forced to go over the events and themes of one’s own life, making comparisons and drawing lessons. This can be an uncomfortable experience. In the case of Bertrand Russell and me there is a special edginess to the process. Although I never met him, I read Russell with great fervor and fire at around the age of twenty, devouring as many of his books as I could. His autobiography was a particularly potent influence upon me, with its mixture of extreme intellectualism and emotional idealism. I let myself be thoroughly Russellized. He has been a voice in my head ever since. (How many others have been indelibly marked by the Russell persona?) I admit that I idolized the man. It is not that this callow worshipfulness has remained constant. There has been the small matter of my own life to live, and reading (and reviewing) two earlier biographies of Russell-by Ronald Clark and Caroline Moorehead-did much to dampen my idolatry. But ploughing through Ray Monk’s massive, thorough, and probing first volume has been an especially chastening experience, as it will be for all Russell worshippers. This is not because, as might be expected, I find my admiration for Russell seriously dented-though it is certainly qualified; rather, it is the sheer unhappiness of the man that is so disturbing.