The third “russell on”

January 28, 2009 (12:22 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 051red.wpd 178 Reviews THE THIRD “RUSSELL ON” Graham Stevens Philosophy / U. of Manchester Oxford Road, Manchester m13 9pl, uk graham.p.stevens@manchester.ac.uk Stephen Mumford, ed. Russell on Metaphysics: Selections from the Writings of Bertrand Russell. London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. viii, 256. isbn 0-415-27744-2.£60/us$105 (hb); £17.99/us$31.95 (pb). Editing a fairly short collection of Russell’s work on metaphysics must be like zwriting a fairly short guidebook to Himalayan mountaineering routes. The phrase “spoilt for choice” was made for occasions like these. That level of choice doesn’t necessarily make the job of choosing easy: it is hard to please everyone when everyone has so many favourites and the space is too limited by far to include everything that merits inclusion. The easiest way to make a choice in such circumstances is to play safe and pick the well known and well liked. Stephen Mumford’s more ambitious approach is to delve deeply but selectively into the full range of Russell’s output on metaphysics over more than 60 years, including some of the highlights from the manuscript material that was only published January 28, 2009 (12:22 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 051red.wpd Reviews 179 after Russell’s death in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell. The result is a striking self-portrait of Russell’s philosophical career unmatched by anything apart from the Collected Papersz itself. The book is divided into Wve sections as follows: Idealism, Ontology (1903– 18), Universals, Causality and Laws, Ontology (1923–50). The Wrst section consists of manuscript material, all of which apart from one piece was Wrst published in the Wrst two volumes of the Papers (the exception is the 1897 paper that Russell presented to the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club, “Seems, Madam? Nay, It Is”, which Russell later chose to publish in Why I Am Not a Christian. It is republished in Papers 1). As readers of these volumes of CPBRz know, the gradual retreat from, and eventual rejection of, neo-Hegelianism in Russell’s work during the 1890s makes for fascinating reading. The selections from the period have obviously been made with great care. Although, by necessity, the picture of this period in Russell’s development that emerges lacks the full detail one gets from a study of CPBRz (notably absent are the 1898 manuscript “An Analysis of Mathematical Reasoning” and the 1899 manuscript “The ClassiWcation of Relations”, both from Papers 2), the general picture is perhaps easier to bring into focus as a consequence. One can clearly see Russell’s rapidly developing thought on the importance of relations, particularly in regard to mathematics, driving him towards the eventual rejection of neo-Hegelianism in favour of the pluralistic metaphysics he saw as central to analytical philosophy. Some of Russell’s writing during his neo-Hegelian period displays the foggy character that is common among those he was no doubt inXuenced by. There are also quite striking moments , however, when the precision and rigour that characterize his work after the rejection of neo-Hegelianism pierce the fog. For example, the essay titled “Why Do We Regard Time, But Not Space, as Necessarily a Plenum?” is sparklingly sharp. Russell disposes of the various arguments for drawing such a distinction between the natures of time and space, concluding that there is no reason to see them as distinct in this respect at all. He does not decide between a plenal or punctual theory of time and space, resting content with the conclusion that they are alike whichever they may be. Which nature they share, Russell states, will depend on the answer to “the most fundamental question in metaphysics ” (p. 51), namely that regarding “the choice between Monadism and Monism” (p. 50). Although he doesn’t venture an answer to that question, there are many signs of the sophisticated, mathematically informed arguments that he would later invoke in support of his answer to that question in The Principles of Mathematics. It is not only Russell’s views on the metaphysics of relations that can be seen undergoing rapid...

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.