Discarded Preface to A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz

russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 37 (summer 2017): 245–51 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036–01631; online 1913–8032 c:\users\ken\documents\type3701\red\rj 3701 134 red.docx 2017-08-24 10:06 DISCARDED PREFACE TO A CRITICAL EXPOSITION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNIZ Bertrand Russell Nicholas Griffin, Introduction Russell Research Centre / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4l6 ngriffin@mcmaster.ca here is a puzzle about the dating of the preface to A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz that was actually published in the first edition. As published, the preface is dated “September 1900” though the manuscript for it is dated “August 1900”. There is nothing untoward there: the date was merely moved forward to reflect when the book actually went to press. The proofs for the preface and the other front matter are date-stamped 15 August and nothing seems untoward there, except that on 31 July Russell left for Paris to attend the International Congress of Philosophy at which he first came across the work of Peano. He was at the conference from 1 to 5 August and then travelled on holiday in France from 6 to 15 August, returning to England on the 15th. The only way the date on the proofs and that on the manuscript could both be correct is if Russell wrote the preface in France, and probably at the congress (to allow enough time for the manuscript to travel to Cambridge and be typeset by 15 August). Alternatively, Russell wrote the preface in late July and post-dated the manuscript to reflect when he expected the book to go to press. It is difficult to decide which of these scenarios is least unlikely. The preface which appeared in the book would not have taken him long. It’s concerned with the usual business of prefaces: a brief account of the book and acknowledgements. He does start by drawing a distinction between two types of history of philosophy—the historical, which describes a philosopher’s thought, traces its development, and identifies the historical factors which shaped it; and the philosophical , which lays out a philosopher’s views systematically and evaluates which are correct and which mistaken—and he places his own book firmly in the second category . But he does this briskly and unapologetically, as part of the normal task of a preface alerting the reader about what to expect. The published preface, however, replaced an earlier one, of a very different character , which is printed below. The composition of the rejected preface evidently gave Russell some trouble, to judge at least by the unusually large number of alterations q= 246 bertrand russell c:\users\ken\documents\type3701\red\rj 3701 134 red.docx 2017-08-24 10:06 c:\users\ken\documents\type3701\red\rj 3701 134 red.docx 2017-08-24 10:06 he made to the text, before he abandoned it, incomplete, mid-page. Indeed, its style, both oracular and oratorical, contrasts oddly, not just with the plain and straightforward style of the published preface, but with the style of the whole book. Compared to the book, it seems rather old-fashioned and Victorian—though Russell used similar rhetorical language a few years later in works such as “The Free Man’s Worship” and “On History”. As in the published preface, Russell begins by distinguishing the two types of history of philosophy, but in the rejected preface he attempts, against “the historical spirit” of the age, a full-fledged apologia for the philosophical kind of history of philosophy that he had undertaken. It is not clear what Russell meant by “the historical spirit”. He may have meant nothing more than the tendency of late nineteenthcentury historians of philosophy, especially those in Germany where the art was practised on a scale not approached in the English-speaking world, to concentrate on describing the development of philosophical positions rather than critiquing them. But his subsequent argument suggests that the fashionable approach he is rejecting is one which not merely avoids critiquing the philosophies it describes, but holds that critique is impossible, for he goes on to defend...

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