The Couturat-Russell Correspondence

 Reviews THE COUTURAT–RUSSELL CORRESPONDENCE A U Philosophy / U. of Toronto Toronto, , Canada   @.. Bertrand Russell. Correspondance sur la philosophie, la logique et la politique avec Louis Couturat (–). Édition et commentaire par Anne-Françoise Schmid. Transcription et notes sur la langue internationale par Tazio Carlevaro. Paris: Éditions Kimé, . Pp. .  euros; . francs. ussell’s exchange of letters with Louis Couturat, extending over sixteen Ryears that include his most fruitful period in logic and philosophy, is among the most important of his correspondences. Couturat was not an original thinker like Russell, so that in some ways the correspondence between the two is less important than those with Frege, Whitehead and Moore (for example ). On the other hand, Russell’s correspondence with these latter figures is either incomplete or limited in time. In the case of Couturat, virtually all of the letters on both side survive, so that they form an extraordinary record of the evolution of Russell’s thinking. The only other correspondence from this period that can be compared in scope with it is that with Philip Jourdain. The surviving letters, almost complete, were discovered in the s in the basement of the house of M. Henri Meier-Heuké by his wife, and subsequently donated to the Centre de Documentation et d’Études sur les Langues Internationales , in the municipal library of La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland. The originals of some letters remain in the Russell Archives in Hamilton, but the bulk of the letters, from both correspondents, is to be found in Switzerland. The exact history of how both sides of the correspondence came to be united in Meier’s basement is not known, but we can certainly be grateful to Couturat for preserving this very illuminating record of a formative period in Russell’s career. The correspondence covers a very large range of topics, including not only logic and the foundations of mathematics, but also the history of philosophy (especially the philosophy of Leibniz), philosophy of science, epistemology and current political events (particularly the Boer war). The trajectories of Couturat’s and Russell’s careers show a strong convergence (one might even say pre-established harmony), but then an increasing divergence and estrangement as the correspondence petered out in the years following . Couturat himself, born four years before Russell in , began Reviews  his career in a brilliant fashion, achieving top honours in mathematics and philosophy; Henri Bergson considered him as a possible successor at the Collège de France. However, Couturat, rather than making original contributions in philosophy and logic, confined himself to popularizing and publicizing other people’s ideas. His role in the science of his day might be compared with that of Father Mersenne in the seventeenth century, the correspondent of Descartes, Fermat and other important scientists. Couturat and Russell were brought together in the first place by a review by Russell of the former’s De l’Infini mathématique in Mind. In the succeeding years, Couturat became a kind of disciple of Russell, popularizing mathematical logic in France, together with the new philosophy linked to it. He arranged for a translation of An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry to be published by Gauthier-Villars in , and in  published Les Principes des mathématiques, based in part on Russell’s own Principles of Mathematics, and containing a violent attack on Kant’s philosophy of mathematics, a deliberate provocation towards the reigning neo-Kantian orthodoxy in French philosophy. Couturat entered into polemical debates with gusto, and in  incited a well-known exchange between Russell and Pierre Boutroux, son of the wellknown philosopher Émile Boutroux, who was married to Henri Poincaré’s sister (Papers : –). Russell later came to regret the polemics occasioned by Couturat’s pugnacity, and referred in print to the misunderstandings caused by certain “indiscreet advocates” of symbolic logic, undoubtedly a hit at his former disciple (Papers : ). In the correspondence, though, Russell does not exhibit as much caution as his later remarks suggest. Couturat’s book of  was based on a series of articles that aroused the wrath of Poincaré. Russell responded in his letters to Couturat’s sometimes importunate demands for material to refute neo-Kantian philosophy, as well as material for his...

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