Emerson: The Mind on Fire VI

In 1855, Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass and sent a copy to Emerson. Emerson read it immediately and liked it. He wrote back to Whitman approvingly. Without permission, Whitman had the letter printed in the New York Tribune.  Thereafter, Whitman became the poetic model for Emerson, and Whitman built his reputation on that. If I were Emerson, I would have disliked Whitman's shameless opportunism, but Emerson was also opportunistic, and in Whitman he had found a poet who seemed to fit his literary ideals. Since this is my last post on the biography, I'll say that I don't find Emerson, Thoreau or Whitman to be particularly good poets. By this time, Emerson was having a hard time living up to his "great man" ideal.

During Emerson's later life, there were growing abolitionism and women's rights movements, and he participated in them. To his credit, he publicly opposed materialism. In a commencement address at Williams College in 1854, he said "It is the vulgarity of this country—it came to us with commerce, out of England—to believe that naked wealth, unrelieved by any use or design, is merit." When Darwin's Origin of Species became available in 1860, he read it with interest. In Richardson's description, it doesn't sound as if Emerson or Thoreau had a good understanding of speciation, though they were sympathetic toward the general concept of evolution. Thoreau died from tuberculosis in 1862.

By the 1870's, Emerson was quite famous and was still accepting engagements. In 1871 he took a trip out west, during which he met Brigham Young in Salt Lake City and John Muir at Yosemite. In 1872 there was a fire at his house, but the damage was repaired. Following the fire, he took a trip to England, France, Italy and Egypt with his daughter, Ellen. They returned in May, 1873. His memory gradually deteriorated, with Alzheimer's symptoms, and he died from pneumonia on April 27, 1882, at the age of 78. Lidian lived to the age of 90, dying in 1892.

At this stage, I have a fairly mixed view of Emerson. On the positive side, there are his humanistic qualities: he valued equality and disliked material excess. He emphasized the importance of natural environments, but so did many others at the time. For me, his most important impact was on Emily Dickinson. Many of her poems directly embody some of Emerson's ideas. Though they never met, she read his works and attended one of his lectures. I think that what distinguishes Dickinson from the proclaimed transcendentalists is that she had exactly the right feelings and exactly the right words. To me, she is a far more skilled writer than Emerson. In Emerson's case, you can imagine him saying to himself "By God, I'm having a spiritual experience!" I don't agree with his endorsement of Whitman.

I think that there is more to criticize about Emerson in his postures as an intellectual. He was sort of a Romantic social climber, but his timing was all off. When he first arrived in England in 1833, Keats, Shelley, Byron and Goethe were already dead, and Coleridge and Wordsworth were old. The best ally he could come up with was Thomas Carlyle, who was not a particularly good fit for him. More significant, I think, was his compulsively wide reading in conjunction with his dilettantish summation of it. Also, I think that he set the bar for himself quite low by relying primarily on public lectures, often to uneducated audiences. Though I do make allowance for the fact that the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology and archaeology barely existed in those days, he liked to quote people who lived all over the world in different cultures over thousands of years as if he just ran into them in Concord. I doubt that he fully understood the cultural contexts of what he read. This would have made it difficult for him to apply those models to nineteenth century Massachusetts. My greatest irritation with Emerson has to do with his adoption of the "great man" theory, which he probably applied to himself. To be sure, that has long been a theory among men and is still present in global and national politics. However, the idea had been suspect for quite some time, such as when Beethoven changed the name of his Third Symphony from Bonaparte to Sinfonia Eroica (Heroic Symphony) in 1804.

Summing up, I would say that Emerson was a nice guy who had an interesting life. It would have been fun to visit Emerson and Thoreau in Concord. But I think that an appropriate way to memorialize him would be with an excellent portrait – by Norman Rockwell.

Emerson: The Mind on Fire V

I'm finally approaching the end of the book, and am looking forward to that, since I haven't become a convert to transcendentalism. For me, this is light historical reading, which is useful for understanding earlier periods and the contexts in which people lived, but, in this case, with Emerson as a popular figure of his time, it stands out to me that very little of this has filtered down to the present. Rather than discussing that now, I'll wait until my next post.

Richardson provides a good account of Emerson's life, and the point that Emerson was primarily a lecturer is significant:

Over his active career of four decades, Emerson gave some 1,500 public lectures. Lecturing was a major part of his life and a major source of income. For twenty-five years he was out and away from home lecturing for four, five, or even six months out of each year, every year. He traveled as far west as St. Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and eventually California; he gave 17 lectures in Canada but almost none south of the Ohio River. He delivered the great majority of his lectures in Massachusetts. He gave 157 lectures in New York State. He gave more lectures in Maine than in New Hampshire (35 to 27) and many more in Illinois (49), Ohio (56), Pennsylvania (42), and Wisconsin (29) than in Connecticut, the land of steady habits, where he spoke only 18 times in his entire career.

Throughout his life, Emerson also went on reading binges, sometimes in exotic areas. In 1846 he became obsessed with the Persian poet Hafez, who was a Sufi. This inspired him to write Hafez-like poems and translate Hafez into English. Of what I've seen so far, I'm not inclined to read Emerson's poems. Also that year, the Emersons decided to convert their house into a boardinghouse. This may have been because Lidian's health had declined, and she had difficulty doing all of the housework. They hired a woman to run the boardinghouse and continued to live in part of the house. He took up horticulture and planted many fruit trees, as was popular at the time. By then he had also published four books. But he became restless at home and planned another trip to Europe.

The trip lasted from October, 1847 until July, 1848, and he did a series of lectures at the Mechanics' Institute in different locations. While he was away, Thoreau moved in with Lidian and the children. This is the trip in which he met George Eliot. She was 27 at the time and hadn't started her literary career. Later, Emerson told Carlyle "That young lady has a calm, clear spirit." George Eliot wrote a letter to her friend, Sara Hennell, saying "I have seen Emerson – the first man I have ever seen." He also met previous acquaintances, Wordsworth and Harriet Martineau. New acquaintances included Thackeray, Tennyson, Disraeli, Dickens and Leigh Hunt. He spent time with Carlyle again, but they had some strong disagreements. Apparently, in his later years, Carlyle became reactionary and supported slavery. They both liked the "great man" theory, but Emerson disliked authoritarianism and Carlyle didn't. Even so, they remained cordial, in that they had each assisted the career of the other on their respective continents. During this trip, he briefly visited France and witnessed the revolution in which King Louis-Phillipe was deposed.

When he returned home, Emerson seemed a little disoriented and depressed. His driving idea had been to show the English how competent the Americans are, but he was concluding that the English were in fact superior to the Americans. He wanted to be a "great man," but how could he if he were hanging out with a bunch of losers? A conflict emerged with Thoreau. Thoreau had enjoyed the children and Lidian, and he may have preferred it if Emerson hadn't returned. Thoreau was also in a bad mood because he was unable to find a publisher for A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, which was later printed at his expense but never sold well. Thoreau was in fact stubborn, churlish and lacking in social graces, but their friendship survived.

Emerson gradually readjusted to life in Concord. He went on long walks with Ellery Channing, the "ne'er-do-well" poet. The equanimity in his relationship with Lidian was restored. He began writing again and took up Hegel and Swedenborg. On July 19, 1850, Margaret Fuller died in the shipwreck off Fire Island while returning from Italy, and Emerson was shocked and saddened.

Emerson: The Mind on Fire IV

I'm up to 1844, when Emerson reached the age of 41. His first child, Waldo, was born in 1836 but died in 1842. This had a devastating effect on the family that lasted for some time. He also had a daughter, Ellen (1839-1909), named after his first wife, another daughter, Edith (1841- 1929), and another son, Edward (1844-1930). He seemed to have a good relationship with his wife, Lidian, and she dutifully cared for the children and household and the stream of visitors invited by Emerson, which must have been a strain, because they often stayed for four or five days. Some of them were eccentric, such as the poet Jones Very. Two new women, Anna Barker and Caroline Sturgis, entered the circle, and Emerson seems to have been attracted to both of them physically and emotionally, though nothing came of it. He fretted about this for some time, as Richardson describes:

In August of 1841 Emerson was still protesting that "it is not in the plan or prospect of the soul, this fast union of one to one." In September of 1841 he repeated that "plainly marriage should be a temporary relation, it should have a natural birth, climax and decay, without violence of any kind,—violence to bind or violence to rend." The same year, he made a note, "I marry you for better, not for worse." In 1843 he was still upset by what he called "the vitriolic acid of marriage," and in 1852, after his trip to England, he was still thinking (as he wrote) that "everything is free but marriage." 

There was a similar tension with Margaret Fuller, though he seems to have been less attracted to her. She became the editor and a contributor to their new publication, The Dial, in 1840. This was a transcendentalist publication, and other contributors included Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and W.E. Channing, a preacher. The Dial was never popular and it ceased publication in 1844.

In 1840, his friend, George Ripley, invited the Emersons to live at his newly-formed commune called Brook Farm, which opened in 1841. The commune had been carefully planned and was organized on principles from Charles Fourier. After mulling this over for some time, he declined, because it had an intricate collectivist social structure that would conflict with his independence. Nathaniel Hawthorne lived there briefly. In any case, Brook Farm was never financially viable, and it closed in 1847.

In 1841, Emerson took an interest in Plotinus:

Emerson was particularly struck by two Neoplatonic teachings: the idea of the world as emanation and the idea of the ecstatic union with the One. For Plotinus everything emanates, or flows out, from the One, the ultimate power and unity of things. The first emanation is thought or mind, meaning the whole range of ideas from which in turn the whole range of tangible things and beings emanate. In a piece of visionary writing of this year Emerson says:

As the river flows, and the plant flows (or emits odors), and the sun flows (or radiates), and the mind is a stream of thoughts, so was the universe an emanation of God. Everything is an emanation, and from every emanation is a new emanation, and that from which it emanates is an emanation also. If anything could stand still, it would be instantly crushed and dissipated by the torrent which it resisted.

When I see language like this, I begin to think "Where's Waldo?" To me, this is not serious writing, though I can accept the ideas obliquely in poetic form, such as in the poems of Emily Dickinson. 

In 1843, Emerson's friend, Bronson Alcott, started a transcendentalist-themed commune called Fruitlands. That lasted for less than a year. In 1844, Emerson became an active opponent of slavery. In modern terms, he seemed to have a hodgepodge of ideas that would not cohere well today. For example, he supported capitalism though that is usually seen as inconsistent with most religious sentiments. So, I'm not exactly in awe of Emerson as a thinker at this point but will save my conclusions until after I've finished the last two hundred pages.

Emerson: The Mind on Fire III

I'm at the middle of the book, and it seems to be getting more interesting at this point. The five surviving Emerson brothers are starting to die off. Edward died in 1834 at the age of twenty-nine. More significantly, Charles died in 1836 at the age of twenty-seven. Charles was close to Waldo and had planned to marry later that year. Waldo had added two rooms to his house so that the couple could move in with him. An organization that came to be known as the Transcendental Club began to meet in the Boston area, and although Emerson wasn't particularly fond of it, it indicated that Emerson was forming a sort of movement that came to be centered around his house in Concord. At this point, Emerson's primary source of income seems to have been his lectures.

A heterogeneous group of people began to meet with Emerson at his house. One was Bronson Alcott, who was a rather eccentric educator and a utopian thinker. He was not thought to be an effective writer. His ventures were usually unrealistic, and he was often unable to support his family. Nevertheless, his daughter, Louisa May Alcott managed to become a successful novelist. Another was Margaret Fuller, a prominent journalist and feminist. Fuller added a dimension to Emerson's group, but she was also not a good writer. She died in a shipwreck in 1850 at the age of forty, which I mentioned in my discussion of the Thoreau biography. Thoreau himself probably met Emerson when he attended a lecture by him in 1835 when he was a student at Harvard. After graduating in 1837, he met Emerson at his house and began to become Emerson's disciple, though I think that that is a rather strong word to use, given Thoreau's independence. Richardson's book emphasizes how close Emerson and Thoreau were for a time. I think that, in Emerson's quest to start a movement, Thoreau may have been the only person who was of much help.

Emerson published Nature in 1836, and it became the centerpiece of the transcendentalism movement. At first the essay was a little controversial, but that died down. I have been reluctant to read Emerson because I know how he developed his ideas, I don't agree with all of them, and Thoreau was probably a better writer. Thoreau was a perfectionist in both reading and writing. He preferred to read everything in the original text, including Latin and Greek, and his writing was straightforward, based on his own experiences, and did not contain many abstract ideas. Emerson, on the other hand, was a frenetic reader, and was actively trying to piece together some sort of gospel, which did not occur to him spontaneously. He wanted to identify a spiritual essence in nature, whereas I consider that a waste of time, because it doesn't exist. This tendency, I think, places Emerson within a now-dead cultural environment that was still active during his lifetime. Up until the late nineteenth century, spiritualism was quite popular, and you could find it in Alfred Russel Wallace, Robert Owen and George Eliot. I think it is ironic that the system that Emerson was trying to replace, Unitarianism, is more rationalistic, and that survived while transcendentalism vanished. Another area in which I think he was incorrect was in his emphasis on individualism. He seemed to think that people could be trained to become more individualistic, and, though I suppose that might occur occasionally, for the most part it is an inborn trait. It is a commonplace statement now that individualistic people were more attracted to the U.S. from other countries than collectivists. Moreover, I noticed from an early age that I was individualistic, and I know that I was born that way, and that no essay would ever have affected me in that respect. Despite the above criticisms, transcendentalism probably did have some positive effects. It can be seen as a precursor to a respect for nature and environmentalism. Furthermore, it is well establish now that exposure to nature can be quite therapeutic.

So, I am looking at this as a story about cultural evolution that has little to do with science or theoretical considerations. Indirectly, Emerson was attempting to differentiate American culture from European culture in order to reduce the appearance of vassalage. But Emerson was hardly exposed to psychology, anthropology, sociology or evolution, so it would have been difficult for him to say anything that I would find interesting. Even so, I have to admire him for living at a time when people were open to new ideas and enjoyed discussing them with others – sooooo nineteenth century!

Emerson: The Mind on Fire II

At the time of their marriage, Ellen was already showing signs of tuberculosis, and she died on February 8, 1831, at the age of nineteen. They had been happily married, and this occurring after less than two years was a blow to Emerson. On Christmas Day, 1832, he left on a long trip to Europe, from which he returned on October 8. He was not at all wealthy at that point, and lived very frugally. Later, he received an inheritance from the estate of Ellen's father, but it wasn't large. On the trip, he spent time in several countries and met people. In Rome, he met John Stuart Mill, and, in Paris, he was struck by the Jardin des Plantes, which stimulated his interest in botany. But he really hit the jackpot in England and Scotland, where he met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle was the closest to his age, and they maintained a long friendship. When he returned to Massachusetts, he switched to becoming a lecturer and a writer. At a lecture in Plymouth, he met Lydia Jackson, who was about a year older than he was. They married on September 14, 1835. Eventually they moved to Concord, which was the ancestral home of the Emersons. He disliked her name, and they changed it to "Lidian." Besides being nearly a year older than Emerson, she was more conservative than Ellen, but she also seems to have been somewhat more intellectual. In any case, the marriage lasted up until Emerson's death in 1882. While all this is going on, there are various illnesses and deaths in Emerson's family, which have consequences with respect to living arrangements and financial support. I am trying to avoid writing about that, because it is not central to the narrative.   

Richardson is doing a good job showing the development of Emerson's ideas. It is apparent that he didn't really want to be a minister and wasn't a particularly good preacher. He seems to have taken it upon himself to distill a new conceptual model that would be suitable in the mid-1800's. He drew ideas from his readings and travels in order to, in effect, transform Unitarianism into transcendentalism. It is apparent that he was quite ambitious and energetic in this pursuit.

I am already starting to see Emerson mainly as a participant in the history of ideas who only makes sense if you look at him in the context of the intellectual currents in the U.S. and U.K. at the time. Unfortunately, he came along just as the Romantic poets were dying off, and before Darwin came along. Thus, like Thomas Carlyle, it is hard for me to see him as a force whose ideas have much significance today. Carlyle seems to have led a pro-Germany movement that encouraged intellectuals to adopt German cultural attitudes from the time of Goethe, but that all collapsed in the twentieth century. I now like to use G.H. Lewes as a barometer of intellectual trends in England during the nineteenth century. First he was a Romantic and a friend of Leigh Hunt; as the century progressed, he switched his focus to Goethe and Germany, like Thomas Carlyle. Finally, before he died in 1878, he was essentially a Darwinian devoted to the scientific method. Generally, it appears to me that Emerson was too old to be a Romantic and too young to be a Darwinian. It is also relevant that he had studied little science.

With this in mind, I'm not terribly excited to read much Emerson myself, but I will follow Richardson's examples and analysis in this book. One of Emerson's weaknesses, I think, is his belief in the "great man" theory:

Every great man does in his nature point out and imply the existence and well being of all the institutions and orders of a state.

I think that it would be fair to say that Emerson considered himself a "great man." Not a good sign. I've also been thinking about Emerson's famous statement from Self-Reliance:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

When I first read this some time ago I found it interesting and tended to agree with it. Given what I know now, it can also be seen as self-aggrandizement by Emerson. And, based on my readings on neurology by Vinod Goel and Robert Sapolsky, it is normal for aging human brains to follow methods that they learned earlier in life. Understandably, Emerson could not have known this.

Emerson: The Mind on Fire I

I've started on this biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Robert D. Richardson Jr. So far it seems to be well-written, but, because I'm reading it more for the historical context of writers in nineteenth century Massachusetts than for a specific interest in Emerson, I'm not finding it particularly exciting. Emerson and his family sound fairly extroverted, and, over the years, I have gradually come to dislike extroverts compared to introverts. The writers, artists and scientists whom I like best tend to be introverts: George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert, László Krasznahorkai, Emily Dickinson, Vivian Maier, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and E.O. Wilson, for example. Part of this may be that in order to grasp aspects of life or the world well, one must be capable of observing them and meditating on them for long periods of time. The need to socialize reduces the time available for extroverts to excel in many fields. Rather, I think that extroverts tend to serve the specific function of fostering social unity in various groups. There are probably exceptions to this model, because most people aren't purely introverted or purely extroverted, but it reflects my observations of people over the course of my life. In any case, Emerson seems to me to have been an extrovert, which means that I am unlikely to find his ideas interesting. Nevertheless, it should be informative to learn more about how he interfaced with Henry David Thoreau and other American and British intellectuals of his time.

Emerson was born on May 25, 1803 in Boston. This made him about fourteen years older than Thoreau and twenty-seven years older than Emily Dickinson. In 1803, Boston was a town of only about 25,000 residents, but it was at the beginning of a population explosion. Emerson's father was a poorly-paid minister, and, like other families at the time, his was large, with illnesses and early deaths. The first two children, a girl and a boy, didn't survive to adulthood, then there were five boys who did and one girl who didn't. Emerson's father died 1811, when he was eight, so did not have much direct impact on him. The household, however, was highly literate, and Mary Moody Emerson, his aunt, was extremely well-read. He attended Boston Latin School and entered Harvard in 1817, when he was fourteen. This wasn't because he was precocious, and his family's church connections generally allowed the boys to attend Harvard. Harvard at the time was part boys' school and part college, and there were only sixty students in his class. He did not excel academically and seemed to prefer literature to science. He fancied himself a poet.

After graduating from Harvard in 1821, Emerson didn't have a career plan, and he taught at a school for young women until 1825, when he entered Harvard Divinity School, which he did not complete after withdrawing because of an eye infection. Recovering from the eye infection, he traveled by ship to Charleston, South Carolina and Saint Petersburg, Florida in 1826. In 1827 he returned home, visiting friends and relatives in Baltimore, Alexandria, Philadelphia and New York. He became a preacher and met 16-year-old Ellen Louisa Tucker in Concord, New Hampshire. She was a daughter of a deceased Boston rope manufacturer. They fell in love and married on September 30, 1829.

Besides the above, the book dutifully recounts Emerson's readings throughout and his efforts to clarify his religious beliefs. Of course, his religious struggles are of little interest to me, but I realize that they may be important to others. For me, the ideas discussed by intellectuals didn't become particularly interesting until about 1859, when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species; by then, Emerson was already fifty-six. I do find Richardson's book helpful for understanding the historical and sociological context of Emerson's life, but am doubtful that I would share Emerson's concerns. Hopefully this will not stop me from finishing the book. Because of Richardson's writing style, I may end up speed reading sections of it that don't interest me. In a worst case scenario I'll read only the sections that pertain to Thoreau and Emerson's trips to Europe. 

If a Lion Could Talk II

I first posted on this topic, regarding Ludwig Wittgenstein's view of language, over ten years ago. My ideas have evolved quite a bit since then, and I decided that I should update what I had to say on the original post. In that post, I outlined how a lion might at least understand some human symbolic language if it were given the right exposure. This was based on the fact that some dogs do understand at least one symbolic action: the meaning of pointing. Similarly, domestic cats also understand some symbolic communications made by humans. Therefore, if cats and dogs could speak, we would definitely be able to understand them to some extent. I didn't mention it at the time, but dolphins, whales, elephants and other mammals have their own languages which, with further study, we might be able to understand. As far as I know, Wittgenstein never owned a pet.

Wittgenstein would be technically correct in the sense that all species have their individual evolutionary paths, so their priorities might be completely different from ours and unintelligible to us. However, the languages of organisms are probably all survival-related, hence it would not necessarily be difficult to decipher them. Many animals make sounds indicating the presence of dangers in their immediate environment that would be easy for us to understand through observation. Similarly, it wouldn't be hard to figure out calls for help. The fact that we have complex symbolic language is the result of our development of bipedal gait, our close cooperation with each other over thousands of years, and the changes that occurred in our brain function that became encoded in our genes and permitted us to survive as a species. I would say that Wittgenstein didn't realize that language starts as a kind of noise-making that has survival benefits, and, if you look at various noise-making species, I don't think that it is necessarily difficult to interpret a noise-making behavior if you examine it in the context in which it is made.

I also mentioned Noam Chomsky, who has said that we don't understand how language works in the human brain. In the context of AI, he thought that we could never teach AI how to think, because we don't know how we think. This was before the development of large language models, which are currently at the forefront of AI. I don't study the research in these fields, but it appears to me that, although words, grammar and usage did develop in human brains, it isn't necessary to have a human brain or human learning techniques to learn languages. In fact, it is probably likely that all of our ideas could be expressed without human brains or human language. I think that the messiness of neural development, as described by Robert Sapolsky, indicates that languages that perform better than ours could probably be developed. That is because our languages developed through the rather haphazard process of natural selection. In natural selection, what counts is not necessarily the development of the best possible system, and it all boils down to whether each successive generation survives or dies. This is why I expect AGI to be developed before long, and I see no reason why it would have to function much like the human brain. 

Wittgenstein, I now think, received far more credit than he deserved as a philosopher. Because of his personality and his initial acceptance by English academics, he never had to argue or publish his positions after he received his job at Cambridge. It sounds to me as if most of his career involved lectures with no discussion, at which his devotees simply took notes. That was certainly a dream job!

Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman

Having read some of de Beauvoir's fiction and memoirs, I had a few questions about her life, and this biography, by Toril Moi, was the best that I could find. There is also a biography by Deirdre Bair that reveals many new facts about de Beauvoir, but I decided to skip it, because some readers find Bair a little presumptuous. I also had trepidations about Moi's book, because it is primarily about de Beauvoir's ideas as a feminist, and I thought that she might write in the manner of Elizabeth Povinelli, who sounds absurd to me. Both are academics, but Moi is a little older. On the whole, I liked Moi's book, though it focuses more on ideas than biographical facts, because it does answer the questions I had and provides a clearer picture of de Beauvoir than she did about herself.

One of the areas that I was interested in was the role, if any, of existentialism in de Beauvoir's life. I had thought for a long time that existentialism could be a lot of bunk, and I now think that it is. Having read quite a bit on human evolution, the emerging theory is now that all organisms, including humans, are subject to biological determinism over which they have no control. This makes Jean-Paul Sartre's central idea, that we are "condemned to be free," a falsehood, and I think collapses his entire model. Robert Sapolsky even makes fun of Sartre in Determined. I don't think that existentialism played much of a role in de Beauvoir's life. She paid lip service to it for Sartre's benefit, but it doesn't conspicuously appear in her works. She is best known for The Second Sex, which is primarily a takedown of the patriarchy, and when it was published in 1949 it influenced some of the American women who led the feminist movement in the U.S. in the 1960's and 1970's, such as Betty Friedan and Kate Millett.

I think that in her memoirs and more so in The Mandarins de Beauvoir provided a distorted picture of her life and omitted some of the key factors that influenced her. She was the eldest of two daughters, and was initially very close to her father, who was a conservative, patriarchal bourgeoisie. After her sister, Hélène, was born, her father lost interest in her. Hélène was prettier than Simone and fit her father's model better. He had no interest in an intellectual daughter, and Hélène matched his bourgeois preferences by growing up to become an artist. In Simone's case, until she completed her education and moved out, her parents imposed strict rules on her, and she may have developed an abandonment complex, though she never says this herself. A case could be made that when Sartre became de Beauvoir's ideal partner, he accommodated her because she was his first intellectual fan, and he planned to have a major intellectual career. However, he hedged his bets by setting up the relationship such that they would not marry or live together, and this paved the way for many affairs. In fact, they stopped having sex early in the relationship. But he did live up to their initial agreement, and they continued to confide in each other.

As I said earlier, I don't think that Sartre was of much significance as an intellectual, and Tony Judt, the historian, thought that he missed the boat on Stalin's abuse of power. Angela Carter, the writer, wrote "Why is a nice girl like Simone wasting her time sucking up to a boring old fart like J.-P.?" It was de Beauvoir's minimization of Sartre's sexual escapades that first drew my attention to her omissions. One of the earliest ones was with Olga Kosakiewicz, who was a student of de Beauvoir when she was seventeen and had an affair with Sartre when she was twenty. Olga's younger sister, Wanda, also had an affair with him. Olga later said that she felt psychologically damaged by Sartre. Sartre's behavior toward women sounds as if it perfectly fit de Beauvoir's definition of patriarchal abuse. In many respects, de Beauvoir seems to have adjusted her lifestyle in order to match Sartre's. While she claimed to dislike lesbian sex, she engaged in it often for several years and passed on her lovers to Sartre. Occasionally it almost seems as if they maintained some sort of rivalry in their sex lives. In 1945, Sartre began an affair with Dolorès Vanetti, whom he met while traveling alone in the U.S. In 1947, de Beauvoir also went on a solo trip to the U.S. and immediately started an affair with Nelson Algren. This sort of behavior seemed to become a tit-for-tat pattern in which they both behaved badly but made a private joke of it later.

One of the main things that I noticed from reading de Beauvoir is that she rarely criticizes male behavior but freely offers slightly condescending advice to unhappy women. In The Mandarins, Anne, the de Beauvoir character, pities Paula, who cracks up when Henri, the Camus character, abruptly dumps her, but she isn't at all sympathetic and presumably thinks that Paula should just grow up. In "The Woman Destroyed," Monique also has a breakdown when her husband, Maurice, has an affair, and de Beauvoir once again shows little sympathy. Another thing about her fiction that I dislike is that she portrays young adults within a rigid ideological framework that seems unrealistic to me. Nadine in The Mandarins is portrayed as far more sophisticated for her age than seems possible, and so is Lucienne in "The Woman Destroyed." In "The Age of Discretion," I think that de Beauvoir is too heavy-handed with Phillipe, since he violates Sartre's dogmatic preference for the intellectual life. In these three instances, I think that she missed a lot by never having children and probably didn't understand them well. To me it seems that she may have been unconsciously inserting Sartre's self-serving ideas into her fiction, perhaps as a rationale for her own behavior.

Near the end of the book, Toril Moi does a good job discussing de Beauvoir's psychological weaknesses. This is generally concealed in the de Beauvoir works that I've read. From reading them, you would never know that she had anxiety attacks and suffered from depression, along with the abandonment fears that I mentioned above. In reality, she was nothing like the Anne character in The Mandarins. Moi writes:

For me, the most striking aspect of Beauvoir's choices is the fact that she consistently refused to examine her own emotional strategies with anything like the discernment she mobilized to analyze those of other women. What would have happened to Simone de Beauvoir had she taken psychoanalysis seriously from the start? But this, clearly, is an anachronistic question. Beauvoir was born into a pre-analytical age: in France in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s there was little incentive for her or any other intellectuals to consider psychoanalysis as a major influence on their thought or personal lives.

I would say that de Beauvoir's emotional investment in Sartre was a very bad idea, but that she can't be blamed for that, given her available resources at the time. 

Voltaire: A Life IV

When Voltaire's reputation in Geneva declined among the patricians, he moved out permanently from Les Délices. Ferney became his primary residence for the remainder of his life. He continued to write and stage plays in the theaters that he built there, and he gradually became a tourist attraction. In 1760 he took in Marie-Françoise Corneille, an impoverished girl whom he thought was a granddaughter of the playwright. He later learned that she was a more distant relative. He adopted her, educated her, married her off and provided her with a dowry with the returns from a popular book that he wrote on Corneille. He was able to feed and entertain hundreds of visitors at a time and still work for several hours per day on new plays. 

A major change occurred in Voltaire's life when he decided to become an advocate of criminal justice reform. This was prompted by the publicity surrounding the torture and execution in 1762 of Jean Calas, a Toulouse cloth merchant. Calas, a Protestant, was charged with a crime which he did not commit, and for which there was no evidence of his guilt. At the time, the Seven Years' War with England was underway, and French Catholics viewed Protestants with suspicion. Apparently, one of Calas's sons was despondent, in part because of discrimination against Protestants, and committed suicide. Since the church frowned upon suicides, the family initially covered it up. Although Calas had done nothing wrong, a judge found him guilty of murder, and his execution left the family destitute. Voltaire managed to get the verdict reversed, and this was only the first of several cases with which he became involved. There really wasn't much change made to the criminal justice system until after the French Revolution, but these actions made Voltaire, symbolically at least, more of an Enlightenment figure than he would have been otherwise. In fact, most of his life had been devoted to writing uncontroversial plays and historical works, and he generally behaved obsequiously whenever he had cause to believe that he had upset someone in authority.

Another act of generosity to the public occurred in the early 1770's, just after Geneva had undergone a period of political turmoil. Voltaire decided to assist Genevan refugees by setting up a watch manufacturing industry in Ferney and was remarkably successful. He contacted potential watch buyers across Europe and as far off as Constantinople in order to create a market. I think that his skills as an impresario, along with his skills as a money manager, made this possible. Simply because of Voltaire's presence in Ferney, it gradually became a sizeable town.

Although Voltaire was generally happy with Mme Denis as his partner in Ferney, she obviously was not ideal for him. In 1760 he wrote:

Mme Denis is a fat pig, Sir, like most of your Parisiennes; they get up at midday; the day passes, they do not know how; they have no time to write, and when they want to write, they can find neither paper, pen, nor ink, so then they have to come and ask me, but now the desire to write disappears. For every ten women, nine are like this. Forgive, Sir, Mme Denis for her extreme laziness....

It appears to me that he was not at all a romantic figure and simply recognized, in a purely practical sense, that he needed female companionship.

As the 1770's progressed, Voltaire gradually became more ill, though this had little effect on his work output. He made his final trip to Paris in 1778 in order to see a performance of his last play and died there on May 30. Though he was initially buried in Champagne for technical reasons, his body was moved to the Panthéon after the revolution.

My overall assessment of Voltaire is that he was a multitalented person. However, he was not to any extent what one might call a revolutionary or even a thinker. The works that made him popular were most often satirical, and satire is not the best tool for distilling serious ideas. In contemporary terms, he could reasonably be compared to Carl Reiner or Norman Lear, since television has essentially replaced the theater as the dominant public art form, though, as a class-conscious person, Voltaire would wince at the comparison. He liked theatrical hustle and bustle, and the main difference would be that there weren't mass audiences in those days. What impress me the most are his work ethic and financial savvy. I have no desire to read much of his oeuvre, because I'm sure that I would find his plays dated. They were even dated while he was still alive, and he was incensed by the fact that some of Shakespeare's plays became popular in Paris. Although Voltaire was loosely connected with the buildup to the French Revolution, most of his views came from the generation before the philosophes. Certainly, he was outraged by the abuses of the monarchy and the Catholic Church, but he was in fact quite well adapted to them and would have done well even if a revolution hadn't been imminent.

In this vein, it is of some value to compare Voltaire to Rousseau, Diderot and d'Alembert. The three were each quite unlike Voltaire. Rousseau had the disadvantages of abandonment by his father at the age of ten, little formal education and an inability to navigate complex social situations. Being a philosophe was never his ambition, and he fell into that role mainly because it became the only option available to him after he failed to succeed in the opera and the theater. In fact, his accidental entry into the 1750 Dijon essay contest determined the remainder of his career. He wrote an unnecessarily harsh letter to Voltaire in 1760 which alienated one of the few people who might have assisted him. Nevertheless, I think, from reading Confessions, that he was an extremely talented writer. But because of his psychological makeup and background, he was unable to capitalize on the options that presented themselves to him – quite the opposite of Voltaire. Diderot was primarily a man of his times, and he was excited by the dissemination of new ideas, which is what he is best known for, though I don't think that he had many interesting ideas of his own. I am less familiar with d'Alembert, who was a talented mathematician, and he seems to have fallen somewhere between Diderot and Voltaire in his ability to navigate complex social situations. 

While there is much to criticize about Rousseau, as a personal matter I still prefer him to Voltaire and Diderot, because he was a fellow introvert, and we both had unpropitious backgrounds. Neither Voltaire nor Diderot left recollections of their life experiences, and I consider Confessions, though an imperfect account of Rousseau's life, one of the finest works of the eighteenth century. I had considered reading Candide, but, because I don't think that I would like it at all, I'm going to move on to something else.

Voltaire: A Life III

Voltaire stayed with Émilie du Châtelet for several more years, but kept Marie Louise Denis as a backup. The latter was about eighteen years younger than Voltaire and still had other options for male companions. She and Voltaire had a sexual relationship, though it was hardly a strong romance, and not much changed until 1749, when Émilie died. Mme Denis fit Voltaire's lifestyle to some extent, since she enjoyed participating in amateur productions of his plays, but I don't think that she was an ideal partner for him because, besides the fact that she was his niece, which forced them to pretend that they were not sexually involved, she was not an aristocrat. There were some intellectual female aristocrats whom Voltaire may have preferred, but if he made an attempt to seduce them he failed. The opinion that I've formed is that, while Voltaire was quite intelligent, he was essentially a social climber who sought the same social status as the aristocrats, while allowing himself the opportunity to pursue his interest in the theater. Émilie began an affair in about 1747 with Jean-François de Saint-Lambert, a marquis whom she met through aristocratic circles, and she later became pregnant by him; she died from an infection in 1749, a few days after the birth. The baby died later. Coincidentally, the same Saint-Lambert began an affair with Sophie d'Houdetot in 1752; Rousseau was smitten with her in 1757 and she became the subject of his novel, Julie; or The New Heloise, a bestseller, though their relationship didn't last long.

Leading up to this, Voltaire was getting tired of court life in France. He and Émilie had three residences: the Château de Cirey, an apartment in Versailles and an apartment in Paris. He had avoided visiting Frederick in Potsdam, the capital of Prussia, because the French court frowned upon it, but, after Émilie died, he lived there for a time. However, when he was brought to trial for making an illegal investment, Frederick grew irritated with him, and he left Prussia on bad terms in 1753. He was initially uncertain about what to do next, since he was no longer welcome in Paris, and in 1755 he finally settled on moving to a property in Geneva just outside of town, which he renamed Les Délices, and he made extensive improvements to it. He also obtained a country house near Lausanne. As he had done elsewhere, he ingratiated himself with those in power, particularly Théodore Tronchin, the doctor who later became one of Rousseau's enemies. 

Up to this point in his life, Voltaire, who was now in his early sixties, had not been much of an Enlightenment figure, like Denis Diderot or Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, the mathematician, who together had started the Encyclopédie in Paris. Some of the Parisian philosophes were outright atheists, whereas Voltaire was a deist. They solicited written contributions from him, and he befriended d'Alembert, who visited him in Geneva and wrote an essay about the town. However, this essay scandalized d'Alembert because of its religious references, and it was opposed by both the Catholic censors in Paris and the Calvinists in Geneva. Consequently, d'Alembert withdrew from the Encyclopédie, and Diderot took charge. Voltaire also became controversial in Geneva due to his interest in plays, because Calvinists thought that they led to vices. At the time, Geneva was a city-state, and Voltaire elected to buy properties just across the border in France, where he could do as he pleased. Beginning in 1758, he went on another spending spree and purchased two châteaus, Ferney and Tournay, along with surrounding lands, while retaining Les Délices. This time, besides the usual improvements, Voltaire made investments in farming and built up an enormous staff. According to Davidson, Voltaire then acquired, for the first time, a genuine interest in "the common man," which put him in closer alignment with Diderot, d'Alembert and Rousseau.

I am gradually piecing together Voltaire's character from the information provided. He seems to have had an extremely good memory, a talent for languages and an extroverted personality. Intellectually, though he produced many witty one-liners, they were often sophisticated put-downs and did not demonstrate much intellectual depth. He may have been similar to some extroverted people I've known who were impressive in social situations but at heart were a little superficial. There is still some mystery regarding how he remained so wealthy after 1728. Some of his income came from loans to aristocrats and some of it came from foreign investments. He was living during the heyday of exploitative French colonialism, which may have helped. Davidson notes that Voltaire was anti-Semitic, and this makes me think that his enmity may have derived from years of competition with Jewish moneylenders. There is evidence that some of his transactions were not aboveboard, and this inclines me to think that his wealth was not all acquired honestly. In 1759 he published Candide, which became a runaway bestseller and was probably the only truly profitable work of his literary career. I may read that after I finish this book. I am nearing the end and will have one more post before then.

Voltaire: A Life II

I am plugging away slowly, as usual, and am about halfway through the book. Voltaire had such an active public life that it becomes exhausting to follow all of the details. It doesn't help that I have little interest in his poetic, theatrical or historical writings, and that most of his work is not about ideas per se. He became a major philosophe primarily due to the range of his works and his stature in France at the time.

Émilie du Châtelet was married to an aristocrat who worked in the military. She had dutifully produced three children, and was free to pursue an independent life. She was highly intelligent and interested in mathematics and science, whereas her husband was completely unintellectual and didn't mind if she had affairs. Prior to meeting Voltaire, she had moved to Paris and already had two affairs. While seeing Voltaire, she was initially engaged in another affair with her math tutor, but she eventually settled on Voltaire. Davidson thinks that her difficulty in judging people may have been a symptom of autism, and she was certainly promiscuous and occasionally exercised poor judgment.

When Émilie and Voltaire finally settled on each other, they renovated her husband's dilapidated château, called Cirey, which is located in the country about midway between Paris and Basel, Switzerland. At the time, Voltaire was trying to understand science, and they purchased equipment to conduct experiments. Bizarrely, they separately submitted scientific papers in a competition, which neither of them won. They also staged theatrical performances, participating themselves and including the staff. This was an ideal environment for both of them for a time, but Voltaire didn't really care about science and was more interested in writing and advancing his career. He received overtures from Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, who probably sought him as a trophy for his court. He continued to get himself into trouble with his writings, which were usually condemned by censors, even though they would be considered innocuous today. Sometimes his letters were copied and circulated without his knowledge. On top of this, it was impossible to control the printing and distribution of his works, which often appeared in pirated editions and got him into legal trouble, putting him at risk of being jailed again. As in any period, his financial manager was robbing him blind and had to be replaced.

By 1740, Voltaire was tiring of Émilie, whom he increasingly perceived as too controlling of him. He spent time with Frederick the Great and also attempted to improve his reputation in Paris by being nominated to the Académie Français. His first attempt failed, but later, with the help of Mme de Pompadour, whose friendship he had cultivated, he was elected. This meant that he was in good graces with Louis XV and received a pension. As of 1746, Voltaire's relationship with Émilie is continuing to unravel, and she is running up debts gambling in Fontainebleau. Voltaire has set his sights on a niece, Marie Louise Denis, who is the daughter of his sister, who died earlier, and whose husband has recently died.

There are samples of Voltaire's writing interspersed throughout the text, and I particularly like his witticisms, of which this is an example:

The whole of metaphysics, to my taste, contains just two things: first, what is known by all men of good sense; and second, what they will never know.

This statement not only explains Voltaire's disinterest in philosophy, but may even be correct.

I was pleased to see that Davidson is willing to discuss psychiatric issues. This has been rare in the biographies that I've read, and I would be glad to see more of it. It seems that depression and autism may be common among intellectuals and could be a key to understanding them. Possibly a dysfunction in one aspect of the brain frees up neurons for another aspect. This seems to be what happens with autism, where high competence in rote learning and information processing is accompanied by incompetence in social situations. One might even argue that there is currently an evolutionary pressure favoring autism. Then there are bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, epilepsy and ADHD. There is some evidence that schizophrenia may be associated with mathematical skills in some cases. Since these conditions could be genetically linked, it will be no easy matter sorting them out. 

As for myself, the only disorder that I'll admit to is a mild form of dyslexia. This made it difficult for me to read, write and learn other languages, but there seems to be a benefit in the sense that I form opinions more on the basis of observation than on written words. I'm not really sure that dyslexia is a true disorder, since, in theory, all humans were dyslexic a few thousand years ago, before writing was invented. It is possible that dyslexia is beneficial in some of the sciences: Charles Darwin was a poor student and needed help writing his books, and Richard Feynman, though mathematically talented, was bad at reading and writing.

Voltaire: A Life I

I finally got around to starting this biography by Ian Davidson. Davidson is not a scholar of French intellectual history, and this was written mainly to provide a new English biography of Voltaire, since one had not been written for several years. My interest in the French Enlightenment began with Rousseau, and I followed up with Diderot. From my readings so far, I'm not terribly impressed by the ideas that germinated during this period, and I have become more interested in the biographical details of the people who participated in it. Rousseau wrote on a variety of topics, but, by modern standards, he did not do real research, and what he had to say on practical matters hardly seems relevant today. The primary backdrop for the French Enlightenment was the collapse of the ancien régime, which was unbelievably repressive by our standards, and Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire and others simply helped precipitate the downfall. I find it absurd that contemporary writers like David Graeber and David Wengrow write books such as The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity and refer to Rousseau as if his ideas still have to be taken into account. I am often amazed that ludicrous books become popular among so-called educated people. There are plenty of good books out now, some of which I've reviewed, that cover human evolution quite well without mentioning the Enlightenment at all. The Enlightenment occurred about three hundred years ago, and science has moved on considerably since then, even rendering Newtonian physics obsolete.

Voltaire was born in Paris in 1694, a few years before Rousseau in Geneva, and died in the same year, 1778. His original name was François Marie Arouet, which he changed as an adult, as was not uncommon in those days. He was educated in a Jesuit school, where he learned Latin, but not Greek. His father was a bourgeois lawyer and pressured him intensely to study law, but Voltaire resisted him and initially pursued a career as a poet and a dramatist instead. He had a brother who was nine years older with whom he was not close, and a sister who was eight years older with whom he was quite close. His mother died when he was approaching seven. Because of his career disagreement with his father, he was cut out of his father's will until he reached the age of thirty-five. This proved to be a significant setback during his early adult life. 

One of the few reliable ways to make money as a writer in Paris at the time was to write tragedies and then stage them at the Comédie Français. Voltaire had a hit, but also a few flops, while trying to establish himself as a poet and a wit. Although he had friends and mistresses, some of whom were aristocrats, he often found himself trapped in Paris trying to earn a living under abject conditions, and he became ill from smallpox, scabies and other diseases, while his aristocratic friends were away at their châteaus in the country. With the severe censorship dominant at the time and the ability of aristocrats to crush commoners for any reason, Voltaire, by 1726, had been imprisoned in the Bastille twice and was exiled to England, almost penniless. 

He spent about two years in England, and the contrast with France became a transformative experience for him. The openness of discussion among intellectuals was startling, and there was no religious oppression. There is much uncertainty about how he spent all his time, and Davidson speculates that he may have suffered from depression. Nevertheless, starting with no knowledge of English, Voltaire remarkably became fluent in written and spoken English within a year and a half and developed friendships with Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, along with Lord Bolingbroke, whom he had met previously in France. He was particularly taken by Gulliver's Travels, which he compared favorably to Rabelais. He also attended several Shakespeare plays, and, while he was shocked by the lack of formality, he later used Julius Caesar as a basis for his own play. In addition, Voltaire became aware of Isaac Newton and John Locke, two Enlightenment thinkers who were not widely known in France at the time, and this expanded his intellectual horizons. There is some uncertainty about why he left England, and it is possible that he had engaged in some illicit activity, but, upon his return to France, he had a fresh outlook that enabled him to become a major public figure.

As far as I've read, Voltaire has managed to become extremely wealthy. This occurred in 1728 largely because he and some of his friends noticed a flaw in a state lottery that allowed them to easily win by buying many tickets. They did this several times and split the proceeds. Also, in 1729, he became eligible to receive his inheritance from his father, who had died seven years earlier. From this time onward, Voltaire, with the cash in hand and shrewd investments, never again faced financial hardship. To make matters even better, in 1733, he met "the love of his life," Émilie du Châtelet, who was then twenty-seven, while he was thirty-nine.

In my mind, as I read, I am making comparisons with Rousseau. I like Rousseau, but I prefer Voltaire as a person. The problem with Rousseau, I think, was psychiatric in nature. It is telling how Rousseau's experience of England in 1766 differed from that of Voltaire in 1726. Rousseau left in a panic in order to escape an imagined conspiracy, whereas Voltaire made new friends and absorbed the culture. Rousseau had a history of broken friendships, and his choice of an ascetic lifestyle is puzzling in light of the fact that he could easily have found a sufficient income. He spent most of his life in near-poverty with Thérèse Levasseur, an illiterate peasant, rather than broadening his horizons by circulating among other intellectuals and enjoying the company of an intelligent, aristocratic woman, which he clearly would have preferred. The question then becomes which psychiatric condition might have afflicted Rousseau. It is possible that, since he enjoyed repetitive work such as music-copying and often misunderstood people, he suffered from some form of autism. He also at times seemed ridiculously self-important and condescending, not unlike Wittgenstein or another autistic male I know. More tenuously, one might argue that Rousseau's preference for rules and dislike of commerce and investment, which are generally chaotic, could be indicative of autistic tendencies. Alternatively, his paranoia may have been a symptom of schizophrenia. A close study of Rousseau reveals how the course of his life was probably quite different from what he would have liked. In this respect, Voltaire comparatively seems to have been quite a success. He lived as he chose and found a suitable companion. He loved the theatre, and, by managing the practical aspects of his life effectively, he was able to pursue it. While some of the differences between Rousseau and Voltaire can be explained by Rousseau's introversion and Voltaire's extroversion, I find it difficult not to conclude that Rousseau was more likely to make poor choices. It is true that Voltaire had the advantage of a bourgeois upbringing in Paris, unlike Rousseau and Diderot, and had several lifelong friends there to assist him, but I don't see any of Rousseau's particular pathology in either Voltaire or Diderot.

I'm only up to 1733 and will continue on my next post.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 X

As the 1960's progressed, Russell became increasingly dependent on Ralph Schoenman. He founded the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, which, among other things, sought to draw attention to war crimes. Schoenman managed most of the day-to-day operations and traveled frequently while Russell remained at home. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the focus shifted to the Vietnam War. Although Russell remained relatively lucid up to the time of his death in 1970, his ideas during this period were often inconsistent and interspersed with Schoenman's ideas. While Russell's rhetoric was sometimes over-the-top, equating Lyndon Johnson with Hitler, Schoenman's rhetoric became explicitly Guevarist, which directly contradicted Russell's focus on peace. For a time, Schoenman seemed to emulate Ché Guevara, hopping around countries and inciting violent revolutions. Eventually, Russell was forced to disassociate himself completely from Schoenman.

Russell's family life remained problematic right up to the end. He did finally see his son, Conrad, who grew up to become a successful historian. He remained estranged from his son, John, who continued living with Dora after Harriet and Roddy had grown up and moved out, and he tried unsuccessfully to block John from seeing his children, Anne, Sarah and Lucy. Though Lucy had been a promising student in her early teens, she became a poor student and was sexually promiscuous later on. She was unable to gain admission to Oxford or Cambridge, and for a period had a Moroccan boyfriend who was subsequently deported. She traveled to Kathmandu and studied Buddhism. Both Lucy and Sarah were diagnosed with schizophrenia. The final tragedy occurred after Russell's death, when, in 1975, Lucy, at the age of twenty-six, poured kerosene on herself in a cemetery in Cornwall, ignited it and burned to death.  

My primary reaction to this biography is that I find it extremely depressing. However, there is a lot to think about, and the main categories that interest me concern what intellectual contributions Russell made, the nature of his relationships with other people, and the extent to which schizophrenia influenced his life. These three categories seem intertwined, and I find it difficult to unravel them. Ray Monk has provided a lot of information, but he wisely leaves the ultimate assessment to the reader.

Though I am not an expert on mathematical logic, my sense is that Russell was a failure as a thinker in that realm. Generally, he wanted to prove that mathematics could be derived from formal logic. My understanding is that this idea was disproven conclusively by Kurt Gödel, and, despite Monk being fuzzy on this point, I think that Russell realized that his main mathematical ideas were incorrect. I think that Russell intentionally moved from mathematics and philosophy to popular writing because he lacked the skills to be a major thinker. In my opinion, that was a good idea, because he was completely outclassed by Gödel and others. My sense is that, although Russell had a high IQ and was verbally fluent in an impressive manner, he was not really an original thinker. He reminds me of a book by Robert Sternberg that I read long ago, called The Triarchic Mind. That book isn't completely supported by research, but I think that it contains an important insight into what it means to be a good student. Sternberg discusses how students with high IQ's often sail through their undergraduate years with excellent academic records but, when they arrive in graduate school, they sometimes struggle, because there is a shift in emphasis from analytical skills to creative skills. The impression I have of Russell is that, after obtaining his degree at Cambridge, he found it difficult to work autonomously and came to rely heavily on Whitehead and, later, Wittgenstein for new ideas. He drifted into popular writing and public causes because they didn't require much creativity.

This lack of creativity also affected his personal relationships. I found it bizarre that Russell paid attention to Wittgenstein under the circumstances that they met, because Wittgenstein perfectly fit the description of a crank. Most academics would have ignored someone like that – Gottlob Frege did – but Russell must have been desperate for help. Eventually, the relationship broke down when Wittgenstein began to criticize Russell. Looking at this psychologically, Wittgenstein was seeking an intellectual niche in which he might excel, and Russell encouraged him, though, in my opinion, Wittgenstein ultimately contributed nothing of lasting value to philosophy. Russell completely cleared the way for him in academia by selling him as a genius, when, all things considered, Wittgenstein might have done better in a different field.

Wittgenstein is a good window for looking into how Russell misunderstood people. As mentioned earlier, he showed the symptoms of autism, and, though that wasn't a known psychiatric condition at the time, many recognized his odd behavior. Russell tended to think that people thought the way he did even when they didn't, and there are examples throughout the biography: Wittgenstein, D.H. Lawrence, Ottoline Morrell (whom he tried to teach mathematical logic), Joseph Conrad and Ralph Schoenman. Something similar occurred with his wives, and what is odd is that he broke completely with them when the relationships ended. Though that may partly have had to do with his pride and ego, I suspect that even when he thought things were going well with the women there were schisms that he was unable to see. It is possible that his schizophrenic tendencies caused him to react sharply once the bubble burst on what had been an artificial construct in his mind. Why did he consistently refuse to interact with his ex-wives? In every case, there is no evidence that the wives were in breach of any understanding that they had with him. Russell's extreme reaction must indicate some sort of psychological self-protection.

One example in which Russell seemed to misunderstand human nature, with hints of schizophrenia, occurred in his relationship with Dora after their divorce. When they were married, they were both completely idealistic about living without following oppressive social norms. Apparently neither of them had the common sense to recognize that if Dora had children with another man this could lead to dire consequences in their relationship. In fact, that is exactly what happened. Russell, as a nominal progressive, was initially happy to accept Griffin Barry's children as his own. Later, when he realized that they would be entitled to the aristocratic privileges associated with his name, he did a complete reversal and began to communicate with Dora only through his lawyer. The situation developed into absurdity when their son, John, proved to be seriously schizophrenic. Because John reflected badly on Russell, he completely abandoned him, along with Dora. Although this is a pretty murky area, I think that a case could be made that Russell experienced a significant cognitive dysfunction in his interpersonal relationships, and that schizophrenia was a likely culprit. Given Russell's behavior, one might simply conclude that he was selfish, but it seems probable that psychiatric conditions beyond his control affected him. Although he wrote an autobiography (which was partly intended to finance the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation), I don't think that it contains any explanation of why he treated some of his closest family members as badly as he did.

Regarding Russell's public life, I think that it is best described as trivial. As he grew older, he increasingly chose to emulate his grandfather, Lord John Russell, who was in fact one of the most significant British politicians of the nineteenth century. Russell never became a leader by any definition, and most of his political ideas were disorganized clichés – even his friend, Beatrice Webb, thought so. I found it embarrassing to read about his years with Ralph Schoenman. The main lasting influence from that period in his life, I think, is the enabling of other unproductive thinkers to follow his model as a public intellectual. The first example who comes to mind is Noam Chomsky. Like Russell, Chomsky appeals to younger generations, usually college students, who want to change the world for the better. But what you find in both Russell and Chomsky is a mishmash of uninformed and obsolete ideas that provide no outline for how a better society might be structured and what it might look like. This becomes obvious if you examine traditional Marxist rhetoric in terms of actual political conditions in recent years. According to the standard radical playbook, the proletariat must rise to overcome the bourgeoisie. However, if you look closely at what has happened lately, the populist groups in the U.S. and Europe, which may once have been labeled as the proletariat, seem mainly interested in becoming more bourgeois, i.e., although their economic situations aren't dire, they want higher incomes, larger houses, expensive cars, etc. It seems to me that neither Russell nor Chomsky had much of a sense of human nature. By painting various governments and people as evil, they achieve nothing more than arousing gullible youth.

On a more positive note – one less emphasized by Monk – Russell also advocated reason and science. This is a model that has been followed by Richard Dawkins and others in recent years. For most intelligent people, it is obvious that God, in the traditional Christian sense, does not exist. Thus, the non-existence of God is sort of a low-hanging fruit for people like Russell and Dawkins to expound upon. Perhaps Dawkins and Chomsky both follow Russell's model in the sense that they can use their writing skills to write popular books and receive a modicum of fame without actually producing any original or useful ideas.

I found it grueling to work though this very long biography, but in the end it was rewarding. Russell's mind was an unpleasant place to inhabit, though understanding it can produce insights. Whether all readers would benefit equally remains to be seen – I think not.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 IX

In 1960, Russell met Ralph Schoenman, a young American activist who quickly ingratiated himself with Russell through flattery. Schoenman almost became part of Russell's family at their house in Wales, and he had a major influence on Russell for several of the remaining years in Russell's life. Russell became involved with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Committee of 100, and before long he was speaking at large rallies in London and participating in demonstrations, which authorities grew tired of. He was jailed briefly in 1961. By then he had become an international spokesperson against nuclear armament, though his positions varied over time. Usually he proposed unilateral disarmament, but on one occasion he seemed to support nuclear weapons as a deterrent. This activism was initially connected with the Labor Party, but soon took an independent turn. As previously, Russell had disagreements with others and proved once again to be poor at reconciling differences with real or perceived foes. I must confess that my eyes glaze over almost immediately when I read about politics, in which the underlying issues are almost never addressed and the discussion is endless.

Perhaps the pinnacle of Russell's fame occurred in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He sent telegrams to world leaders such as John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and U Thant, and though, in his mind, his actions contributed to a reconciliation, that seems unlikely according to knowledgeable sources. In 1963, he and Schoenman also became involved in a Sino-Indian border conflict, during which Schoenman made a fool of himself while visiting China on Russell's behalf. Schoenman was, as Monk describes him, a simplistic radical, and, with Russell, engaged in complex international conflicts which far exceeded their expertise. I think that Russell loved being the center of attention, but the truth was that all he was good for, particularly when he was in his nineties, was a few good slogans: war is bad; nuclear was is very bad; a world government could reduce conflicts; there are too many people.... One of Russell's weaknesses throughout his life was a tendency to make sweeping statements without understanding all the facts, and this condition only worsened in his old age. He liked playing the oracular philosopher for effect, but often had little to back it up. In this respect, he took advantage of the fact that most people didn't have the slightest idea that modern academic philosophy was merely an esoteric subject with no significant applications. His political views wavered over time. Initially he favored socialism, but when he saw what the U.S.S.R was like, he decided that, though he disliked capitalism, the U.S. was the best country to follow in the immediate future. Then, when nuclear weapons came into existence, he perceived the U.S. as a threat to mankind. It is notable, particularly during the Cuban Missile Crisis, that Russell did not have command of all the facts, and he misattributed the defusing of a potentially catastrophic nuclear confrontation to his shrewd negotiation techniques. In his house and in the village of Portmeirion, Wales he was treated as if he were the savior of mankind, but that sentiment didn't spread very far.

I should mention that at this point Russell's household was freefalling into chaos, just as his previous households had. His grandchildren, Anne, Sarah and Lucy (though Anne was not biologically related), disliked the family environment and felt ignored by both Russell and Edith. They spent most of their time away at school, but it is significant that they felt displaced by both Edith and Ralph Schoenman in Russell's attention. No one seemed to have cared about their emotional needs, and this is reminiscent of the experiences of John and Kate. I have peeked ahead, and there is yet another family disaster looming.

As you may be able to tell, the further I delve into this biography, the less impressed I become with Bertrand Russell. Fortunately for me – and you, if you're sick of reading about Bertrand Russell too – I have only a few pages left and will finish up on my next post. I have little criticism of Ray Monk, because, unlike many biographers, he has refrained from idealizing his subject and has dutifully reported his concerns about Russell's character. Our misery will be over soon. I am reserving my final conclusion for then.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 VIII

Up until mid-1955, John spent time in various psychiatric institutions with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Russell wanted nothing more to do with him and attempted to have him certified as insane and live in psychiatric hospitals for the rest of his life. However, authorities decided that John's mental state wasn't serious enough for that, and he ended up living with his mother, Dora, in London. Russell sold his house in Richmond and moved permanently to Wales with Edith and the three children. Although Russell hated all interaction with Dora, an agreement was reached in which he would pay her to take care of John. Her financial situation at the time was grim, and she had been living in London with Harriet and Roddy. 

While these problems with John were occurring, Russell returned to public life with radio broadcasts. He was concerned that a nuclear war could occur and worked to convince world leaders to take steps to avert that outcome. He organized an international panel of physicists with both capitalist and socialist orientations to discuss the risks and report to political leaders. He contacted Albert Einstein, who supported his efforts but died immediately after sending his letter in 1955. The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was published in 1955, and an international meeting called the Pugwash Conference occurred in 1957 and in successive years. Russell also wrote editorials encouraging Eisenhower and Khrushchev to meet. 

During this period, Russell attempted to engage the philosophy community in England. The center of gravity in the field had moved from Cambridge to Oxford, and Russell wrote essays attacking the views of prominent philosophers there, such as Gilbert Ryle and Peter Strawson. He also painted the Oxford philosophers as effete academics. One of the unfortunate characteristics of Russell was that, especially as he grew older, he tended to personalize his views in a manner that attempted to put him in a superior light. Thus, although he may have had a point, his efforts always came across as self-aggrandizement, and they fell flat. Increasingly, Russell saw himself as a towering intellectual icon, though only the general public saw him that way, and the professionals simply dismissed him. 

Russell's daughter, Kate, had stayed in the U.S. and dropped out of academia. She married a graduate student and had three children. In 1960, her family traveled to England and visited Russell and Dora separately. Besides completely losing interest in John, Russell had never been very engaged with Kate. Overall, she was much more stable than John, though she did suffer from depression, and academically she seems to have been considerably more talented. The enormous rift between Russell and Dora had had a significant effect on her childhood, and she had hoped to discuss it with him on this visit, but she never had the opportunity. Ironically, the solution that Kate had found for herself was Christianity, which seems, for her, to have filled the vacuum created by her father's callous intellectual approach to everything.

I will probably have more to say later about Russell's foibles, but I'll make a few comments now. When you look at his life, there is a fairly clear picture in which, when he was young, he concocted various theories completely in the abstract, and they usually turned out to be incorrect. The main example, insofar as his family is concerned, has to do with the idea that the puritanical environment created by his grandmother while he was growing up made him uncomfortable and guilty, stunting his development as a person. The theory was that if he had an open marriage and his children were raised without inhibitions, they would grow up to become psychologically robust adults. In the comments that Ray Monk has provided so far, there is no evidence that Russell ever conceded that his theory of child-rearing was merely a convenient position to hold, and that it failed miserably because, even if it had some basis in fact, his execution of it was a complete failure. In my view, Russell mainly wanted to have free access to as many sexual partners as possible, and he was not at all interested in making sure that his children were raised properly. In the end, the way that he handled family matters was quite similar to the way that his Victorian grandparents had: children have no rights, and the goal is to maintain the family's social standing at all costs. It has been noted that the attitudes of his last wife, Edith, did in fact resemble his grandmother's in some respects. Thus, he didn't really care what happened to Kate, because she was a female and not the male heir. He paid far more attention to John, but when John was unable to live up to his expectations, he simply dumped him. There is a pattern in Russell's behavior that indicates an unusual coldness towards others when he no longer finds any use for them and they represent a challenge to his self-image. Thus, when Wittgenstein, D.H. Lawrence, Dora and Peter criticized him, he demonized them and broke off the relationships with no discussion. As a reader, my sense is that Russell did have some schizophrenia-related cognitive misperceptions, which, though not debilitating, provide an explanation for his coldness, which I think was inborn and had nothing to do with his childhood. I think that many of his views reflect his particular personality and are not applicable to most others. One might argue that his grandmother was trying to do him a favor when she told him not to have children, but he was unable to recognize the soundness of her reasoning due to an inherent lack of understanding of other people.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 VII

Special note to those of you who are obsessed with Bertrand Russell's sex life:

March 23, 2024. This post is so popular that I thought I'd add a comment. While there is a chance that Russell did have sex with his son John's wife, Susan, I think it is unlikely for the following reasons:

1. It is possible that Russell was impotent by 1950.

2. The whole point of having John and his family live with him was to stabilize them to prevent embarrassment to himself.

3. The only source that I've found for the idea is Anne, John's adopted daughter. She was only about five years old when this would have occurred and probably couldn't assess the situation accurately.

4. Russell's opinion of Susan could not have been good: he helped John divorce her later.

                                                                        ***

Russell was so active over such a long period and so many details of his daily life survive that it is a strain to read this biography at times. He rose to great prominence in England after World War II, in part because he had supported the war, unlike World War I, during which he had been a pacifist. In 1948, while on a lecture tour, his plane crashed into the sea between Oslo and Trondheim, and only those in the smoking compartment, where Russell sat, survived. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1949 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. He was dumbfounded by the latter, since he had never published any fiction or poetry, but it encouraged him to write short stories, which, according to Monk, weren't very good. He also came to represent the U.K. in semi-official international meetings. Throughout this period, Russell continued to lecture, and his main concerns at the time were the possibility of a nuclear war and the dangers of the Soviet Union under Stalin and his successors. His last lecture tour in the U.S. occurred in 1951. 

Russell's marriage to Peter did eventually collapse, and Peter left with Conrad, whom Russell didn't see again for nearly twenty years. Because his divorce from Dora had been extremely contentious, he did not engage in a legal battle with Peter. His relationship with Colette O'Niel never revived, and they broke up permanently. While Russell was in the process of separating from Peter and seeing Colette, he had another short affair with a woman named Nalle Kielland. After this, he took up a relationship with Edith Finch, who was a friend of a friend from Bryn Mawr whom he had met many years earlier. They were married in December, 1952, when Russell was eighty and she was fifty-two. Edith was different from his previous wives in that she liked order and had a more conservative personality, and they had a harmonious marriage. She seems to have been more supportive than Dora or Peter had been, thereby not triggering his animosity. It may also be relevant that Russell had prostate surgery shortly after the marriage and perhaps no longer had a roving eye.

The main event in the section I'm reading concerns the disastrous developments in the life of his son, John. In 1945, John traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend a party given by Kate, who was just beginning graduate school. On that trip he met a college friend, Maurice Friedman, and Susan Lindsay, the daughter of the poet Vachel Lindsay, who was then nineteen. Susan had given birth to a baby from her previous boyfriend, and Friedman married her in December. However, the marriage collapsed after just two months, and John decided to marry Susan. This situation grew into a major family disaster. Susan's mental state can hardly be considered stable. Besides the indications of her promiscuity, her father had committed suicide by drinking lye. Moreover, although John was clearly homosexual, he held the mistaken idea that his homosexuality was caused by his mother and could be cured. To make matters worse, Griffin Barry, himself a failed writer, had convinced John to become a writer. I think that this was all an obvious disaster-in-progress, but perhaps because it was occurring on a different continent and Russell refused to communicate with Dora, no action was taken to remedy the situation until it was too late.

John and Susan married in the U.S. in 1946, and John adopted Susan's daughter, Anne. They had their own daughter, Sarah, in 1947 and moved to England that year. John had received an inheritance from his father and proceeded to run through it by living in luxury in London, hiring an expensive governess and seeing an expensive psychoanalyst. To complicate matters, John and Susan had another daughter, Lucy, in 1948. Neither John nor Susan were interested in taking care of their children, and their household became chaotic. Susan continued her affairs with other men. John could not hold down a job, and they began to run out of money. In early 1949, when John was twenty-eight, a plan was made for Russell to buy a large house and share it with John, Susan and the three children. Russell found a house in Richmond, near the house where he had grown up, and had major renovations made to accommodate the family. 

The chaos continued at the new house, though, for a time, Russell seems to have developed a close relationship with Susan. When Russell married Edith in 1952, she moved in and apparently put her foot down regarding household behavior. On the surface, the home seemed calm initially, but on Christmas, 1953, after dinner, John and Susan announced that they were "tired of children" and left the house forever, "taking the remainder of the food, but leaving the children." John and Susan moved to Wales, where their psychiatric conditions continued to deteriorate. Susan launched a new affair with a man named Wordsworth, and John proceeded to divorce her with the help of his father. By December, 1954, John had become psychologically unhinged, and he was taken to a psychiatric ward and began a long period of hospitalization. The children were temporarily left in Russell's custody. 

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 VI

According to Monk, there is no record of what Russell spoke about or how people reacted to the 1940 William James Lectures. John and Kate remained in California until 1941 and grew to enjoy their independence. When they moved to Pennsylvania to live with Russell, Peter and Conrad, they became despondent. Then, probably with help from Russell in John's case, John and Kate transferred to Harvard and Radcliffe, respectively, in the fall. Russell's job at the Barnes Foundation initially went well, and he continued to take other jobs on the side. However, Peter became increasingly restless and troublesome. In 1941 she was thirty-one years old to Russell's sixty-nine years, and, compared to Russell's earlier wives, she was more emotionally demanding. Russell merely attempted to humor her, but that didn't work. It was a rather ironic situation for Russell to be working at the Barnes Foundation, because the purpose of the Foundation was to enrich the lives of underprivileged people by exposing them to the arts. Barnes had acquired one of the best collections of Impressionist paintings in the world (which I would like to see at some point). In contrast, Russell was a closet elitist who usually hid his disdain for ordinary people. Perhaps intentionally to stir up trouble, Peter attended events at the Foundation and routinely offended the staff by being snobby and disruptive. This became so significant that Barnes fired Russell in 1942. However, the situation worked out well for Russell, because he successfully sued for breach of contract and was awarded $20,000, which covered his expenses for some time.

Russell remained in the U.S. until 1944, when he was offered a position at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1943, before he got the position and sailed back, he spent time in Princeton, New Jersey, where he met Albert Einstein, Kurt Gödel and Wolfgang Pauli. It does not appear that Russell enjoyed their company. Knowing Russell well by now, I think that he was probably hobnobbing with people at the Institute for Advanced Study in order to obtain a position there. The main complaint I have about Ray Monk's narration is that he doesn't sufficiently emphasize the importance of Gödel's work in relation to Russell's work. This may be in part because, by 1943, Russell's interest in mathematical logic had evaporated, but the fact remains that Gödel's incompleteness theorem of 1931conclusively refuted the central argument of Principia Mathematica by proving that it is impossible to use the axiomatic method to construct a mathematical theory that entails all of the truths in any particular branch of mathematics. Gödel was one of the preeminent mathematicians of the twentieth century and the final word on mathematical logic, but both Monk and Russell act almost as if he were just some guy who worked at the Institute for Advanced Study. It is conceivable that Russell never read any of Gödel's work – indicating to me that Russell's intellectual curiosity was rather limited, and that he was primarily motivated by the desire for fame. In major thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein – or Kurt Gödel – there is a doggedness that one does not see in Russell, and Russell's drift from serious academic work to popular writing and lecturing probably reveals his intellectual limitations. The most productive thinkers often dwell on the same questions for many years, a process which probably leads to greater insights than those produced by more superficial thinkers.

Because of the war situation, John chose an accelerated graduation program at Harvard and finished in 1943. He returned to England, joined the Royal Navy and trained in Japanese language translation in London before being sent to Washington, D.C. While living in Washington, he ran into Griffin Barry, the father of his half-siblings by Dora, and they occupied the same apartment for a time. This probably facilitated John's reckoning with his homosexuality, because he apparently confided in Barry, who was bisexual. John had taken an interest in Barry's children, Harriet and Roddy, while living in London. In 1945, John led a futile letter campaign to resolve family issues so that Harriet and Roddy wouldn't have to live through discordant childhoods similar to those that he and Kate had experienced.

Russell had been working on A History of Western Philosophy with help from Peter while still living in the U.S., and it was published in 1945 in the U.S. and 1946 in the U.K. The book was popular and increased his renown. He also became a BBC broadcaster. Nevertheless, at Trinity College, his estrangement from academic philosophers continued. He attempted to write essays which would appeal to both the public and academics, but the academics generally had lukewarm or negative responses. Wittgenstein was then at Trinity College and had many followers in ordinary language philosophy, a subject in which Russell took no interest. I think that philosophy had become a faddish academic subject by then, and it was hard to take seriously, even for Russell. To this day, philosophers often cannibalize other subjects without saying anything memorable to people other than academic philosophers.

In 1946, Peter made a serious suicide attempt, for which her stomach had to be pumped, and Russell subsequently shipped her off to live in a house in North Wales while he remained in Cambridge. Though their relationship hadn't completely collapsed yet, Russell took the opportunity to meet Colette O'Niel, his old girlfriend, whom he hadn't seen in years. There is a good example of Russell's dishonesty to be found here: at the time, he wrote to Colette, "Every moment of my visit to you was a joy," yet, in about 1949, he wrote to Peter saying, according to Monk, "that Colette was by this time middle-aged, very fat, nearly stone deaf and without any traces of her former beauty." Russell also made overtures to the wife of a Cambridge academic and unsuccessfully tried once again to interest Gamel Brenan, the writer. The unraveling of his marriage to Peter is ongoing.

I am slowly creeping toward the end of the book, but probably won't finish for another month.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 V

In 1937, Russell's financial situation became precarious. Peter had become pregnant the previous year, and his second son, Conrad, was born in April. He wanted time for serious academic work, but, without lecturing in the U.S. or writing popular books, he had insufficient income. Besides his family expenses, he was required to make payments to both Dora and his brother's widow. For this reason, Telegraph House was sold, the family moved temporarily to Oxford, and Russell searched for an academic position. Because he had been outside academia for several years, he could not find an academic post in England. Therefore, he looked to the U.S. for whatever jobs there might be. He contacted the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton but was turned down.  He did manage to receive a one-year contract as Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago for 1938-1939. Then, in April, 1938, Ottoline Morrell, one of his oldest friends, died. 

He, Peter and Conrad traveled to Chicago in September, 1938 and lived near the campus. Russell enjoyed the intellectual environment at the University and had opportunities to discuss philosophical issues with Rudolf Carnap, the German philosopher, who was there at the time. However, in the spring, his contract was not renewed, and he once again sought employment. He was offered a three-year position at U.C.L.A. and moved to California in 1939 with Peter and Conrad. Before his contract period began, he squeezed in a short lecture tour. After negotiating with Dora, John and Kate joined them. At the time, Dora was having trouble keeping the Beacon Hill School in operation, because, with World War II looming, wealthy Americans didn't want to send their children to school in Europe. Russell did not find U.C.L.A. agreeable and was distracted by the war. Therefore, he chose to break his contract with U.C.L.A. and seek employment elsewhere. Peter, apparently, had another affair and greatly disliked John; she briefly considered moving out. Russell was offered the William James Lectures at Harvard for 1940. He also found a job teaching at C.C.N.Y. for 1941-1942. The C.C.N.Y. job turned into a major fiasco, because some people who had read his popular books considered him immoral and objected to his appointment. After a court case, for which he did not have to appear, the offer was rescinded.

At this point, Russell heard from Dr. Albert C. Barnes, of the Barnes Foundation, and, quite unusually, ended up receiving an offer to teach there. This was quite a strange situation, since the school was an art school and Russell didn't know anything about art. Barnes was an eccentric but had complete control over the Foundation, and he agreed to let Russell deliver one lecture per week on philosophy, with very high wages. As far as I've read, Russell, Peter and Conrad moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in the fall of 1940 for the William James Lectures, and then, in January, 1941, to the Philadelphia suburbs, near the Barnes Foundation, with John and Kate staying in California and attending U.C.L.A., which neither of them liked. I don't think that the Barnes Foundation job is going to end well – we'll see. 

As you can tell, Russell's life at this stage, at the age of sixty-eight, was quite a frenzy. I am only able to fit in the bare outlines of what transpired. Monk devotes considerable space to the discussion of Russell's philosophical ideas at the time and evaluates how well they agreed with those of his philosophical contemporaries. According to Monk, Russell argued that experiences are internal ones that occur in the brain and are not the same as external events, whereas other philosophers considered external events real. I still think that this is all a lot of nonsense and am not spending much time thinking about it. Russell seems to have been a die-hard Platonist who wanted to discover objective truths by using a precise language that corresponded exactly with reality. What I have found is that philosophers rarely agree on anything, and that their "arguments" can safely be construed as exotic ephemera. My current view is that all language, including logic and mathematics, is the result of an evolutionary process that allowed humans to exchange knowledge, along with other cultural functions. There is nothing special about language outside a human context. This is why AI is already able to accurately predict phenomena without resorting to the use of symbolic notation. Contrary to what Russell and Wittgenstein thought in their early years, language has no connection with eternal truths. I think that the authoritative pronouncements made by philosophers in these areas are slightly ludicrous. Wittgenstein, at least, in his later thinking, seems to have taken language off the pedestal that he had placed it on earlier – though one dare not paraphrase a philosopher! For me, the main interest of this biography is Russell's life, since I don't consider him to have been an important thinker. In some ways he seems to have been a prototype for later public intellectuals – who rarely offered useful ideas. The possibility remains that in the future both philosophers and mathematicians will be unemployable.