Bertrand Russell — Autobiography

I read this autobiography over the course of a few months. Finished it today, started it in May (really, started reading it the first time in December 2022, but never finished it). Gives a good template as to how an honest-to-whatever modern thinker is to live their life - travel, various organizations, writing, love interests, civil disobedience, national honors. But mainly serves to point to other works of his… a catalog with surrounding context… and he was very prolific.

A couple ideas of his that didn’t carry much weight into the future could have been very impactful if someone had implemented them. Ideas about a one world government, which were apparently very popular in the 50s and were seriously considered by some including Russell; extracting the weapons of warfare and the weaponization of science to a single organization so that man may not use them against eachother; pacifist education of children to prevent future warmongering; changing the ideals of courage to mean exploration on the moon instead of conquering your neighbors. These are from the 15th chapter of the autobiography.

There are not many Russell-ites today. The most engagement I see with Bertrand Russell now is people citing him in their respective fields when he talks about something there, not him as a holistic figure. There is a website for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation that does not look like it’s been updated since 2021; but more recently, there is a publishing imprint and magazine dedicated to him called Spokesman Books which has last been updated May 2025.

I suppose incubating at Cambridge will fill one with thoughts of goodwill towards every man, without the need for a complete systematic framework like Christianity. A lifelong project for his was to try and find some logical basis for ethics, which he admitted he never accomplished. The apologist arguments are right, one cannot easily or hardly even at all do away with Christian moral frameworks.

There is a lot that can be expounded about Russell - these are but brief notes. Might add something about China later.