- Paperback: 488 pages
- Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (Sep 20 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0415396271
- ISBN-13: 978-0415396271
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 13.7 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 662 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #497,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) was renowned as one of the founding figures of "analytic" philosophy, and for his lasting contributions to the study of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics and epistemology. He was also famous for his popular works, where his humanism, ethics and antipathy towards religion came through in books such as The Problems of Philosophy, Why I am Not A Christian, and The Conquest of Happiness.
Beginning with an overview of Russell’s life and work, Gregory Landini carefully explains Russell’s philosophy, to show why he ranks as one of the giants of British and Twentieth century philosophy. He discusses Russell’s major early works in philosophy of mathematics, including The Principles of Mathematics, wherein Russell illuminated and developed the ideas of Gottlob Frege; and the monumental three volume work written with Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, where the authors attempted to show that all mathematical theory is part of logic, understood as a science of structure.
Landini discusses the second edition of Principia Mathematica, to show Russell’s intellectual relationship with Wittgenstein and Ramsey. He discusses Russell’s epistemology and neutral monism before concluding with a discussion on Russell’s ethics, and the relationship between science and religion.
Featuring a chronology and a glossary of terms, as well as suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, Russell is essential reading for anyone studying philosophy, and is an ideal guidebook for those coming to Russell for the first time.
About the Author
Gregory Landini is Professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Wittgenstein’s Apprenticeship With Russell (2007), and Russell's Hidden Substitutional Theory (1998).
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2.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not for neophytes, May 7 2012
By David Auerbach "waggish org" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Russell (Paperback)
The Routledge Philosophers editions I've read have generally been quite excellent (Beiser's Hegel, Guyer's Kant, Jolley's Leibniz), but this one misses the mark as a substantive introduction. I would not touch it unless you have a very solid grounding in logic and mathematics. Though he rightly focuses primarily on Russell's immense contributions to logic and the founding of analytic philosophy, Landini uses complex logical syntax without much explanation, which is fine if you're familiar with it, but will be incomprehensible to anyone approaching the logic-analytic tradition for the first time. Further, Landini just doesn't seem to write in a user-friendly manner. I have seen far more approachable explanations of Cantor and the Continuum Hypothesis than the one Landini gives in chapter 2.Landini declares his account of Russell's logical atomism to be "revisionary," linking it much more closely to Russell's work in mathematical logic. It is certainly far from Russell as I studied him. I don't know whether Landini is right, but be aware that his interpretation is idiosyncratic, and I still wasn't able to understand how it solved the seeming lack of reference that Wittgenstein (and others) pointed out. A later chapter on the Principia revision seems quite speculative and unnecessarily hostile toward Wittgenstein. It could have been trimmed from this long book. Russell *is* hugely important and I fear this book will not win him too many converts.
A.C. Grayling's brief, well-written survey Russell: A Very Short Introduction is vastly more accessible and orthodox. And Peter Hylton's Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy (Clarendon Paperbacks) gives a good overview of the context in which Russell worked while treating several key aspects of the logical work. After that, better to just read Russell himself.
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