Mysticism and Logic, Halftime

Time to take a halftime break in Mysticism and Logic. What have we learned in the first half?

Both intuition and logic are part of the human condition, akin to Plato’s two horses or Kahneman's System 1 and System 2. Intuition is particularly well suited to guiding quick judgments in dangerous circumstances; these circumstances, however, are not as common as they were when the intuitive decision capability evolved. As a result, intuition is often a source of error, probably, on net, a disadvantage for philosophy. What intuition or mystical insights can do is to suggest hypotheses and incentivize us to examine scientific or philosophical questions – these are the benefits of intuition in increasing our understanding. But once the incentivizing is done, the analysis must be conducted in a disinterested fashion, unaffected by our hopes and fears. We must examine the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. Mysticism can provide an attitude, a stance, that promotes understanding, but reason is the tool for uncovering truths. Intuitive reflection also can aid rational inquiry through its frequent championing of a sort of detachment, which is the proper attitude for scientific investigation.

Philosophy can and should employ the methods of science, but not try to base reasoning on specific scientific results (which themselves are only approximate truths). When philosophers draw on evolution, for instance, they also adopt the unscientific (but personally comforting) viewpoint that things trend upwards, that there is a built-in progressive slant. Progress in philosophy cannot be secured by imposing preconditions on how the world must evolve.

An inappropriate certitude, the belief that a flash of insight reveals an unerring truth, is a negative consequence of mysticism. The common, intuitive sense of a grand unity also undermines rationality, as the personal interest of philosophers becomes to force reality into their preconceptions of this underlying harmony. Structures of philosophical thought can then be impressive and beautiful, but they are fragile: nothing remains for future thinkers to build on, because the foundations are faulty. In other sciences, mistaken ideas can nevertheless prove fruitful over time, as the errors are corrected while stronger elements remain. As a result, science has made great gains over the centuries – but it is hard to discern progress in philosophy, where past contributions collapse wholesale upon their shaky premises.

The usual argument in favor of science – that it produces technological wonders that make our lives better – is secondary to its chief virtue, that the outlook encouraged by science improves our way of thinking. And for Russell, education essentially is such an outlook, one that can broaden (temporally and geographically) our mental realms, in service to our primary desires. (One mark of a poor education is that it seeks to counter those primary desires.) Education can allow us to overcome our parochial blinkers. Beware of static disciplines, those that are too much in thrall to the past, as they narrow thought.

Chapters IV, V, and VI of Mysticism and Logic are devoted to the disciplines of mathematics and philosophy. Mathematics seeks truth, and attains beauty. Students can glimpse this beauty not by memorizing rules or by dwelling on the long-term material advantages tied to mathematical understanding, but by starting with examples, and then travelling the most pristine paths that lead to the general truths underlying the examples. Mathematics encourages and rewards the devotion to truth.

Mathematics only recently has become rigorous, thanks to advances (impressive, amazing advances) with respect to infinities, infinitesimals, continuity, and symbolic logic. Indeed, mathematics now can be seen as an application of logic. Some philosophical issues, such as Zeno’s paradoxes, have been cleared up in the process, and Euclid is relegated to historical interest. The further application of the full armory of mathematical logic could unleash a new golden age in philosophy.

Russell adopts a sort of Marxian view of prevailing ethics, that they serve the desires or interests of a subset of mankind, not universal truths. Indeed, we should recognize the limitations of those scientific “universal” truths that we do know, which we cannot trust to hold beyond the small piece of the universe we have been able to examine. Philosophy needs the scientific method to progress, but one part of the scientific posture is the notion that truths are provisional.

If there were a “which chapter is unlike the rest?” quiz for the first half of Mysticism and Logic, “A Free Man’s Worship” would be the obvious answer. The message here starts with the unavoidable recognition that the uncaring universe is not built for progress, or for us, or for our happiness. Each of us is a brief candle, soon to be extinguished. The key is to seize upon this recognition with gusto, to nourish and cling to our ideals, and to strive to use our flame, while we can, to aid and illuminate, to engage in the noble task of rendering this insignificant corner of space and time a somewhat better, more beautiful dwelling.

And so we move on to the second half of Mysticism and Logic…

In Praise of Idleness, Halftime

In keeping with an RBR tradition, this halftime report on In Praise of Idleness comes well after the halfway mark of the book – though more than half of the chapters lie in the future.

One of the themes that comes through to me in the first “half” of In Praise of Idleness is how much of the thinking is consonant with Marxian ideas. I guess this should not be a surprise when reading an openly socialist thinker like Russell (who has much good to say about anarchism, too), but Russell’s direct comments on Marx tend to be rather critical. What are some Russellian echoes of Marxian ideas? The ethical positions of society, according to Marx, are those notions that suit the ruling class – and Russell claims that the idea that hard work is virtuous is one such position – as long as the hard work is done by others. (And the education system will attempt to sustain support for the existing order.) Even the Soviet Union, with its praise of the proletariat and its campaigns to enlist young people for manual toil, offers Russell a case in point. The reserve army of the unemployed is a feature of capitalism that, for Marx, helps keep the demands of laborers in line; for Russell, unemployment makes it appear that leisure time cannot possibly be evenly distributed. For Marx, work under capitalism is just a means to an end, as opposed to being what it should be, life itself, manifesting the human need for purposeful labor. Further, workers are required to work such long hours that they have no room for active leisure pursuits. Russell concurs on both points, along with the Marxian (and Millian) observation that machinery has not lightened the load for workers. Property ownership largely stems from military prowess, according to Russell, a’ la Marx’s primitive capitalist accumulation. (As Marx puts it, “In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly force, play the great part.”) Academic economists tend to be stooges of the rich and powerful, according to Russell. Marx was there first: “Though he [a capitalist] chanted to us the whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he would not give a brass farthing for it. He leaves this and all such like subterfuges and juggling tricks to the professors of Political Economy, who are paid for it.” The state apparatus itself is captured to serve the interests of rich industrialists, according to Russell. For Marx, “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”

Marx and Russell share views about other features of the capitalist economy, too. They both recognize the capitalist tendency for large swings in the business cycle and pressure to extend the working day, while they both also seem to believe that economies of scale in production are always available, so that larger producers can out-compete small producers (p. 100). [It turns out that is not always the case.] Of course, Marx and Russell differ on many points. Marx has little good to say about the profit motive within an advanced capitalist system (though the early stages of capitalism create wonders). Russell is more nuanced, suggesting that there are areas where free enterprise delivers the goods and other areas where it does not. For instance, the fact that housework lies outside the profit-oriented economy leads to worse conditions for women. But those areas where the unregulated pursuit of profits fails society are legion for Russell:

(1) The profit motive does not inspire the type of architecture that promotes wellbeing. Desirable architectural reform cannot take place without shielding design from the profit motive, that is, without a species of socialism in this realm.

(2) Relatedly, the profit motive ruins the aesthetics of suburbs. Along with the ugly suburbs, the chase for profits produces anxious wives and unhealthy children.

(3) Profit-seeking in the financial sector leads to anti-social behavior. One element of this anti-social behavior is the promulgation of self-serving myths (which, as noted above, are parroted by academics and other influential people). The policy ideas of people in the financial sector are as divorced from social wellbeing as are the policy ideas of people who are proficient in the military arts. [This is reminiscent not only of Marx but of Adam Smith’s analysis of the disconnect between the interests of capitalists and social wellbeing: “The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public… The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."]

(4) Speaking of the military arts, war is promoted by the profit-seeking of industrialists. [And Smith again on the colonies: “A great empire has been established for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers who should be obliged to buy from the shops of our different producers all the goods with which these could supply them. For the sake of that little enhancement of price which this monopoly might afford our producers, the home-consumers have been burdened with the whole expence of maintaining and defending that empire. For this purpose, and for this purpose only, in the two last wars, more than two hundred millions have been spent, and a new debt of more than a hundred and seventy millions has been contracted over and above all that had been expended for the same purpose in former wars.”]

(5) The unemployment that comes from the volatility of investment represents a social cost that is not taken into account by profit-maximizing decisions within heavy industry. Society does not thrive, then, when the commanding heights of the economy pursue profit in an unregulated fashion. Indeed, poverty is perpetuated by excessive devotion to profits.

(6) The profit motive has not been a major influence on education, but to the extent that it has had an influence, the tendency is for that influence to be detrimental.

(7) The arts cannot thrive when they are driven by profit considerations alone.

Russell’s case for socialism is non-Marxian, it does not follow from class war or even conceptions of fairness to workers. Rather, Russell sees socialism – which includes state control of the commanding heights and some income protection for the poor and unemployed – as being a necessary part of a rational response to the conditions that accompany large-scale industrialization. Why should willing workers suffer because of macroeconomic forces over which they have no control? [Once again, I am reminded of Engels: “Who guarantees that willingness to work shall suffice to obtain work, that uprightness, industry, thrift, and the rest of the virtues recommended by the bourgeoisie, are really his road to happiness? No one. He knows that he has something today and that it does not depend upon himself whether he shall have something tomorrow.”] Surely the unavoidable risks of unemployment should be spread through society, not forced to be borne by the few (in relative terms) who are unlucky. Also for Russell, wealth differentials are tolerable, as long as they do not translate into power differentials. Russell’s vision brings to mind the views of the philosopher Michael Walzer, who in Spheres of Justice (p. 127), also finds that income differentials become a problem when they allow for people to become powerful outside of the economic sphere: “If we succeeded absolutely in barring the conversion of money into political power, for example, then we might not limit its accumulation or alienation at all. As things are, we have strong reasons to limit both of these – reasons that have less to do with the marginal utility of money than with its extra-mural effectiveness.”

Russell is perhaps most stridently non-Marxian (or at least non-Leninist) in his belief that socialism cannot be established in a sustainable fashion through force; persuasion is the route to the rationalization of capitalism that Russellian socialism represents.

Another thinker who came to mind on a few occasions in the first half of In Praise of Idleness is (Bertrand’s friend) John Maynard Keynes. Russell echoes Keynes’s views on the unnecessary and perverse severity of the Versailles Treaty. Russell is prescient in foreseeing another European war on the horizon, stoked in part by the German reaction to the Versailles Treaty. Russell also predicts that the war will be a losing one for Germany, despite initial German victories, and that neglect of America will once again be the cause of German military over-reaching – pretty impressive for an essay published in 1935.

Perhaps the most famous quote of Keynes’s is: “…the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” Russell’s essay “The Ancestry of Fascism” seeks to trace out those political philosophers whose ideas helped spark the rise of fascism. Among the many names that Russell identifies, Johann Gottlieb Fichte seems to hold what, in other contexts, might be termed pride of place.

One fun Russellian nugget from the first half of In Praise of Idleness involves a story of how a town’s butcher is so spiteful towards his competitors that he converts the town to vegetarianism – and thereby destroys his own livelihood along with those of his competitors. This story has a Keynesian, beggar-thy-neighbor flavor, and it occurs within the Keynesian context, too, of foreign trade controls.

A second memorable moment is yet another rather depressing depiction of domestic life. Suburban existence even provides fertile ground for fascist ideologies to flourish, as the lack of public life in suburbia combines with hierarchical structures at work to preclude other outlets for men to exercise power. (In Human Society in Ethics and Politics, Russell compares human suburban existence unfavorably to that of jungle-dwelling monkeys.)

A third small point that I think I will remember from the first half of In Praise of Idleness is that fascism, for Russell, is diabolical both in what it hopes to achieve and how it hopes to get there. [Elsewhere, Russell similarly characterizes Marx as someone “who substituted Prussian discipline for freedom as both the means and the end of revolutionary action.”] And while Russell correctly foresees its eventual military defeat, he also sees as fascism’s intellectual opponents two rather different bodies of thought, Bentham-style utilitarianism and Russell-style socialism. If Russell is right about socialism, however, then utilitarianism and socialism are quite closely allied: socialism brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number.

On to the second half of In Praise of Idleness…

New Hopes for a Changing World, End of the Second Period

The first section of New Hopes for a Changing World takes on the conflict between Man and Nature; the now-completed (by RBR) second section looks at the conflict between Man and Man. In this section, Russell sees technological and military considerations as raising the optimal size of social units, but he recognizes nationalism as an important counterforce; perhaps the upcoming Scottish independence referendum is a case in point. 

Nobel prize-winning economist Ronald Coase passed away earlier this month. Some of Coase’s best known work parallels Russell’s analysis of the size of social units. In his 1937 article “The Nature of the Firm,” Coase looks into the optimal size of corporations in a market economy – and like Russell, sees that agency problems, the difficulty of controlling large numbers of people through centralized commands, are a limiting factor. Further, though a rather staunch free-market thinker, Coase does not have a strong commitment to the notion that individuals make their decisions in a rational fashion.  (Russell points to substantial free trade zones as one of the advantages that accrue to large nations.) Russell’s observation that biased education leads to overly optimistic views of military adventures – and hence to even more war – perhaps would have been agreeable to Coase. I wonder if Coase, who was British (and was born in 1910), ever met Russell?

Russell sees the formation of the rule of law in Marxian terms, as the establishment of the rule of the powerful. (From The Communist Manifesto: “Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class….The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.” From Russell: “Property, in fact, is what the dominant political group chooses that it should be [p. 78].”) But order probably is better than anarchy, and offers the potential for transition to more democratic systems. World Government might have to follow from the usual historical pattern, where it is imposed by one or more powerful nations, but eventually develops independent legitimacy. The Marxian notion that class struggle will disappear following a revolution is a mirage, in part because the negative motivations that underlie Marx’s thinking will survive the revolution.

Communist-style ideas of full equality would lead to poor consequences, as socially beneficial acts would not be sufficiently incentivized, nor socially detrimental acts deterred. But this is only a theoretical concern, as the departures from equality currently are so severe that they themselves lead to inferior consequences, chiefly social instability. No justice, no peace, Russell seems to say, both within a nation and at the international level. So economic development of the currently poorer countries is necessary for global stability and for curtailing racial animus.

Russell uses historically-informed logic to make his case for World Government (Chapter 11). A global system of competitive nation states has always brought war. While the payoff to winners from a war has diminished, or become negative, the overall danger from war has increased with more terrible weaponry. We cannot maintain the old system of nation-states if we are to have a good chance of survival. Hence, we need an armed world government, one that will punish any militarily aggressive states. Russell does not examine the difficulty in determining which state is the aggressor, but there is some ambiguity even in seemingly obvious cases like World War II, and virtually all military adventures are characterized, and not without some justification, as humanitarian.

Three sources of human strife that must be neutralized to give peace a chance are economic, racial, and ideological conflicts. The spread of toleration and enlightenment can help to reduce these conflicts, especially in the face of the rising toll that even a winning war brings. (Enlightened economic self-interest would even indicate a cooperative, altrusitic approach towards other countries.) Marxism in practice is intolerant of the bourgeoisie, who thus respond with equal intolerance when Marxism gathers a following. In some sense, this second section of New Hopes for a Changing World is focused on anti-dogmatism – also the focus of Unpopular Essays, which was published only one year earlier.

Russell holds Keynes’s approach to macroeconomic policy in high esteem, believing that it offers a serviceable cure for sustained unemployment. Russell is in good company, even if the Keynesian solution no longer holds the same luster.  Russell’s encapsulation of macroeconomic distress as arising when private interest undermines the public interest (as with Keynes’s Paradox of Thrift) continues to be relevant, as does his recognition of the tendency of capitalism to evolve into state capitalism.

Russell foresaw the post-war economic renaissance in western Europe. along with the (eventual) softening inside Russia – although the emergence of a world government in the wake of the end of the cold war did not come to pass. Nonetheless, the international human rights project, which was all but non-existent when New Hopes was penned, has come a long way, and is helping to improve the situation for once (and sometimes still) marginalized groups like women and gays.

Despite his criticism of Marx and Lenin, Russell’s vision of the future involves a major role for a vanguard, which comprises some scientists and others devoted to world economic development, as well as sane, anti-dogmatic humanitarians; their work and example can help make today’s new hopes into tomorrow’s realities.

New Hopes for a Changing World, End of the First Period

Bertrand Russell tells us at the beginning of New Hopes for a Changing World that he intends to keep hope alive, though not by succumbing to foolish, unmoored optimism. Progress is not foreordained – but it can be achieved. Russell will recognize our constraints, indicate our predicament, and chart a path ahead.

The conflict between Man and Nature forms the subject matter for the first part of New Hopes for a Changing World. Science and technology have altered the terms of the conflict in recent centuries, but not eliminated it, nor will they do so in the future. (Industrialization not only alters the man/nature nexus, it simultaneously destabilizes inter- and intra-human conflicts.) Economic and technical progress alone cannot ensure higher living standards, given population increases and the deterioration of our environmental and natural resource capital stocks. Much of the world already is overpopulated, yet religious moralists refuse to provide access to information about contraception – they prefer to see population growth checked by higher death rates, not lower birth rates. Even though one might guess from human actions that people apparently want to leave a multitude of descendants, with access to contraception and an end to moralizing against it, population growth can be stemmed without coercion.

Russell’s alarm about population growth appears a little dated now. Population has increased much faster than Russell envisioned, and in many places, much misery did indeed accompany the growth. Nonetheless, living standards around most of the world have gone up, often substantially, even in places like India that Russell singled out as particularly overpopulated. Japan, another country whose population was a concern to Bertie, saw negative population growth during 2008-2010.

Of course, the moral and legal attack on contraception has diminished since New Hopes for a Changing World was written. Access to contraception received constitutional protection in the United States in 1965, and the AIDS crisis spurred the promotion of safer sex practices that also would lead to fewer unwanted pregnancies. (The recent upswell of anti-contraception political positions in the US has not succeeded in reversing this trend, I believe.) In the US, though Catholic leaders still adhere to an anti-contraception line, most practicing Catholics do not share those views.

In Chapter V, Russell noted Condorcet’s optimistic stance on population. This led me to look into Condorcet’s “Outlines of an historical view of the progress of the human mind,” which bears many similarities to New Hopes for a Changing World. (Condorcet does seem to have a little more unmoored optimism than does Russell; but then, Russell was privy to Condorcet’s fate.) Need we fear that increasing mastery over nature will prove self-defeating, that the induced increase in population will eventually so press against available resources that people will die in misery? According to Condorcet,

...there would result from it [the induced increase in population] nothing alarming, either to the happiness of the human race, or its indefinite perfectibility; if we consider, that prior to this period the progress of reason will have walked hand in hand with that of the sciences; that the absurd prejudices of superstition will have ceased to infuse into morality a harshness that corrupts and degrades, instead of purifying and exalting it; that men will then know, that the duties they may be under relative to propagation will consist not in the question of giving existence to a greater number of beings, but happiness; will have for their object, the general welfare of the human species; of the society in which they live; of the family to which they are attached; and not the puerile idea of encumbering the earth with useless and wretched mortals. Accordingly, there might then be a limit to the possible mass of provision, and of consequence to the greatest possible population, without that premature destruction, so contrary to nature and to social prosperity, of a portion of the beings who may have received life, being the result of those limits.

Like Russell, Condorcet contemplates man as being in the infancy of his freedom, and supposes that maturity will bring wonders beyond what currently can be foreseen.

Nature having been handled, it’s on to Man and Man…

Portraits From Memory, End of the Second Period

The preceding nine chapters comprise the “Portraits from Memory” subsection of the book, so perhaps it is an appropriate time for our second (of two) intervals, even though in terms of length, there is still half of the book to go. (Here's the report from the first interval.) Despite some negative judgments that are sprinkled within most of the short biographical pieces – such as the view of Santayana as an enemy to progress – Russell’s Portraits generally are admiring: it is Lawrence alone who emerges as “a positive force for evil [p. 112].” Indeed, Lawrence and Conrad turn out to be opposites for Bertie: superficially, Conrad and Bertie were quite different, but deep down, they were of a piece. Bertie and Lawrence, alternatively, were superficially in agreement, while fundamentally at odds or even at war. But Bertie cannot help but to admire independence of mind, whether it arises in Cambridge Dons, George Bernard Shaw, or H. G. Wells.

The spiritual bond between Joseph Conrad and Bertie is perhaps what I found most surprising in the Portraits. My untutored (indeed, almost completely uninformed) view of Conrad would not have suggested that he and Russell were soul mates. The praise of Moore, Conrad, and Whitehead joins the previous admiration for Wittgenstein as tributes that make me want to know more about the men who inspired them.

One of the implicit messages that comes through is how typical short lifespans were in Bertie’s era – thanks be that Bertie himself was a notable exception. What if other members of Russell’s generation had Bertie-like lifespans? How much more might we have gotten from Keynes, Strachey, and even that force for evil, Lawrence? Imagine Keynes and Strachey, for instance, taking public positions on the Vietnam War – both were considerably younger than Russell. Because of their relatively short lifespans, however, they (particularly Strachey) seem as if they are part of the olden days, while Bertie seems (and is) almost like one of our contemporaries.

The next chapter, however, deals with someone whom Bertie knew, and who himself knew Napoleon. How close we are to those olden days.

Portraits From Memory, End of the First Period

Portraits From Memory lends itself, as did Education and the Good Life, to tripartite division, so we will adopt again the ice hockey approach of two intervals. The first period opens with an autobiographical essay, and “chapters” two through nine offer expansions on themes introduced in that initial chapter. These themes include Russell’s lonely existence as a youth in a repressive atmosphere, the liberating power of Cambridge and mathematics, a trio of turning points, constancy in many matters of opinion, and constancy, too, though at times wavering, in an optimistic outlook on humanity.

The three key moments seem to have been an intellectual epiphany in 1901, the onset of World War I, and a visit to Russia in 1920. We don’t learn anything about the precipitating events for the 1901 turnabout, but the others arise in part through Russell’s personal observations of a pathological public war lust and a hatred-motivated Bolshevik leadership. The common problem is dogmatism; Russell would prefer not to be a contrarian, but the global conditions often have demanded that he be out of step with public opinion. World War I cements Russell’s commitment to improving society through means of political activity, though he is also at an age (over 40) when most mathematicians have already seen a marked decline in their creative powers. (The Prospero-like abandonment of his mathematics books in the early twentieth century was perhaps a bit premature, though it didn’t prevent Russell from co-authoring Principia Mathematica.) The literary public intellectual side of Russell then takes center stage, though it had long been extant: his first book, published in 1896, was German Social Democracy.

Those elements of Russell’s political outlook that remained constant are ones that I still find admirable: the anti-dogmatism, the commitment to personal liberty, the unwillingness to bend to power. One must be realistic, facts cannot be ignored. “But it is also a bad thing to assume that whatever is in the ascendant must be right, that regard for fact demands subservience to evil [p. 47].” I also sympathize with his inability to align himself wholeheartedly with any of the standard political parties.

The fact that Russell laid out an intellectual work plan when he was nineteen, one that he essentially stuck to for the rest of his life, is pretty amazing. And those books that he feared would have no impact – well, they are still being read some seventy years later, alongside only a tiny percentage of the productions of his contemporaries. But we already knew he was remarkable.

Finally, Russell’s praise of Wittgenstein is such an encomium it makes me want to learn more about Russell’s student and colleague: “…at the time when I knew him well he was immensely impressive as he had fire and penetration and intellectual purity to a quite extraordinary degree [p. 24].”

Education and the Good Life, End of the Second Period

We have completed two of the three periods in Education and the Good Life, so it is time to smooth the ice. The middle section that we have just put to rest, “The Education of Character” (Chapters III through XIII), is sufficiently coherent (and long) to have appeared in standalone format. As the section title suggests, the chapters are not so much concerned with the transmission of knowledge to the young as they are with raising happy, kind, and psychologically sound children. To my eye, untutored through first-hand experience with parenting, the guidance provided in “The Education of Character” is likely to succeed.

What are the chief elements of that guidance? Do not lie to children, they will (eventually) see through lies and distrust you. The admonition to avoid lying applies to the most sensitive subjects, too, including religion, death, and sex. (A respect for truth will lead to psychological soundness, but will not necessarily make children [or the adults they become] more popular.) Overcome irrational fears by promoting understanding of how strange processes work; treat real dangers matter-of-factly, as difficulties to be managed but not obsessed over. Do not try to instill virtue through ignorance. Carefully ration praise and, especially, blame. Praise should be offered for any accomplishment that requires extraordinary effort. Do not praise children simply for doing their duty – they are expert strategists, and will realize that they can wield power over you by failing to do their duty. Limit threats, and make sure they are credible but not severe; they must be followed through on when the undesired behavior arises – as it will. Physical punishment must be eschewed, as it sends improper messages and poisons adult-child relationships. Protect children, but don’t coddle them. Don’t demand reciprocal love from children: the parent-child relationship is naturally one-sided. Make sure children frequently are among their peers, as it is only in this setting that a sense of justice can be instilled. Play and fantasy are welcome and important, but organized, competitive games should only be a small part of a child’s life. Emphasize the acquisition of skills, particularly those that allow mastery over nature, as opposed to dominance over other people. Foster a constructive attitude by allowing risks to be taken, and mistakes made.

How does Russell’s advice compare with what might be written today? Here, my ignorance of modern parenting norms betrays me, but for what it is worth, Russell’s views, progressive, no doubt, for their time, seem to have aged well. He recognizes successful pedagogical models like that of Madame Montessori, he sees the value and the shortcomings of Freud, and he understands the fundamental importance of very early education. Russell thinks that misbehaving children should be viewed almost as ill (as opposed to bad) – a position he elsewhere adopts for adult criminals. In his own parenting, he employs the “time out” strategy, which seems to have caught on a lot, and his prohibition on physical punishment likewise has spread.

Russell sees how challenges that stretch but do not break are the key to human development; here, as in his book on happiness, he endorses what in the happiness literature is known as flow. And what is human development, for Russell? He does not want to straitjacket it; rather, society is like a tree, one that can grow in many different, and unplanned, directions. Once again, I am reminded of Russell’s godfather, John Stuart Mill, whose embrace of individual liberty is not based on any intrinsic value to freedom, but rather, derives from the notion that liberty is the best means to promote “the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.”

One, perhaps surprising, sub-text in "The Education of Character" is the stupidity of war. The destruction of resources and lives that war represents is noted (often, as it were, in passing), in many different chapters, and Russell believes that children should be taught to understand how wasteful war is. The allusion that comes to mind here is Shakespearean, from Hamlet:

HAMLET

Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
Or for some frontier?

Captain

Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

HAMLET

Why, then the Polack never will defend it.

Captain

Yes, it is already garrison'd.

HAMLET

Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw:
This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.

Russell’s own summary of "The Education of Character," perhaps, comes at the end of Chapter XIII: “There is only one road to progress, in education as in other human affairs, and that is: Science wielded by love [p. 234].”

Education and the Good Life, End of the First Period

The organization of Education and the Good Life suggests a hockey-like two intervals, as opposed to Reading Bertrand Russell’s traditional halftime recess.

Russell believes that new knowledge is available, knowledge that can inform us of appropriate educational practices. That knowledge comes from psychology and from pedagogy, and the pedagogical advances have demonstrated their effectiveness through the Montessori method. Clear standards and a few simple rules will minimize the need for discipline. Children are eager to learn, and will apply themselves without the need for torture – indeed, terror is counterproductive, and will drive children away from their studies. Excellence in adulthood requires a happy childhood.

[Russell’s godfather has a slightly more approving view of terror in education: “And I do not believe that boys can be induced to apply themselves with vigour, and what is so much more difficult, perseverance, to dry and irksome studies, by the sole force of persuasion and soft words. Much must be done, and much must be learnt, by children, for which rigid discipline, and known liability to punishment, are indispensable as means. It is, no doubt, a very laudable effort, in modern teaching, to render as much as possible of what the young are required to learn, easy and interesting to them. But when this principle is pushed to the length of not requiring them to learn anything but what has been made easy and interesting, one of the chief objects of education is sacrificed. I rejoice in the decline of the old brutal and tyrannical system of teaching, which, however, did succeed in enforcing habits of application; but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race of men who will be incapable of doing anything which is disagreeable to them. I do not, then, believe that fear, as an element in education, can be dispensed with; but I am sure that it ought not to be the main element; and when it predominates so much as to preclude love and confidence on the part of the child to those who should be the unreservedly trusted advisers of after years, and perhaps to seal up the fountains of frank and spontaneous communicativeness in the child's nature, it is an evil for which a large abatement must be made from the benefits, moral and intellectual, which may flow from any other part of the education.”

Perhaps we also can compare Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations: “No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well known wherever any such lectures are given. Force and restraint may, no doubt, be in some degree requisite in order to oblige children, or very young boys, to attend to those parts of education which it is thought necessary for them to acquire during that early period of life; but after twelve or thirteen years of age, provided the master does his duty, force or restraint can scarce ever be necessary to carry on any part of education. Such is the generosity of the greater part of young men, that, so far from being disposed to neglect or despise the instructions of their master, provided he shows some serious intention of being of use to them, they are generally inclined to pardon a great deal of incorrectness in the performance of his duty, and sometimes even to conceal from the public a good deal of gross negligence.”]

OK, back to Russell. As for the content of a good education, applied science (including psychology) is necessary but not sufficient. The humanities might have to be more strictly rationed, though not abandoned, as scientific knowledge advances. When teaching material that demands close attention and sustained study, such as literature in a foreign tongue, the more practical approach – a modern language as opposed to a dead one – should, all else equal, be given preferment. For the most part, the later years of schooling should be devoted to science and math.

Today we need science and the skeptical scientific approach. Skepticism tout court is detrimental, however – progress is conceivable. Russell associates a scientific approach with a sort of insurance against error: be guided by your beliefs, but not to the point that if your beliefs turn out to be incorrect, untold damage will result. (Both the anti-dogmatism and the policy suggestion of pursuing harm reduction appear elsewhere in Russell’s writings. For instance (beyond the instance of the prior link), from his essay “Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind”: “Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.”)

The traits that education should help to nurture in virtually everyone are “vitality, courage, sensitiveness, and intelligence [p. 60].” Vitality promotes an even temperament and intellectual curiosity. Courageous people will think for themselves and not force others to proclaim fidelity to a favored opinion. Sensitiveness will grant standing to other humans, even distant and unknown others, in the cost-benefit analysis of our actions. Intelligence is almost a synonym for the scientific approach: a willingness to learn more – which children have by nature – and a rejection of dogmatism. Open-mindedness helps to extend intelligence into adulthood. The universal application of an education imbued with these precepts holds the potential to promote progress and human happiness almost beyond conceiving.

Now that I have summarized my earlier summentary, I see that there is little on which to pass judgment at this point – or at least that I share virtually all of Russell’s stated aims. The proof, it seems, will be in the pudding of the specific suggestions that follow from Russell’s general precepts. And it is the next section of the book, “Education of Character,” that promises to connect Russell’s more theoretical musings with practical applications.

Human Society in Ethics and Politics, Halftime

When the Reading Bertrand Russell project got underway I noted that I was not particularly interested in Russell’s work within the disciplines of mathematics or philosophy. Human Society in Ethics and Politics is a piece of applied philosophy, and one that surely has tested me. Nevertheless, I have found it to be stimulating – though a bit repetitive, and not quite as straightforward (for this amateur, at least) as I might have hoped. Here’s what I managed to make of the first half.

My main reaction is that Russell is a natural economist. Rationality, for both Russell and economists, involve choosing the proper means to given ends. Russell is a consequentialist: actions should be judged by their likely consequences, not by whether they are virtuous or sinful. Russell’s idea of proper action is one that promotes overall wellbeing – or maximizes the size of the pie, as an economist might say. (The pie represents not material wealth, but preference satisfaction. And “overall” well-being means that the preferences of all humans are implicated, and possibly even the preferences of other sentient beings; some of the most convincing argumentation in the first half is where Russell shows that restricting the social ethic to a subset of humanity is not tenable, even if not provably wrong as a matter of logic.) He recognizes that people must have a motive for behaving in this manner, and thinks such a motive generally can be provided (and often is provided) through social institutions, education, and advances in psychological science. Social institutions can cause people to internalize externalities, by punishing crime, for example, or by requiring damage payments in the event of accidental harm. Social institutions also can channel our passions, including our desire for power, into directions that comport with the general good. Education can help to shape preferences – here Russell goes beyond standard economics – to reduce the gulf between perceived individual well-being and social benefit. Praise and blame can be allocated, too, in ways to generate a motive for desirable behavior.

While society should aim to influence both preferences and choices, individuality must be protected – it is only in the face of the prospect of real externalities that the social system should intervene in individual decision making. Nevertheless, even superstitious preferences of people – such as a belief that card playing on Sunday is wicked – should be given some attention in aiming at maximizing overall satisfaction. My reconciliation of these two positions (based, I hope, on the hints that Russell provides) is that the law should focus on real externalities, whereas the notional externalities connected to beliefs about sin can be addressed informally. Though cognizant of the sources of many of our beliefs in taboo and superstition, Russell nonetheless thinks that for the most part, our ethical intuitions are consistent with his consequentialist, satisfaction-maximizing approach. This concordance renders ethical intuitions to be superfluous, or counterproductive in those cases where they do not align with probable consequences. The goal of overall happiness should make us suspicious of ethical rules whose attraction for us is that they involve unhappiness for people we dislike.

While Russell talks mostly about aggregate satisfaction, he does address distributional issues in Chapters IV, X, and XI. He endorses equality of opportunity, but goes somewhat further. Russell is a sort of soft egalitarian, who believes that in a desirable social system basic goods would be fairly evenly distributed. In part this is due to diminishing marginal utility – an additional loaf of bread does a better job of promoting overall preference satisfaction if it is consumed by a starving person than by a well-fed person.

Overall preference satisfaction generally can be served by limiting suffering. As a result, Russell opposes retributive punishment (even retributive allocation of blame) and bans on euthanasia.

One of the nuggets that will stay with me is Russell’s thought experiment about criminal punishment – where criminals are only believed to be punished, while in fact they lead an idyllic existence. His quick aside in Chapter XII about the traditional moral code -- “Indeed, a cynic might be tempted to think that one of the attractions of a traditional code is the opportunities which it affords for thinking ill of other people and for thwarting what should be innocent desires [p. 139]” – appears to me to particularly apt in light of recent media feeding frenzies concerning perceived lapses by public figures.

Onward to Part Two, “The Conflict of Passions.”

The Conquest of Happiness, Halftime

Chapter 9 marks the end of “Causes of Unhappiness,” which is the first section of The Conquest of Happiness. The second and final section, “Causes of Happiness,” picks up with Chapter 10. So now is an appropriate moment for a halftime report, especially as this timing preserves the RBR custom of declaring halftime at a point somewhat beyond the physical midpoint of the text: “Causes of Happiness” is a bit shorter than “Causes of Unhappiness.”

A lack of moderation is probably the most consistent component of Russell’s analysis of the causes of unhappiness. Excessive self-absorption; excessive love of power; excessive pursuit of excitement; excessive estimation of one’s own virtues, abilities, or interest for other people; excessive ambition, envy, or belief in the malevolence of others; excessive concern with public opinion, excessive labor, and even excessive altruism – these all are causes of unhappiness.

Rational thought is one of the cures for these ills, especially those that are based on false beliefs, such as the typical overestimation of one’s own talents and virtues. Other false (and probably subconscious) beliefs, in particular, those that associate pleasure with wickedness – which Russell thinks are quite widespread due to improper yet standard moral upbringing – also can be combatted by examining their untruth. Russell’s decision to begin his specific listing of the causes of unhappiness with “Byronic unhappiness” can be seen as part of the larger project of countering unhappiness with correct thinking. In Unpopular Essays, Russell takes aim at Leibniz and other philosophers for pushing too far their ambitions to uncover truths through reasoning, to believe that deep understandings can be generated “by merely sitting still and thinking…[Unpopular Essays, p. 60].” The major premise of The Conquest of Happiness, at least so far, is that unhappiness can be overcome by sitting still and thinking – but not too much!

In recent years there has been a burgeoning of research into happiness, and much of what Russell has to say anticipates this literature. Russell, like Adam Smith before him, recognizes that people adapt fairly quickly to the stable conditions in which they find themselves. [Here’s Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (III.I.72): “…in every permanent situation, where there is no expectation of change, the mind of every man, in a longer or shorter time, returns to its natural and usual state of tranquillity.”] Adaptation, the hedonic treadmill, is one of the chief tenets of modern happiness research. For Russell, adaptation is one reason to be moderate in pursuing excitement, because you will find you will need a larger dose for the same effect in the future. Russell also picks out (in Chapter 5) some conditions, such as noise and a hard commute to work, that current researchers believe people have less facility in adapting to – and hence these conditions undermine happiness. Despite our powers of adaptation, Russell notes that for full human flourishing, stability alone generally is not enough: a person has to dwell in an environment congenial to his or her tastes and beliefs. Russell does not believe that rationality per se crowds out other forms of happiness – otherwise reasoning one’s way to happiness would be a fool’s errand – though he does recognize that dwelling on oneself too much is a symptom of unhappiness.

Russell again follows Smith in regarding a quiet life as a key to happiness. Smith virtually equates tranquillity and happiness (TMS, III.I.72): “Happiness consists in tranquillity and enjoyment. Without tranquillity there can be no enjoyment; and where there is perfect tranquillity there is scarce any thing which is not capable of amusing.” Russell is only slightly less assertive: “A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live [p. 56].”] Russell is in accord with much current thinking when he attributes some unhappiness to indecision or second guessing, a lack of commitment to a choice. Further, what is sometimes called “flow,” the losing of oneself in a challenging but doable task, is associated with happiness in modern discussions, and it looks as if Russell understands the importance of flow, too -- for instance, when he suggests in Chapter 2 that not having to struggle undermines happiness.

As usual, I find myself in broad agreement with Russell’s argument. Further, I believe that the process of reading the first half of this book has contributed to my own happiness! I have tried to employ Russellian advice, for instance, to moderate my envy and my fear of societal disapprobation. One of my consumption decisions has been affected by Russell’s admonition to avoid spending money on things that we only value because society expects certain sorts of expenditures. Now I have to read the second half of The Conquest of Happiness not just to avoid unhappiness, but to find happiness.

Proposed Roads to Freedom, Halftime

The obvious intermission in reading Proposed Roads to Freedom is at the break that Russell provides between Part I (“Historical”) and Part II (“Problems of the Future”), but I so enjoyed the delayed intermission in Unpopular Essays that I am trying to recapture the experience. The largest surprise for me in this first “half” of Proposed Roads to Freedom is Russell’s fairly positive take on Anarchism, and his prescience with respect to the tyranny lurking in State Socialism. Russell’s view that large increases in productivity were within grasp also has been borne out in the 90 years that have elapsed since Proposed Roads to Freedom was written. Russell’s argument that pure Anarchism cannot form a stable equilibrium seems sound to me, too.

Russell is endorsing a system in which people are guaranteed a minimal income (the “vagabond’s wage”) without any work requirement, along with a minimal government. Further, guilds play a serious role in governance, setting wages, output and prices, it seems. (Incidentally, though Russell does not reference Emile Durkheim, the guild part of Russell’s vision seems consonant with the ideas laid out by Durkheim in the Preface to the Second Edition of Division of Labour in Society.)

The first Russellian tenet, that of a guaranteed income, largely came to pass, though guild governance and a minimal State did not. I feel as if Russell neglects what proved to be an almost impenetrable issue for socialist economic planners, how to determine where to put new investments, how to decide what goods to make. (Russell, later in the book, discusses innovation with respect to art and science, and recognizes that incentives will have to be provided, but the socialist-style restriction on individual investment and entrepreneurship would, I believe, lead to a Russellian society ultimately falling behind a more capitalist one in terms of living standards.)

One of the reasons that Russell believes that any of the three alternatives (Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism) could, in the right form, be an improvement over the status quo is that he recognizes a good deal of un-freedom in the status quo. Some of this lack of freedom is tied to the British class system – Russell believes that the working class are barred from high-paying professions by their poor education, and that they do not have the resources to support any type of intellectual, scientific, or artistic investment that does not offer an immediate payoff. Give them a vagabond’s wage, then, and watch the flourishing as the majority of people, for the first time, are free to pursue their dreams. I guess I believe that this vision has come to pass in part, too, though surely it is still the case that poor education limits the progress of many children.

Two mini-points made by Russell will stay with me, I think. The first is in the Introduction, when he offers an explanation of how people who fundamentally are empathic and loving nevertheless end up appearing to the rest of the world as being consumed by hate. The second is Russell’s argument against seizing power via violent tactics. Russell says that if the Syndicalists could actually seize and hold power via violent means, then they could do so using non-violent means. (Essentially, he is arguing that holding power requires substantial public support.) I am more intrigued than convinced by this argument, however: many regimes that come to power via violence are able to maintain their position for a long time, despite public disapproval. (Oh, one more mini-point, Russell’s note that labelling was one of the tactics of the Syndicalists was news to me; here’s a brief history of labelling. Two weeks from now [the first edition of this post was made on September 16, 2008], the US will require country-of-origin labelling on many meat products -- this particular labelling requirement might not reflect and appeal to our best instincts.)

Finally, Russell’s arguments in Chapter V about how liberty cannot be foisted upon or be maintained by an uninterested population form a lesson that largely remains unlearned.

Unpopular Essays, Halftime

The length of Chapter 7 has pushed this intermission well past the midpoint of Unpopular Essays. The first “half” of Unpopular Essays provides a few broad themes, as well as the occasional nugget of wisdom or pithy adage – it is Russellian, I suppose.

One of the themes that emerges in Chapter 1 is how trade and contact with foreigners helps to undermine dogmatism. (See also the final part of Chapter 7 on this score.) In Chapter 2, we learn that inculcating what might be called a foreign frame of mind improves our thinking, too, especially in matters political. This is important, because dogmatism is a source of human misery.

The alternative to dogmatism is liberalism, which concerns itself not with what opinions are held, but the manner in which they are held – a liberal recognizes that he or she might be wrong, and that new evidence might require an adjustment in one’s opinions. (Education of the probabilistic nature of the world would be helpful, too, in turning political debate away from absolutist statements.) Liberalism is policy-relevant, in that it suggests that one adopt policies that will not prove disastrous if indeed, your opinions do turn out to be wrong. Avoid committing present evils based on some (possibly wrong) theory of how those evils will be justified by putative long-term benefits. That is, Russell’s consistent political advice is that of insuring against our own mistakes, even as we work to minimize those mistakes. (This point is raised most thoroughly in Chapters 1 and 2.)

In Chapter 3, Russell appears to ignore his own general political advice, when he argues that it may prove necessary to establish world government by force. Russell seems pretty convinced of the desirability of (the right form of) world government. (Even false dogmas would not be so bad if all nations taught the same ones – Chapter 7, part 2; Russell displays the same preference for global political monopoly in Marriage and Morals.) Russell’s prediction (Chapter 3) about the possible future courses for the world through the end of the 20^th century proved to be false (or at least unfulfilled in a timely manner). His more general notion, that international law could be developed into something that would bring on a relative golden age, remains a common hope.

The human propensity to embrace nonsense avidly also is a theme of the first half of Unpopular Essays, though it is most prominent in Chapter 7. Russell’s writings on this score resonate, alas, given our current war on terror: fear breeds cruelty, along with the supposed justifications for the cruelty.

I won’t recount my favorites among the pearls of wisdom in the first half, with one exception (from Chapter 7, part 3): the idea that, when you find yourself getting angry with your interlocutor during a discussion, your anger should serve as a signal that your own opinion goes beyond what the evidence allows.

Onward.

Marriage and Morals, Halftime

I am now halfway through Marriage and Morals so I thought a short pause for what passes for reflection might be in order. My main reaction is how much of what Russell has to say is still pertinent, almost 80 years on. Let me start by mentioning what is less pertinent, however. The notion that a married couple, especially the woman, should be celibate until their wedding night has become much more marginalized. Yes, that particular morality has some traction within US policy, but within the public at large, it simply does not have much of a following that I can see. Meanwhile, of course, the social emancipation of women has come much further than what had been achieved by 1929.

But other viewpoints of the moralists still do have a large following, even if the law has tended to move away from them. (Some ways in which the law has moved: easier divorce; better access to birth control and information about birth control; liberalization of controls over obscenity; legalization of homosexual behavior.) The anti-sex, ascetic code remains a force, and children brought up in religious households imbibe a form of it almost as strong as in Russell’s day – with the same deleterious effects, I believe. A similar point applies to efforts to keep children ignorant about sexuality, and the sacrifice of public health on the altar of the old moral code.

Russell’s identification of workaholism (in Chapter 9) as the chief threat to love still seems relevant.

I think that Russell (so far) neglects the importance of marriage-like institutions that provide some forms of commitment, even in the absence of kids. (I am not sure I concur with Russell’s claim that kids are “the true purpose of marriage,” either.) Happy long-term partnerships require a lot of “investment” on both sides, and people will not be as willing to make those investments if it easy for their partner to just walk away. (This problem applies to marriages with kids, too, and in some sense, has become more acute as opportunities for women outside the home have increased. A woman who forgoes a career to raise kids – or just to keep house – for her husband has made a larger sacrifice than she did 100 years ago, when most careers were closed to her. If such sacrifices are to be encouraged, the woman’s investment has to be protected.) The trial marriages described in chapter 12 have largely come to pass, in the form of young unmarried couples living together.

In reading Marriage and Morals, I frequently am reminded of controls on “vices” other than sex, and in particular, the war on drugs. Russell notes how the position of traditional sexual moralists amounts to an endorsement of prostitution, though the moralists will not accept this characterization, and want to be judged upon their intentions, not upon the consequences of the adoption of their code. Likewise, to my mind, with US drug prohibitionists, who somehow fail to associate the 1.8 million arrests per year, the police corruption, the lethal violence, the eroding of the Fourth Amendment, and so on, with their well-intentioned policies. Finally, on prostitution, though Russell notes the important social function of the prostitute, he remains a strong opponent of prostitution, even in circumstances (such as the ones he identifies in Japan) where the immediate problems are not so severe. I think that his overall assessment underestimates the benefits of prostitution; in particular, I accept the claim that is not infrequently made by prostitutes, that they are engaged in a type of social work. [Nevertheless, I also suspect that Russell is right in his suggestion that male access to sex without going through even perfunctory courtship tends to coarsen social relations, and that he is also right that most of this "unwooed" sex probably takes place outside of a directly commercial context, within either marriages or long-term relationships.]

Russell’s Marriage and Morals shows him to be an acute observer and analyst of the social scene, and an entertaining expositor. Some of his pronouncements are a bit glib (though that characterization does not necessarily imply that there was not deep thought and evidence underlying them). To take two examples (in which I happen to agree with Russell): (1) his claim in Chapter 8 that “no rational argument” can be adduced for laws against homosexuality, and (2) his pronouncement in Chapter 10 that “every humane person” has to support a liberalization of England’s divorce laws. But these examples are drawn from what are basically asides, points that are not central to his theme, so the glibness is forgivable. I am just greedy, sometimes I want more from Russell. Oh, except at other times I find a little bit of needless repetition, especially in his multiple references to how traditional moralists are, in effect, making a case for prostitution.

On to the second half….