A Conversation with Bertrand Russell in 1952

“The rational man will not be too sure he’s right”

This Bertrand Russell interview took place in 1955. There were many notable things about the conversation, like how different the style of interrogation used to be, but what was hard to miss was how the world has changed since the time of this interview – or hasn’t changed.

Russell touches on the problems of educational institutions, what attracted him to philosophy, and the politics of the future.

He started his academic life by learning mathematics, but after doing so for three years in Cambridge, he took philosophy for a year. What attracted him to philosophy was his failure to find truths in mathematics, and the second was the possibility of developing his spirituality. Russell refused to take anything for granted and even in maths – the self-proclaimed root of all truths – he noticed that one was required to accept axiomatic presuppositions on faith. This deeply disturbed him.

People at the time summed up philosophy as “What is matter? never mind. What is mind? no matter.” After hearing the joke endlessly, he got sick of it, and decided to see for himself.

“I have a passion for reason and sharp outlines. I do like clarity and exact thinking. When you allow yourself to think inexactly, your bias interferes without you noticing.”

But Russell didn’t believe that abstract philosophy was needed in the world. According to him, the needs that one responds to of course depends on their own capacity, but it would have been more useful to learn physics, history, psychology, or political theory at the time. Of course, had he been asked this question in today’s world, his answer might not have been the same.

Education

Russell disliked traditional educational institutions for their strictness and the limitations they put on free speech and self-expression, but he similarly disliked the progressive educational institutions that did the opposite.

Freedom is not always good. For example, if countries should not have too much freedom with regards to their relationships with one another. But freedom was extremely desirable when it came to speech.

Russell didn’t think that unbridled freedom would lead to competent and well-learned students, he thought that discipline was too important. And specifically, he thought that instruction should be more emphasized by these progressive schools. In the highly technical world that he lived in, you had to have a lot of knowledge about a subject to be useful.

War

Russell was against the first World War but was not against the Second World War. He blamed Britain for getting involved in World War I that led to the subsequent wars, Germany at the time may not have been completely democratic and free (like England and Scandinavia) but it was better than what came after.

People thought of Bismark as a rascal, and an uneducated farm man. The hope was that Schiller and Goethe would bring Germany to modernity. But Germany was a land power, not a naval power like the British, and so the Germans were not considered dangerous. At the time, France was more feared.

Marx

A political system that will bring happiness must be predicated on kindly feeling. Marxism was not, it was not born out of wanting happiness for the proletariat. Marx was only pretending that this was the case – it was born out of wanting the unhappiness of the bourgeois. Russell hated Russian government in the 20’s, then went to China for a year and enjoyed it more.

“Democracy is the best form of government where it will work”

It didn’t work in China.

Happiness

in the Industrial World

There are three things that are needed to adapt to the industrial revolution according to Russell. For people to live happily in the industrial phase, 1) world government 2) approximate economic equality 3) a near stationary population.

World government

Should be a federal government, leaving great deal of freedom to individual national governments. The things that are controlled by the world government include weaponry – this makes war impossible. If war is not impossible, every advance in scientific technique will result in mass murder.

Approximate Economic Equality

Western Europe and the US have a high standard of living. Asia lives in abject poverty along with Africa. The moment people are educated enough about this, there will be a great development of envy in that part of the world. It will cause unrest and make world peace precarious.

Stationary Population

Food supply does not increase appreciably. The parts of the world where population increases fast will want to go to war with the parts of the world where the population increases slowly.

Russell believed that Asia does not want to be subservient to the white man – but it doesn’t notice that the Russians are white. The most effective propaganda to use in Asia, he said jokingly, is to point out that Russians are white. Asia must live up to its responsibilities and ensure a stationary population. They need to learn what the west has learned faster – that is the only way the East and West can become equal.

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Related posts:

1. Self Reliance Summary (6/10)
2. Chapter 13: God (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
3. Chapter 10: Teaching as an amusing activity (Amusing Ourselves to Death)
4. Chapter 6: The Modern Covenant (Homo Deus)