Mysticism and Logic
by Bertrand Russell
3.82 · Rating details · 802 ratings · 75 reviews
10 brilliant essays by a Nobel Prize-winning philosopher challenge romantic mysticism and promote a scientific view of society and nature. Russell explains his theory of logical atomism in these witty, cogent writings, which include popular treatments of religious and educational issues as well as more technical examinations of problems of logic.
Paperback, Western Philosophy, 192 pages
Published August 16th 2004 by Dover Publications (first published October 1910)
Original Title
A free Man's Worship and other essays
Showing 1-30
3.82 ·
· 802 ratings · 75 reviews
Sep 18, 2020Fergus rated it really liked it
Each of us is born with a rudimentary ego, which we and our circumstances develop into a Real Sense of Our Selves.
And if we believe strongly, and have for a long time, that God exists, it is simply a characteristic of who we are, for us.
But there’s a catch.
Our perceptions and ideas of the world are fleeting.
And if we’re meditative by nature, we somehow absorb this Ungroundedness into ourselves, by going where the tide takes us in life.
That’s a pretty basic sense of insecurity.
If you’re pretty well satisfied with getting whatever you happen to be desiring at the moment, wherever the wind blows seems good enough.
But you’ll end up at the end of your life with a physical sense of sheer emptiness from life. Not to mention the resulting heavy weight of cynicism.
I’m not kidding.
Having a foundation makes all the difference.
And we all WILL have upsets to our sense of self this way. The higher our approach, the riskier the result - as in mystics like Eckhart and St Francis.
In other words, once we glimpse our Ungroundedness we must rationalize it to ourselves some substantial way. It seems to oppose our ideas of Goodness and Faith.
The mystics of Meister Eckhart’s ilk succeed in correcting this by believing that Being is born in Emptiness (as in the second Creation story in Genesis), and that this Emptiness, paradoxically, is actually the fullness of God.
And to paraphrase Eliot in his Dry Salvages, we have no choice but to venture out to sea.
And that is the very Ascent of Mount Carmel.
So Eckhart turns the loneliness of this apparent insubstantiality of physical and spiritual things into a Dance.
But Russell laughs at Scholasticism.
Russell believed in solid good sense: rather ironically, since he describes physical reality as relative in Our Knowledge of the External World.
I don’t laugh at mystical insights, finding a Zen-like profundity in Eckhartian scholastic insights. You see where this is going, now?
Turns out Russell is perfectly ENTITLED to discredit Faith. As are we all nowadays.
But, as it turns out, Eckhart’s is ALSO an alternate - but by contrast WELL-GROUNDED - path to RELIGIOUSLY sound common sense.
For if you can’t grasp the amazing depth of Mysticism now -
You may be Out of your depth later on.
Russell, in the dedicatory poem of his Autobiography, states that one thing he never got out of life was Peace.
Love, maybe, in his final marriage but lasting peace? No.
And peace is the only panacea that can truly HEAL us...
And save us from our ceaseless discontent. (less)
And if we believe strongly, and have for a long time, that God exists, it is simply a characteristic of who we are, for us.
But there’s a catch.
Our perceptions and ideas of the world are fleeting.
And if we’re meditative by nature, we somehow absorb this Ungroundedness into ourselves, by going where the tide takes us in life.
That’s a pretty basic sense of insecurity.
If you’re pretty well satisfied with getting whatever you happen to be desiring at the moment, wherever the wind blows seems good enough.
But you’ll end up at the end of your life with a physical sense of sheer emptiness from life. Not to mention the resulting heavy weight of cynicism.
I’m not kidding.
Having a foundation makes all the difference.
And we all WILL have upsets to our sense of self this way. The higher our approach, the riskier the result - as in mystics like Eckhart and St Francis.
In other words, once we glimpse our Ungroundedness we must rationalize it to ourselves some substantial way. It seems to oppose our ideas of Goodness and Faith.
The mystics of Meister Eckhart’s ilk succeed in correcting this by believing that Being is born in Emptiness (as in the second Creation story in Genesis), and that this Emptiness, paradoxically, is actually the fullness of God.
And to paraphrase Eliot in his Dry Salvages, we have no choice but to venture out to sea.
And that is the very Ascent of Mount Carmel.
So Eckhart turns the loneliness of this apparent insubstantiality of physical and spiritual things into a Dance.
But Russell laughs at Scholasticism.
Russell believed in solid good sense: rather ironically, since he describes physical reality as relative in Our Knowledge of the External World.
I don’t laugh at mystical insights, finding a Zen-like profundity in Eckhartian scholastic insights. You see where this is going, now?
Turns out Russell is perfectly ENTITLED to discredit Faith. As are we all nowadays.
But, as it turns out, Eckhart’s is ALSO an alternate - but by contrast WELL-GROUNDED - path to RELIGIOUSLY sound common sense.
For if you can’t grasp the amazing depth of Mysticism now -
You may be Out of your depth later on.
Russell, in the dedicatory poem of his Autobiography, states that one thing he never got out of life was Peace.
Love, maybe, in his final marriage but lasting peace? No.
And peace is the only panacea that can truly HEAL us...
And save us from our ceaseless discontent. (less)
There is something strange about Russell’s writing. Although he often adopts a formal, even stilted, style, and tackles the most abstruse logical problems, his personality is always floating in the background, barely out of sight. The feeling is like Russell is there, in the room with you, reading aloud from his work. His ability to adopt this warm, personal style while appearing not to do so is why I think he is a fantastic writer.
This is related to another persistent feature of his writing. When he is laying forth a theory or an argument, I often feel that Russell is trying just as hard to convince himself as his audience. He was a man skeptical to the core, and I get the feeling that he was only capable of wholeheartedly believing in things—even logical theories—in short, passionate bursts; and that, after reflection, he would find flaws in every one of his former opinions. The vacillation of his ideas throughout his career shows this in full evidence.
This quality is apparent in the first essay, “Mysticism and Logic.” Russell starts off in praising philosophers who have successfully combined the two notions, and expresses his wish that the mystical impulse be given its due respect. And then he proceeds to demolish every doctrine or idea posited by mystical thinkers. By the end of the essay, the reader is more averse to mysticism than before he started. (For a more productive attempt to combine the two, see Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.)
Then there’s his masterpiece of prose, “A Free Man’s Worship.” That is a piece of writing more passionate that I could have ever thought possible from polite, civilized Bertrand. And yet, in the back of the reader’s mind is Russell’s cordial warning in the preface that he later came to find the sentiments expressed somewhat naïve. As I said, an incorrigible skeptic.
It is getting to be something of a cliché to say this, but I find it valuable to read through this philosophy even if you don’t believe it. Even the late Bertrand Russell himself didn’t believe it. But his mind was cast in a unique mold. Russell was capable—or at least as nearly capable as can be achieved—of contemplation without sentimentality or dogmatism. He questioned everything: an exercise incomparably valuable, if not ultimately productive.
What’s more, Russell’s ability to get to the very heart of a question, to probe it with his logical pincers until every strand of the thing is clearly laid out on the dissection table, is always astounding. Merely following the train of his thought is worthwhile, even if the train leads into blind alleys. Plus, what’s so bad about blind alleys?
(less)
This is related to another persistent feature of his writing. When he is laying forth a theory or an argument, I often feel that Russell is trying just as hard to convince himself as his audience. He was a man skeptical to the core, and I get the feeling that he was only capable of wholeheartedly believing in things—even logical theories—in short, passionate bursts; and that, after reflection, he would find flaws in every one of his former opinions. The vacillation of his ideas throughout his career shows this in full evidence.
This quality is apparent in the first essay, “Mysticism and Logic.” Russell starts off in praising philosophers who have successfully combined the two notions, and expresses his wish that the mystical impulse be given its due respect. And then he proceeds to demolish every doctrine or idea posited by mystical thinkers. By the end of the essay, the reader is more averse to mysticism than before he started. (For a more productive attempt to combine the two, see Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.)
Then there’s his masterpiece of prose, “A Free Man’s Worship.” That is a piece of writing more passionate that I could have ever thought possible from polite, civilized Bertrand. And yet, in the back of the reader’s mind is Russell’s cordial warning in the preface that he later came to find the sentiments expressed somewhat naïve. As I said, an incorrigible skeptic.
It is getting to be something of a cliché to say this, but I find it valuable to read through this philosophy even if you don’t believe it. Even the late Bertrand Russell himself didn’t believe it. But his mind was cast in a unique mold. Russell was capable—or at least as nearly capable as can be achieved—of contemplation without sentimentality or dogmatism. He questioned everything: an exercise incomparably valuable, if not ultimately productive.
What’s more, Russell’s ability to get to the very heart of a question, to probe it with his logical pincers until every strand of the thing is clearly laid out on the dissection table, is always astounding. Merely following the train of his thought is worthwhile, even if the train leads into blind alleys. Plus, what’s so bad about blind alleys?
(less)
“That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins…only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built."
“In advocating the scientific restraint and balance, as against the self-assertion of a confident reliance upon intuition, we are only urging, in the sphere of knowledge, that largeness of contemplation, that impersonal disinterestedness, and that freedom from practical preoccupations which have been inculcated by all the great religions of the world.”
“The fundamental epistemological principle…is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.”
“It follows that an ‘event’ is not a particular, but some universal of which there may be many instances. It follows also that an ‘event’ must be something short of the whole state of the universe, since it is highly improbable that this will recur.”
“The beauty of Tragedy does but make visible a quality which, in more or less obvious shapes, is present always and everywhere in life. In the spectacle of Death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, an in the irrevocableness of a vanished past, there is a sacredness, an overpowering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, the inexhaustible mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange marriage of pain, the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow.”
“For countless ages the hot nebula whirled aimlessly through space. At length it began to take shape, the central mass threw off planets cooled, boiling seas and burning mountains heaved and tossed, from black masses of cloud hot sheets of rain deluged the barely solid crust…from the monsters, as the play unfolded itself, Man was born, with the power of thought, the knowledge of good and evil.”
“The vision of beauty is possible only to unfettered contemplation, to thoughts not weighted by the load of eager wishes; and thus Freedom comes only to those who no longer as of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of Time.”
“The mystic insight begins with the sense of a mystery unveiled, of a hidden wisdom now suddenly become certain beyond the possibility of a doubt. The sense of certainty and revelation comes earlier than any definite belief. The definite beliefs at which mystics arrive are the result of reflection upon the inarticulate experience gained in the moment of insight…The first and most direct outcome of the moment of illumination is belief in the possibility of a way of knowledge which may be called revelation or insight or intuition, as contrasted with sense, reason, and analysis, which are regarded as blind guides leading to the morass of illusion. Closely connected with this belief is the conception of aReality behind the world of appearance and utterly different from it. This Reality is regarded with an admiration often amounting to worship….the poet, the artist, and the lover are seekers after that glory; the haunting beauty that they pursue is the faint reflection of its sun. But the mystic lives in the full light of the vision.
“Time builds and destroys all things.”
“The greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism: the attempt to harmonize the two was what made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either science or religion.”
“You are describing a strange scene, and strange prisoners.”
“They resemble us, I replied.”
“Most men, for example, have in their nature meanness, vanities, and envies of which they are quite unconscious, though even their best friends can perceive them without any difficulty.”
“There is some sense—easier to feel than to state—in which time in an unimportant and superficial characteristic of reality…A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.”
“All our thinking consists of convenient fictions, imaginary congealings of the stream: reality flows on in spite of all our fictions, and though it can be lived, it cannot be conceived in thought.” (less)
“In advocating the scientific restraint and balance, as against the self-assertion of a confident reliance upon intuition, we are only urging, in the sphere of knowledge, that largeness of contemplation, that impersonal disinterestedness, and that freedom from practical preoccupations which have been inculcated by all the great religions of the world.”
“The fundamental epistemological principle…is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.”
“It follows that an ‘event’ is not a particular, but some universal of which there may be many instances. It follows also that an ‘event’ must be something short of the whole state of the universe, since it is highly improbable that this will recur.”
“The beauty of Tragedy does but make visible a quality which, in more or less obvious shapes, is present always and everywhere in life. In the spectacle of Death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, an in the irrevocableness of a vanished past, there is a sacredness, an overpowering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, the inexhaustible mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange marriage of pain, the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow.”
“For countless ages the hot nebula whirled aimlessly through space. At length it began to take shape, the central mass threw off planets cooled, boiling seas and burning mountains heaved and tossed, from black masses of cloud hot sheets of rain deluged the barely solid crust…from the monsters, as the play unfolded itself, Man was born, with the power of thought, the knowledge of good and evil.”
“The vision of beauty is possible only to unfettered contemplation, to thoughts not weighted by the load of eager wishes; and thus Freedom comes only to those who no longer as of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of Time.”
“The mystic insight begins with the sense of a mystery unveiled, of a hidden wisdom now suddenly become certain beyond the possibility of a doubt. The sense of certainty and revelation comes earlier than any definite belief. The definite beliefs at which mystics arrive are the result of reflection upon the inarticulate experience gained in the moment of insight…The first and most direct outcome of the moment of illumination is belief in the possibility of a way of knowledge which may be called revelation or insight or intuition, as contrasted with sense, reason, and analysis, which are regarded as blind guides leading to the morass of illusion. Closely connected with this belief is the conception of aReality behind the world of appearance and utterly different from it. This Reality is regarded with an admiration often amounting to worship….the poet, the artist, and the lover are seekers after that glory; the haunting beauty that they pursue is the faint reflection of its sun. But the mystic lives in the full light of the vision.
“Time builds and destroys all things.”
“The greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism: the attempt to harmonize the two was what made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either science or religion.”
“You are describing a strange scene, and strange prisoners.”
“They resemble us, I replied.”
“Most men, for example, have in their nature meanness, vanities, and envies of which they are quite unconscious, though even their best friends can perceive them without any difficulty.”
“There is some sense—easier to feel than to state—in which time in an unimportant and superficial characteristic of reality…A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.”
“All our thinking consists of convenient fictions, imaginary congealings of the stream: reality flows on in spite of all our fictions, and though it can be lived, it cannot be conceived in thought.” (less)
Aug 02, 2020Xander rated it liked it · review of another edition
Mysticism and Logic (1918) is a collection of essays by Bertrand Russell, which presents his viewpoints during the period 1902-1915. That is, all the essays included represent Russell’s first phase as a philosopher (second if you include his youthful Hegelianism).
As he mentions in the preface, the first five essays are popular, while the last five essays are more technical and aimed at a professional audience. The first five essays have the overarching theme of the refutation of mystical philosophy. According to Russell, all of prior philosophy (especially metaphysics) is rooted in ethical and/or religious ideas. This started with Parmenides and continued, through Spinoza, Kant and Hegel, up to his time. These philosophers were system builders, and the system they tried to build was a world that fitted their preconceived ethical and religious feelings.
This is the primary cause of the lack of progress in philosophy, while the sciences (especially in Russell’s time) were progressing at a spectacular speed and into spectacular depths. It is time philosophers started to take from science what is useful – that is, no more cherry picking from scientific results, and start applying the scientific method to philosophical problems.
Of course, here Russell falls back on his own method of analysis. In this view, philosophy should be solely occupied with studying the relations between concepts (symbolic logic) and studying the forms of propositions (formal logic). In the end, the philosopher works with propositional functions and offers general and a priori propositions, to be used by the scientist. This is a radical break with the metaphysics of the past – and a very fruitful approach to philosophy.
With the help of the analytical method, Russell studied problems in mathematics, physics, psychology, language, etc. One original theory that resulted from this approach is Russell’s analysis of the conflict between psychological and physical theories of perception. The physicist starts from objects, which cause certain effects on/in our body, which results in thoughts and other mental activities. The psychologist (and physiologist) starts from our thoughts and mental life and works his or her way ‘back’ to the outside. This leads to insoluble problems about the existence of the outer world and its connection to our thoughts.
For Russell, objects are classes of particulars, and what I see is just one of these particulars. Thus, when I see the sun, what I see is just one instance of the sun – my perspective of the sun – and the sun itself, as thing, is the class of all its particular instances (including the one within my perspective). In short, perspectives and things – the stuff of psychology and the stuff of physics – are just two ways of classifying particulars.
This theory has to address the problem of permanence: Do things exist when I am not perceiving them? And Russell is able to attack this problem with his theory: permanence originates in our notion of continuity – we assume things to continue in time and space. And it is continuity that Russell dismantles: things are simply the series of collections of their particular instances. We either perceive them or we don’t. When a thing moves, we think we perceive the movement of the thing, while all we perceive is the thing at some particular instants in spacetime. Common sense deludes us and philosophers haven’t realized this leads to their insurmountable problems.
This, by the way, requires there to be two sorts of spaces: (1) private space (our perspective of the thing) and (2) the arrangement of all possible private spaces (all possible perspectives of the thing). And this means the world is nothing but a collection of series of collections of particulars, existing in six dimensions. Here we see Russell’s analytical method leading him to a pluralistic worldview (following William James) and a form of realism that overcomes the pitfalls of naïve realism.
In a similar way he attacks the notions of causality, knowledge and the relation between physics and our sense-data. He doesn’t offer clear cut answers or certain theories: he offers hypotheses that are possible and undermines the ground for the alternative theories instead of trying to refute them. For example, when dealing with Kant’s a priori intuitions, he acknowledges this claim is irrefutable, yet the grounds which led Kant to postulating this theory are delusions and hence the theory becomes simply one alternative. In general, Russell’s sole aim is to offer viable hypotheses to philosophical problems that require the least amount of postulates. As he says in one of his essays: “Wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.”
In sum: Russell tries to reduce all philosophical problems to logical problems; through analysis cut up these problems into solvable and unsolvable parts; solve the parts that can be solved; and formulate a theory which makes the unsolvable parts redundant. All should be reduced to logical propositions, and in the end to a handful of logical axioms. (These essays were written during the time when he was still heavily engaged in reducing all of mathematics to logic, and all of logic to some basic principles.) Which makes me wonder: he utterly thrashes all the earlier system builders, yet he himself is heavily rooted in the Aristotelean tradition of viewing all of the sciences to be (ideally) deduced from logic. If this isn’t system building, I don’t know what is…
Anyway, this collection of essays is truly a masterpiece in clear thinking and clear writing. I can recommend it to anyone interested in these types of subjects. For people who are (relatively) new to philosophy and science: perhaps ‘just’ read the first five essays. (less)
As he mentions in the preface, the first five essays are popular, while the last five essays are more technical and aimed at a professional audience. The first five essays have the overarching theme of the refutation of mystical philosophy. According to Russell, all of prior philosophy (especially metaphysics) is rooted in ethical and/or religious ideas. This started with Parmenides and continued, through Spinoza, Kant and Hegel, up to his time. These philosophers were system builders, and the system they tried to build was a world that fitted their preconceived ethical and religious feelings.
This is the primary cause of the lack of progress in philosophy, while the sciences (especially in Russell’s time) were progressing at a spectacular speed and into spectacular depths. It is time philosophers started to take from science what is useful – that is, no more cherry picking from scientific results, and start applying the scientific method to philosophical problems.
Of course, here Russell falls back on his own method of analysis. In this view, philosophy should be solely occupied with studying the relations between concepts (symbolic logic) and studying the forms of propositions (formal logic). In the end, the philosopher works with propositional functions and offers general and a priori propositions, to be used by the scientist. This is a radical break with the metaphysics of the past – and a very fruitful approach to philosophy.
With the help of the analytical method, Russell studied problems in mathematics, physics, psychology, language, etc. One original theory that resulted from this approach is Russell’s analysis of the conflict between psychological and physical theories of perception. The physicist starts from objects, which cause certain effects on/in our body, which results in thoughts and other mental activities. The psychologist (and physiologist) starts from our thoughts and mental life and works his or her way ‘back’ to the outside. This leads to insoluble problems about the existence of the outer world and its connection to our thoughts.
For Russell, objects are classes of particulars, and what I see is just one of these particulars. Thus, when I see the sun, what I see is just one instance of the sun – my perspective of the sun – and the sun itself, as thing, is the class of all its particular instances (including the one within my perspective). In short, perspectives and things – the stuff of psychology and the stuff of physics – are just two ways of classifying particulars.
This theory has to address the problem of permanence: Do things exist when I am not perceiving them? And Russell is able to attack this problem with his theory: permanence originates in our notion of continuity – we assume things to continue in time and space. And it is continuity that Russell dismantles: things are simply the series of collections of their particular instances. We either perceive them or we don’t. When a thing moves, we think we perceive the movement of the thing, while all we perceive is the thing at some particular instants in spacetime. Common sense deludes us and philosophers haven’t realized this leads to their insurmountable problems.
This, by the way, requires there to be two sorts of spaces: (1) private space (our perspective of the thing) and (2) the arrangement of all possible private spaces (all possible perspectives of the thing). And this means the world is nothing but a collection of series of collections of particulars, existing in six dimensions. Here we see Russell’s analytical method leading him to a pluralistic worldview (following William James) and a form of realism that overcomes the pitfalls of naïve realism.
In a similar way he attacks the notions of causality, knowledge and the relation between physics and our sense-data. He doesn’t offer clear cut answers or certain theories: he offers hypotheses that are possible and undermines the ground for the alternative theories instead of trying to refute them. For example, when dealing with Kant’s a priori intuitions, he acknowledges this claim is irrefutable, yet the grounds which led Kant to postulating this theory are delusions and hence the theory becomes simply one alternative. In general, Russell’s sole aim is to offer viable hypotheses to philosophical problems that require the least amount of postulates. As he says in one of his essays: “Wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.”
In sum: Russell tries to reduce all philosophical problems to logical problems; through analysis cut up these problems into solvable and unsolvable parts; solve the parts that can be solved; and formulate a theory which makes the unsolvable parts redundant. All should be reduced to logical propositions, and in the end to a handful of logical axioms. (These essays were written during the time when he was still heavily engaged in reducing all of mathematics to logic, and all of logic to some basic principles.) Which makes me wonder: he utterly thrashes all the earlier system builders, yet he himself is heavily rooted in the Aristotelean tradition of viewing all of the sciences to be (ideally) deduced from logic. If this isn’t system building, I don’t know what is…
Anyway, this collection of essays is truly a masterpiece in clear thinking and clear writing. I can recommend it to anyone interested in these types of subjects. For people who are (relatively) new to philosophy and science: perhaps ‘just’ read the first five essays. (less)
Jul 15, 2013Sam Motes rated it really liked it
Very deep essays on the human being, being human with essay I. "Mysticism and Logic" the most popular, but don't stop reading at the end of that essay. My favorite that resonated the most with me was III. "A Free Man's Worship" in which Russell struggles with finding meaning in life through helping fellow travelers along the journey through life. A life changing read for sure! One of the most compassionate authors for sure. A true foul to the writings of authors such as Rand and Friedman's pro Capitalism stances.
Favorite quote:
���The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish form our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair.���
(less)
Favorite quote:
���The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish form our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair.���
(less)
Sometimes brilliant, but sometimes tedious examination of philosophy and science, good and evil, logic and mysticism, and knowledge itself.
Bertie could dazzle us with his education but prefers to write from the heart. Rather than eviscerate Mysticism as superstitious nonsense, he places a value on mystical experiences as being real catalysts which often inspire subsequent scientifically rigorous work.
"But the greatest of men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and mysticism: the attempt to harmonise the two was what made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either science or religion."
Russell goes on to trace instances of these twin forces of philosophy through the ages. He finds several common themes which characterize mysticism, including a feeling of Unity, documented in the writings of Parmenides, and a feeling that Time is an illusion. Is evil real or is everything relative? These are all the cool theories, questions and ideas that draw me to philosophy (the arcane and involved logic of Aristotle and Russell himself, don't excite me like these do, quite possibly because I find them incredibly difficult).
Bertrand Russell is surprisingly direct and sometimes very funny. He almost slipped this one past me,
"even in the most civilised societies men are not put to death for mathematical incompetence."
His method is what appeals to me most and he articulates it beautifully. He has a deep reverence for the human pursuit of scientific philosophy.
"the ideals to which we do and must adhere are not realized in the realm of matter. Let us preserve our respect for truth, for beauty, for the ideal of perfection which life does not permit us to attain, though none of these things meet with the approval of the unconscious universe. If Power is bad, as it seems to be, let us reject it from our hearts. In this lies Man's true freedom: in determination to worship only the God created by our own love of the good, to respect only the heaven which inspires the insight of our best moments."
(less)
"But the greatest of men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and mysticism: the attempt to harmonise the two was what made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either science or religion."
Russell goes on to trace instances of these twin forces of philosophy through the ages. He finds several common themes which characterize mysticism, including a feeling of Unity, documented in the writings of Parmenides, and a feeling that Time is an illusion. Is evil real or is everything relative? These are all the cool theories, questions and ideas that draw me to philosophy (the arcane and involved logic of Aristotle and Russell himself, don't excite me like these do, quite possibly because I find them incredibly difficult).
Bertrand Russell is surprisingly direct and sometimes very funny. He almost slipped this one past me,
"even in the most civilised societies men are not put to death for mathematical incompetence."
His method is what appeals to me most and he articulates it beautifully. He has a deep reverence for the human pursuit of scientific philosophy.
"the ideals to which we do and must adhere are not realized in the realm of matter. Let us preserve our respect for truth, for beauty, for the ideal of perfection which life does not permit us to attain, though none of these things meet with the approval of the unconscious universe. If Power is bad, as it seems to be, let us reject it from our hearts. In this lies Man's true freedom: in determination to worship only the God created by our own love of the good, to respect only the heaven which inspires the insight of our best moments."
(less)
Oct 01, 2015Karl Gross rated it really liked it
Although these essays contain many flaws, they are packed with insights. Accordingly, I highly recommend them.
The first essay, "Mysticism and Logic," provides a good overview of the features common to mystical experiences and the tenets common to mystical philosophies. His treatment of the reason/intuition dichotomy is flawed, however, because, reason ultimately gains its legitimacy from intuition. In the section devoted to "Good and Evil," Russell gives no arguments that ethical predicates are ...more
The first essay, "Mysticism and Logic," provides a good overview of the features common to mystical experiences and the tenets common to mystical philosophies. His treatment of the reason/intuition dichotomy is flawed, however, because, reason ultimately gains its legitimacy from intuition. In the section devoted to "Good and Evil," Russell gives no arguments that ethical predicates are ...more
Even though these essays were written nearly 100 years ago, Russell comes across clearly while remaining eloquent and succinct. The subject matter is rather abstract, dealing mostly with mysticism, religion, and logic. The last few essays are aimed at a rather small niche audience of mathematicians, physicists, and logicians, but were still comprehensible although not quite as interesting as the opening pieces.
Jun 03, 2013E. G. rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Preface
--Mysticism and Logic
--The Place of Science in a Liberal Education
--A Free Man's Worship
--The Study of Mathematics
--Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
--On Scientific Method in Philosophy
--The Ultimate Constituents of Matter
--The Relation of Sense-data to Physics
--On the Notion of Cause
--Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description
Index ...more
--Mysticism and Logic
--The Place of Science in a Liberal Education
--A Free Man's Worship
--The Study of Mathematics
--Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
--On Scientific Method in Philosophy
--The Ultimate Constituents of Matter
--The Relation of Sense-data to Physics
--On the Notion of Cause
--Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description
Index ...more
Feb 08, 2020Ron Steiner added it · review of another edition
This philosophy dialog made me think... Is science just another religion? It seems to work very well with objective reality... whatever that is..lol
This is another book that was just ok on a first skimming, but was much more rewarding on a second reading.
This book is a series of essays that develops a mysticism based on mathematics, but without a belief in the supernatural. It starts off supporting the attitude of mysticism as a better way to live while dismissing the worldview behind it. It then presents mathematics as a fit object for mystic contemplation. In the process, a criticism of math education and a support for pure mathematics are presented.
Although the essays stand alone, when read in sequence, they build up to a unified body of thought. The blending of mysticism with science comes about very naturally, and does not violate the tenets of science (and perhaps not even those of mysticism).
I have only a few criticisms.
The first is the language gets a bit flowery at times, to the detriment of comprehension. This is especially a problem because while the titles are technically accurate, they mislead in that they don't give a sense of where the essays are heading. This is especially a problem when considered in light of my second objection below...
The subject is a bit too subtle. Math education flows naturally into pure mathematics which flows naturally into contemplation, life, ethics and dissatisfaction. It's so natural that it's easy to miss the subtle point being made. (less)
This book is a series of essays that develops a mysticism based on mathematics, but without a belief in the supernatural. It starts off supporting the attitude of mysticism as a better way to live while dismissing the worldview behind it. It then presents mathematics as a fit object for mystic contemplation. In the process, a criticism of math education and a support for pure mathematics are presented.
Although the essays stand alone, when read in sequence, they build up to a unified body of thought. The blending of mysticism with science comes about very naturally, and does not violate the tenets of science (and perhaps not even those of mysticism).
I have only a few criticisms.
The first is the language gets a bit flowery at times, to the detriment of comprehension. This is especially a problem because while the titles are technically accurate, they mislead in that they don't give a sense of where the essays are heading. This is especially a problem when considered in light of my second objection below...
The subject is a bit too subtle. Math education flows naturally into pure mathematics which flows naturally into contemplation, life, ethics and dissatisfaction. It's so natural that it's easy to miss the subtle point being made. (less)
May 24, 2017mublacksmith rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Between Al-Ghazali's theologically limited philosophy and Russell's logical unbiased rationalism, I find myself in a place where I like both ways of thinking and how invisibly similar both deducted results are.
I recommend the fourth chapter for everyone out there. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mystic...
(less)
I recommend the fourth chapter for everyone out there. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mystic...
(less)
Aug 24, 2011T rated it it was amazing
Brilliant collection of essays.
Jun 29, 2012Pooja Surapaneni rated it really liked it
An excellent fusion...a powerfull insight..but to read it one may need certain pre-requisites i.e a needed subtility of thinking..
Not an easy read, but interesting.
Mysticism and Logic: And Other Essays (1918) Paperback – June 12, 2009
by Bertrand Russell (Author)
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Publisher : Cornell University Library (June 12, 2009)
Language : English
Paperback : 248 pages
ISBN-10 : 1112019219
ISBN-13 : 978-1112019210
Item Weight : 9.6 ounces
Dimensions : 5 x 0.62 x 7.75 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #16,379,248 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#269,773 in Classic Literature & Fiction
Customer Reviews: 4.4 out of 5 stars 20 ratings
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Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970). Philosopher, mathematician, educational and sexual reformer, pacifist, prolific letter writer, author and columnist, Bertrand Russell was one of the most influential and widely known intellectual figures of the twentieth century. In 1950 he was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1950 for his extensive contributions to world literature and for his "rationality and humanity, as a fearless champion of free speech and free thought in the West."
Photo by Photographer not identified (Bertrand Russell (1916). Justice in War-Time.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Daniel H. Reigle
1.0 out of 5 stars Missing Pages
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2012
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I have not read all of the essays in this book yet, but the lead essay "Mysticism and Logic" has pages missing. There is a gap of probably two pages between the bottom of the first page in print, and the next page in print, which is numbered "4." Then pages 6 and 7 are missing. The rest of this essay appears to be present.
This book is printed from a scan of the copy in the Cornell University Library. I found an online copy of this book on Internet Archive, and it is missing the same pages in this essay. So the problem may be in the scan of the original in the Cornell library. Internet Archive has two other scans from different sources that appear to be complete.
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Steven H Propp
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5.0 out of 5 stars AN ILLUMINATING COLLECTION OF RUSSELL'S ESSAYS
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2014
Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970) was an influential British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and political activist. In 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, in recognition of his many books such as A History of Western Philosophy , The Problems of Philosophy , The Philosophy of Logical Atomism , The Analysis of Mind , Our Knowledge of the External World , Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits , etc. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 234-page hardcover edition from 1959.]
He wrote in the Preface, "The following essays have been written and published at various times... The essay on `Mysticism and Logic' appeared in ... 1914... In theoretical ethics, the position advocated in `The Free Man's Worship' is not quite identical with that which I hold now: I feel less convinced than I did then of the objectivity of good and evil. But the general attitude towards life which is suggested in that essay still seems to me, in the main, the one which must be adopted in times of stress and difficulty by those who have no dogmatic religious beliefs, if inward defeat is to be avoided."
Those inquiring about this book in hopes of finding one of Russell's famous and witty critiques of religion [e.g., Why I am Not a Christian , Religion and Science ] will be much disappointed by the opening essay. Russell states, "The mystic insight begins with the sense of a mystery unveiled, of a hidden wisdom now suddenly become certain beyond the possibility of a doubt. The sense of certainty of revelation comes earlier than any definite belief. the definite beliefs at which mystics arrive are the result of reflection upon the inarticulate experience gained in the moment of insight." (Pg. 9)
He goes on, "I believe that, by sufficient restraint, there is an element of wisdom to be learned from the mystical way of feeling, which does not seem to be attainable in any other manner. If this is the truth, mysticism is to be commended as an attitude towards life, not as a creed about the world." (Pg. 11) He adds, "Of the reality or unreality of the mystic's world I know nothing. I have no wish to deny it, nor even to declare that the insight which reveals it is not a genuine insight." (Pg. 12) And finally, "In religion, and in every deeply serious view of the world and of human destiny, there is an element of submission, a realisation of the limits of human power, which is somewhat lacking in the modern world, with its quick material successes and its insolent belief in the boundless possibilities of progress. `He that loveth his life shall lose it'; and there is danger lest, through a too confident love of life, life itself should lose much of what gives it its highest worth. The submission which religion inculcates in action is essentially the same in spirit as that which science teaches in thought; and the ethical neutrality by which its victories have been achieved is the outcome of that submission." (Pg. 31)
Of course, his 1903 essay on the "Free Man's Worship" is the best-known in this collection; and particularly its statement, "That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought or feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath debris of a universe in ruins¯all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built." (Pg. 48)
But note that even in this essay (written when he was profoundly depressed; he said in his 1956 book, Portraits from Memory , that the essay was "a work of which I do not now think well"), said that man's true freedom lay in "determination to worship only the God created by our own love of the good, to respect only the heaven which inspires the insight of our best moments" (pg. 50), and that Christianity's preaching of the necessity of renunciation showed "a wisdom exceeding that of the Promethean philosophy of rebellion." (Pg. 51) [For more information about this period, and Russell's ideas about religion at this time, see my own essay, "The Religion of Bertrand Russell" in my book, Saved by Philosophy .]
Russell was at his lyrical best in these essays; we fans of his work will find much to enjoy in this collection.
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Pet_Bookworm
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2013
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Russell was an amazingly lucid writer. This e-book contains some of his most interesting essays on the contrast between the moral and spiritual experience of human beings and the scientific approach to knowledge. Fascinating insights into the mind of one of the world's greatest mathematical logicians.
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