A. C. Grayling's "Russell: A Very Short Introduction"

If you want a whirlwind tour of Russell's life and a brief, but very good, overview of his contributions to logic and philosophy, then A. C. Grayling delivers.



I remember vividly wrestling with Russell's The Problems of Philosophy in college in 1967. The book was very accessible, it sounded right, but it was "understandable". Something that most of the "classics" of philosophy weren't. Russell was marvelous because he wrote philosophy intelligibly. And he set the problems up and analyzed them in ways that made them accessible, interesting, and enlightening.

I loved Russell's A History of Western Philosophy. It was interesting an entertaining. His account of the murder of Hypatia at the hands of the Christians was, and remains, etched into my memory. He had a way with words. He had a viewpoint. And, he got you engaged. As Grayling points out, this is a "spotty" history of philosophy, but:

"... it is a standing wonder in the philosophical profession that his most successful and widely read book, A History of Western Philosophy, arguably the source of most peoples knowledge of philosophy, is -- despite its many virtues -- in a number of places woefully inadequate as philosophical discussion."

I've read the three volume The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell and enjoyed it, but you can get a reasonable understanding of Russell's scandal-filled but surprisingly moral life in one-fifth the number of pages by reading Grayling, and as a bonus you actually get a very good discussion of Russell's philosophy which isn't covered in the autobiography.

In short, Grayling's book is an excellent crib to read first to orient yourself before you read Russell, and it's even a pretty good crib to read while studying Russell to make sure that you understand what you're studying.

I very much enjoy Grayling's assessment of Russell:

If you wish to see Russell's monument, look around you at mainstream philosophy in the English language as it has been practised since the years between the two world wars. Look also at logic, the the philosophy of mathematics, at the changed moral climate of the twentieth-century Western world...

... in Philsophy his place so pivotal that ... he is practically wallpaper. His philosophical inheritors carry on their philosophical work in his style, addressing the problems he identified or to which he gave contemporary shape, using tools and techniques he developed, and all in large agreement with the aims and assumptions he adopted.