A short, CRITICAL History of Philosophy, Chapter 57

Was Bertrand Russell Wise - or Merely Clever?

Bertrand Russell’s 1946 A History of Philosophy is among the most popular books on the subject ever written, and it may be the means by which he had his greatest influence on the field.

In this sense, Russell was something like his younger contemporary Leo Strauss. That German-American academic said that he was not a philosopher but rather a critic and commentator on the field. Like Strauss, Russell is someone who has been mislabled as his significance derives primarily from what he said about other men’s compositions and not because of his own ideas.

Yet if they were the two most important commentators on philosophy of the twentieth century, few men could have been so unlike. Where Strauss was indirect, inferential, guarded, scholarly and grave, Russell was pointed, witty, provocative, irreverent and conversational. The differences extend to their backgrounds, personalities and outlook. An expatriate German Jew reared in a middle-class home, Strauss was a faithful husband and devoted father to his step-daughter. Russell was an earl. The rich, titled grandson of a British Prime Minister, he was married four times, a notorious philanderer and less than a conscientious parent. Although a supporter of FDR and the New Deal, Strauss was politically right of center. Although a critic of Lenin and the USSR, Russell was very much a man of the Left, and he was continually seeking out the spotlight in his advocacy for fashionable progressive causes.