preface by Ray Monk to John G. Slater's Bertrand Russell
* Source: Bertrand Russell, by John G. Slater; with a preface by Ray Monk. Bristol, England; Thoemmes Press, 1994. xii, 171 p. (Bristol Introductions series)
John Slater is well known to anyone who has done any original research on the life or the work of Bertrand Russell. A professor of philosophy at Toronto University; he is also an avid book collector, famous for having built up the largest personal collection of Russell's works anywhere in the world.(右上写真：恵送していただいた、Slater教授所蔵ラッセル・コレクションの目録／右下写真：松下宛寄贈の辞) Perhaps unusually among book collectors, Slater actually reads the works in his possession, and his knowledge of Russell's work is generally regarded as approaching omniscience. As well as editing many of the volumes in the superb series of Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, he was also chosen by Routledge to write the introductions for their new series of paperback reprints of some of Russell's most important philosophical works (The Principles of Mathematics, Our Knowledge of the External World, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, etc.). These introductions are models of lucid assessment and interpretation, revealing Slater to have, like Russell himself, a natural gift for the simple exposition of difficult ideas. Slater is thus the perfect person to write a general introduction to Russell's work and the present book has been eagerly anticipated for some time. It does not disappoint. Perhaps alone among introductions to Russell's work, it does not confine itself to that small portion of Russell's vast oeuvre that has received attention among professional philosophers. Russell published over sixty books and more than two thousand articles, Naturally, these are not all of equal importance: Principia Mathematica is one of the most significant contributions to the intellectual history of the twentieth century, while Satan in the Suburbs is just an embarrassment; again, 'On Denoting', Russell's famous 1905 article, has had and will continue to have a central place in the philosophical literature, while 'Should Socialists Smoke Good Cigars?', a piece he wrote for an American newspaper in 1932, is, like many such pieces he wrote, merely ephemeral.
The vastness and the diversity of Russell's output presents a problem for anyone setting out to summarize it. What weight should be given to the various parts of this enormous body of work? Among professional philosophers, this problem has generally been solved by treating with the utmost respect Russell's work on logic and mathematics, discussing, though with markedly diminished respect, his epistemology and metaphysics, and finally dismissing in a paragraph or two his writings on ethics, politics, religion and history. The disadvantage of their approach has been that readers of Russell's work have over the years become increasingly selective, so that, by now. Russell is known to many in the profession almost solely as the author of 'On Denoting'. Among such people, Tbe Principles of Mathematics and Principia Mathematica are unread but respected, while everything else he wrote is both unread and despised. In consequence, a whole generation of philosophers has grown up with little or no knowledge of some of his most interesting philosophical writings, such as The Analysis of Mind, Our Knowledge of the External World, and Human Knowledge. Meanwhile, outside the academic profession, among ordinary readers, Russell remains a widely admired and well-liked author for the very work that the professionals despise most: his writings on ethics, politics and religion.John Slater's book provides a useful corrective to the usual academic approach, and, I hope, will do something to help reverse the trend. It is, assuredly, the most wide-ranging short introduction to Russell's work available. For an undergraduate student of philosophy, the most useful chapters will, admittedly, be chapters 2 to 6, in which Slater provides an excellent and admirably clear summary of the work of Russell's that has had the greatest impact upon the development of analytical philosophy - though, even here, his range of citations is considerably greater than that of other commentators. His discussions of Russell's metaphysics and epistemology are, I think, especially good and provide one of the best short summaries available of Russell's work after 1912, which is when conventional accounts of Russell's philosophy usually begin to lose interest.
In his three chapters of Russell's ethics, religious views and political theory, Slater does well to provide some sort of link between Russell as a philosopher and Russell as a public figure. Russell's views in these areas were highly publicized during his lifetime and did much to establish his reputation as a philosopher with something to say about important issues in everyday life. As Slater shows, however, Russell was not just reacting to topical questions, but establishing for himself a general, one might almost say philosophical, position of the perennial question of how one should live.
I am, I must confess, rather sceptical about whether Russell's views on the writing of history really deserve a chapter of their own. Certainly, it seems excessive to devote to them as much space as to his work on logic and the foundations of mathematics. Russell as a historian of philosophy is an interesting topic; his History of Western Philosophy remains, after all, the most popular single volume work of its kind in print and (despite being the subject of scorn and disapproval among professional historians of philosophy) has had a considerable influence. But, even after reading John Slater on the subject, I remain unconvinced that Russell has much that is original and interesting to say about history generally or that How to Read and Understand History is an important work.
This raises my only general qualm about the book. Slater is, I think, generous to a fault in his accounts of Russell's opinions. Russell expressed opinions about such a vast array of subjects that it would be amazing if some of them at least were not utter folly and I would have appreciated rather more indications from Slater as to where, in his view, Russell was being foolish. Such criticism, however, pales beside the pleasure in having in such an accessible form the benefit of Slater's unrivalled knowledge of Russell's work. It is the best kind of introduction: one that seeks not to replace the work its summarizes but rather to lead people to read it for themselves. It is like a guidebook of a vast and little-explored country. Speaking as a tourist who strayed into this particular country several years ago and has felt lost ever since, I can say with assurance that this is one of the best and most reliable guidebooks available.
Ray Monk
University of Southampton. 1994