Bertrand Russell was my great teen hero—I believe this is the only thing I have in common with Philip Roth. Then, after he died, there was a lot of anti-Russell revisionist stuff painting him as either (a) an icy manipulator and exploiter of people, especially women, (b) a crazy old coot even before he got old, (c) a lousy and abusive parent, (d) the dupe (in later years) of his lefty secretary, (e) etc., etc.,... PJ took a good swipe at him in "Intellectuals" (the closing story is very funny).
Looking back on it all, and picking up the "History of Western Philosophy" to browse a page or two, and discounting for the normal proportion of human weaknesses and follies, I believe my first impressions were correct. BR was a good egg. He went to the USSR very early—1921, I think—and met everyone (incl. Lenin, of whom he noted the dictator's "Mongolian cruelty"), and saw through the whole thing right away. He came back and wrote a very good book, "The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism," which lost him most of his "progressive" friends. He lived in early-republican China, too, and wrote lucidly and with insight about it. (Comparing the two experiences, he later said: "I went to China, which I found had too little government; then I went to Russia, which had too much.")
BR was a brilliant and funny writer, a terrific companion (by all accounts), and grasped two or three essential truths about the world, which is better than most of us manage. He was a great contrarian, who boasted that "I have never held correct opinions about anything." When Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, he wrote an Op-Ed for the London Times that very elegantly put the case against manned space travel, a position I have come to myself. He was 96 years old at that point. To be sure, he did and said many dumb and foolish things; but if that is your filter, none of us will pass it, certainly not in a life as long and active as BR's. Truly a great man, who, like Lycidas, "hath not left his peer."
Posted on 07/13/2006 4:06 PM by John Derbyshire
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