Russell Roads
JOSÉ MANUEL SÁNCHEZ RON
, From BABELIA, SUPPLEMENT York Times
For people of my generation, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a myth, a man much admired for his contributions to thought and by the social commitments he made during his long life. I read with enthusiasm some of his books: for example, those devoted to the fundamentals of geometry and the principles of mathematics, its magnificent history of Western philosophy and Why I Am Not a Christian. Many years later, when the opportunity arose, I bought a good edition of his great work, the three volumes he wrote with Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913), which aims "frustrated" was finally reduce all mathematics to the principles of logic. Although I can not understand most of this demanding work, now occupies a special place in my library, which also includes the three volumes of the English edition of his autobiography (1967, 1968, 1969). I remember I bought the first volume in 1968 and still today I moved it began: "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind . These three passions, like great winds, have led me here and there, changing a route, over a deep ocean of anguish, to the edge mismo de la desesperación".
Sin duda por la admiración que sentía por él, fue tan grande el desengaño que experimenté cuando un día de 1979, mientras trabajaba en la biblioteca de la American Philosophical Library de Filadelfia, me encontré con una carta en la que Russell contestaba a unas preguntas relacionadas con la historia de la física cuántica que, creo, Thomas Kuhn le había formulado en una misiva anterior. Las respuestas no eran demasiado interesantes (Russell poco tenía que decir sobre el tema), pero la sorpresa llegaba al final, en una posdata, cuando lord Russell, el aristócrata que, huérfano temprano, tuvo como hogar la casa de su abuelo, antiguo primer ministro británico, correspondent warned that in future not to forget to address him with the titles of nobility which he belonged and Russell detailing.
Today, when I reread his autobiography, a new edition of the translation into English (the three volumes have now been integrated into one), who unfortunately had many years dead, "clearly warn that feeling of class that in 1979 both hit me: Russell was an aristocrat, his whole life, and felt like this forever. But I do not care too much. I've had enough chances to witness the ambiguities and contradictions in which we humans move, but still admire, harder than before to those who strive to be better and supportive, but stop along the way, as Russell in his letter to Kuhn, scales of poverty, class of foolish pride.
Of course, I do not see the body of work as before. In his autobiography, wrote that soon had decided to "write two kinds of books: one abstract, which in time would become concrete and other concrete gradually tend to the abstract." And that, unless a final synthesis, which also planned, "had served its purpose," received praise and "influenced the thinking of many men and women." Certainly influenced, but much of the books he wrote after Principia Mathematica now seem little more than factual texts, interesting but perhaps dispensable in a man of his talent. I also see his autobiography under lights which was not so sensitive before. I know that the excessive number of letters that appear in appendices to the chapters, and often weigh down the narrative, are due to the desire that the play, Russell initially planned to be published posthumously appeared in three volumes ... to make more money, at that time, although in his nineties, was involved with various committees and foundations that will cost money.
And yet, despite the many buts that can make this huge English Autobiography continues to fascinate. Throughout its pages featuring characters and issues that the younger generation, those for which Bertrand Russell is not in any way, a myth, do well to learn. Characters and topics including, among others, Frege, Keynes, Conrad, Santayana, Wittgenstein, Einstein, the elite world of the University of Cambridge, the First World War (where he was imprisoned for pacifist), North America, Soviet Union Communism and the war in Vietnam. It never hurts the other hand, reading passages that help us look to the future with more hope, as virtually closed this book: "There may be wrongly conceived theoretical truth, but I was not wrong in thinking that truth exists and deserves our loyalty. You may have thought that the road to a free and happy men was shorter than it is revealing, but I was wrong to think that this world is possible and worth living in order to make it a reality. " Autobiography
Bertrand Russell
Translation
Puente Juan Garcia and Pedro del Carril
Edhasa. Barcelona, \u200b\u200b2010
1,017 pages. 39 euros
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