Philosopher views

RUSSELL'S PHILOSOPHY IS KEY TO INCREASED HUMAN FREEDOM

1. RUSSELL’S REVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHY KEY TO HUMAN FREEDOM

Noam Chomsky, Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MELLON LECTURE, Loyola University, Chicago, October 19, 1994. http://www.zmag.org/chomsky Accessed May 23, 2003, p-np.

Dewey and Russell also shared the understanding that these leading ideas of the Enlightenment and classical liberalism had a revolutionary character, and they retained it right at the time they were writing, in the early half of this century. If implemented, these ideas could produce free human beings whose values were not accumulation and domination but rather free association on terms of equality and sharing and cooperation, participating on equal terms to achieve common goals which were democratically conceived. There was only contempt for what Adam Smith called the "vile maxim of the masters of mankind, all for ourselves, and nothing for other people." The guiding principle that nowadays we're taught to admire and revere as traditional values have eroded under unremitting attack, the so-called conservatives leading the onslaught in recent decades.

Noam Chomskey, Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology, DETERRING DEMOCRACY, 1992, p-np.

Those who adopt the common sense principle that freedom is our natural right and essential need will agree with Bertrand Russell that anarchism is "the ultimate ideal to which society should approximate." Structures of hierarchy and domination are fundamentally illegitimate. They can be defended only on grounds of contingent need, an argument that rarely stands up to analysis. As Russell went on to observe 70 years ago, "the old bonds of authority" have little intrinsic merit. Reasons are needed for people to abandon their rights, "and the reasons offered are counterfeit reasons, convincing only to those who have a selfish interest in being convinced." "The condition of revolt," he went on, "exists in women towards men, in oppressed nations towards their oppressors, and above all in labor towards capital. It is a state full of danger, as all past history shows, yet also full of hope."
3. RUSSELLIAN THINKING PREVENTS INDOCTRINATION, PROMOTES TRUE EDUCATION

William Hare, Professor Mt. Vincent University. BERTRAND RUSSELL ON EDUCATION, 1998, http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Educ/EducHare.htm, Accessed May 22, 2003, p-np.

Russell's conception of critical thinking involves reference to a wide range of skills, dispositions and attitudes which together characterize a virtue which has both intellectual and moral aspects, and which serves to prevent the emergence of numerous vices, including dogmatism and prejudice. Believing that one central purpose of education is to prepare students to be able to form "a reasonable judgment on controversial questions in regard to which they are likely to have to act", Russell maintains that in addition to having "access to impartial supplies of knowledge," education needs to offer "training in judicial habits of thought." (4) Beyond access to such knowledge, students need to develop certain skills if the knowledge acquired is not to produce individuals who passively accept the teacher's wisdom or the creed which is dominant in their own society. Sometimes, Russell simply uses the notion of intelligence, by contrast with information alone, to indicate the whole set of critical abilities he has in mind.

SKEPTICISM IS THE BEST WAY TO AVOID PROBLEMS OF "TRUTH'S"

1. RUSSELL RECOGNIZES PROBLEMS IN DISCOVERING TRUTH

William Hare, Professor Mt. Vincent University, BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE IDEAL OF CRITICAL RECEPTIVENESS, Skeptical Inquirer, May 2001, p. 40.

It is sometimes maintained that philosophers have traditionally regarded ideals such as truth, rationality, and impartiality, especially in the context of science, as relatively unproblematic notions; and that this simplistic view has only recently been discredited by postmodernist thinking (Keller 1995, 11). Contrary to these suggestions, however, contemporary awareness of the deeply problematic nature of such ideas, and of related intellectual virtues such as open-mindedness and love of truth, is greatly indebted to philosophers of an earlier generation, such as Russell, who were under no illusions about the complexities in such ideals and who helped to reveal the dubiousness of naive confidence in them. Unlike many critics today, however, Russell sees clearly that truth, rationality, and impartiality--suitably qualified--remain centrally important in science, education, and elsewhere. [3] We find in his work a valuable account and defense of those intellectual virtues that sustain and promote Enlightenment ideals, [4] and are central to any serious understanding of what it means to be an educated person.

William Hare, Professor Mt. Vincent University, BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE IDEAL OF CRITICAL RECEPTIVENESS, Skeptical Inquirer, May 2001, p. 40.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) enjoys a well-deserved place among the outstanding skeptics of the twentieth century. [1] His work not only sets a powerful example of skepticism in practice, but also helps to clarify the nature and value of skepticism. Russell explicitly rejects what he calls a lazy skepticism and dogmatic doubt, where all inquiry is regarded as pointless and doomed to failure, arguing instead for a constructive skepticism which seeks approximate truth even though certainty is unattainable. He is anxious that his own position be seen as a form of rational doubt, which requires that beliefs be held with the degree of conviction warranted by the evidence. Tentative truth replaces cocksure certainty.

Russell identifies two dispositions at the heart of the inquiring spirit, dispositions that to some extent tend in different directions but which need to co-exist in a dynamic tension and delicate equilibrium if either one is to serve its purpose in promoting the pursuit of truth. He strongly endorses a welcoming attitude toward new and controversial ideas, albeit infused with a definite reluctance and disinclination to give full assent to any idea before it has passed careful scrutiny. This is the complex, almost paradoxical, stance of critical receptiveness.