I wrote in this space on the sounds and colors of India and the enjoyment I derived from them during a business trip to Ahmadabad in March. This post will be about the immense intellectual pleasures I derived, quite fortuitously, from the same trip.
At a break in a meeting, our Indian host suggested that we take some time off to explore a nearby bookstore. My Indian colleagues and I found
Mehras across from and a short walk down the street from the office. Anuj suggested that I buy
The White Tiger, which received the Man Booker Prize in 2008. I grabbed it, for I have no reason to doubt Anuj's recommendation of an Indian novel, and I continued browsing through the shelves of this large store. Not much space was dedicated to literature, but I suddenly stumbled upon a series of books by Bertrand Russell.
My initial surprise at this find was quickly dispelled by the realization that Russell was a contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi and an admirer of his pacifist and non-violent convictions, and that he must therefore share in the reverence accorded all over India to the father of the nation, particularly in Ahmadabad, the capital of Gandhi's native state of Gujarat. In fact, when I had visited Gandhi's ashram during a prior trip to Ahmadabad, I had noticed a Russell quote inscribed on a wall dedicated to remarks made by various prominent people on this great man.
Until very recently I neglected reading Bertrand Russell, for I dismissed him as a crank who used to sign with many other "leftist" intellectuals countless manifestoes protesting the Vietnam War, a war which, against the prevailing opinion, I found justified. I fortuitously discovered his writings a few months ago. A friend in New York was clearing some of his book shelves to make room for new acquisitions, and he gave my wife
Wittgenstein's Poker - The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers, by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. This book is a fascinating account of the lives of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper until their encounter on the evening of Friday, 25 October 1946 at a meeting of the Cambridge Moral Science Club in a room of King's College, during which they had an argument that almost led to blows, as an exasperated Wittgenstein brandished at Popper a poker he had seized from the fireplace, at least if we believe Popper's version of the incident in his autobiography
Unended Quest.
In
Wittgenstein's Poker, I learned that Bertrand Russell had been elected in 1944 to a fellowship at Trinity College in Cambridge, where he had been a student half a century earlier, and that he was present at the meeting. The book mentions that "this was the only time these three great philosophers - Russell, Wittgenstein and Popper - were together." The reading of this book made me want to read Popper's
The Open Society and its Enemies, but also awoke my interest in Russell, who appeared to be of a kindred spirit.
Looking for Popper's book, I noticed on the shelves of Kinokuniya's Philosophy section Russell's
Why I am not a Christian. This title appealed to me and I bought the book together with
The Open Society and its Enemies. After reading the latter (in which Popper brilliantly destroys the intellectual underpinnings of totalitarianism found in the writings of Plato, Hegel and Marx), I read Russell's book, which was an intellectual and esthetic delight.
Intellectual rigour and clarity are rare things. So is a luminous and elegant style. Russell possessed these to the highest degree, and he combined them with certainty in his convictions and a very British wit to produce an enormous outpouring of profound and eminently readable essays. And here on a shelf of a bookstore in Ahmadabad were three collections of essays, which I had not yet seen at Kinokuniya,
Fact and Fiction,
Unpopular Essays and
Authority and the Individual. I could not resist their appeal.
I read
Fact and Fiction first, for the title seemed relevant to what is going on today in Washington, where policies of the new Democratic administration appear to be driven more by fiction than by facts. The back cover gives a good summary of this book: "Its first section deals with the books which influenced Russell in his youth ... The second part is devoted to essays on politics and education. The third section is one of divertissements and parables ... Finally there are eleven essays and speeches concerned with peace and war ..." The first part ends thus:
" ... I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence. The world is still full of people who when they feel a sentiment that they themselves judge to be beautiful or noble are persuaded that it must find some echo in the cosmos. They suppose that what seems to them to be ethical sublimity cannot be causally unimportant. The indifference to human joys and sorrows which seems to characterize the physical world must, they believe, be an illusion; and they fancy that the painfulness of certain beliefs is evidence of their falsehood. This way of looking at things seemed in youth, and still seems to me, an unworthy evasion.
This is recognized where simple matters of fact are concerned. If you are told that you are suffering from cancer, you accept medical opinion with what fortitude you may, although the pain involved to yourself is greater than that which would be caused to you by an uncomfortable metaphysical theory. But where traditional beliefs about the universe are concerned the craven fears inspired by doubt are considered praiseworthy, while intellectual courage, unlike courage in battle, is regarded as unfeeling and materialistic. There is, perhaps, less of this attitude than there was in Victorian days, but there is still a great deal of it, and it still inspires vast systems of thought which have their roots in unworthy fears. I cannot believe ... that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth."
There is much to be admired in the second part dedicated to political essays, but the benefit of hindsight (reviewing the failures of the United Nations) proves that Russell had far too much confidence in the idea of a world government as a solution to continuing conflicts.
I am currently reading this book. One of these
Unpopular Essays is
An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish. In it, one finds many examples of Russell's biting wit. Here are a few: "Man is a rational animal - so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it ... "
"Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth."
"I am persuaded that there is absolutely no limit to the absurdities that can, by government action, come to be generally believed. Give me an adequate army, with power to provide it with more pay and better food than falls to the lot of the average man, and I will undertake, within thirty years, to make the majority of the population believe that two and two are three, that water freezes when it gets hot and boils when it gets cold, or any other nonsense that might seem to serve the interest of the State. Of course, even when these beliefs had been generated, people would not put the kettle in the ice-box when they wanted it to boil. That cold makes water boil would be a Sunday truth, sacred and mystical, to be professed in awed tones, but not to be acted on in daily life. What would happen would be that any verbal denial of the mystic doctrine would be made illegal, and obstinate heretics would be "frozen" at the stake. No person who did not enthusiastically accept the official doctrine would be allowed to teach or to have any position of power. Only the very highest officials, in their cups, would whisper to each other what rubbish it all is; then they would laugh and drink again. This is hardly a caricature of what happens under some modern governments."
There is also in the same essay this wonderful invitation to listen to differing opinions, in which he does mention Mahatma Gandhi.
"For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a different bias. This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time or space. Mahatma Gandhi deplores railways and steamboats and machinery; he would like to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of actually meeting any one who holds this opinion, because in Western countries most people take the advantage of modern technique for granted. But if you want to make sure that you are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan to test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might say in refutation of them. I have sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of imaginary dialogue, and, short of this, I have frequently found myself growing less dogmatic and cocksure through realizing the possible reasonableness of a hypothetical opponent."
I just finished another essay in this collection,
Philosophy and Politics, whose brevity (it is only 20 pages long) and humour do not detract from its profundity. It is a powerful defense of the liberal tradition and of the philosophy of Empiricism developed by Locke, against the philosophies that advocate dogmatic totalitarian systems. It makes, brilliantly, the same devastating criticism of Hegel that can be found in Popper's
The Open Society and its Enemies. It ends with this inspirational conclusion:
"I conclude that, in our day as in the time of Locke, empiricist Liberalism (which is not incompatible with
democratic socialism) is the only philosophy that can be adopted by a man who, on the one hand, demands some scientific evidence for his beliefs, and, on the other hand, desires human happiness more than the prevalence of this or that party or creed. Our confused and difficult world needs various things if it is to escape disaster, and among these one of the most necessary is that, in the nations that still uphold Liberal beliefs, these beliefs should be wholehearted and profound, not apologetic towards dogmatisms of the right and of the left, but deeply persuaded of the value of liberty, scientific freedom, and mutual forbearance. For without these beliefs life on our politically divided but technically unified planet will hardly continue to be possible."
I have yet to read this collection of essays, whose title indicates that they deal with the problem fundamental to all political philosophies: how to strike a balance between the need for social cohesion and individual freedom. Based on what I have read so far by Russell, I am confident that this book will give me many more hours of profound intellectual and esthetic pleasures, thanks to his clear and insightful mind, the diversity of his experiences (acquired over a long and productive life that spanned almost a century from 1872 to 1970), the passion of his convictions and his luminous prose.
I have here mostly exposed my admiration for Russell's thought and writing, but in all of these books, there is much matter to reflect on and debate, and I store this up in my unconscious for future writings ... when I finally find the time for serious writing. Such are the pleasures that can be found in rich and profound literature.
Every morning, between 6:30 and 7:00, as I have my coffee before getting ready to go to the office, I like to watch the second half of the news hour presented by Bret Baier on the Fox Cable News network. It features a panel discussion of noteworthy political topics in the news. This panel is made of analysts who usually provide interesting insights that go beyond the thirty-second headlines we have sadly gotten used to. My favorite panelist is Charles Krauthammer, whose views are deepened by his professional training as a medical doctor and psychologist. When I see it in Singapore, this program is actually broadcasted at the same time in the evening on the other side of the world, prime time on the US East Coast.
