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RR 2004/178 The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell Edited by Nicholas Griffin Cambridge University Press Cambridge 2003 xvii + 550 pp. ISBN 0 521 63178 5 (hardback); ISBN 0 521 63634 5 (paperback) £55/$75 (hardback); £19.95/$26 (paperback)
Keywords Philosophy, Logic
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120410535128
Bertrand Russell was a key figure in the development of modern analytical philosophy, but also a major influence on general social and political thinking in the twentieth century. When I first went to university there were two distinguished professors of philosophy on campus. Both were strongly influenced by Russell, but were scarcely on speaking terms (quite a normal situation for academic philosophers) and so different in their approaches that the university actually had two separate departments for them to work in - the "Philosophy Department", and the "Department of Moral and Political Philosophy". Both departments have long since been subsumed into the "School of Social Sciences" so I presume that moral and political can be said to have won that particular battle.
This dichotomy creates difficulties...