The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell

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...