“Unpopular Essays”, by Bertrand Russell, translated from English (United Kingdom) by Bernard Kreise, Les Belles Lettres, “The taste of ideas”, 220 p., €15.50, digital €11 .
In an obituary that he had fun writing about himself in 1937, the “third Earl Russell (or Bertrand Russell, as he preferred to be called)”who imagined himself dying at the age of 90 – he will in reality be 97 when he died in 1970 -, recalls in a few words his work as a philosopher, logician and mathematician, without saying that she renewed the methods of critical thinking, helping to create modern logic and analytical philosophy. He prefers to emphasize the importance of Principia Mathematica (1910-1913), whose revolutionary force, with the half-feigned modesty he knew how to play like a virtuoso, he attributes to his co-author, Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947).
Then he moves on to something else, which occupies most of the text: his constant contribution, since the end of the 19the century, to the debates of his time, in the United Kingdom and throughout the world, his unfailing lucidity, of which he seems more proud than of his theoretical genius, on injustice, oppression, totalitarian vertigo. If, by nature, only a small number of readers could access its main books, From the denotation (1905) or Introduction to mathematical philosophy (1919), it is this commitment to the heart of the battles for democracy that has earned him universal glory.
It is pleasing to rediscover this vein thanks to the translation of his Unpopular essaysan important collection of political or personal texts – such as his autobiography – which has remained inaccessible to the French-speaking public since its publication in 1950, even if we can regret that this publication was treated with negligence by the publisher. He, in fact, did not see fit to illuminate Russell's sometimes cryptic games with notes, nor to date the texts, although they were anchored in the news of their time. Worse still: an introductory note dates back to 1921 the first edition of this book which, verified, was written between 1937 and 1950. “Le Monde des livres” is always happy to be of service to its readers. But we cannot think without compassion of those who, neglecting to read this article, will have to improvise as philologists to try to find their way around it.
“A revival of liberal uncertainty and tolerance”
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