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THOUGH MOST FAMOUS for his work on technical issues in professsional philosophy and popular ones in social and political thought, Bertrand Russell also wrote extensively on human emotion and the habits of mind and behavior that lead towards or away from a joy-filled life. With articles on Russell, psychiatry, and happiness by David Goldman, Russell, psychology, and fear by Marvin Kohl, and a review of recent work in psychology on happiness, this issue of the Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly focuses on Russell and human nature. DAVID GOLDMAN, in his essay “A Psychiatrist Looks at Russell’s Conquest of Happiness” considers Russell’s relevance for psychiatry today. He finds the views on human happiness expressed by Russell in his 1930 book, The Conquest of Happiness, to be not only of value for many people unhappy in their lives, but to also contain important lessons for psychiatric theory today. It is a view of human nature, Goldman says, that has important lessons for us all. BERTRAND RUSSELL had strong views on fear, which Marvin Kohl surveys and critiques in his essay “Bertrand Russell on Fear: A Prolegomena.” Kohl finds Russell’s view important, though at times unrealistic, with Russell holding what he argues is an overly simplistic idea of fear that ignores some kinds of fear that cannot be confronted in the way Russell thinks all fears should be faced. This is due, Kohl claims, to an inadequate view of human nature on Russell’s part. ROUNDING OUT the theme of human emotion is Brandon Young’s review of the psychiatrist Daniel Gilbert’s book, Stumbling on Happiness, which pursues a theme not unlike Russell’s own: that happiness is possible, if we would only get out of our own way. How it is that we stand in our own way, according to Gilbert, raises issues of human abilities at prediction and choice Russell would have found fascinating. WE HAVE STILL NOT YET determined what analytic philosophy is or isn’t, so Gary Hardcastle and Chris Pincock provide further elucidation on this point by way of criticizing Aaron Preston’s article in an earlier issue of the BRS Quarterly, and Aaron Preston provides still further elucidation on the point by way of criticizing Hardcastle’s and Pincock’s views and defending his own view that the earlier standard view, that analytic philosophy was a common practice of linguistic analysis shared by most members of the movement, is false, an “illusion” he claims, and yet it is still the only acceptable definition of analytic philosophy, the only view that justifies calling earlier members of this movement ‘analytic philosophers’ at all.
THIS ISSUE of the Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly is rounded out by a report in “Society News” on last June’s annual meeting of the Bertrand Russell Society held in Rochester NY. Meeting minutes for both the board meeting and members’ meeting held there can be found at the back of the issue, along with the most recent Treasurer’s Report from Society treasurer Kenneth Blackwell.
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