Russell - Human Society in Ethics and Politics

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This edition first published in 1954
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2010 The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd

Introduction 1992 John G. Slater

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ISBN13: 978-1-135-22331-1 ePub ISBN

ISBN10: 0415487374

ISBN10: 0203864794 (ebk)

ISBN13: 9780415487375

ISBN13: 9780203864791 (ebk)

The first nine chapters of this book were written in 19456, the rest in 1953, except , which was the lecture I gave in Stockholm on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. I had originally intended to include the discussion of ethics in my book on Human Knowledge, but I decided not to do so because I was uncertain as to the sense in which ethics can be regarded as knowledge.

This book has two purposes: first, to set forth an undogmatic ethic; and second, to apply this ethic to various current political problems. There is nothing startlingly original in the ethic developed in the first Part of this book, and I am not sure that I should have thought it worth while to set it forth, except for the fact that, when I make ethical judgments on political questions, I am constantly told by critics that I have no right to do so, since I do not believe in the objectivity of ethical judgments. I do not think this criticism valid, but to show that it is not valid requires certain developments which cannot be altogether brief.

The second Part of this book does not attempt to be a complete theory of politics. I have dealt with various parts of the theory of politics in previous books, and in this book I deal only with those parts that, in addition to being closely related to ethics, are of urgent practical importance in the present day. I have hoped that, by setting our actual problems in a large impersonal framework, I may cause them to be viewed with less heat, less fanaticism, and a smaller amount of worry and fret than is easily possible when they are viewed only in a contemporary context.

I hope also that this book, which is concerned throughout with human passions and their effect upon human destiny, may help to dispel a misunderstanding not only of what I have written, but of everything written by those with whom I am in broad agreement. Critics are in the habit of making a certain accusation against me which seems to imply that they approach my writings with a preconception so strong that they are unable to notice what, in fact, I say. I am told over and over again that I over-estimate the part of reason in human affairs. This may mean that I think either that people are, or that they ought to be, more rational than my critics believe them to be. But I think there is a prior error on the part of my critics, which is that they, not I, irrationally over-estimate the part which reason is capable of playing, and this comes I think from the fact that they are in complete confusion as to what the word reason means.

Reason has a perfectly clear and precise meaning. It signifies the choice of the right means to an end that you wish to achieve. It has nothing whatever to do with the choice of ends. But opponents of reason do not realize this, and think that advocates of rationality want reason to dictate ends as well as means. They have no excuse for this view in the writings of rationalists. There is a famous sentence: Reason is and ought only to be, the slave of the passions. This sentence does not come from the works of Rousseau or Dostoevsky or Sartre. It comes from David Hume. It expresses a view to which I, like every man who attempts to be reasonable, fully subscribe. When I am told, as I frequently am, that I almost entirely discount the part played by the emotions in human affairs, I wonder what motive-force the critic supposes me to regard as dominant. Desires, emotions, passions (you can choose whichever word you will), are the only possible causes of action. Reason is not a cause of action but only a regulator. If I wish to travel by plane to New York, reason tells me that it is better to take a plane which is going to New York than one which is going to Constantinople. I suppose that those who think me unduly rational, consider that I ought to become so agitated at the airport as to jump into the first plane that I see, and when it lands me in Constantinople I ought to curse the people among whom I find myself for being Turks and not Americans. This would be a fine, full-blooded way of behaving, and would, I suppose, meet with the commendation of my critics.

One critic takes me to task because I say that only evil passions prevent the realization of a better world, and goes on triumphantly to ask, are all human emotions necessarily evil? In the very book that leads my critic to this objection, I say that what the world needs is Christian love, or compassion. This, surely, is an emotion, and, in saying that this is what the world needs, I am not suggesting reason as a driving force. I can only suppose that this emotion, because it is neither cruel nor destructive, is not attractive to the apostles of unreason.

Why, then, is there this violent passion which causes people, when they read me, to be unable to notice even the plainest statement, and to go on comfortably thinking that I say the exact opposite of what I do say? There are several motives which may lead people to hate reason. You may have incompatible desires and not wish to realize that they are incompatible. You may wish to spend more than your income and yet remain solvent. And this may cause you to hate your friends when they point out the cold facts of arithmetic. You may, if you are an old-fashioned schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence, and at the same time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you have to persuade yourself that caning has a reformatory influence. If a psychiatrist tells you that it has no such influence on some peculiarly irritating class of young sinners, you will fly into a rage and accuse him of being coldly intellectual. There is a splendid example of this pattern in the furious diatribe of the great Dr. Arnold of Rugby against those who thought ill of flogging.