Notes on McTaggart's Lectures on Lotze

Russell preserved notes he took on McTaggart’s course on Lotze’s major works in 1898. They are published here for the first time. Russell’s abbreviations are expanded and deletions noted. N. Milkov introduces the notes and provides Russell’s biographical and philosophical background. The course on Lotze, on whose philosophy of geometry Russell had already written, was influential in his development away from monism.

Bible Studies: Frank Russell and the "Book of Books"

Religion was as much a concern for Frank Russell throughout his life as it was for younger brother Bertrand and their father before them. Each advocated its rational study untainted by Christian dogma. The chance discovery of an amusing film review by Frank Russell of the biblical epic The Dawn of the World (1921) became the catalyst for an exploration of this theme in the paper that follows, as well as providing the opportunity to explore the foundations of Frank’s agnosticism and demonstrate his erudition and wit through the reprinting of his article “The Bible on the Film”.

Letters of Bertrand Russell and Wincenty Lutosławski on Immortality, Matter and Plato

Wincenty Lutosławski (1863–1954) was internationally recognized in the academic world as a prominent Plato scholar. His fragmentary correspondence with Bertrand Russell is presented in this paper. Before World War II he initiated an exchange of letters with Russell on issues such as reincarnation, but the replies he received were laconic and discouraging. This changed, however, after the war when Russell published his History of Western Philosophy. Despite their different philosophical positions, Lutosławski’s opinion on this work as a whole was favourable, in particular the chapters on Plato. Such an assessment was the exception rather than the rule for that book, and knowing Lutosławski’s general recognition in Platonic studies, Russell forwarded the letter to his publisher.

Why Russell Was Not an Epistemic Structural Realist

Bertrand Russell’s work in philosophy of science has been identified as a progenitor of structuralism in contemporary philosophy. It is often unclear, however, how the philosophical problems facing contemporary structuralist programmes relate to the problems of philosophy as Russell saw them. We contend that Russell has been mistakenly identified as an epistemic structural realist. The goal of this essay is to clarify the relationship between Russell’s programme and contemporary structuralist projects. In doing so, we hope to display the motivation for a broad, truly Russellian structuralist project in the philosophy of science.