The years covered by this volume of the Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell were among the most productive of Russell's entire career. In addition to the papers reprinted here, he brought Principia Mathematica to its finished form and wrote The Problems of Philosophy, Theory of Knowledge and Knowledge of the External World. In October 1910 he began teaching at Cambridge, having accepted an appointment as lecturer in logic and the principles of mathematics at Trinity College for a term of five years. A year later Ludwig Wittgenstein began to attend his lectures. Within a few months he was...

This volume shows Russell in transition from a neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian philosopher to an analytic philosopher of the first rank. During this period, his research centred on writing The Principles of Mathematics where he drew together previously unpublished drafts. These shed light on Russell's paradox. This material aims to alter previous accounts of how he discovered his paradox and the related paradox of the largest cardinal. The volume also includes a previously unpublished draft of an early attempt to solve his paradox, as well as the earliest known version of his generalized...

This volume covers the period from the beginning of Whitehead and Russell's work on Volume 2 of the Principles of Mathematics to the critical discovery of the theory of descriptions in 1905. The volume contains a large number of unpublished manuscripts which illustrate Russell's often unsuccessful struggles with logical paradoxes, as he tries out one foundational scheme after another.

During the period covered by this volume, Bertrand Russell first retired from and then resumed his philosophical career. In 1927 he published two philosophy books, The Analysis of Matter and An Outline of Philosophy. His next book in academic philosophy, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, was not published until 1940.
Yet, Russell published a significant amount of essays and popular books between 1927 and 1946, mostly to finance the running of Beacon Hill School, and his growing family. Those years also saw his break-up with Dora Russell, his marriage to Patricia (Peter) Spence and a move...

This volume collects together Betrand Russell's philosophical writings during the period from 1947-68. For about half of this period Russell worked steadily at philosophy but after the publication of My Philosophical Development in 1959 he retired from academic philosophy for the second time. After that date, only the occasional philosophical piece appeared, as he was preoccupied with political writings. In this volume there are a handful of papers dated later than 1959, and all of these were written by Russell himself. This volume contains Russell's writings on diverse philosophical...

During the First World War, Bertrand Russell was political commentator for The Tribunal, the official weekly publication of the No-Conscription Fellowship, of which Russell was Action Chairman.
This volume contains many short papers from that period, which reflect Russell's immediate reponses to developments in the conflict. These documents bear witness to Russell's growing commitment to pacifism, and reveal the development of the patterns of political argument, rhetoric and activism which were to characterise his work throughout his life.

The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Volume 15 assembles Russell's writings on his experiences of visiting and reflecting on Russia and China.
Having emerged from the Great War determined to prevent another armed conflict, Russell became a champion of international socialism as the antidote to the destructive forces of nationalism and capitalism. His quest for international reconstruction led to two enduring experiences, his trip first to Bolshevik Russia in 1920 and then to divided China in 1920-21. These letters describe those experiences which confirmed his emergence as a popular...

This volume of collected papers signals the reinvigoration of Russell the public campaigner. The title of the volume is taken from one of his most famous and eloquent short essays and probably the best known of his many broadcasts for the BBC. Man's Peril, 1954-55 not only captures the essence of Russell's thinking about nuclear weapons and the Cold War in the mid-1950s, its extraordinary impact served to jolt him into political protest once again. The activism of which we glimpse the initial stirrings in this volume continued in various guises, more or less without interruption, until his...

'Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and acheived fewer results than any other branch of learning ... I believe that the time has now arrived when this unsatisfactory state of affairs can be brought to an end' - Bertrand Russell
So begins Our Knowledge of the Eternal World, Bertrand Russell's classic attempt to show by means of examples, the nature, capacity and limitations of the logico-analytical method in philosophy.

The 1896-1898 papers, few of which were published in Russell's lifetime, concentrates primarily on physics, arithmetic and the concept of quantity. Several views that later became well-known in his The Principles of Mathematics actually originate in his earlier work, and though incomplete, An Analysis of Mathematical Reasoning, forms a centrepiece of the volume.