"When I was growing up in the 60s, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre were a model couple, already legendary creatures, rebels with a great many causes, and leaders of what could be called the first postwar youth movement: existentialism — a philosophy that rejected all absolutes and talked of freedom, authenticity, and difficult choices. It had its own music and garb of sophisticated black which looked wonderful against a cafe backdrop. Sartre and De Beauvoir were its Bogart and Bacall, partners in a gloriously modern love affair lived out between jazz club, cafe and writing desk, with forays on to the platforms and streets of protest. Despite being indissolubly united and bound by ideas, they remained unmarried and free to engage openly in any number of relationships. This radical departure from convention seemed breathtaking at the time." —Lisa Appignanesi, in "Did Simone de Beauvoir's open 'marriage' make her happy?" in The Guardian (9 June 2005)

We're entering a new era in philosophy now in this series on the survival of the fittest philosophers. (Only 10 to go!) As the quote above points out, we're now in the post-war era. Nietzsche marked the end of the modern philosophy period with his declaration of our final unmooring from religion. Then Russell and Wittgenstein started the contemporary era with their invention of logic-focused analytical philosophy, forsaking any further inquiry into the "big questions" of value and meaning in the world. When the horrors of WWI and WWII were then witnessed by the world though, philosophy no longer offered much to explain it. The helplessness in the face of such mass death at the hands of other men, the lack of interruption from any exterior divine power, and the knife's edge on which the balance between good and evil rested, led Jean Paul Sartre and others to wryly declare that *this* is all there is. This universe, and our place in it, is what we make of it. For better or worse. As Sartre said:

Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse.

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards.

Unfortunately, Sartre found little to like in the definition. And who can blame him in that era of fascism, totalitarianism, and brutal dictatorships ruling large swaths of the world. He also died before the invention of positive psychology, which has made a science of studying what it is we can do to live well and be happy, however you define that term. So Sartre wrote books and plays like Nausea and No Exit where protagonists were horrified by their own existence or trapped in a room after death with three other people who got on their nerves to such an extent that this line was uttered as a climax:

So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.

It can often feel that way. The shopper who rudely cuts you off, the co-worker whose unyielding defensiveness sucks the air out of every meeting, the family members whose narrow ways cage you in, the politicians who only scheme for themselves and leave society in tatters. All of these have taken their turn as the straw attempting to break my back, causing me to question if this world can really be lived in, and reminding me of Don McClean's song lyrics that "this world was never meant for one as beautiful" as the artist Van Gogh. But people can be heaven too. Not literally, of course, but since Sartre was right that we can make of this world as we please, we can indeed cooperate to make this world pleasing. We all find that somewhere in our lives, and so we carry on, but I wonder where Sartre found his solace. Probably not in love. "The nature of Sartre and Beauvoir’s partnership was never a secret to their friends, and it was not a secret to the public, either, after they were abruptly launched into celebrity, in 1945. They were famous as a couple with independent lives, who met in cafés, where they wrote their books and saw their friends at separate tables, and were free to enjoy other relationships, but who maintained a kind of soul marriage. Their liaison was part of the mystique of existentialism, and it was extensively documented and coolly defended in Beauvoir’s four volumes of memoirs, all of them extremely popular in France. Beauvoir and Sartre had no interest in varnishing the facts out of respect for bourgeois notions of decency. Disrespect for bourgeois notions of decency was precisely the point."

This sounds very brave, but we know now the importance that conventional social bonds bring. They've become conventional precisely because of this. Because they work. They aid our happiness and survival over the long term. Recently, George Vaillant, who directed a study for more than three decades of the lives of 268 young men, published the study’s findings in the 2012 book Triumphs of Experience. The conclusions? “At a time when many people around the world are living into their tenth decade, the longest longitudinal study of human development ever undertaken offers some welcome news. In Triumphs of Experience, Vaillant raises a number of factors more often than others, but the one he refers to most often is the powerful correlation between the warmth of your relationships and your health and happiness in your later years."

Sartre, in contrast, attempted to celebrate his cool relationship while "his physical condition deteriorated, partially because of the merciless pace of work (and the use of amphetamines) he put himself through. He suffered from hypertension, and became almost completely blind in 1973. [He was also] a notorious chain smoker, which could also have contributed to the deterioration of his health."

How sad. As Joseph Epstein said in his Essays in Biography, "What is it about the study of philosophy that tends to make brilliant minds stupid when it comes down to what are known as actual cases? Consider Martin Heidegger, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the four great names in twentieth-century philosophy: the first was a Nazi, the second died certain that America was responsible for all the world’s evil, the third was a Stalinist long after any justification for being so could be adduced, and the fourth lived on the borders of madness most of his life. Contemplation of the lives of philosophers is enough to drive one to the study of sociology."

Before we go quite that far, let's take a look at the major beliefs of Jean-Paul Sartre and see how I evaluated them against my evolutionary philosophy.

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Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980 CE) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic.

Survives

Needs to Adapt
The main idea of Jean-Paul Sartre is that we are, as humans, "condemned to be free.” This theory relies upon his belief that there is no creator, and is formed using the example of the paper knife. Sartre says that if one considered a paper knife, one would assume that the creator would have had a plan for it: an essence. Sartre said that human beings have no essence before their existence because there is no Creator. Thus, "existence precedes essence.” This forms the basis for his assertion that since one cannot explain their own actions and behavior by referencing any specific human nature, they are necessarily fully responsible for those actions. "We are left alone, without excuse.” There is no evidence for a god or creator. Life has evolved blindly, without purpose, and from no essence. However, we do exist and the rules of evolution point towards ways to continue that existence. In that sense, evolution points existence towards an essence. That essence is immortal life. Life will evolve until it achieves it. We are not condemned to be free; we are free to live.

Gone Extinct
Originally, Sartre believed that our ideas are the product of experiences of real-life situations, and novels and plays can well describe such fundamental experiences, having equal value to discursive essays for the elaboration of philosophical theories such as existentialism. Later, Sartre concluded that literature functioned ultimately as a bourgeois substitute for real commitment in the world, and thus turned down a Nobel Prize for literature. Art has its purpose in society. Art instructs and inspires us. No art takes hold of the mind for the length of time that literature does. It is a useful and difficult pursuit.
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The hashtag YOLO has become a dumbed-down twitter excuse for hedonistic, short-term focused partying lifestyles, but it is true—you do only live once. There doesn't appear to be any evidence for some cosmic essence that is driving our lives and development, so we must take charge of our own existence. That is a great takeaway from existentialism. What we do with that existence though, is still up for debate, and so far not to be advised by the examples of early existentialists themselves.

Let's make this a quick one. When I first wrote about Martin Heidegger in my analysis of the survival of the fittest philosophers, he didn't fare very well and his position as a nazi sympathizer had been much debated. Well, since then, several of his personal diaries have been published and his nazi leanings were even worse than originally suspected. The New York Review of Books did an excellent review of Heidegger's diaries, so if you really want to spend any more time on his thoughts, read their story. If you don't, then just skim the analysis below and enjoy the funny Monty Python video. And with that, I bid you Bruces a g'day.

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Martin Heidegger (1889-1976 CE) was a German philosopher whose best-known book, Being and Time, is considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century. Heidegger's work has strongly influenced philosophy, theology, and the humanities. Within philosophy it played a crucial role in the development of existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, postmodernism, and continental philosophy in general. Bertrand Russell called the philosophy of Heidegger highly eccentric in its terminology and extremely obscure. English philosopher Roger Scruton stated that, “Heidegger’s major work Being and Time is formidably difficult - unless it is utter nonsense, in which case it is laughably easy. I am not sure how to judge it, and have read no commentator who even begins to make sense of it.” Heidegger was also a prominent member of the Nazi party, for which he often comes under attack.

Survives

Needs to Adapt

Gone Extinct
Heidegger's philosophy is founded on the attempt to conjoin what he considers two fundamental insights. The first is that Heidegger claimed Western philosophy has, since Plato, misunderstood what it means for something "to be," tending to approach this question in terms of a being, rather than asking about being itself. In other words, Heidegger believed all investigations of being have historically focused on particular entities and their properties, or have treated being itself as an entity, or substance, with properties. A more authentic analysis of being would, for Heidegger, investigate "that on the basis of which beings are already understood," or that which underlies all particular entities and allows them to show up as entities in the first place. Secondly, Heidegger argues that to be able to describe experience properly means finding the being for whom such a description might matter. Heidegger thus conducts his description of experience with reference to "Dasein," the being for whom being is a question. In Being and Time, Heidegger criticized the abstract and metaphysical character of traditional ways of grasping human existence as rational animal, person, man, soul, spirit, or subject. Dasein, then, is not intended as a way of conducting a philosophical anthropology, but is rather understood by Heidegger to be the condition of possibility for anything like a philosophical anthropology. Dasein, according to Heidegger, is care. In the course of his existential analytic, Heidegger argues that Dasein, who finds itself thrown into the world amidst things and with others, is thrown into its possibilities, including the possibility and inevitability of one's own mortality. The need for Dasein to assume these possibilities, that is, the need to be responsible for one's own existence, is the basis of Heidegger's notions of authenticity and resoluteness - that is, of those specific possibilities for Dasein that depend on escaping the vulgar temporality of calculation and of public life. The marriage of these two observations depends on the fact that each of them is essentially concerned with time. That Dasein is thrown into an already existing world and thus into its mortal possibilities does not only mean that Dasein is an essentially temporal being; it also implies that the description of Dasein can only be carried out in terms inherited from the Western tradition itself. Ugh. This seems like nothing other than the removal of reality by one step and calling that reality - Plato and his parable of the cave rehashed and obscured to cover his tracks. I would have dropped Heidegger from this list had he not been in Monty Python’s philosopher song.

Type "philosophy is" into google and these are the top five results the search engine will recommend to complete your query. I blame Ludwig Wittgenstein. Not entirely of course, but as the co-founder (along with his mentor Bertrand Russell) of analytical philosophy, Wittgenstein played a major role in turning much of philosophy into a shell of itself. As a quick reminder, here's the definition of Analytical Philosophy from my Philosophy 101 page:

Current philosophical camps
Analytic Philosophy - In the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand, the overwhelming majority of university philosophy departments identify themselves as "analytic" departments. Analytic philosophy is often understood as being defined in opposition to continental philosophy. The term "analytic philosophy" can refer to a tradition of doing philosophy characterized by an emphasis on clarity and argument, often achieved via modern formal logic and analysis of language, and a respect for the natural sciences. In this sense, analytic philosophy makes specific philosophical commitments: 1) The positivist view that there are no specifically philosophical truths and that the object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. This may be contrasted with the traditional foundation that views philosophy as a special sort of science, the highest one, which investigates the fundamental reasons and principles of everything. As a result, many analytic philosophers have considered their inquiries as continuous with, or subordinate to, those of the natural sciences. 2) The view that the logical clarification of thoughts can only be achieved by analysis of the logical form of philosophical propositions. The logical form of a proposition is a way of representing it (often using the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical system) to display its similarity with all other propositions of the same type. However, analytic philosophers disagree widely about the correct logical form of ordinary language. 3) The rejection of sweeping philosophical systems in favor of close attention to detail, common sense, and ordinary language.

Philosophers may stand on surer ground when they focus on logic and the analysis of words in arguments, and these are surely vital building blocks for anyone to use in the pursuit of knowledge, but for this to dominate the field as it now does takes its practitioners a long way away from the original "love of wisdom" that Pythagoras intended when he first invented the word philosophy. I get it though. Nietzsche had rightly observed that "God is Dead", so there was no need to re-plow the land medieval philosophers had dug up by speculating about theological metaphysical origins. Physics and the natural sciences had taken over the search for our natural metaphysical origins. And Hume's "is/ought" divide meant that no headway could ever be made about what was right or wrong in this world, meaning further arguments about ethics, aesthetics, or politics were doomed and essentially fruitless. Hopefully that will change soon, but in the meantime, philosophers throw up their hands and respect proclamations from Wittgenstein like:

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.

What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.

Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.

And yet, when thoughts are clarified, does the body of a doctrine not form? If not, if the thoughts still leave a fuzzy view of the world, then the thoughts require further clarification. I obviously think this is possible since I've posted my own doctrine here for discussion and clarification, but I wish more philosophers would join in. Until they do, let's look at how Wittgenstein's works hold up against the doctrine I'm elaborating through my survival of the fittest philosophers series.

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Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951 CE) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. Wittgenstein is considered by many to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.

Survives
After the completion of his first book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1918, Wittgenstein believed he had solved all the problems of philosophy and he abandoned his studies. However, in 1929 he returned to Cambridge and began the meditations that ultimately led him to renounce or revise much of his earlier work, rejecting the analytical fantasy that a philosophical language could be derived mathematically from first principles, in favor of a more descriptive linguistic philosophy. This change of mind culminated in his second magnum opus, the Philosophical Investigations, which was published posthumously. In it, Wittgenstein asks the reader to think of language as a multiplicity of language-games within which parts of language develop and function. He argues philosophical problems are bewitchments that arise from philosophers' misguided attempts to consider the meaning of words independently of their context, usage, and grammar, what he called "language gone on holiday.” According to Wittgenstein, philosophical problems arise when language is forced from its proper home into a metaphysical environment, where all the familiar and necessary landmarks and contextual clues are removed. He describes this metaphysical environment as like being on frictionless ice: where the conditions are apparently perfect for a philosophically and logically perfect language - the language of the Tractatus - where all philosophical problems can be solved without the muddying effects of everyday contexts; but where, precisely because of the lack of friction, language can in fact do no work at all. Wittgenstein argues that philosophers must leave the frictionless ice and return to the "rough ground" of ordinary language in use. Ordinary language is the easiest way to express penetrating insight. Abstruse language is the sign of an obtuse mind.

Needs to Adapt

Gone Extinct
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is probably most well known for the logical atomism that Russell himself stressed in it: the picture theory of meaning. The world consists of independent atomic facts - existing states of affairs - out of which larger facts are built. Language consists of atomic, and then larger-scale, propositions that correspond to these facts by sharing the same logical form. Thought, expressed in language, "pictures" these facts. Wittgenstein himself later recanted these beliefs. This is more logical-grammatical acrobatics that ended up upside down.

The whole sense of the Wittgenstein’s first book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence. Those things that cannot be expressed in words make themselves manifest; Wittgenstein calls them the mystical. They include everything that is the traditional subject matter of philosophy, because what can be said is exhausted by the natural sciences. Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. The word philosophy must mean something whose place is above or below the natural sciences, not beside them. Philosophy helps us guide, categorize, and understand the natural sciences. The natural sciences inform philosophers about the big questions they are asking. The two fields are intertwined and supportive of one another, just as all life supports and is intertwined with other life.
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Wittgenstein came from quite a unique background, and in many ways one wouldn't expect him to have become a philosopher known primarily for logic. Wittgenstein's father Karl was an industrial tycoon who, by the late 1880s, "was one of the richest men in Europe, with an effective monopoly on Austria's steel cartel. Thanks to Karl, the Wittgensteins became the second wealthiest family in Austria-Hungary, behind only the Rothschilds." Ludwig was one of nine children who "were raised in an exceptionally intense environment. The family was at the center of Vienna's cultural life. Karl was a leading patron of the arts, commissioning works by Auguste Rodin and financing the city's exhibition hall and art gallery—the famous Secession Building. Gustav Klimt painted Wittgenstein's sister for her wedding portrait, and Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler gave regular concerts in the family's numerous music rooms." Karl, though, aimed "to turn his sons into captains of industry; they were not sent to school lest they acquire bad habits, but were educated at home to prepare them for work in Karl's industrial empire. Three of the five brothers would later commit suicide. After the deaths of Hans and Rudi, Karl relented, and allowed Paul and Ludwig to be sent to school [though] it was too late for Wittgenstein to pass his exams for the more academic Gymnasium and only barely managed after extra tutoring to pass the exam for the more technically oriented Realschule."

As an interesting historical anecdote, Adolf Hitler was at that same school and although the two were born only six days apart, Wittgenstein skipped a year and Hitler was held back one so even though they almost certainly met each other, there's no indication they influenced one another. However, something must have been in the air there as later in life, Wittgenstein was described by a member of the Vienna Circle thusly:

"His point of view and his attitude toward people and problems, even theoretical problems, were much more similar to those of a creative artist than to those of a scientist; one might almost say, similar to those of a religious prophet or a seer... When finally, sometimes after a prolonged arduous effort, his answers came forth, his statement stood before us like a newly created piece of art or a divine revelation ... the impression he made on us was as if insight came to him as through divine inspiration, so that we could not help feeling that any sober rational comment of analysis of it would be a profanation."

This attitude helps explain another of Wittgenstein's quotes, which would otherwise seem out of place for the 20th century's premier logician.

So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.

To this, I can only say....grrrrrgggghhhh.

But, in fact, I can say a bit more too. Because as Wittgenstein also said:

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.

Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.

So, if you can, please enter the ring with me. Help me find my path from error to truth. And let me know your thoughts about what combination I'm trying that isn't working for you. Because I do want philosophy to be alive again and more than just an act of clarification.

In 1945, after Bertrand Russell was already "world-famous outside academic circles, frequently the subject or author of magazine and newspaper articles, and called upon to offer opinions on a wide variety of subjects," he published one of the most important philosophical works of all time. A History of Western Philosophy is "a dazzlingly unique exploration of the ideologies of significant philosophers throughout the ages—from Plato and Aristotle through to Spinoza, Kant, and the twentieth century. Written by a man who changed the history of philosophy himself, this is an account that has never been rivaled since its first publication." A few years later in 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought." And even after all of that, he still lived for another 20 years to the ripe old age of 97, championing political causes and remaining active in the public eye right up until the end when he died from influenza in 1970. He led a hugely productive and important life by just about any measure. How did he manage it?

Bertrand was born in 1872 into "one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Britain." By that time, the Russells had "established themselves as one of Britain's leading Whig families, and participated in every great political event from the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536–40 to the Glorious Revolution in 1688–89 and the Great Reform Act in 1832." His paternal grandfather had twice served as Prime Minister, once in the 1840s and again in the 1860s. His parents were radically liberal at the time, accepting an open marital arrangement, advocating for birth control, and professing atheism publicly to the point that they asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Bertrand's secular godfather.

This incredibly fortunate place of birth was soon met with much tragedy though. John Stuart Mill died when Bertrand was just one (though his writings later had a huge effect on Bertrand's life). Russell's mother died when he was two, followed by his only sister shortly thereafter. His father died when he was three, which resulted in him and his older brother being sent to live with his staunchly victorian grandparents. His (ex-Prime Minister) grandfather died when he was six though, leaving him in the care of his 64 year old grandmother for the rest of his childhood. He was "educated at home by a series of tutors. Russell's adolescence was very lonely, and he often contemplated suicide. At age eleven, his brother Frank introduced him to the work of Euclid, which transformed Russell's life. He remarked in his autobiography that his keenest interests were in religion and mathematics, and that only his wish to know more mathematics kept him from suicide." It seems from several quotes that Bertrand came to rely on the bedrock of mathematics as a solid retreat from his chaotic childhood filled with so much promise, change, and death.

In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the passionate aspiration after the perfect, from which all great work springs.

It seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

How poignant. But is mathematics really so removed from our world of understanding? Isn't it only as it is precisely because of the material nature of the universe? The fact that things can be separate and distinct gives us the numbers of mathematics. The way that material objects come together, fall apart, or can be grouped together with stability into different combinations gives us the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Imagine if we lived in a universe where Jesus could actually create loaves and fishes out of thin air. This story from the Sermon on the Mount may throw us off the track because it uses the term "multiplication of loaves and fishes," but the loaves and fishes didn't cross with one another to create more of both in the way that multiplication actually works—they are purported to simply have sprung to life out of nothing. What mathematical operation should be used to more accurately describe this action? There are none! If our universe actually behaved in this manner, our concepts of numbers and mathematical operations would be very different. Five loaves would just as likely be 4, 10, or 52 at any moment, so numbers would be temporary, almost irrelevant. Objects wouldn't add to or subtract from one another, they would just change spontaneously in any direction. Other philosophers use the supposed independence of mathematics from the world as proof that there is an idealistic plane of existence beyond the mere physical, but I think this is wrong. Logic and mathematics are merely reflections of the way our universe works. Still, because of the essential eternity and permanence of our universe from a human perspective, I see why Bertrand Russell saw mathematics as something different. And for the father of analytic philosophy—a school that retreated from the fuzzy world of ethical systems and tortured arguments about metaphysical origins to focus more simply on the objective fields of logic and mathematics—we can now see Russell's psychological motivations as well. He did go on to write much about the traditional fields of philosophical inquiry, but he always considered those speculations to be secondary.

Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

In fact, his pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, "Russell's books should be bound in two colours, those dealing with mathematical logic in red – and all students of philosophy should read them; those dealing with ethics and politics in blue – and no one should be allowed to read them." Russell may have even agreed with this sentiment; at least in moments of levity. When asked why he didn't write on aesthetics, Russell replied that he didn't know anything about it, "but that is not a very good excuse, for my friends tell me it has not deterred me from writing on other subjects." He knew plenty though, so let's look now at some of the main "red" and "blue" writings of Russell by considering my analysis of him within my list of the survival of the fittest philosophers.

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Bertrand Russell (1872-1970 CE) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, socialist, pacifist, and social critic. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy and is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians.

Survives
For most of his adult life Russell maintained that religion is little more than superstition, and despite any positive effects that religion might have, it is largely harmful to people. He believed religion and the religious outlook (he considered communism and other systematic ideologies to be forms of religion) serve to impede knowledge, foster fear and dependency, and are responsible for much of the war, oppression, and misery that have beset the world. Yes. As shown above. Good to see this penetrating the discourse.

Russell claimed that he was more convinced of his method of doing philosophy than of his philosophical conclusions. Science was one of the principal components of analysis. Russell was a believer in the scientific method, that science reaches only tentative answers, that scientific progress is piecemeal, and attempts to find organic unities were largely futile. He believed the same was true of philosophy. Russell held that the ultimate objective of both science and philosophy was to understand reality, not simply to make predictions. Our knowledge is probabilistic and the scientific method helps to uncover it. Philosophy loves this knowledge, organizes it, and directs its inquiry. Philosophy will evolve as our knowledge evolves. 

Russell sought clarity and precision in argument by the use of exact language and by breaking down philosophical propositions into their simplest grammatical components. In 1900, he became familiar with the work of the Italian mathematician, Giuseppe Peano. He mastered Peano's new symbolism and his set of axioms for arithmetic. Peano defined logically all of the terms of these axioms with the exception of ‘0’, ‘number’, ‘successor’, and the singular term, ‘the’, which were the primitives of his system. Russell took it upon himself to find logical definitions for each of these. Yes, but this is where philosophy began to confine itself to only a minor part of philosophy. It is simply logic applied to language and mathematics.

Needs to Adapt
A significant contribution to philosophy of language is Russell's theory of descriptions. The theory considers the sentence "The present King of France is bald" and whether the proposition is false or meaningless. Frege had argued, employing his distinction between sense and reference, that such sentences were meaningful but neither true nor false. Russell argues that the grammatical form of the sentence disguises its underlying logical form. Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions enables the sentence to be construed as meaningful but false, without commitment to the existence of any present King of France. The problem is general to what are called "definite descriptions.” Normally this includes all terms beginning with "the," and sometimes includes names, like "Walter Scott.” (This point is quite contentious: Russell sometimes thought that the latter terms shouldn't be called names at all, but only "disguised definite descriptions," but much subsequent work has treated them as altogether different things.) What is the "logical form" of definite descriptions: how, in Frege's terms, could we paraphrase them in order to show how the truth of the whole depends on the truths of the parts? Definite descriptions appear to be like names that by their very nature denote exactly one thing, neither more nor less. What, then, are we to say about the proposition as a whole if one of its parts apparently isn't functioning correctly? In this example, the role of the word “present” is ignored. Present defines the time period as when the reader reads it. Then the definite description of “the king of France” can be understood perfectly well and the statement can be true or false. This over-analysis of grammar known as analytical philosophy is just logic applied to writing. It is important to be clear, but this is a small part of our overarching knowledge. It does not deserve the central role in philosophy departments that it has achieved. It consigns them to the role of fussy nitpicker, rather than the broad-minded lover of wisdom.

Gone Extinct
While Russell wrote a great deal on ethical subject matters, he did not believe that the subject belonged to philosophy or that when he wrote on ethics that he did so in his capacity as a philosopher. He believed that moral facts were objective, but known only through intuition and that these simple, undefinable moral properties cannot be analyzed using the non-moral properties with which they are associated. In time, however, he came to agree with his philosophical hero, David Hume, who believed that ethical terms dealt with subjective values that cannot be verified in the same way as matters of fact. Ethics arise from nature. They arise from life’s need to stay alive in the long-term. Values can be objectively verified by the success of the resulting actions at keeping a species alive.
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Much of Russell's prolific output was not up to the high standards of his objective contributions to logic, but it would be a great shame not to pick through his writing to discover the many, many gems of subjective thoughts that he penned as well. I'll finish this already long essay with a simple list of some of those aphorisms to let Russell have the last words. He surely deserves them.

Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.

To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance with his instincts, he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:
1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great.