Man's Worship Research Articles

Did Russell Have A Personal Religion?

176 Reviews DID RUSSELL HAVE A PERSONAL RELIGION? THOM WEIDLICH Apt. 10,170 East 3rd St. New York, NY 10009, USA THOMWEID@WORLDNET.ATT.NET Louis Greenspan and Stefan Andersson, eds. Russell on Religion: Selections from the Writings ofBertrand Russell London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Pp. vii, 261. Cloth £40.00; pb $12.99. To the general observer, Bertrand Russell's opinions on religion are simple enough: Russell was that outspoken "atheist" who hated religionespecially Christianity-and sputtered against its alleged evils every chance he got. But as one takes a closer look, complications begin to emerge; the firebrand seems to allow some nuances, after all. We have a new opportunity to reevaluate Russell's religious views (and our view of those views), a collection of his writings on the subject entitled Russell on Religion. The book is another installment in Routledge's "Russell on ..." series. And as the first number, Russell on Ethics, edited by Charles Pigden, showed us that the philosopher had thought more about metaethics than was previously imagined, this one shows us that Russell had many interesting and complex things to say about religion. Reviews 177 The editors are well known to those who travel in Russellian circles.'Louis Greenspan is the former director of the Bertrand Russell Editorial Project, as well as professor emeritus at McMaster University's Department of Religious Studies. Stefan Andersson is a frequent researcher at the Bertrand Russell Archives. The twenty-two essays are arranged by broad topics, starting with some "personal statements" and then "religion and ...": "philosophy", "science", "morality", and "history". Greenspan and Andersson supply briefintroductions to the sections that help place each essay. In the book's introduction they provide an overview and seek to show that Russell essentially was religious in his personality (which this reviewer thinks goes too far, but we'll get to that). As for the selected writings themselves, the editors have chosen well. Yes, many of the old gems are here-"The Free Man's Worship" (1903), "Why I Am Not a Christian" (I927)-but so are some rather obscure and rather brilliant texts such as "The Existence and Nature of God" (1939). Some popular essays missing in action-"Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?" (1954), "Do We Survive Death?" (1936), and (the lengthy) What J Believe (1925)-were included in an earlier collection that had a much greater emphasis on Russell's opposition to religion, Why J Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (1957), edited by Paul Edwards. It's well known that Russell changed his opinions on many subjects (a trait his foes view as a vice, his friends as a virtue). Taken in their totality, the essays in this new volume show that he changed his views on religion, though it is difficult to get at exactly how this played out because the pieces are not arranged chronologically. But this book is invaluable in revealing the seriousness with which Russell approached the subject and the complexity of his conclusions. Russell could be cautious in his criticisms ofreligion, admitting, for example, that he couldn't prove there was no God. He usually referred to himself as an agnostic. His answers to Look magazine's questions on "What Is an Agnostic?" (1953) are included, and show that he relied on an old view that "An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God" (p. 41). Many atheists would disagree, holding that they simply reject the arguments for the existence ofa God-and have no need of that hypothesis. Yet, the cau~tic critic is also here and it makes one pine for such a public opponent of religion to come around again; let's face it, Russell is a lot more fun to read when he's bashing religion than when he's saying nice things about it. In their introduction, Greenspan and Andersson try to reconcile Russell's polar-opposite takes on religion. On the one hand, there is his daughter's opin- 178 Reviews ion that "He was by temperament a profoundly religious man"l and his own statement (in "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilizations...

Existentialism and the Return to Religion

There are some good reasons to think that future historians will characterize twentieth century century of secularism. As century began, Nietzsche's declaration that God is dead, made some years earlier, was still reverberating. Three years into century, Bertrand Russell's famous essay, A Free Man's Worship, was published.1 The essay is widely interpreted a powerful renunciation of religion in favor of an ethical humanism. Then came existentialism. Despite its religious beginnings in Kierkegaard and Buber, existentialism established itself in twentieth century a thoroughly secular philosophy. As David Cooper puts it, existentialism as defined by Sartre, made notion of a religious existentialist a virtual contradiction..2 While existentialism is no longer an influential philosophy, its secular messages have been well absorbed. However, it remains to be seen whether secular trend will continue into new millennium. According to some observers, it is too hasty to assume that it will. Indeed, Gianni Vattimo claims that end of twentieth century has witnessed a to religion.3 Given standard view of existentialism, it may be taken for granted that if there is a return to religion then it cannot be via existentialism. The trouble is that philosophy has habit of demonstrating that what is taken for granted turns out to be otherwise. At least, wish to demonstrate that this is so in case of existentialism. Specifically, aim of this essay is to show that philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas is essentially an existentialist philosophy and if so, then, far from being a dead end, existentialism could well be main route for a return to religion. Levinas' account of subjectivity is discussed in Section I. In Section II, defend claim that Levinas' philosophy of subjectivity is essentially existentialist. In Section III, religiousness of that philosophy is explored. In his various writings, Levinas employs term l'Autrui, often translated the Other, to refer to one's fellow human beings, indefinite neighbors, strangers, widows and orphans, and term 1 'Autre, often translated the other, to refer to what lies beyond totality that is one's own being, beyond what constitutes one's essence, a realm to which Other belongs. The world that one knows is called the le dit, because all things in that world are known through what is said about them, through our own thematization or conceptualization of them. The realm of other is called the saying, le dire, because we are aware of it only through what it says to us rather than through our thematization. As a totality, belong to world of said, having an essence that can be thematized, a being that can be conceptualized; for instance, thematized and conceptualized in science or in traditional philosophy. However, this is utterly devoid of any subjectivity. In response to this, in Totality and Infinity, Levinas embarks on a phenomenological journey, tracing subjectivity of I.4 As is case with any classical phenomenology, Levinas begins with mundane experiences of I, showing that acquires its unique identity, or its unicity, by separating or isolating itself from what is not itself in activity of enjoyment. It is in that one is aware of one's own happiness and unhappiness, thus aware of one's own ipseity. For Levinas, enjoyment . . . is (TI, 117) and isolation is structure of unicity of I. The phenomenology of allows Levinas to conclude that self sufficiency of enjoying measures egoism or ipseity of Ego and same. Enjoyment is a withdrawal into oneself, an involution (TI, 118). In enjoyment, see all things in terms of my own being because in it I am absolutely for myself (TI, 134). Yet, in very process of enjoying, come to be aware that am much more than my own enjoyment. …

What does the free man worship

Dans son essai de 1903 A free man's Worship, l'humaniste Bertrand Russel a elabore une ethique profane. L'A. ne s'interesse pas au secularisme mais aux evenements theoriques de la pensee ethique. Contrairement aux apparences, il montre que les idees de Russel ne constituent pas une interdiction philosophique de la religion. Russel n'est pas vraiment en desaccord avec Kant : la foi de l'homme libre est la foi qui lui permet de vivre constamment dans la vision du bien. Les mots de Russel font apparaitre qu'ils sont en accord avec ceux de Levinas. Tous deux sont contre la conceptualisation de Dieu.

Man's worship of God before and after the fall inParadise Lost∗

(1990). Man's worship of God before and after the fall in Paradise Lost. English Studies: Vol. 71, No. 1, pp. 16-28.

"Spot this Mumbo Jumbo": Thomas Pynchon's Emblems for American Culture in "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna"

Before World War I, as early as 1910, Bertrand Russell, one of founders of logical positivism, had characterised the world which science presents for our as and void of meaning. He claimed that Man is product of causes which had no prevision of end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but outcome of accidental atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond grave; … and that whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath debris of a universe in ruins. Such things are not beyond dispute, but so nearly certain that within scaffolding of these truths, only on firm foundation of despair, can soul's habitation be safely built (A Free Man's Worship). But worse was to come. After World War II, Gilbert Ryle claimed that even belief in soul was a logical error, a category mistake. The soul was insubstantial, not even the ghost in machine of human body (Concept of Mind [1949]). Following that lead, influential Norbert Wiener, in his The Human Use of Human Beings (1954), resolved to avoid all question-begging epithets as 'life,' 'soul,' 'vitalism,' and like, since such words as life, purpose and soul are grossly inadequate to precise scientific thinking. It was no longer even to be possible coherently to state Russell's original unyielding despair concerning soul's proper habitation in a purposeless life.

Realism as a Practical and Cosmic Joke

By the end of the nineteenth century the conditions of existence were commonly regarded as a bad joke. Thus Thomas Hardy entitled a group of poems Time's Laughingstocks (1904) and referred in the last line of Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) to the sport the President of the Immortals had enjoyed with his heroine. Or Joseph Conrad wrote of the infernal and burlesque meanness of the apparent collision cost the hero of Lord Jim (1900) his honor and career, and consequently his death. An actual ship had been deserted by its officers in the Indian Ocean in 1880, but Conrad, in order to make a bad joke worse, included one of in the affair and made the circumstances more incongruous: the S. S. Jeddah had been abandoned in rough weather with a flooded engine room; the Patna, in a calm sea after nothing more than a bump in the night. These writers worked in the shadow of a century-long debate over the origin and destiny of the created universe. Because the starting point of the debate in received Christianity was theistic and, let us admit, anthropomorphic, the question of intent of creation was always prominent; and now, at the end of the century, writers like Hardy and Conrad were forced to contemplate a universe without conscious purpose. Creation was gratuitous, like a needless practical joke. Created beings therefore experienced what Albert Camus and others would call the absurd, that divorce between the mind desires and the world disappoints. 1 The notion of a cosmic joke is well illustrated by an essay entitled A Free Man's Worship Bertrand Russell contributed to the Independent Review in 1903. Russell can properly be regarded as a Victorian at this time; he was thirty-one when the essay appeared, and the joke itself summarizes the nineteenth-century views on which it is founded. It is a Mephistophelian account of creation, in which God is reported to have smiled inwardly before and after the event.

Notes from Underground: A Horneyan Analysis

In attempting to make sense of the vacillating, inconsistent, and often bizarre behavior of the underground man, critics have employed two distinct modes of analysis, thematic and psychological. The psychological approach seems more appropriate; the novel is essentially a portrait of a character. As yet, however, critics have not approached the work with a psychological theory that is congruent with it and adequate to its complexities. The underground man's character structure, attitudes, and behavior can be understood in terms of Karen Horney's analysis of neurotic processes. In Horneyan terms, the underground man is a detached person whose aggressive and compliant trends are very close to awareness and rather evenly balanced. He experiences severe and almost continuous conflict between all three of his trends and is caught in a devastating crossfire of contradictory “shoulds.” He compensates for his feeling of worthlessness by self-glorification and then hates himself even more because he cannot live up to his idealized image. The novel's philosophic passages are an integral part of Dostoevsky's portrait of his character. The underground man's worship of freedom, will, caprice, and individuality, and his phobic reaction to anything suggesting coercion, conformity to law, or ordinariness are all aspects of his detached solution.

E. A. Robinson and the Cosmic Chill

For this cosmic chill Robinson, in the first poem in his first regularly published volume, The Children of the Night, and again in the last poem he published before his death, attempted to set forth a remedy. Moreover, poem after poem between gave evidence of his preoccupation with the revelations of science. After the appearance of Captain Craig in 1902, both his consideration of the problem and his final solution of it are conditioned by the same conception of the universe so eloquently set forth by Bertrand Russell in A Free Man's Worship, in 1903. From this time on, Robinson was painfully aware of the significant question that sprang inevitably from the interpretation of natural science which to Russell seemed the only honest one:

A Study in WorshipModern Man's Worship: A Search for Reality in Religion. Bernard Eugene Meland

A Study in Worship<i>Modern Man's Worship: A Search for Reality in Religion</i>. Bernard Eugene Meland

Modern Man's Worship. A Search for Reality in Religion.

Modern Man's Worship. A Search for Reality in Religion.

Can a Modern Man Worship?

Can a Modern Man Worship?

The Motive of Individualism in Religion

These passages, which I have printed elsewhere, I venture to reproduce on the ground that they state, if somewhat baldly, not indeed all that is important for an individualistic philosophy, but what is most distinctive and necessary. And thus they enable us to see the full dimensions of the question which I shall endeavor to answer, namely, whether the spirit of a free man is compatible with that reverence for the universe and desire for unity with the universe, conceived always as a personal universe—or, more concretely, with that worship and love of God—which I shall assume to be implied in any genuine religion. I need hardly say that the usual answer to the question would be negative. Those who stand firmly enough for the right of self-assertion in the presence of our fellows would be likely either to deny the authority of religion or at any rate to hold that self-assertion has properly no place there. And traditional Christianity, while teaching the doctrine of a personal relation to a personal God and, in the doctrine of personal immortality, affirming, almost distinctively, the worth of the individual soul, treats this worth, hardly as a right, but as a gift, and holds that though a man may stand upright in the presence of his fellows, in the presence of God his attitude must be one of self-abnegation and self-effacement—of submission. On the other hand, in Mr. Bertrand Russell's essay, A Free Man's Worship, in which I should say that the motif of the “free man” is rendered for the most part admirably, it seems to be implied that a free man's religion is necessarily a religion of self-sufficiency. This states my question: Does the individualistic motive imply a spiritual self-sufficiency?

Philosophical Essays

THE subject-matter of Mr. Russell's book may be gathered from the titles of his chapters—“The Elements of Ethics,” “The Fre,e Man's Worship,” “The Study of Mathematics,” “Pragmatism,” “William James's Conception of Truth,” “The Monistic Theory of Truth,” “On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood.” With the exception of the last, all are reprints, with some alterations, of articles which have appeared in the New Quarterly, Hibbert Journal, Independent Review, Albany Review, Edinburgh Review, and Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.