Answers to Questions about Philosophy [1957]

RUSSELL’S ANSWERS TO the first set of questions were published in This Is My Philosophy: Twenty of the World’s Outstanding Thinkers Reveal the Deepest Meanings They Have Found in Life, ed. Whit Burnett (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), p. 2 (B&R 6122). They appeared in the editor’s introduction to the selection from Russellthe final chapter of Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954). In addition to his work as an anthologist, Burnett (1899-1973) was also the editor of Story magazine and a teacher of creative writing at Columbia University. He had already (in 1950) persuaded Russell to provide something (the chapter on “Education” from Why Men Fight-the American edition of Principles of Social Reconstruction) for The World’s Best, a similar compendium of the “105 Greatest Living Authors”. He had sought Russell’s involvement with his latest venture in a letter dated 31 August 1955. In addition to “some unified chapter, essay or lecture in which you have summed up…your most important thoughts reflecting your philosophy”, Burnett wanted each contributor to consider an enclosed questionnaire. He reiterated this request in a follow-up letter of 6 September. In the reply which Russell dictated to Edith the following day, however, he tackled only the first three questions. As he explained in a short covering note, Russell did not “feel that I have anything to say” about his intellectual influences, the present considered from a historical perspective, possible future developments in his field, or what Burnett had called “man’s greatest social need”.