What Bertrand Russell Actually Said About Death
All 3 Bertrand Russell passages on death, in full — what each one claims, what holds them together, and who argues the other way.
Bertrand Russell returns to death three times in thinkr's library — more often than to almost anything else. British logician, philosopher, and public intellectual. Co-author of Principia Mathematica, and later a passionate voice for peace and free thought.
What follows is every one of those passages, in full, with what each is actually claiming. The language is of its period, but the question underneath is not: what is death for, and what does it ask of you?
Every Bertrand Russell passage on death
“Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”
“Arithmetic must be discovered in just the same sense in which Columbus discovered the West Indies, and we no more create numbers than he created the Indians.”
“All's well that ends well; which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.”
What holds these together
Read in sequence rather than one at a time, the passages stop being separate aphorisms. Bertrand Russell is not offering three opinions about death; the lines are facets of one position, and the repetition is the argument. The shortest of them — “Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so” — is the version you can carry, and the longer ones are what it unpacks into.
Bertrand Russell applied to a real decision
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what the position actually does when it meets a situation where every option costs something. thinkr puts two such cases to Bertrand Russell.
Everyone in the room is avoiding the obvious problem.
Argued as socratic courage: You are choosing truth over group comfort. The danger is using truth as a way to dominate the room.
You have to decide before you feel certain.
Argued as methodic doubt: You are honoring the difference between confidence and knowledge. The risk is making doubt infinite.
Work through these yourself
- Everyone in the room is avoiding the obvious problem. — argued from socratic courage and several competing positions
- You have to decide before you feel certain. — argued from methodic doubt and several competing positions
Who disagrees
Albert Camus, Buddha, Carl Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche all address death too, and they do not converge. Reading Bertrand Russell alone gives you a coherent position; reading Bertrand Russell against Albert Camus shows you what the position is actually choosing against.