- A brief account of the history of logic, from the The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (edited by Ted Honderich), OUP 1997, 497-500.
- A biography of Peter Abelard, published in the Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 115, edited by Jeremiah Hackett, Detroit: Gale Publishing, 3-15.
- Philosophy in the Latin Christian West, 750-1050, in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, edited by Jorge Gracia and Tim Noone, Blackwell 2003, 32-35.
- Ockham wielding his razor!
- Review of The Beatles Anthology, Chronicle Books 2000 (367pp).
- A brief discussion note about Susan James, Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy.
- Review of St. Thomas Aquinas by Ralph McInerny, University of Notre Dame Press 1982 (172pp). From International Philosophical Quarterly23 (1983), 227-229.
- Review of William Heytesbury on Maxima and Minima by John Longeway, D.Reidel 1984 (x+201pp). From The Philosophical Review 96 (1987), 146-149.
- Review of That Most Subtle Question by D. P. Henry, Manchester University Press 1984 (xviii+337pp). From The Philosophical Review 96 (1987), 149-152.
- Review of Introduction to the Problem of Individuation in the Early Middle Ages by Jorge Gracia, Catholic University of America Press 1984 (303pp). From The Philosophical Review 97 (1988), 564-567.
- Review of Introduction to Medieval Logic by Alexander Broadie, OUP 1987 (vi+150pp). From The Philosophical Review 99 (1990), 299-302.
Friday, December 18, 2009
"What I Have Lived For" by Bertrand Russell,1967
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
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