Three Passions of Bertrand Russell (and a Collection of Free Texts)

“Three pas­sions, sim­ple but over­whelm­ing­ly strong, have gov­erned my life,” wrote Bertrand Rus­sell in the pro­logue to his auto­bi­og­ra­phy: “the long­ing for love, the search for knowl­edge, and unbear­able pity for the suf­fer­ing of mankind.”

This five minute video, a pre­view of a three-part series pro­duced in 2005 for Ontario pub­lic tele­vi­sion called “The Three Pas­sions of Bertrand Rus­sell,” fea­tures a record­ing of Rus­sell read­ing pas­sages from the pro­logue, enti­tled “What I Have Lived For.” You can read the orig­i­nal text at the Bertrand Rus­sell Soci­ety, an excel­lent online resource, that also makes avail­able free books by Rus­sell, includ­ing:

• An Essay on the Foun­da­tions of Geom­e­try (1897)
• The Prin­ci­ples of Math­e­mat­ics (1903)
• Our Knowl­edge of the Exter­nal World (1914)
• Intro­duc­tion to Math­e­mat­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy (1919)
• Mys­ti­cism and Log­ic and Oth­er Essays (1919)
• The Analy­sis of Mind (1921)
• The Con­quest of Hap­pi­ness (1930)

You can also down­load the first edi­tion of Rus­sel­l’s land­mark 1910–13 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Alfred North White­head, Prin­cip­ia Math­e­mat­i­ca, as well as many of Rus­sel­l’s essays, includ­ing:

• “A Free Man’s Wor­ship” (1903)
• “On Denot­ing” (1905)
• “The Ele­ments of Ethics” (1910)
• “The Ethics of War” (1915)
• “On Propo­si­tions” (1919)
• “The­o­ry of Knowl­edge” (1926)
• “Why I am Not a Chris­t­ian” (1927)

To explore the full list of avail­able resources, and to learn how you can sup­port the soci­ety’s activ­i­ties, vis­it the Bertrand Rus­sell Soci­ety web­site.

Also don’t miss some great Rus­sell mate­r­i­al in our own archives, includ­ing all six of his 1948 BBC Rei­th Lec­tures, a clip from a Cana­di­an tele­vi­sion inter­view fea­tur­ing his views on God, and his elo­quent 1959 mes­sage to the future.