introduction

'I do not myself think very well of what I have said on ethics', wrote Russell in extreme old age (Dear Bertrand Russell, p. 132). And most subsequent philosophers have agreed with him. Either they do not think very well of what he said or they do not think of it at all. Until very recently, Russell hardly rated a mention in most books and bibliographies on twentieth-century ethics. His most anthologised paper on the subject is 'The Elements of Ethics' (1910) in which he expounds, not his own ideas, but the ideas of his colleague and sometime friend, G.E. Moore. Even dedicated Russell fans such as John Slater (Bertrand Russell (1994)) and Anthony Grayling (Russell 1996) are a bit lukewarmabout his theoretical ethics, whilst R.M. Sainsbury in his 'Arguments of the Philosophers' book Russell (1979), is positively dismissive: 'I have left aside his work on moral philosophy, on the grounds that in both its main phases, it is too derivative to justify a discussion of it'. In the first phase, represented by 'The Elements of Ethics' (1910), Sainsbury suggests that Russell's ideas were derived from G.E. Moore, and in the second, represented by Human Society in Ethics and Politics, they were 'close to Hume's, with a dash of emotivism' (Sainsbury 1979, p. x).