20th century · 1872–1970
Who influenced Bertrand Russell?
Influences and legacy
Logic, language, and public dissent — the analytic tradition's loudest voice.
Bertrand Russell was influenced by John Stuart Mill, Ernst Mach, F. H. Bradley, Gottlob Frege and G. E. Moore, and went on to influence Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, W. V. O. Quine and P. F. Strawson. That is 9 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Bassano Ltd, Public domain See the whole map
Who was Bertrand Russell?
A grandson of a British prime minister, Russell was orphaned at four, studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and with G. E. Moore led the revolt against British idealism. With Frege, Moore and his student Wittgenstein he founded analytic philosophy. With Alfred North Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, a landmark attempt to reduce mathematics to logic, and his essay "On Denoting" became a model of philosophical analysis.
Outside the academy he was known for atheism, pacifism and campaigns against nuclear weapons. He was jailed for his pacifism during the First World War, later condemned the Vietnam War and spoke for nuclear disarmament. In 1950 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature for writings championing humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Bertrand Russell?
5 direct influences on this map, earliest first.
- John Stuart Mill 1806–1873
- Ernst Mach 1838–1916
- F. H. Bradley 1846–1924
- Gottlob Frege 1848–1925
- G. E. Moore 1873–1958
Who did Bertrand Russell influence?
4 thinkers on this map draw directly on Bertrand Russell.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
- Rudolf Carnap 1891–1970
- W. V. O. Quine 1908–2000
- P. F. Strawson 1919–2006
The line of teachers behind Bertrand Russell
The longest documented line of influence ending at Bertrand Russell runs 25 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
- Thales of Miletus
- Anaximenes of Miletus
- Anaxagoras
- Socrates
- Antisthenes
- Diogenes of Sinope
- Crates of Thebes
- Zeno of Citium
- Seneca
- Tertullian
- Augustine of Hippo
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Peter Lombard
- Thomas Aquinas
- René Descartes
- Thomas Hobbes
- Baruch Spinoza
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Christian Wolff
- Immanuel Kant
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte
- F. W. J. Schelling
- Georg W. F. Hegel
- T. H. Green
- F. H. Bradley
- Bertrand Russell
Two steps away from Bertrand Russell
Indirect influences
- Through John Stuart Mill: Jeremy Bentham, Mary Wollstonecraft, Auguste Comte, Alexis de Tocqueville, Harriet Taylor Mill
- Through Gottlob Frege: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant
- Through F. H. Bradley: T. H. Green
The second generation
Contemporaries of Bertrand Russell
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Bertrand Russell, with no direct line between them.
- Sergei Bulgakov 1871–1944
- Max Scheler 1874–1928
- Nikolai Berdyaev 1874–1948
- Ernst Cassirer 1874–1945
- Kitarō Nishida 1870–1945
- Nikolay Lossky 1870–1965
- W. E. B. Du Bois 1868–1963
- Muhammad Iqbal 1877–1938
Bertrand Russell by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 5
- Direct followers
- 4 — #30 of 279 on this map
- Thinkers upstream
- 104
- Thinkers downstream
- 18
- Wikipedia languages
- 127 — #5 of 84 among 20th-century philosophers
- Card rarity
- Legendary
Schools and lineages
Questions about Bertrand Russell
- Who influenced Bertrand Russell?
- John Stuart Mill, Ernst Mach, F. H. Bradley, Gottlob Frege and G. E. Moore.
- Who did Bertrand Russell influence?
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, W. V. O. Quine and P. F. Strawson.
- When did Bertrand Russell live?
- 1872–1970. The map files Bertrand Russell under the 20th century.
- How rare is the Bertrand Russell card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Bertrand Russell in 127 languages, which makes it a Legendary card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More 20th-century philosophers
- Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980
- Albert Camus 1913–1960
- Max Weber 1864–1920
- Simone de Beauvoir 1908–1986
- Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
- Martin Heidegger 1889–1976
- Umberto Eco 1932–2016
- Antonio Gramsci 1891–1937