Esta obra é uma colectânea de diversos textos filosóficos da autoria de Bertrand Russel. O título foi tirado do tema do primeiro capítulo que é também, na minha opinião, o mais interessante. Os outros textos abordam temáticas diversas que podem ser mais ou menos interessantes em função dos interesses do potencial leitor.
No primeiro capítulo Russel faz uma crítica racional e muito interessante ao cristianismo. Já o capítulo dedicado a uma discussão sobre religião entre Russel e um padre, não corresponde às espectativas porque se prende com aspectos demasiado técnicos da filosofia.
Igualmente interessante, mas desta feita para melhor compreender a mentalidade americana e a sua estranha concepção de liberdade, é o último capítulo que descreve como Bertrand Russel se viu afastado de leccionar na Universidade pública de Nova Iorque, uma medida de censura que não se fica atrás das fascistas e comunistas. ( )

(Comments on Volume 1:) My second reading of this first volume (of 3) of Russell's autobio was so long delayed that I had forgotten that many of the chapters end with lengthy collections of letters. E.g. two remarkable 1911 letters from set-theory founder Georg Cantor ("one of the greatest intellects of the [1800s]", Russell rightly opines) reveal how it was (barely) that no meeting of the two thinkers ever took place. Earlier in the volume, naturally, Russell describes how his eponymous paradox, and the eventual writing of the landmark _Principia Mathematica_ with Alfred North Whitehead, stemmed from studying Cantor's work. Whitehead's philosophy, he says, was "very obscure", and a painful illness that befell Whitehead's wife was what gave rise to the pacifist/compassionate aspects of his own philosophy. The points I've mentioned, of course, are but a minuscule subset of all the events and people Russell talks about.

(Comments on Volume 2:) This middle volume -- the thickest of the 3 volumes -- covers Russell's pacifist activism (and 1918 imprisonment) during World War I, his months-long sojourns in Russia and China at the start of the 1920s, the years partly spent in running an elementary school of his own design, and his years-long sojourn in the US prior to and during much of World War II. In regard to the latter period, I was surprised to be reminded that for a time he lived in Princeton and had weekly discussions with Einstein, Gödel, and Pauli. A large fraction of the volume is taken up by letters to and from famous and not-so-famous people.

(Comments on Volume 3:) His final years coinciding with the first half of the Cold War, Russell was perhaps the most prominent of peace activists, involving himself in the buildup to the Pugwash conferences (including the securing of an important co-signature from Albert Einstein at the very end of the latter's life), the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (advocating and effecting a shift towards non-violent civil disobedience), his Peace Foundations (additionally concerned with human rights), and the International War Crimes Tribunal (concerned with US actions in Vietnam). He also tells of receiving the 1950 Nobel prize in literature. This may strike some present-day readers as ironic, since all Russell's writings are pervaded by the use of "man" to mean "man or woman" (and "men" to mean "people") and the heavy use of "which" as a restrictive relative pronoun

The Founding Fathers obviously placed a high value on happiness or they wouldn't have insisted on pursuit of it as a basic right in a major American document. Bertrand Russell, who already as an adolescent was trying to reconcile the meaning of life and the role of reason, adopted a Millian (if that's a word) premise to "act in a manner. . . to be most likely to produce the greatest happiness, considering both the intensity of the happiness and the number of people made happy." In The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, volume I, Conscience, he argued, was too dependent upon education, a product a evolution and education, and therefore "it is an absurdity to follow that rather than reason." The inherited part "can only be principles leading to the preservation of the species" and the education part of conscience is derived from the same imparted wisdom that "made Bloody Mary burn the Protestants." Russell was good friends with Alfred Whitehead who was a teacher and mentor to him, although in later years to parted on aspects of their philosophies. He perceived Whitehead as having the qualities of a perfect teacher: "He took a interest in those with whom he had to deal and knew both their strong and weak points. He would elicit from a pupil the best of which a pupil was capable. He was never repressive, or sarcastic or any of those things that inferior teachers like to be. I think that in all the abler young men with whom he came in contact, he inspired, as he did in me, a very real and lasting affection."

Russell's comments about people he met and his friends were amusingly perspicacious. "My impression of the old families of Philadelphia Quakers was that they had all the effeteness of a small aristocracy. Old misers of ninety would sit brooding over their hoard while their children of sixty or seventy waited for their death with what patience they could command. Various forms of mental disorder appeared common. Those who must be accounted sane were apt to be very stupid."

It was while in the midst of writing his great Principia Mathematica that he had a revelation that was to alter his life. Alfred Whitehead's wife was in severe pain from a heart condition and while attending to her he came to the following reflections: "the loneliness of the human soul in unendurable; nothing can penetrate it except the highest intensity of the sort that religious teachers have preached; whatever does not spring from this motive is harmful, or at best war is wrong, that a public school [the English public school is the equivalent of an American private school:] is abominable, that the use of force is to be deprecated, and that in relations one should penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person and speak to that. . . . cared only for exactness and analysis, I found myself filled with semi-mystical feelings about beauty, with an intense interest in children, and with some desire almost as profound as that of the Buddha to find some philosophy which should make life endurable." ( )

The greatest combination of intellect and humanity I have come across. ( )

after this book I read Monks autobiography and that gives not a positive image og Russel. Insincere. "Is this the man that always taught me to be honest" is a comment of one of his daughters.