This is a guest post by James R. Connelly, author of Wittgenstein’s Critique of Russell’s Multiple Relation Theory of Judgement
In May–June 1913, Bertrand Russell wrote roughly 350 pages of a draft manuscript provisionally titled Theory of Knowledge. His goal was to apply logical methods developed in Principia Mathematica to problems in the epistemology of physical science. However, he ceased working on the manuscript in mid-June 1913 and never resumed writing it. In fact, when the extant manuscript was discovered among Russell’s papers as part of the process of cataloguing them in preparation for sale of his archives to McMaster University, Russell expressed his desire that the manuscript ‘be buried in the most remote corner of the archives’. This has left Russell scholars with a puzzle of explaining why Russell would abandon and then suppress a book manuscript, given that it was initially undertaken with great enthusiasm, demonstrated significant promise and was already at an advanced stage of composition. What caused Russell to change his mind about the project so suddenly and drastically?
In Fall 2023, I took up a position as Visiting Professor in Russell and the History of Analytic Philosophy at McMaster, which, as mentioned, is the home of the Bertrand Russell Archives. I taught a course there based on my 2021 book Wittgenstein’s Critique of Russell’s Multiple Relation Theory of Judgement, but much of my time was spent conducting research at the Russell archives. My research focused on the question of why Russell abandoned his 1913 Theory of Knowledge manuscript.
I set out to gather evidence in the archives to help historically reconstruct this crucial event in the history of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. My ultimate conclusion was that Russell abandoned the manuscript due to Wittgenstein’s criticisms of the multiple relation theory of judgement defended in the manuscript. Within his Theory of Knowledge project, Russell offers the multiple relation theory as an account of atomic propositional content, which is supposed to serve as a crucial link in the chains of deduction by which we derive knowledge of the external world from epistemological premises which are either self-evident or known by acquaintance. Wittgenstein’s criticisms cast a paralysing doubt on the ability of Russell’s multiple relation theory to perform this critical, intermediary role within Russell’s epistemology of science.
In addition to examining the original manuscript itself, some crucial evidence I inspected included correspondence between Russell and Wittgenstein, and also between Russell and his lover Lady Ottoline Morrell. Luckily for Russell and Wittgenstein scholars, shortly before Wittgenstein arrived at Cambridge to study with Russell in fall 1911, Russell began a romantic affair with Morrell. They exchanged letters almost daily and sometimes multiple times per day, for several years. There are approximately 3700 letters exchanged between them which can be accessed at the Russell archives at McMaster. Russell and Morrell discuss various things in these love letters, but for my purposes what is most relevant is that they provide a (more or less) day-by-day record of Russell’s composition of the manuscript, his interactions with Wittgenstein while composing the manuscript and the impacts of Wittgenstein’s criticisms on his Theory of Knowledge project. For instance, on 27 May 1913, Russell writes to Morrell that
Wittgenstein came to see me – we were both cross from the heat – I showed him a crucial part of what I had been writing. He said it was all wrong, not realizing the difficulties – that he had tried my view and knew it wouldn’t work.
Morrell’s handwriting is very difficult to read, so it took a significant amount of time just to learn how to decipher it, after which I began transcribing letters from the crucial period of May–June 1913. These transcriptions, along with an article I wrote on this topic, were published in the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies in June 2024. In the article, I flesh out the story I told in my 2021 book about the nature and import of Wittgenstein’s criticisms of Russell’s multiple relation theory. In the book, I focused on the criticisms themselves, their historical context, and their role in Wittgenstein’s and Russell’s philosophical development. In the paper based on my work at the Russell archives, I focus more directly on the question of why Russell abandoned his Theory of Knowledge manuscript and on the role played by Wittgenstein’s criticisms in its demise.