vasion by new philosophical methods. Thus Hegel could couch his dialectical
metaphysics in the form of a logic; and in Russell’s generation, Bosanquet
(1888) and McTaggart (1910) continued to produce systems of Idealist logic.
The most famous logic was that of Bradley (1883), in which he used a
critique of Mill’s inductivism as stepping-stone to his Idealist system of 1893.
Bradley’s key argument (as we saw in Chapter 12) held that relations are
illegitimate abstractions from an inexpressible Reality, as revealed by an infinite
regress of relations which attach relations to their terms. Russell counterat-
tacked accordingly. Bradley had assumed that relations are internal, constitu-
tive of the objects that are related. The absurd consequences of this doctrine
(including the mind-dependence of all objects) can be avoided by recognizing
that relations are external; items that are related exist in their own right,
unaffected by their relations with anything else. Russell’s logical atomism
directly opposed Bradley’s Idealism.
Russell proposed a logically perfect language to overcome the mystifications
of surface grammar in the subject-predicate form. All descriptive terms are to
be replaced by logically proper names which simply designate. To use an
un-Russellian example: “the son of God” is merely a circumlocution which
can be replaced by “Jesus.” For Bradley, who recognized no brute particular
facts, it was the opposite: “Jesus” is above all “the son of God” and not vice
versa. In Russell’s reductionist program, all indirect, descriptive statements can
be translated into statements about logically proper names, referring to things
that one knows by acquaintance. Truth or falsity can be read off directly.^19
As the controversy over meta-mathematics moved increasingly toward
philosophical turf, Russell’s own attention shifted to the larger consequences
of his logical atomism. The basis of his influence was not so much the series
of systems which Russell tried out during his lifetime as the direction he gave
to subsequent philosophy. In fact the publication of Principia Mathematica
posed a personal crisis for Russell; for all the investment of effort in three
detailed volumes of formal derivations, the greatest attention was attracted to
the ground-level flaws of the theory of types. At just this point Wittgenstein
appeared at Cambridge and was adopted by Russell as the disciple to carry on
his method and remedy its flaws (Monk, 1990: 36–65). Wittgenstein was
undoubtedly an individual of high intelligence and powers of concentration;
what alone was unique, however, and what fitted him for the role of icono-
clastic genius, were the opportunities presented as he was welcomed into the
core of the intellectual network at this challenging moment.
Wittgenstein saw that the method of a logically perfect language could be
cut loose from mathematics—where Russell’s trajectory had encountered a
dead end—and generalized to all of philosophy. During 1912–1916, Wittgen-
stein reworked and radicalized Russell’s ingredients. Wittgenstein postulates
714 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths