Betrand Russell with John and Kate
– Photo: Wikimedia Commons
“Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (* 18 May 1872 near Trellech, Monmouthshire, Wales; † 2 February 1970 in Penrhyndeudraeth, Gwynedd, Wales) was a British philosopher, mathematician, critic of religion and logician. He has taught at Trinity College, Cambridge University, the London School of Economics, Harvard University, Beijing University, among others, and was a member of the ‘Cambridge Apostles’. In 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Russell is regarded as one of the fathers of analytical philosophy. He wrote a large number of works on philosophical, mathematical, and social topics. Together with Alfred North Whitehead, he published the ‘Principia Mathematica’, one of the most important works of the 20th century on the foundations of mathematics. Russell was an atheist and rationalist. A world-renowned peace and disarmament activist, he was a leading figure in pacifism, although he was not a strict pacifist himself. He was open to socialist ideas. In 1963, he founded the ‘Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation’. In the ‘Russell Tribunal’, he investigated US war crimes in Vietnam together with Jean Paul Sartre.”
– Source: “Bertrand Russell” (en.wikipedia.org), 2020, layout modified by the author
“Marriage and Morals“
“Marriage and Morals” (en.wikiquote.org)
“Marriage and Morals” (buecher.de)
– Extract of this book (pageplace.de)
“Offers a cross-cultural examination of individual, familial and societal attitudes towards sex and marriage. Exploring the codes by which we live our sexual lives and conventional morality, this title sets out a fresh morality, shaped and influenced by dramatic changes in society such as the emancipation of women and the use of contraceptives.”
(buecher.de), 2020
Together with his wife Dora, Russell founded the Beacon Hill School in 1927 specifically with regard to their two children Kate and John, because existing schools did not meet their requirements. They intended the libertarian, progressive school to convey rational thinking and proved its open-mindedness, like other schools of reformed pedagogics did, i.a. through nudity during physical education. After the separation from Betrand Russell in 1932, Dora Black continued to run the school until 1943. Russell himself later stated self-critically, that the children at Beacon Hill School did not fare as well as hoped.
The book “Marriage and Morals" (1929) also dates back to this period influenced by pedagogics. Russell recognised: “So long as parents are unwilling to be seen naked by their children, the children will necessarily have a sense that there is a mystery, and having that sense they will become prurient and indecent.”1) A danger for children to become prurient and indecent does precisely exist, when they do not get the chance to see nude people.
He has published his commitment to naturism in the same book: “There are also many important grounds of health in favour of nudity in suitable circumstances, such as out-of-doors in sunny weather. Sunshine on the bare skin has an exceedingly health-giving effect. Moreover anyone who has watched children running about in the open-air without their clothes must have been struck by the fact that they hold themselves much better and move more freely and more gracefully than when they are dressed. The same thing is true of grown-up people. The proper place for nudity is out-of-doors in the sunshine and in the water. If our conventions allowed of this, it would soon cease to make any sexual appeal; we should all hold ourselves better, we should be healthier from the contact of air and sun with the skin, and our standards of beauty would more nearly coincide with standards of health, since they would concern themselves with the body and its carriage, not only with the face. In this respect the practice of the Greeks was to be commended.”2)
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1) Full cit.: “The taboo against nakedness is an obstacle to a decent attitude on the subject of sex… It is good for children to see each other and their parents naked whenever it so happens naturally. There will be a short period, probably at about three years old, when the child is interested in the differences between his father and his mother, and compares them with the differences between himself and his sister, but this period is soon over, and after this he takes no more interest in nudity than in clothes. So long as parents are unwilling to be seen naked by their children, the children will necessarily have a sense that there is a mystery, and having that sense they will become prurient and indecent. There is only one way to avoid indecency, and that is to avoid mystery.
• Ch. 8, p. 116”
Bertrand Russell, mathematician, pedagogue and philosopher, England
in his book “Marriage and Morals” (1929),
cited from “Marriage and Morals, ch. 8, p. 116” (en.wikiquote.org), 2020, layout modified by editor.
2) Cited from “Marriage and Morals, ch. 8, p. 116-117” (en.wikiquote.org), 2020, layout modified by editor.