Potter College News

Dr. Landon Elkind (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Department of Political Science) has published a new collection of essays, Bertrand Russell, Feminism, and Women Philosophers in His Circle, with Palgrave Macmillan.

Bertrand Russell, a Nobel Prize winner and a major contributor to modern logic, is widely acknowledged also as a “founding father” of modern analytic philosophy. Russell was also an early advocate for women’s rights, running for the House of Commons in 1907 on a platform of women’s suffrage and arguing for no-fault divorce in his 1929 Marriage and Morals. This latter book, which also advocated for legalizing birth control and ending the stigmas on sex outside of marriage, resulted in his job offer at City College of New York in 1940 being revoked in 1940 – an early case of being “cancelled” for his feminist ideas.

The new collection of essays includes 10 chapters on various women philosophers, feminist thinkers, and even Russell’s third wife Patricia Spence Russell. The volumes essays both compare Russell’s early feminist thinking to that of contemporary feminist authors and show the influence of women philosophers on his own widely influential philosophy.

“The women discussed in this volume have long been wrongly neglected by historians of philosophy in two ways. First, their own original ideas have been unduly ignored. Second, their influence on much-discussed male philosophers like Russell have been omitted or minimized in histories of analytic philosophy,” Dr. Elkind wrote. “This volume contributes to an ongoing conversation among academic philosophers about recovering its own history and creating an accurate narrative about the origins of modern analytic philosophy.”

Dr. Elkind co-edited the book with Dr. Alexander Klein (Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster University).