Russell and China—100 Years of a Meaningful Intercultural Interaction

Abstract

Bertrand Russell is one of the most important scholars in the foundation and development of modern epistemology and logic, especially mathematical logic, in the 20th century. It is well known that his studies in these fields have had a remarkable impact in both Europe and the United States. However, the extremely significant role he played in stimulating Chinese interest in these subjects is still virtually unknown. As we will see from numerous contributions to this special issue of Contemporary Chinese Thought, his visit to China also had a major impact on the development of modern Chinese humanism. By presenting various aspects of his visit to China, which took place in 1920 and 1921, this issue thus introduces the background and important intellectual and theoretical legacy of Russell’s work in China. On the threshold of the 20th century, in an era of sweeping changes in human apprehension of social and material reality, Bertrand Russell was invited to China by some of the most influential Chinese intellectuals of the time. In Russell’s life, this was already a relatively mature period, for by this time he had already published some of his most important works, such as The Problems of Philosophy (1912), Principia Mathematica (1913), Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy (2014), Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916), Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism (1918), and Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919). At the time of his visit, these works had already made him an established scholar and theoretician, not only in Europe, but also in the United States and, as we will see, also in Asia, especially China and Japan. Russell arrived in China in the autumn of 1920 and stayed there for almost a year before continuing his visit to Eastern Asia and heading for Japan. In the first two decades of the century, China had already established all the necessary components for a fruitful dialogue and a vital meeting of Europe and the Middle Kingdom. In China, this was a period of all-embracing and all-pervading renewal, but also one in which the first confrontations with Western ideas and Western philosophy began to bear fruit. The origins of these exchanges, however, were not only difficult and sometimes painful for China, but also linked to an urgent need for a new cultural self-identification.