Alert - Serious and Extreme Nerdliness ahead. Proceed at one's own peril.
I'm certainly not claiming Russell was consistent -- he changed his thinking about as often as he changed his socks. But what he brought to the table was a determination to bring the discussion about thought down to a more basic, analytical level. Maybe it's the fact that I doubled in Philosophy and Economics, but I appreciate his desire to reduce our ways of thinking to more logical levels, with somewhat consistent rules (or, maybe it was the fact that I never could wrap my mind around metaphysics -- who's to say?
I admire Russell's efforts to be as clear and focused as possible while pursuing a very difficult topic, and fully understand why he changed his mind on important questions more than a few times. The great questions in philosophy really are hard to answer well if one approaches them as rigorously as he did. I would say that Russell's problem was that, unlike his teacher Whitehead, he really didn't like metaphysics, and so while he really tried to avoid doing it, when you try to avoid doing something, you just wind up doing it badly. Whitehead had at least the equal logical rigor of Russell considering their joint authorship on the Principia (did you know they wrote it in Whitehead's kitchen because that was the only place they were allowed to work since Whitehead's wife couldn't stand Russell?), but he was also quite a bit more capable in dealing with the more difficult questions of metaphysics in a rigorous manner. While (as far as I understand him - he can be tough reading) I think I don't ultimately agree with him either for he seems like a neo-Hegelian trying so hard to bolt the absolute into nature that he even allows evolution in the absolute (which I regard as a very serious problem), I still hold a great deal of respect for him. He was truly both a deeply kind, wonderfully brilliant, and deeply thoughtful man who is very admirable to me. He was sort of the opposite of a Nietzsche. And as much as Nietzsche loathed Plato, Whitehead was fond of Plato, after all it was Whitehead who said, "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." Whitehead certainly disagreed with Plato on many points but he also followed him on many of the more important points. They were both idealistic, both fascinated with the philosophy of mathematics, both capable metaphysicians, both mystics, etc. I'd say it's too bad that Russell didn't follow him better, but I think the some differences between philosophers more given to the Platonic mode of thought vs. the Critical or the Skeptical might in the end be a difference of temperament - Plato appears to suggest as much in the Phaedrus, and Plotinus and laters followed him on that. Those contemplatives with more musical/creative souls seem to inevitably be drawn into some kind of Platonizing, while those inclined in other ways will wind up answering the really fundamental questions quite differently and from there differ in how systems of thought such as cynicism, skepticism, relativism, reductionism, naturalism, positivism, etc. will evolve. I could be wrong about that, I'd be happy if I was.
On the other hand, I got an A+ in Symbolic Logic, so that explains a lot).
I very much enjoyed studying Symbolic Logic. I aced the first year and a few of us in the course got the Prof. to do schedule a third semester of Logic so we could keep going, though I admit things did get pretty hairy a few times in that last course. I think that's why I wound up liking Comp. Sci. so much, since you can see the rudiments of Boolean logic used in C.S. in many places on various higher and lower levels. To push the envelope of nerdiness, the computer itself and the structures that were worked out to enable modern digital computing are an attempt at making a mathematical calculator out of a logic system, so the issues that Boole, Russell, Gödel, and later mathematical philosophers were wrestling with actually had an influence on the ideas behind the design of modern computing.
As to your obsession with the Greeks, well, as I told H once, Aristotle rules (and Plato drools).
You know what's funny is that I don't have a poor regard for Aristotle at all, I just have a higher regard of Plato. The later Platonists after Aristotle really regarded the differences between Plato and Aristotle as mostly just a disagreement about the critical questions of whether there is a good in itself and a one in itself, and whether they are the same (along with some resulting epistemological and ontological differences). You might not be familiar with the works of Plotinus (he's not studied too often these days, alas), he was the first of the great Platonists after Aristotle (the "Middle Platonists" are very interesting but are not nearly as interesting as the "Neoplatonists"). Plotinus held that Plato and Aristotle were quite close in thought mostly differing in the previously mentioned points, and offered a critique of Aristotle's critiques of Plato's Good/One, a a critique of Aristotle's critique of the Platonic idea of the nature of Being in itself, but at the same time Plotinus and later Platonists incorporated a great deal of Aristotelian thought, though always using it Platonically, thus Plato's Forms are pure actualities, while the realm of the forms is pure act, self-contemplative thought (noesis noeseos), and the highest and most perfect substantiality. Many scholars say it would be as correct to call Neoplatonism Neo-Aristotelianism. It was assumed by most later Platonists that since Aristotle was Plato's pupil and knew Plato in person rather than just through his writings that he was really just a Platonist who made a few errors which caused him to disagree with Plato on a few points while still holding a largely Platonic view. When Proclus (the last great greek philosopher and a favorite of Leibniz, Spinoza, Hegel and others due to the logical rigor of his works), was first being trained at the Academy he studied the works of Aristotle, studying logic, epistemology, physics, metaphysic as the "lesser mysteries" then once he mastered those he turned to Plato, the "greater mysteries." So I'm kind of an Aristotelian, I just think there are a couple of errors he made in his metaphysics that should be corrected.
