He was an interesting guy. He came from a very progessive and liberal family (JS Mill was his godfather), but was also a member of a hugely wealthy titled family: he was Earl of Amberley, if I recall correctly. So a very British paradox: a socialist aristocrat, an anti-establishment friend of royalty and a philosopher-logician with a significant personal fortune. He is also - with Frege and G.E. Moore - the founder of analytic philosophy, which is to say the kind of philosophy that is practiced everywhere in universities today. I think his influence on philosophy has been largely dreadful (Wittgenstein came to agree), but nobody can deny his importance as a thinker, and his History of Western Philosophy is a classic. |