Marriage and Morals is a 1929 book by philosopher Bertrand Russell, in which the author questions the Victorian notions of morality regarding sex and marriage.
Russell argues that the laws and ideas about sex of his time were a potpourri from various sources and were no longer valid. The subjects range from criticisms of social norms, theories about their origins and tendencies, evolutionary psychology, and instinctual attachment to children (or lack thereof), among others. Notably, the book found marital rape to be common, stating: "Marriage is for woman the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.". [1] Russell also argues for increased availability of birth control, the decriminalization of homosexuality, improved sex education, easier access to divorce, and greater freedom of women to pursue their own interests and careers.
Marriage and Morals prompted vigorous protests against and denunciations of Russell during his visit to the United States shortly after the book's publication. [2] A decade later, the book, along with his protest against US involvement in World War II and his generally controversial position in public discourse, cost him his professorial appointment at the City College of New York, owing to a court judgment from a Catholic judge that his opinions made him "morally unfit" to teach. A public outcry, initiated by the mother of a student who was ineligible for his course in mathematical logic, preceded the ruling. John Dewey and several other intellectuals protested against his treatment. [3] Albert Einstein's often-quoted aphorism that "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" is from his open letter in support of Russell. [4]
In chapter eighteen, Russell discusses eugenics, expressing humanitarian reservations about many aspects and cautious approval for others. On the topic of "negative eugenics" (selecting against undesirable qualities), he concludes that most such qualities are too subjectively defined, but that sterilization on the basis of "mental deficiency" is justifiable. [5] He explores the idea of "positive eugenics" (selecting for desirable qualities), concluding that such a program would be fraught with moral issues but could produce a very militarily capable nation. [6]
On the subject of race, he wrote "It seems on the whole fair to regard negroes as on the average inferior to white men". In later editions this was changed to "There is no sound reason to regard negroes as on the average inferior to white men". Russell would later write "I never held Negroes to be inherently inferior. The statement in Marriage and Morals refers to environment conditioning". [7] Later in the same chapter Russell wrote that most racial eugenics is "an excuse for chauvinism." [8]
According to Russell, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for Marriage and Morals. [9]
When I was called to Stockholm, at the end of 1950, to receive the Nobel Prize – somewhat to my surprise, for literature, for my book Marriage and Morals– I was apprehensive, since I remembered that, exactly 300 years earlier, Descartes had been called to Scandinavia by Queen Christina in the winter time and had died of the cold.
The Nobel Foundation, on the other hand, wrote that the prize recognized "his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought"; not any particular work.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, and various areas of analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency. Dreiser's best known novels include Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925).
The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopaedia, containing 40,000 entries, has entered the public domain and is readily available on the Internet. Its use in modern scholarship and as a reliable source has been deemed problematic due to the outdated nature of some of its content. Modern scholars have deemed some articles as cultural artifacts of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Hermann Joseph Muller was an American geneticist who was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, "for the discovery that mutations can be induced by X-rays". Muller warned of long-term dangers of radioactive fallout from nuclear war and nuclear testing, which resulted in greater public scrutiny of these practices.
Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of love. The movement's initial goal was to separate the state from sexual and romantic matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It stated that such issues were the concern of the people involved and no one else. The movement began around the 19th century and was advanced by hippies during the Sixties.
Wolfgang Köhler was a German psychologist and phenomenologist who, like Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka, contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology.
Henry Havelock Ellis was an English-French physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations, as well as on transgender psychology. He developed the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis.
Paul Bowman Popenoe was an American marriage counselor, eugenicist and agricultural explorer. He was an influential advocate of the compulsory sterilization of mentally ill people and people with mental disabilities, and the father of marriage counseling in the United States.
William McDougall FRS was an early 20th century psychologist who spent the first part of his career in the United Kingdom and the latter part in the United States. He wrote a number of influential textbooks, and was important in the development of the theory of instinct and of social psychology in the English-speaking world.
The Russell–Einstein Manifesto was issued in London on 9 July 1955 by Bertrand Russell in the midst of the Cold War. It highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict. The signatories included eleven pre-eminent intellectuals and scientists, including Albert Einstein, who signed it shortly before his death on 18 April 1955. Shortly after the release, philanthropist Cyrus S. Eaton offered to sponsor a conference—called for in the manifesto—in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Eaton's birthplace. The conference, held in July 1957, became the first of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.
The Bertrand Russell Case, known officially as Kay v. Board of Higher Education, was a case concerning the appointment of Bertrand Russell as Professor of Philosophy of the College of the City of New York, as well as a collection of articles on the aforementioned case, edited by John Dewey and Horace M. Kallen.
The argument from beauty is an argument for the existence of a realm of immaterial ideas or, most commonly, for the existence of God, that roughly states that the elegance of the laws of physics or the elegant laws of mathematics is evidence of a creator deity who has arranged these things to be beautiful and not ugly.
Horace Brisbin Liveright was an American publisher and stage producer. With Albert Boni, he founded the Modern Library and Boni & Liveright publishers. He published the books of numerous influential American and British authors. Turning to theatre, he produced the successful 1927 Broadway play Dracula, with Béla Lugosi and Edward Van Sloan in the roles they would make famous in the 1931 film by the same name.
Aspects of philosopher, mathematician and social activist Bertrand Russell's views on society changed over nearly 80 years of prolific writing, beginning with his early work in 1896, until his death in February 1970.
Theodore Lothrop Stoddard was an American historian, journalist, political scientist and white supremacist. Stoddard wrote several books which advocated eugenics, white supremacy, Nordicism, and scientific racism, including The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920). He advocated a racial hierarchy which he believed needed to be preserved through anti-miscegenation laws. Stoddard's books were once widely read both inside and outside the United States.
Boni & Liveright is an American trade book publisher established in 1917 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. Over the next sixteen years the firm, which changed its name to Horace Liveright, Inc., in 1928 and then Liveright, Inc., in 1931, published over a thousand books. Before its bankruptcy in 1933 and subsequent reorganization as Liveright Publishing Corporation, Inc., it had achieved considerable notoriety for editorial acumen, brash marketing, and challenge to contemporary obscenity and censorship laws. Their logo is of a cowled monk.
William Josephus Robinson was an American physician, sexologist and birth control advocate. He was Chief of the department of Genito-Urinary Diseases at Bronx Hospital Dispensary, and editor of the American Journal of Urology and Sexology. Robinson was active in the birth control movement in the United States. He was "the first American physician to demand that contraceptive knowledge be taught to medical students and [...] probably the most influential and popular of the American physicians writing on birth control in the first three decades of the twentieth century".
The World League for Sexual Reform was a League for coordinating policy reforms related to greater openness around sex. The initial groundwork for the organisation, including a congress in Berlin which was later counted as the organisation's first, was orchestrated by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1921. It officially came into being at a congress in Copenhagen in 1928.
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict. The term anti-war can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts, or to anti-war books, paintings, and other works of art. Some activists distinguish between anti-war movements and peace movements. Anti-war activists work through protest and other grassroots means to attempt to pressure a government to put an end to a particular war or conflict or to prevent it in advance.
Sachi Sri Kantha is a Sri Lanka-born scientist, historian and bilingual author. He has been residing in Japan since 1986, and became a naturalised Japanese citizen in 2016.