Into the Words: Bertrand Russell

Sondheim’s musicals as a map of moral and intellectual inquiry

In 1951, philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) proposed ten principles for intellectual humility and open discourse in his essay “The Best Answer to Fanaticism: Liberalism.” Now colloquially known as his ten commandments, these principles emerged in the shadow of World War II and amid the early tensions of the Cold War. Russell offered them as a reme…