버트런트 러셀은 이성애자였지만 동성애 운동에 관심이 많았다

버트런트 러셀은 이성애자였지만 동성애 운동에 관심이 많았다.

 

총애하는 제자인 루트비히 비트켄슈타인이 게이였던 것이 영향을 끼쳤을 것이다. 

 

1957년 미국의 강단 (CCNY)에서 동성애를 옹호했다는 명목으로 러셀이 거의 추방당하다싶이 한 것에 빅터 로스차일드가 개입했을까 의문이 남는다. 물론 구태여 누군가가 개입하지 않더라도, 당시 동성애를 옹호하던 것은 기독교 정신이 강한 미국에서 용납할 수 없는 행위이긴 했다.

 

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'I have been happily married for the last 23 years and have 5 children ages ranging from 8 to 21 years. About two years ago, my wife began a homosexual relationship. ..."

Dear Sir,
My attitude about homosexuality is that it should be regarded no differently from heterosexual relations. When I say that it is a matter only for the people immediately concerned, I should certainly include a husband or wife as immediately concerned; and the children also, obviously are concerned. Very often these family considerations would make extra-martial homosexual or heterosexual relations undesirable, but, if one party to a marriage is deeply and seriously in love with someone else, it is hardly possible for the marriage to remain happy, and sometimes divorce would be best. One cannot make general rules in such matters.'
　Source: Dear Bertrand Russell, 1969.

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"Homosexuality between men, though not between women, is illegal in England, and it would be very difficult to present any argument for change of the law in this respect which would not itself be illegal on the ground of obscenity. And yet every person who has taken the trouble to study the subject knows that this law is the effect of a barbarous and ignorant superstition, in favour of which no rational argument of any sort or kind can be advanced."

~Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929), Ch. 8: The Taboo on Sex Knowledge

Russell was an active supporter of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, being one of the signatories of A.E. Dyson's 1958 letter to The Times calling for a change in the law regarding male homosexual practices, which were partly legalised in 1967, when Russell was still alive.

Marriage and Morals is a 1929 book by the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell that questions the Victorian notions of morality regarding sex and marriage. Russell argued that the laws and ideas about sex of his time were a potpourri from various sources, which were no longer valid with the advent of contraception, as the sexual acts are now separated from the conception. He argues that family is most important for the welfare of children, and as such, a man and a woman should be considered bound only after her first pregnancy.

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https://academeblog.org/2015/05/18/bertrand-russell-and-academic-freedom/

1957년 러셀 사건

Since today is Bertrand Russell’s birthday (he was born in 1872), I wanted to share this short segment from my dissertation on the history of academic freedom about Russell’s firing from CCNY and the first court case to mention the words “academic freedom”:

A turning point in academic freedom came in 1940. That year marked the adoption of the AAUP’s fundamental doctrine on academic freedom and tenure. But it was also the year in which famed philosopher Bertrand Russell was prevented from teaching logic at City College of New York, and the first court decision in America mentioned academic freedom.

Russell was called “a desiccated, divorced, and decadent advocate of sexual promiscuity” (Edwards, 1957, 210). Bronx Borough President James Lyons threatened to eliminate the $7.5 million appropriation for city colleges unless Russell was fired, declaring that “the colleges would either be godly colleges, American colleges, or they would be closed” (Edwards, 1957, 213). The New York State Legislature unanimously adopted a resolution asking the Board to rescind Russell’s appointment, declaring that “an advocate of barnyard morality is an unfit person to hold an important post in the educational system of our state at the expense of the taxpayers” (Edwards, 1957, 217). Charles Keegan of the City Council called Russell an “avowed Communist” and urged that board members should be dismissed if they tried to put Russell on the faculty. The Council voted 14-5 to ask the mayor to reorganize the board and appoint new members (Edwards, 1957, 250-1).

But ultimately, it would be the judicial system that demanded the firing of Russell. Jean Kay, a citizen of Brooklyn with no connection to City Colleges, filed suit declaring that “it was contrary to public policy to appoint as a teacher anyone believing in atheism” (Edwards, 1957, 219). A New York judge revoked Russell’s appointment as “an insult to the people of the City of New York” and “in effect establishing a chair of indecency” (Edwards, 1957, 221).

As would often happen in the future, academic freedom was seen as being inapplicable to sexual questions. Judge McGeehan wrote, “While this court would not interfere with any action of the board in so far as a pure question of ‘valid’ academic freedom is concerned, it will not tolerate academic freedom being used as a cloak to promote the popularization in the minds of adolescents of acts forbidden by the Penal Law” (Kay v. Board of Higher Education, 1940, 829). Nor was academic merit given any consideration. Judge McGeehan declared, “It is contended that Bertrand Russell is extraordinary. That makes him the more dangerous” (Kay v. Board of Higher Education, 1940, 829).

In his decision, Judge McGeehan denounced Russell for “his immoral character” attacking “the filth which is contained in the books” Russell had written, such as urging “temporary childless marriages” for college students (Kay v. Board of Higher Education, 1940, 826-7). Judge McGeehan argued that though he found Russell’s views on masturbation, nudity, religion and politics to be despicable, the court could not intervene for these reasons. And, although Russell endorsed the crime of adultery, this, the judge noted, was only a misdemeanor (Kay v. Board of Higher Education, 1940, 830). What ultimately justified judicial intervention was “Russell’s utterances as to the damnable felony of homosexualism, which warrants imprisonment for not more than twenty years in New York State.” Judge McGeehan quoted Russell’s writings: “It is possible that homosexual relations with other boys would not be very harmful if they were tolerated, but even then there is danger lest they should interfere with the growth of normal sexual life later on” (Kay v. Board of Higher Education, 1940, 831).

Here, Russell was expressing a homophobic view, that homosexual behavior by boys should not be tolerated, because it may be harmful and it would interfere with “normal” sexual development. However, Russell (in words not quoted by the judge) had condemned the laws punishing homosexual behavior. It is not clear if the judge simply misread Russell and assumed that he was open-minded toward homosexuality, or if the judge felt that Russell’s condemnation of homosexuality was insufficiently harsh.

The Russell case showed that sexuality cannot be segregated from political forms of academic freedom. Any kind of subversive thinking, whether political or sexual, was merged together in the crusades against academic freedom. One interesting aspect of the Russell case is the way that homosexuality has been forgotten. Today, when Russell’s case is mentioned, it is typically asserted that Russell was fired for discussing “trial marriages” or adultery (Johnson, 1994). Even at the time of Russell’s firing, the topic of homosexuality was avoided. A commentator in the Yale Law Review defended Russell, declaring: “The statutes which outlaw rape and abduction seek to protect chaste females under eighteen. As report has it there are at City College no chaste females…there are no females at all” because “Women are barred from the School of Liberal Arts, where Dr. Russell would have delivered his lectures…” (Hamilton, 1941, 785).

Judge McGeehan’s decision was ultimately never challenged. Mayor La Guardia simply struck the lectureship from the budget without saying a word, and prevented an appeal of the decision, refusing to allow the Board to get their own counsel. Courts prohibited Russell himself from appealing the decision (Edwards, 1957, 255).

To the academic world, the Russell case was a deep embarrassment because it involved an internationally admired scholar. John Dewey noted, “As Americans, we can only blush with shame for this scar on our repute for fair play” (Edwards, 1957, 258). The AAUP’s Statement of Principles was in part academia’s revenge for the insult to Russell, and its force for self-protection.

The firing of a prominent scholar like Russell showed how vulnerable academic freedom was in America. The Russell case also foreshadowed more anti-subversive crusades. The investigation of Russell was among the early anti-subversive campaigns that would reign supreme during the era of McCarthyism. In response to the controversy over Russell, the Rapp-Coudert Committee was formed in New York, which would serve as a forerunner for McCarthyism. Although there had been previous anti-subversive legislative investigations, the Rapp-Coudert Committee was the first that led to mass firings. By 1942, 40 professors were fired or did not have their contracts renewed because of accused links to Communism or refusing to divulge their views (Ollman, 1984, 45). As Marjorie Heins noted, “The Rapp-Coudert investigation made it dangerous for scholars of history, literature, sociology, science, or religion to write or teach about Marxism, socialism, the Soviet Union, revolution, and indeed social change of any kind” (Heins, 2013, 115).

The Rapp-Coudert Committee revealed an early hint of what the McCarthy Era would bring to academia: a relentless attack on radicals in academia. It also revealed the powerlessness of the AAUP and other defenders of academic freedom in the face of a political crusade.

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“He was queer, and his notions seemed to me odd,” Russell says, surely using queer in its archaic sense. (Though others do apply; in 1993, Derek Jarman made a gay-themed biographical film about the philosopher.) “For a whole term, I could not make up my mind whether he was a man of genius or merely an eccentric.” But at the end of this term, the young Wittgenstein brought to his instructor a pressing question: “Will you please tell me whether I am a complete idiot or not? If I am a complete idiot, I shall become an aeronaut; but, if not, I shall become a philosopher.” Russell issued a challenge to write about a philosophical subject over the school break, and Wittgenstein handed him the result as soon as the next term began. “After reading only one sentence,” recalls Russell, “I said to him, “No, you must not become an aeronaut.” And he didn’t.” One imagines his unrealized career in aeronautics wouldn’t have given us quite so much to debate.

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https://www.jsnyc.com/season/Ludwig_Bertie.htm
"Ludwig and Bertie" traces the entwined lives and philosophies of these two avatars of modernism from their first meeting at Cambridge in 1911, when Russell was nearly 40 and Wittgenstein was 21, to Wittgenstein's death in 1951. A play on such characters might seem to be a play of philosophical ideas, but this one is rooted in a pointedly personal drama that plays out at many levels. Russell is heterosexual, hedonistic and agnostic; Wittgenstein is puritanical, gay and Jewish. Russell is an imprisoned pacifist; Wittgenstein a decorated combat soldier. Wittgenstein is intensely religious; Russell mocks religion from first to last. Academically, they start out together as proponents of a modernism rooted in logic, mathematics and science. Wittgenstein creates a modernist book, and then designs a modernist house, each with as many sharp angles as a painting by Mondrian. But it all goes wrong in 1926, when Wittgenstein wakes up to a post-modern, post-truth world. Russell tries desperately to hold on to modernism, but Wittgenstein supplants him at Oxford, Cambridge and around the world.

We ride along as their ideas evolve, including Wittgenstein's notion that the meaning of a proposition varies with its use. Meanings, you see, are only rules--and when you get down to it, there are no rules for rules. With this logic Wittgenstein drives Russell nearly mad.

Ludwig regards Bertie as his "mental father," but their relationship has elements of rivalry. At one point, Russel declares, "Damn it, I will never catch up with him." Their clashes take many comic turns, as when Russell is unable to prove to Wittgenstein that there is no rhinoceros in the room.