Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living Virtuously (1930)

Image by J. F. Horra­bin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bertrand Rus­sell may have lived his long life con­cerned with big top­ics in log­ic, math­e­mat­ics, pol­i­tics, and soci­ety, but that did­n’t keep him from think­ing seri­ous­ly about how to han­dle his own day-to-day rela­tion­ships. That hard­ly means he han­dled every such rela­tion­ship with per­fect aplomb: take note of his three divorces, the first of which was for­mal­ized in 1921, the year he mar­ried his lover Dora Black. Pos­sessed of sim­i­lar bohemi­an-reformer ideals — and, before long, two chil­dren — the cou­ple found­ed the exper­i­men­tal Bea­con Hill School in 1927, intent on encour­ag­ing their young pupils’ devel­op­ment as not just thinkers-in-train­ing but full human beings.

A few years lat­er, Rus­sell pub­lished his per­son­al “ten com­mand­ments” in a cul­ture mag­a­zine called Every­man, and you can read it in full in this 1978 issue of the Rus­sell Soci­ety News. (Go to page 5.)

“Every­body, I sup­pose, has his own list of virtues that he tries to prac­tice, and, when he fails to prac­tice them, he feels shame quite inde­pen­dent­ly of the opin­ion of oth­ers, so far at any rate as con­scious thought is con­cerned,” he writes by way of intro­duc­tion. “I have tried to put the virtues that I should wish to pos­sess into the form of a deca­logue,” which is as fol­lows:

  1. Do not lie to your­self.
  2. Do not lie to oth­er peo­ple unless they are exer­cis­ing tyran­ny.
  3. When you think it is your duty to inflict pain, scru­ti­nize your rea­sons close­ly.
  4. When you desire pow­er, exam­ine your­self close­ly as to why you deserve it.
  5. When you have pow­er, use it to build up peo­ple, not to con­strict them.
  6. Do not attempt to live with­out van­i­ty, since this is impos­si­ble, but choose the right audi­ence from which to seek admi­ra­tion.
  7. Do not think of your­self as a whol­ly self-con­tained unit.
  8. Be reli­able.
  9. Be just.
  10. Be good-natured.

In the full text, Rus­sell elab­o­rates on the think­ing behind each of these virtues.  “When you wish to believe some the­o­log­i­cal or polit­i­cal doc­trine which will increase your income, you will, if you are not very care­ful, give much more weight to the argu­ments in favor than to those against”: hence the impor­tance of not lying to your­self. When it comes to lying to oth­ers, not only should gov­ern­ments tell the truth to their sub­jects, “par­ents should tell the truth to their chil­dren, how­ev­er incon­ve­nient this may seem.” And fam­i­lies as in states, “those who are intel­li­gent but weak can­not be expect­ed to forego the use of their intel­li­gence in their con­flicts with those who are stu­pid but strong.”

Rus­sel­l’s fifth com­mand­ment also applies to rela­tion­ships between the old and the young, since “those who deal with the young inevitably have pow­er, and it is easy to exer­cise this pow­er in ways pleas­ing to the edu­ca­tor rather than use­ful to the child.” And by his eighth com­mand­ment, he means “to sug­gest a whole set of hum­drum but nec­es­sary virtues, such as punc­tu­al­i­ty, keep­ing promis­es, adher­ing to plans involv­ing oth­er peo­ple, refrain­ing from treach­ery even in its mildest forms.” Alas, “mod­ern edu­ca­tion, in less­en­ing the empha­sis on dis­ci­pline, has, I think, failed to pro­duce reli­able human beings where social oblig­a­tions are con­cerned.”

This “pre­scrip­tive empha­sis — notably the stress placed on the mer­its of some hum­ble virtues — may have been influ­enced then by his prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence of pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion,” writes The Col­lect­ed Papers of Bertrand Rus­sell edi­tor Andrew Bone. But Rus­sell still revised his deca­logue long after he left the Bea­con Hill School in 1932, with world events of the sub­se­quent decades inspir­ing him to use it in the ser­vice of what he regard­ed as a lib­er­al world­view. One ver­sion broad­cast on the BBC in 1951 includes such com­mand­ments as “Do not feel absolute­ly cer­tain of any­thing,” “Find more plea­sure in intel­li­gent dis­sent than pas­sive agree­ment,” and “Do not use pow­er to sup­press opin­ions you think per­ni­cious, for if you do the opin­ions will sup­press you” — all of which more of the last few gen­er­a­tions of stu­dents could have done well to inter­nal­ize.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s 10 Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

Bertrand Rus­sell: Author­i­ty and the Indi­vid­ual (1948)


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Comments (5)
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  • J. Paul Radin says:

    The prob­lem with this approach is we live in a world of PEOPLE. Peo­ple do not treat each oth­er this way. Why should I be the only one doing so?? I am liv­ing my life, not every­one else’s. I have a duty to put MYSELF first, NOT my scum­bag neigh­bor. He is in it for him­self, and if I am to sur­vive, I MUST be in it for MYSELF. If you don’t like it, you know what you can do.

  • Gary Fletcher says:

    As an adult I com­mit My resources My time In a way Con­sis­tent Where’s my val­ues. I Risk No more So what I can afford to lose
    If I were your neigh­bor Put out that effort I know what I would do I would Shun you
    Please for­give A poor­ly for­mat­ted mes­sage I have Parkin­son’s And my body Does not Eas­i­ly Do what I tell it to do

  • Nicola Larosa says:

    The ten com­mand­ments can be found in the linked Rus­sell Soci­ety News issue on page 5, not 2.

  • Patti Manner says:

    My hus­band was diag­nosed of Parkinson’s Dis­ease a cou­ple of years ago, he had severe fatigue, dif­fi­cul­ty with mobil­i­ty and sleep­ing. He was placed on Sinemet 3 times dai­ly, which helped but only for a short while. So, we decid­ed to try alter­na­tive treat­ment and began on PD‑5 pro­to­col, it has made tremen­dous dif­fer­ence for my hus­band, he had improved walk­ing bal­ance, mus­cle strength and he is now very active. His Parkinson’s is total­ly under con­trol, we got the treat­ment from bine­health­cen­ter. com. This treat­ment is a break­through for PWP!

  • Jason Oswald says:

    I lost my mar­riage after 2 years and it was a hor­ri­ble expe­ri­ence for me. My wife left me and my son and every­thing hap­pened beyond my con­trol and I nev­er knew few peo­ple around me engi­neered my wife and turned her against me just because I choose to build my fam­i­ly and focus more on it. I had to seek help because I know I did not do any­thing to have my mar­riage crashed. Dr Isiko­lo helped me and a lot was revealed to me on what tran­spired. He cast a love reunion spell that bond­ed my wife and I back togeth­er and the whole evil my fam­i­ly did against me was revealed. Am thank­ful that my home is back more hap­pi­er than ever and all the appre­ci­a­tion goes to Dr Isiko­lo as he indeed fixed my prob­lems just after 48 hours. text him on What­sApp him on +2348133261196

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