A Russellian Philosophy of Philosophy

Abstract In this chapter I explore Bertrand Russell’s philosophical methodology, and his epistemology of philosophy. Russell is widely regarded as a founding father of the analytic method, but what was the aim of his philosophical analyses? How did his logical and metaphysical ambitions hang together with his epistemology of acquaintance and sense-data? Was he foundationalist, as his logicism might suggest, or was he some sort of coherentist? In the course of this investigation, and in conversation with all of these questions, I develop a conception of systematicity that I call Russell-systematicity. With these concepts in hand, I address various new questions posed by the prospect of an epistemic end of days.