Although Bertrand Russell was famous as a practical moralist, who wrote about war and peace, marriage and sexuality, eugenics and population policy, he is largely unknown as an ethical theorist. This collection of Russell's writings, many of them not readily available, presents his development as an ethical thinker

Charles Pigden introduces the writings and situates them within the study of ethics and explores the relevance of Russell's ethical essays to current issues. Russell was a pioneer of both emotivism and error theory, the two anti-realist theories that have dominated the twentieth century debate, and contributed to the discussions of the ethical implications of Darwinism. This book is a philosophical narrative of one of the most respected thinkers of the twentieth century.