Cheryl Misak

Even a short life can be full. Frank Ramsey lived a full life. He was born with an immense talent for logical thought, but it may have been his talent for living a fully human life that set him most apart from his philosophical peers such as Wittgenstein, Russell, or Keynes. Cheryl Misak brings those human qualities to life in this biography. She also, thankfully, is able to situate Ramsey’s intellectual contributions, render reasonable judgement as to their merits, and draw connections to Ramsey’s influence on future scholars in mathematics, economics, and philosophy. This is a fine work of biography and history of ideas.

Ramsey was not a moody, self-tortured genius; he was no Wittgenstein. He was sensible of his actions in the world and how they affected others. He found it “pleasanter to be thrilled than to be depressed, and not merely pleasanter but better for all one’s activities.” He was a large man with a large and infectious laugh who was not afraid to experience and express his joy in life. And this was not merely a disposition. It both resulted from and influenced the development of his philosophical stance, which moved ever away from the logicism of his youth toward a modest Peircean pragmatism.

As one might expect from a fine philosopher such as Misak, the technical elucidation of Ramsey’s important insights and discoveries are handled with great care. Since he delved in many fields, at least some of this will be new (perhaps startlingly so) to most readers. But Misak is also sensitive when dealing with the more strictly biographical aspects of Ramsey’s life. She always presents him as the well-rounded person that he was rather than as some freakish intellectual giant, despite his noted sheer excess of powers. The writing is clear and crisp and rarely slips into eddies of rumination. I enjoyed the reading as much as the content and feel that an important piece of the puzzle of the development of analytic philosophy has finally been put in place.

Recommended.… (more)

A surprisingly lively intellectual biography of a polymathic teen prodigy.

As a mathematician, I was aware of Ramsey because of the Ramsey Theory of combinatorics (but didn't know that he invented it to assist in his work on the Entscheidungsproblem). This book dwells much more on Ramsey's work in economics and philosophy. The description of his work in economics was clear and fairly interesting to me, even though it's not a subject I think about much. The description of his philosophical work was amazingly jargon-free but confirmed my opinion that the topic is a bore.

Actually, maybe it's not right to call this an intellectual biography, because it informs us about all aspects of Ramsey's life. He was very much a modernist and socialist and atheist with an "open" marriage. He and his social group overwhelmingly rejected the values of the preceding Victorian era.… (more)