Bertrand Russell's Marriage and Morals (Reading group meeting #1)

This spring/summer I will be running an outdoor reading group on Bertrand Russell's 1929 book Marriage and Morals. A PDF copy can be viewed here.

A book review at the time described the book as " a mixture of sense and nonsense that it is difficult to distinguish them". Russell is one of the giants of analytic philosophy of the 20th century, and I have been meaning to give this book a read for a long time.

The reading group will cover the book in 4 meetings, meeting on the last Sunday afternoon of the months of April, May, June, and July at Lake Ontario Park. We will be sitting in some shade under a tree just past the sheltered area where the bathrooms are located. Please be sure to bring your own lawn chair as that helps ensure we can move to sit where it is quiet as the park can get loud when there are public events being held at that some time.

Hope to see some of you there to discuss and debate these issues. Here is the game plan for dividing up the chapter topics per meeting:

Meeting #1 (April)
1. Introduction
2. Matrilineal Societies
3. Patriarchal Systems
4. Phallic Worship, Asceticism and Sin
5. Christian Ethics
6. Romantic Love
Meeting #2 (May)
7. The Liberation of Women
8. The Taboo of Sex Knowledge
9. The Place of Love in Human Life
10. Marriage
11. Prostitution
Meeting #3 (June)
12. Tribal Marriage
13. The Family at the Present Day
14. The Family in Individual Psychology
15. The Family and the State
Meeting #4 (July)
16. Divorce
17. Population
18. Eugenics
19. Sex and Individual Well-being
20. The Place of Sex among Human Values
Conclusion

Cheers,
Colin