Bertrand Russell's Idealist Heritage

Bertrand Russell's research on logic is believed, alongside Wittgenstein's and
Moore's works, to have fuelled the linguistic turn that characterized much of twentieth-
century philosophy. This process originated in the refutation of British idealism
and monism, providing a new interpretation of empiricism. But while his debt
to traditional British empiricism has been the subject of study (including by Russell
himself) and extensively investigated, the assumption that the British neo-idealist
legacy was merely a polemical target of Russell and Moore's realist pluralism has
hindered a proper assessment of its influence - which, on the contrary, proves to
be of theoretical significance. This essay attempts a documentary reconstruction
- in part relying on the Bertrand Russell Archives - to better understand Russell's
relationship with the thought of F. H. Bradley and, indirectly but consequently, with
the English idealist tradition.