How We Discovered Aristotle Standing in for Bertrand Russell

Torah isn’t like any other philosophy or area of study: those can be compartmentalized. You can study science or math intellectually, but it won’t affect you as a person or change your behavior. Torah is different. Torah dives deep into your psyche and changes you as a person. If you learn Torah, it makes you a better person, whether you realize it or not.

The classic anecdote given to illustrate this story is about Aristotle, the most revered of philosophers. He was brilliant, but it was all mental development; it meant nothing to the development of his character. Once, he was out in the field and hungry, so he ripped a limb off a rabbit and ate it raw. His students asked him, “How is it that Aristotle, the greatest of all philosophers, can stoop to do something so low?”

He replied: “When I’m teaching, I’m Aristotle. But I’m not always Aristotle.”

(Alternative version: he replied “Is a mathematician a triangle?”)

From here we can see that “chachma bagoyim” is just that – merely cold, intellectual knowledge, with no moral aspect.

At this point in the lesson Devorah, the Asker of Questions, invariably raises her hand. “Excuse me! But what is the source for this story?”

The teacher just looks at her. Everyone knows the story. Asking for a source is like asking for the source of Little Red Riding Hood. It just is.

“It’s a very common story, but I would like to please know where it comes from,” Devorah explains. “I haven’t been able to find it in any biographies of Aristotle.”

For the record, I totally believe that Devorah read a biography of Aristotle, looking for this story.

“I’ll have to get back to you,” the teacher says.

She doesn’t, of course. A week later Devorah follows up, and the teacher promises to ask her husband. If she does, he doesn’t know either.

Devorah, in her infinite faith, believed the story must have a source, or everyone wouldn’t be quoting it. So she kept asking. Finally, a teacher had a brainstorm: crowdsource the question!

The challenge was issued to the entire class: find the source for the Aristotle story. We all went home and passed the challenge on to our fathers and brothers. And the search was on.

For a month, there were periodic updates, as students raised their hands to give the status of their research teams. People found the story – in many permutations – quoted in recent books, mostly mussar seforim, but nobody had a source tracing it back further than, say, 1950.

Finally, at around a month and a half, the story was traced back to its apparent origins, which was neither Aristotle nor a raw rabbit leg.

Bertrand Russell, while he was a Professor of Ethics at Harvard was carrying on an adulterous affair.  Harvard’s Board of Governors called Russell in and censured him. Russell maintained that his private affairs had nothing to do with the performance of his professional duties.

“But you are a Professor of Ethics!” one of the Board members remonstrated.

“I was a Professor of Geometry at Cambridge,” Russell rejoined, “but the Board of Governors never asked me why I was not a triangle.”

This satisfied the class. Obviously, Bertrand Russell lacked the name recognition of Aristotle. Describing adultery in a classroom was less preferable than describing animal cruelty. And so the story was massaged for best reception by the audience, but the point was clear: being an ethicist didn’t make you ethical. Unlike being a Torah scholar, which automatically makes you a moral person who would never take part in any sexual impropriety.

And so, the search was halted and everyone was happy.

Except Devorah. I spoke to her last week and she still considers the search unfinished. The story had been about Aristotle. Surely, the Jewish world would not participate in wholesale libel against a man so highly regarded by the Rambam?

PS: Apparently there isn’t an authoritative source for the Russell story either, although he did carry out an affair while being a professor of philosophy, and ethics was a particular interest of his. Still, he never worked at Harvard, and the actual quote “When I was professor of mathematics they didn’t ask me why I wasn’t a triangle” is not known to have been uttered.