Russell's target was not conventional prior beliefs and
certainly not Keynes or Wittgenstein.  A fuller quote is:

         "The fever of Nationalism which has been increasing
         ever since 1848 is one form of the cult of unreason.
         The idea of one universal truth has been abandoned;
         there is English truth, German truth, Montenegran
         truth, and truth for the principality of Monaco.
         Similarly there is truth for the wage-earner and
         truth for the capitalist. Between these different
         ‘truths’, if rational persuasion is despaired of,
         the only possible decision is by means of war and
         rivalry in propagandist insanity."

In the same essay (The Ancestry of Fascism) we find:

         "In view of the failure to find an answer to Hume,
         `reason' can no longer be regarded as something
         absolute, any departure from which is to be
         condemned on theoretical grounds.  Nevertheless,
         there is obviously a difference, and an important
         one, between the frame of mind of (say) the
         philosophical radicals and such people as the early
         Mohammedan fanatics.  If we call the former temper
         of mind reasonable and the latter unreasonable, it
         is clear that there has been a growth of unreason in
         recent times."

Clearly this is not meant to indict Keynes or Wittgenstein,
even implicitly.  What Russell was opposing in this essay
was people who used force rather than persuasion to clinch
their "arguments".

Cheers,
Alan Isaac





-----Rob Tye wrote: -----
From: Rob Tye
Sent:  Sunday, August 16, 2015 5:25AM
To: Societies For The History Of Economics
Subject: Re: [SHOE] two questions

> Dear Duncan, Carlo

> I suggest not enough has been made of the element of self contradiction in
> Keynes’ Treatise.

> His arguments bring to my mind those over trinitarianism.  Was Christ human
> or divine?   Historically, the winning strategy has been, it seems to me,
> the self contradictory one.  Likewise, are priors numerical or not?  Keynes
> chose to make them both.  This would I think be utilising ideas “that Keynes
> thought might be acceptable to the philosophical tradition of the Cambridge
> of his time”.

> Concerning “the process by which communities form consensus on priors, which
> Keynes seems to have thought of as ‘conventions’ ”.  That seems to be the
> key to the (very close) relationship between Keynes and Wittgenstein, which
> Michael originally enquired about.

> In 1935 Bertrand Russell was sarcastically dismissive of such a
> ‘conventional’ approach when he wrote "The idea of one universal truth has
> been abandoned; there is English truth, German truth, Montenegran truth, and
> truth for the principality of Monaco."

> The chain Keynes > Wittgenstein > Feyerabend > McCloskey however apparently
> yields (2003) its positive affirmation “There are no timeless standards
> outside those of an interpretative community”

> Rob Tye