Bertrand Russell and other filosofers even today often make use of terms like "lunatic", if only in rhetoric.
A problem with terms like this is that they really do have no meaning at all.
Russell in using such terms is showing that - as he always stressed - filosofers, even including him, were embedded in the culture of their times.
What I think Russell really means when he says things like "everyone other than a lunatic agrees that" - is there are certain things that he believes everyone reasonable would agree to.
Elsewhere he and others say more worrying things.
One of the only other filosofers to deal with Bertrand Russell and others' use of meaningless terms like "lunatic" is Thomas S. Szasz.
http://www.szasz.com/freeinquiry.html
A problem with terms like this is that they really do have no meaning at all.
Russell in using such terms is showing that - as he always stressed - filosofers, even including him, were embedded in the culture of their times.
What I think Russell really means when he says things like "everyone other than a lunatic agrees that" - is there are certain things that he believes everyone reasonable would agree to.
Elsewhere he and others say more worrying things.
One of the only other filosofers to deal with Bertrand Russell and others' use of meaningless terms like "lunatic" is Thomas S. Szasz.
http://www.szasz.com/freeinquiry.html
