Mr. Russell & (Part of) What it Means to be Modern

What does it mean to be modern? It means, at least partially, to endorse the following from Bertrand Russell. In fact, I think that the degree to which one agrees with this passage is roughly the degree to which one is a modern.

The free intellect will see as God might see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge--knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for man to attain. Hence also the free intellect will value more the abstract and universal knowledge into which the accidents of private history do not enter, than the knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, as such knowledge must be, upon an exclusive and personal point of view and a body whose sense-organs distort as much as they reveal.
-from "The Value of Philosophy" in The Problems of Philosophy (1969)

As for me, something about Russell's view strikes me stifling and cold. I am a firm believer in the objectivity of truth and the reality of knowledge, but in my view the emotions (passions, affections) have a pivotal role to play in the pursuit of knowledge and the expansion of the mind. The goal should not be to snuff out the emotions but to stimulate and refine appropriate emotions. Moreover, as persons, there is no chance of extricating the "personal" from knowing; why then ought we to pursue "impersonal" knowledge, "as purely contemplative?" Perhaps if we accept and celebrate that we are unavoidably personal knowers, we might find the world all the more opened up to us.

I, therefore, prefer the philosophical vision of Michael Polanyi to that of his contemporary. As he puts it, notably in personal terms,

"I declare myself committed to the belief in an external reality gradually accessible to knowing, and I regard all true understanding as an intimation of such a reality which, being real, may yet reveal itself to our deepened understanding in an indefinite range of unexpected manifestations. I accept the obligation to search for the truth through my own intimations of reality, knowing that there is, and can be, no strict rule by which my conclusions can be justified."
-from "Knowing and Being" (1961)