The Problems of Philosophy

The Problems of Philosophy is a 1912 book by Bertrand Russell, in which Russell attempts to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics: If it is uncertain that external objects exist, how can we then have knowledge of them but by probability. There is no reason to doubt the existence of external objects simply because of sense data. Russell guides the reader through his famous 1910 distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description" and introduces important theories of Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and others to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike.

• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: with Hume's Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature and A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh (Hackett Classics)
• Meditations on First Philosophy (Hackett Classics)
• Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
• A History of Western Philosophy
• Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Hackett Classics)
• The Conquest of Happiness
• Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Penguin Classics)
• Meno (Hackett Classics)
• A Practical Companion to Ethics
• Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects