History of Western Philosophy

First published in 1946, History of Western Philosophy went on to become the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged to this day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy. Providing a sophisticated overview of the ideas that have perplexed people from time immemorial, it is ‘long on wit, intelligence and curmudgeonly scepticism’, as the New York Times noted, and it is this, coupled with the sheer brilliance of its scholarship, that has made Russell’s History of Western Philosophy one of the most important philosophical works of all time.

BOOK ONE Ancient Philosophy

PART I The Pre-Socratics

1 The Rise of Greek Civilization

2 The Milesian School

3 Pythagoras

4 Heraclitus

5 Parmenides

6 Empedocles

7 Athens in Relation to Culture

8 Anaxagoras

9 The Atomists

10 Protagoras

PART II Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

11 Socrates

12 The Influence of Sparta

13 The Sources of Plato’s Opinions

14 Plato’s Utopia

15 The Theory of Ideas

16 Plato’s Theory of Immortality

17 Plato’s Cosmogony

18 Knowledge and Perception in Plato

19 Aristotle’s Metaphysics

20 Aristotle’s Ethics

21 Aristotle’s Politics

22 Aristotle’s Logic

23 Aristotle’s Physics

24 Early Greek Mathematics and Astronomy

PART III Ancient Philosophy after Aristotle

25 The Hellenistic World

26 Cynics and Sceptics

27 The Epicureans

28 Stoicism

29 The Roman Empire in Relation to Culture

30 Plotinus

BOOK TWO Catholic Philosophy

Introduction

PART I The Fathers

1 The Religious Development of the Jews

2 Christianity During the First Four Centuries

3 Three Doctors of the Church

4 St Augustine’s Philosophy and Theology

5 The Fifth and Sixth Centuries

6 St Benedict and Gregory the Great

PART II The Schoolmen

7 The Papacy in the Dark Ages

8 John the Scot

9 Ecclesiastical Reform in the Eleventh Century

10 Mohammedan Culture and Philosophy

11 The Twelfth Century

12 The Thirteenth Century

13 St Thomas Aquinas

14 Franciscan Schoolmen

15 The Eclipse of the Papacy

BOOK THREE Modern Philosophy

PART I From the Renaissance to Hume

1 General Characteristics

2 The Italian Renaissance

3 Machiavelli

4 Erasmus and More

5 The Reformation and Counter-Reformation

6 The Rise of Science

7 Francis Bacon

8 Hobbes’s Leviathan

9 Descartes

10 Spinoza

11 Leibniz

12 Philosophical Liberalism

13 Locke’s Theory of Knowledge

14 Locke’s Political Philosophy

15 Locke’s Influence

16 Berkeley

17 Hume

Part II From Rousseau to the Present Day

18 The Romantic Movement

19 Rousseau

20 Kant

21 Currents of Thought in the Nineteenth Century

22 Hegel

23 Byron

24 Schopenhauer

25 Nietzsche

26 The Utilitarians

27 Karl Marx

28 Bergson

29 William James

30 John Dewey

31 The Philosophy of Logical Analysis

About the Author

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970). Philosopher, mathematician, educational and sexual reformer, pacifist, prolific letter writer, author and columnist, Bertrand Russell was one of the most influential and widely known intellectual figures of the twentieth century. In 1950 he was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1950 for his extensive contributions to world literature and for his “rationality and humanity, as a fearless champion of free speech and free thought in the West.”