The Problems of Philosophy (e-Book)

The Problems of Philosophy is one of Bertrand Rusell's 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. "Philosophy aims primarily at knowledge", says Bertrand Russell. "But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions".

With that caveat, which comes in the last chapter of The Problems of Philosophy, Russell defines in part what philosophy is and what it can accomplish. The definition casts a rather dim light over the field of philosophy, calling into questions its value as a discipline worthy of our attention. But Russell goes on to say that philosophy's value won't be found in its ability to provide answers ("since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true"). Instead, philosophy is valuable for the sake of the questions themselves".

"These questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation," notes Russell. He says our minds are "rendered great" when we contemplate "the greatness of the universe". This enables our minds to form a "union with the universe which constitutes its highest good".

In the pages that precede this final chapter on the value of philosophy, Russell highlights the questions he considers to be most "positive" and "constructive". In his view, philosophy's most important questions relate to epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. As a result, most of this book deals with questions. Russell doesn't always provide "definite answers" to these questions. Yet he does a marvelous job of helping us to think through them in creative and logically sound ways.  

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