The Problems of Philosophy

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This article is about the book. For the concept, see unsolved problems in philosophy.

The Problems of Philosophy (1912) is one of Bertrand Russell'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.

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 Hegel and others to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike.

“	In the following pages I have confined myself in the main to those problems of philosophy in regard to which I thought it possible to say something positive and constructive, since merely negative criticism seemed out of place. For this reason, theory of knowledge occupies a larger space than metaphysics in the present volume, and some topics much discussed by philosophers are treated very briefly, if at all.	”
—Bertrand Russell, Preface of The Problems of Philosophy