The History of Western Philosophy

First published in 1945, this is a single-volume narrative of European philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the early twentieth century. Russell groups the story into ancient, Catholic, and modern periods, setting each thinker against political and social background: city-states, the Church, the rise of science, and liberal states. He summarises arguments - being, knowledge, ethics, government - and then judges them in his own analytic and empiricist voice. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and the utilitarians receive extended chapters. The book is a critical history of ideas, not a neutral encyclopaedia or a technical treatise.

Bound in brown buckram blocked on cover with a gilt and black pattern.