Bertrand Russell was an upper-class English philosopher who was born on May 18th, 1872. He came from a long line of left-wing academics and after the death of his parents when he was only four years old, he was raised by his Grandmother. She valued education enormously and dedicated herself to providing him with the best education possible; this paid off when he was accepted to study Math at the prestigious Cambridge University in 1890. Math sparked his interest in logic and philosophy and he published his first book on the subject in 1897. Unlike the majority of philosophers, Russell achieved almost celebrity-like status. He is also unique in that it is possible to trace the evolution of his own philosophical thought by following his career from beginning to end.
Russell was outspoken and extremely left wing. He was imprisoned for his Communist views and for expressing them so vocally, and it was during this period of incarceration that he wrote "A History Of Western Philosophy". So much for imprisoning him to keep him quiet. Surprisingly, though, his philosophical leanings were not nearly so leftist as his political ones. HIs first philosophical attraction was to the teachings of liberalism and idealism. This became a strong belief in Platonic realism. He then claimed that all pure mathematics could be deduced from logic (logicism). However, he moved away from extreme realism at around the time he began writing "The Problems of Philosophy." He did, however, continue to espouse Platonic principles that seemed to contradict the majority of what he believed.
When he published this book in 1912, he wrote of his appreciation for and agreement with British empiricism, focusing chiefly on Hume and Berkeley. This basically states that knowledge gained from experience (empirical knowledge) is formed from a direct acquaintance with sensory experience (in other words, if you have seen it you can believe it.) This fundamental relevance to our day to day lives made "The Problems of Philosophy" extremely popular. It is written in such a way that beginners to the field of philosophy can not only understand it, but are inspired to continue investigating their own philosophical path. The key element of his philosophy in this book is applying his new logic to old philosophical problems which gives the impression of actually solving them. He also briefly introduces other philosophers and explains their schools of thought. He then explains why there are problems in the way they look at the world and our experience of it, as well as personal identity, sense of self and time and space relativity questions. Russell himself combined his own philosophies of metaphysical and epistemological concerns and he makes a distinction between the knowledge of "things" and the knowledge of "mystical truths".
Later in his life, Russell rejected much of what he wrote in this book, but it remained his most popular and widely referenced. Russell published seventy five other works in his lifetime and was awarded both the Order of Merit in 1949 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Russell died on January 31, 1971.
