The Problems of Philosophy
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The Problems of Philosophy is a 1912 book by Bertrand Russell. Attempting to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy, Russell focuses on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, concentrating on knowledge rather than metaphysics.
[edit] Quotes
- Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.
- Ch. II: The Existence of Matter
- We shall say that we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference of any knowledge of truths.
- Ch. V: Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description
- Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
- Ch. V: Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description
- The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.
- Ch. V: Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description
- Truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements: hence a world of mere matter, since it would contain no beliefs of statements, would also contain no truth or falsehood.
- Ch. XII: Truth and Falsehood
- There is no reason to suppose that only one coherent body of beliefs is possible. It may be that, with sufficient imagination, a novelist might invent a past for the world that would perfectly fit on to what we know, and yet be quite different from the past. In more scientific matters, it is certain that there are often two or more hypotheses which account for all the known facts on some subject, and although, in such cases, men of science endeavour to find facts which will rule out all the hypotheses except one, there is no reason why they should always succeed.
- Ch. XII: Truth and Falsehood
- If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science.
- Ch. XV: The Value of Philosophy
- Knowledge is a form of union of Self and not-Self; like all union, it is impaired by dominion, and therefore by any attempt to force the universe into conformity with what we find in ourselves.
- Ch. XV: The Value of Philosophy
- The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, finds its satisfaction in every enlargement of the non-Self, in everything that magnifies the objects contemplated, and thereby the object contemplating.
- Ch. XV: The Value of Philosophy
- The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus contemplation not only enlarges the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes and fears.
- Ch. XV: The Value of Philosophy
- Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.
- Ch. XV: The Value of Philosophy
