A History of Western Philosophy

Bertrand Russell's history moves from the pre Socratic philosophers of ancient Greece to his own twentieth century, and he refuses at every stage to treat philosophy as a closed conversation among specialists. The book is organized into three parts, ancient philosophy, philosophy under the authority of the medieval church, and modern philosophy, and within each Russell insists that ideas cannot be separated from the political and social conditions that produced them: Plato's Republic reads differently once a reader understands the Athens that tried and executed Socrates, and Descartes reads differently against the religious wars he lived through.

What makes the book distinctive, and occasionally maddening, is that Russell never hides behind neutral summary. He tells the reader plainly which philosophers he thinks were confused, which were dangerous and which were simply wrong, and he does this in clear, unacademic prose meant for a general reader rather than a philosophy department. The result reads more like a long, opinionated conversation with a brilliant and combative host than like a reference book, and it suits a reader who wants strong arguments to push back against rather than a neutral survey that leaves every judgment to them.

Specialists have never fully forgiven Russell for the shortcuts this approach requires; his account of several individual philosophers is thinner and more dismissive than a dedicated scholar would allow. General readers have forgiven him easily, since the book's real gift is momentum, hundreds of pages that keep moving and keep taking sides, across a scope almost no other single volume by one author attempts to cover.