BOOK ONE Ancient Philosophy
PART I The Pre-Socratics; 1 The Rise of Greek Civilization; 2 The Milesian School; 3 Pythagoras; 4 Heraclitus; 5 Parmenides; 6 Empedocles; 7 Athens in Relation to Culture; 8 Anaxagoras; 9 The Atomists; 10 Protagoras; PART II Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; 11 Socrates; 12 The Influence of Sparta; 13 The Sources of Plato's Opinions; 14 Plato's Utopia; 15 The Theory of Ideas; 16 Plato's Theory of Immortality; 17 Plato's Cosmogony; 18 Knowledge and Perception in Plato19 Aristotle's Metaphysics; 20 Aristotle's Ethics; 21 Aristotle's Politics; 22 Aristotle's Logic; 23 Aristotle's Physics; 24 Early Greek Mathematics and Astronomy; PART III Ancient Philosophy after Aristotle; 25 The Hellenistic World; 26 Cynics and Sceptics; 27 The Epicureans; 28 Stoicism; 29 The Roman Empire in Relation to Culture; 30 Plotinus;

BOOK TWO Catholic Philosophy;
Introduction; PART I The Fathers; 1 The Religious Development of the Jews; 2 Christianity During the First Four Centuries; 3 Three Doctors of the Church; 4 St Augustine's Philosophy and Theology5 The Fifth and Sixth Centuries; 6 St Benedict and Gregory the Great; PART II The Schoolmen; 7 The Papacy in the Dark Ages; 8 John the Scot; 9 Ecclesiastical Reform in the Eleventh Century; 10 Mohammedan Culture and Philosophy; 11 The Twelfth Century; 12 The Thirteenth Century; 13 St Thomas Aquinas; 14 Franciscan Schoolmen; 15 The Eclipse of the Papacy;

BOOK THREE Modern Philosophy;
PART I From the Renaissance to Hume; 1 General Characteristics; 2 The Italian Renaissance; 3 Machiavelli; 4 Erasmus and More; 5 The Reformation and Counter-Reformation; 6 The Rise of Science7 Francis Bacon; 8 Hobbes's Leviathan; 9 Descartes; 10 Spinoza; 11 Leibniz; 12 Philosophical Liberalism; 13 Locke's Theory of Knowledge; 14 Locke's Political Philosophy; 15 Locke's Influence; 16 Berkeley; 17 Hume; Part II From Rousseau to the Present Day; 18 The Romantic Movement; 19 Rousseau; 20 Kant; 21 Currents of Thought in the Nineteenth Century; 22 Hegel; 23 Byron; 24 Schopenhauer; 25 Nietzsche; 26 The Utilitarians; 27 Karl Marx; 28 Bergson; 29 William James; 30 John Dewey; 31 The Philosophy of Logical Analysis

First published in 1946, History of Western Philosophy went on to become the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged to this day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy. Providing a sophisticated overview of the ideas that have perplexed people from time immemorial, it is 'long on wit, intelligence and curmudgeonly scepticism', as the New York Times noted, and it is this, coupled with the sheer brilliance of its scholarship, that has made Russell's History of Western Philosophy one of the most important philosophical works of all time.