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The Problems of Philosophy is one of Bertrand Russell's attempts to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics. In The Problems of Philosophy, Russell addresses the question of how, if it is uncertain that external objects exist, we then have knowledge of them but by probability. Russell maintains that there is no reason to doubt the existence of external objects simply because of sense data. Russell guides the reader through his famous 1910 distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description and introduces important theories of Plato, Aristotle, Rene Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel and others to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike.

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Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872-1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, socialist, pacifist and social theorist. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died. Russell led the British revolt against idealism in the early 1900s. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his protege Wittgenstein and his elder Frege, and is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay On Denoting has been considered a paradigm of philosophy. Both works have had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, and philosophy. He was a prominent anti-war activist, championing free trade between nations and anti-imperialism. Russell was imprisoned for his pacifist activism during World War I, campaigned against Adolf Hitler, for nuclear disarmament, criticised Soviet totalitarianism and the United States of America's involvement in the Vietnam War.

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