The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell is a concise and accessible guide to the basic concepts and issues in the study of philosophy.  The book is noted for its simplicity and clarity, and was intended to give general readers a foundation for philosophical inquiry as well as provoke constructive discussion. As such, it eschews metaphysics for the more concrete discipline of epistemology, or the theory of knowledge.  The fundamental theories of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, Hegel and others are outlined and explained.  Russell begins by delving into the subject of appearance versus reality. He postulates that knowledge is largely derived empirically from sensory perceptions and what he calls the “sense-data” or mental images that we perceive and guides the reader through the famous distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description".

 “In the following pages I have confined myself in the main to those problems of philosophy in regard to which I thought it possible to say something positive and constructive, since merely negative criticism seemed out of place. For this reason, theory of knowledge occupies a larger space than metaphysics in the present volume, and some topics much discussed by philosophers are treated very briefly, if at all.”

— Bertrand Russell, Preface of The Problems of Philosophy

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