The Value of Philosophy: Analyzing Bertrand Russell's Perspective

Running head: Philosophy
Philosophy
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Running head: Philosophy
Philosophy refers to the study of general and fundamental questions about existence,
knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher,
logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist and also a Nobel Laureate. Once he
considered himself as liberal, socialist and pacifist, however he was the one who was behind
the revolt against idealism. He is considered as the father of analytical philosophy along with
his predecessors like GottlobFrege, G.E Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In his book, “The
Problems of Philosophy”he analytically describes the judgement one makes about the is real.
It is very important to know what is sensed as real, he takes the example of tableand talks
about “sense-datum”1. According to him for a reality to exist, it is very important to have
sense-data, that is the practice of rational process of inference to get the physical world.
According to him, knowledge of his sense-data acquaintance takes precedence. He
makes a useful distinction between knowledgegathered by acquaintance and knowledge by
description. Every person practices knowledge gathered by acquaintance and thus it is a form
of direct knowledge, one the other hand knowledge by description enables the person to think
and understand the object, where there is no acquaintance. This is a form of indirect
knowledge of things. In his words, he totally nullifies any argument of idealism. Especially in
the chapter of 15, “The value of Philosophy”, Russelladdresses the utility of philosophy with
the natural sciences. Since his nature of analysis is very objective, he tries to compare theends
of both philosophy and science. Scientific or natural science creates impact on the life if the
people because it is inventing something substantial. There is an empirical reality that
sciences is addressing to it however; philosophy affects the life of people involved in the
scientific endeavour. In this way. He figures out of the importance of disciples because he
thinks they are the most important elements of their subjects of philosophy. He forms a
1 Russell, Bertrand. An outline of philosophy. Routledge, 2009.