Since its first publication in 1945, Lord Russell's A History of Western Philosophy has been universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject -- unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace and wit. In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associated -- Cantor, Frege, and Whitehead, co-author with Russell of the monumental Principia Mathematica.

A European lately arrived in China, if he is of a receptive and reflective disposition, finds himself confronted with a number of very puzzling questions, for many of which the problems of Western Europe will not have prepared him. Russian problems, it is true, have important affinities with those of China, but they have also important differences; moreover they are decidedly less complex.

《我的哲学的发展》（MyPhilosophicalDevelopment）是罗素（1872～1970）写于1959年的一部著作，顾名思义，这《我的哲学的发展》是罗素自己哲学思想发展的一个回顾。罗素一生写了大量著作，在这些著作中，罗素很重视自己在1914年和怀特海合著的《数学原理》（三卷本）一书的成就。我们知道，罗素通过这《我的哲学的发展》建立了逻辑主义数学体系，旨在把整个数学归结为逻辑学。罗素在《我的哲学的发展》中重点叙述了《数学原理》的基本思想。罗素一生的哲学思想屡经变更，但他在《我的哲学的发展》中表示，他于1912年写的《哲学问题》可以作为他一生的代表作。 罗素作为二十世纪的哲学巨匠，其哲学思想给当代的许多哲学家和哲学流派以很大影响，其中受其影响最深的要算维根斯坦哲学以及整个逻辑实证主义学派。罗素曾于1920年来过我国，在北京大学主讲“物的分析”、“心的分析”等哲学问题，对旧中国的学术界也有过广泛的影响。《我的哲学的发展》这《我的哲学的发展》，是罗素本人对自己哲学思想的总结，作为研究罗素哲学思想的第一手材料，有其特殊的价值。译者温锡增先生，劳作多年，译成此书，因健康欠佳，不遑作序，嘱我们代为小引。