a history of western philosophy by bertrand russell

Am I reading it wrong? How am I supposed to approach this as someone from India? I have my studies and I wanted to self-study philosophy as kind of a hobby but when I wanted to get some context on the people mentioned above in the book, it is taking me a lot of time. Russell takes the names of various cities and States, but due to my lack of knowledge of European geography I get confused which one is East, which is West, etc. They are all important but not much is given on them. A history of western philosophy by Russell, Bertrand, 1872-1970 Publication date 1945 Topics Philosophy Publisher New York, N.Y. However, now that I am in Medieval Philosophy, the places and names have become important, being referenced again and again and the war between 'Eastern' and 'Western' empires and the chaos is making my head spin with all the plethora of names thrown at me without much context.Īs an example, I was reading John the Scot chapter and I came across - Theodore, Heiric, Charles the Bald, Gottschalk, Hincmar, Rheins, William of Malmesbury, Athelney, Alfred the Great, Dionysius the Areopagite, Hilduin, Louis the Pious, Anastasius and Honorius III - just in one chapter. So I marked the names of people as circles and places as rectangles in the book.

My approach was to ignore these proper nouns and focus on Philosophy.

that I have no clue about - there are 'Lombards', 'Franks', 'Anglo-Saxon', 'Germanic', etc., there are thousands of Nicholas's and Charles's then there are places - Sicily, Ionia, Attica, Hippo, Stridon, etc., empires, etc. There are so many kings, laymen, nobles, tribes, places, etc.

It goes through European history extremely fast and I have no exposition to western history before. Its mostly History - History that I have zero clue of. So I started reading this book since a few months, and honestly I don't know how to go on with this book.

A history of western philosophy by bertrand russell