Ancient Chinese, Greek, and Indian Philosophy
Vedas (c. 1500–1000 BC)
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, eds. (Princeton University Press) Selected excerpts from the Vedas and other texts, with commentary.
Buddha (c. 450 BC)
Anguttara Nikāya, The Book of the Gradual Sayings, trans. F. L. Woodward & E. M. Hare, 5 volumes (Pali Text Society)
Dīgha Nikāya, The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya, trans. Maurice
Walshe (Wisdom Publications)
Majjhima Nikāya, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, trans. Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi (Wisdom Publications) Samyutta Nikāya, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, trans. Bhikkhu Bodh (Wisdom Publications)
Laozi (c. sixth century BC), Confucius (c. 551–479 BC), Zhuangzi (late fourth century, BC), Mozi (c. 430 BC), Mengzi (fourth century BC)
Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, translators, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy
Pre-Socratics (c. 600 – 400 BC): Thales (c. 626/623 BC-c. 548/545 BC)
Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers (Routledge)
G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and Malcolm Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge University Press)
Richard D. McKirahan, Philosophy Before Socrates (Hackett Publishers)
Socrates (c. 469–399 BC) and Plato (c. 429–347 BC)
Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton University Press)
Aristotle (384–322, BC)
Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, 2 vols. (Princeton University Press)
Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics (300 BC–fifth century AD)
A.A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, in 2 vols. (Cambridge University Press)
Medieval Philosophy
Augustine (354–430)
Confessions, translated and edited by Albert C. Outler
(https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/hum100/augustinconf.pdf)
Boethius (c. 475–526?)
Consolation of Philosophy, translated by H.R. James
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14328/14328-h/14328-h.htm)
al-Kindi (800–870)
Peter Adamson and Peter E. Pormann, translators, The Philosophical Works of al-Kindi (Oxford University Press)
Jon McGinnis and David C. Reisman (eds.), Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources (Hackett Publishing)
al-Farabi (c. 870–950)
Jon McGinnis and David C. Reisman (eds.), Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources (Hackett Publishing)
Ibn-Sīnā (Avicenna) (c. 970–1030)
Saint Anselm (1033–1109)
al-Ghazali (c. 1056–1111)
Jon McGinnis and David C. Reisman (eds.), Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources (Hackett Publishing)
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (d. 1198)
Jon McGinnis and David C. Reisman (eds.), Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources (Hackett Publishing)
Peter Abelard (1079–1142)
Ethical Writings, edited by Paul Vincent Spade (Hackett Publishing Company)
Maimonides (1138–1204)
The Guide of the Perplexed, translated by Shlomo Pines (University of Chicago Press)
Roger Bacon (1214 or 1220–1292)
Selected Philosophical Works, edited by Rose-Mary Sargent (Hackett Publishing Company)
Duns Scotus (1265/1266–1308)
Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, edited by Allan B. Wolter (Hackett Publishing Company)
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)
Selected Philosophical Writings, translated by Timothy McDermott (Oxford University Press)
Aquinas’s writings are voluminous, ranging across every major area of philosophy. Curated selections are good ways to enter into his thought.
William of Ockham (1287–1347)
William of Ockham: Philosophical Writings, revised edition, translated by Philotheus Boehner (Hackett Publishing Company)
This text contains some of Ockham’s significant writings on metaphysics, ethics, and logic.
Modern European Philosophy
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
Essays, translated by M.A. Screech (Penguin Classics)
Montaigne’s essays cover a wide range of topics, including sadness, laughter, warhorses, and prayer.
Giordano Bruno (1548–1600)
Cause, Principle and Unity: And Essays on Magic, translated and edited by Richard J. Blackwell and Robert de Lucca (Cambridge University Press)
Bruno critically engages with Aristotle and embraces Copernicus’s heliocentric theory as the beginning of a new philosophy.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
Francis Bacon: The Major Works, edited by Brian Vickers (Oxford University Press)
Bacon’s writings range of interests includes politics, religion, and natural philosophy (what will become “science”) and the scientific method. He is best known for Advancement of Learning.
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
The Essential Galileo, edited and translated by Maurice A. Finocchiaro (Hackett Publishing Company) Considered a (if not the) progenitor of the scientific revolution, Galileo wrote on scientific methodology, astronomy, and what we know now as physics.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
Leviathan, edited by Richard Tuck (Cambridge University Press) Hobbes is best known for the view of human nature that underlies his social contract theory, but he wrote on language, mind, and other philosophical topics.
Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655)
Selected Works, translated by Craig Brush (Texts in Early Modern Philosophy)
The theologian engaged with Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz, among other important thinkers of 17th century Europe.
René Descartes (1596–1650)
Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings, translated and edited by John Cottingham (Cambridge University Press)
Descartes is a towering figure in philosophy, whose work helped usher in the transition from a teleological to a mechanistic worldview, but his thought ranged over a number of topics in his systematic philosophy, including mind and the passions.
Antoine Arnauld (1612–1694)
On True and False Ideas, translated by Stephen Gaukroger (Manchester University Press)
Along with Gassendi, Arnauld is best known for his critical engagements with some of the most prominent thinkers of his day, including Galileo, Hobbes, and Descartes.
Blaise Pascal
Pensées and Other Writings, translated by Honor Levi and edited by Anthony Levi (Oxford University Press)
Best known for his “Wager,” Pascal’s contributions to seventeenth-century debates in theology and natural philosophy reveal thinking on, among other topics, ethics, free will, and politics.
Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673)
Margaret Cavendish: Essential Writings, edited by David Cunning (Oxford University Press)
A versatile thinker, Cavendish wrote fiction, poetry, plays, and philosophy. Her work anticipated views of some important, and better-known thinkers, and she engaged with a number of luminaries of the day.
Robert Boyle (1627–1691)
Selected Philosophical Papers edited by. M.A. Stewart (Hackett Publishers)
Boyle was a leading empirical thinker of his day.
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)
Ethics, translated by Samuel Shirley (Hackett Publishers)
Spinoza was a significant post-Cartesian philosopher who influenced many other thinkers across the discipline.
Samuel von Pufendorf
The Divine Feudal Law: or, Covenants with Mankind, Represented, translated by T.
Dorrington (Liberty Fund)
An influential thinker who went largely unappreciated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Pufendorf wrote across a broad range of philosophical topics.
John Locke (1632–1704)
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford University Press)
Second Treatise of Government (Routledge Press)
Locke is a towering figure of early modern philosophy. Perhaps best known outside philosophy for his significant influence on the U.S. Founding Fathers, Locke wrote not only political philosophy, but also metaphysics and epistemology.
Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715)
Treatise on Ethics, translated by C. Walton (Kluwer Publishers)
Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, translated by Nicholas Jolly and D. Scott (Cambridge University Press)
Malebranche, a Cartesian thinker, contributed to areas as diverse as optics and theology.
Isaac Newton (1642–1727)
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Harvard University Press)
“Newtonian” physics was the foundation for classical mechanics. His three laws of motion revolutionized science.
G.W. Leibniz (1646–1716)
Philosophical Essays, edited and translated by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Hackett Publishers)
Leibniz’s genius ranged across the intellectual spectrum, from mathematics to theology.
Giambatista Vico (1668–1744)
The First New Science, edited and translated by Leon Pompa (Cambridge University Press)
Trained in law, Vico read and wrote widely, from philology to natural philosophy.
George Berkeley (1685–1753)
Philosophical Works, Including the Works on Vision, edited by Michael Ayers (J.M. Dent Publishers)
Bishop Berkeley was one of the three major British Empiricists. He is best known for his empirical idealism.
Thomas Reid (1710–1796)
An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, in The Works of
Thomas Reid (Edinburgh University Press and Pennsylvania State University Press)
Reid wrote largely on perception and methodology, though his interests ranged across philosophical topics.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, edited and translated by Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge University Press)
Rousseau is best known for his work in political philosophy, which includes views on human nature, education, and moral psychology.
David Hume (1711–1776)
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited by Dorothy Coleman (Cambridge University Press)
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford University Press) Hume’s work in epistemology and moral psychology influenced, among others, Kant and contemporary psychologists.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Critique of Pure Reason, edited by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge University Press)
Critique of Practical Reason, edited by Mary Gregor (Cambridge University Press)
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited by Mary Gregor and Jens Timmerman One of the last great systematic philosophers, Kant revolutionized philosophy, bringing together formerly disparate rationalist and empiricist strands of metaphysics and epistemology.
Late Modern European Philosophy
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (Joseph Johnson Publishers)
Wollstonecraft’s work on the moral, political, and social status of women continues to be influential today.
Johan Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814)
Fichte: Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre), edited by Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge University Press)
Fichte was one of Kant’s followers, but developed his own system of transcendental philosophy.
G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)
Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by Terry Pinkard (Cambridge University Press)
Hegel systematic philosophy purports to complete all previous attempts, e.g., Kant’s.
Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854)
Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature: An Introduction to the Study of this Science, translated by E.E. Harris and P. Heath (Cambridge University Press)
Schelling (along with Fichte and Hegel) is among the most influential German idealists.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)
The World as Will and Representation, Vols. I and II, translated by E. F. J. Payne, (Dover Publications)
Schopenhauer argues that the universe is not rational.
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays, edited by Mark Philp and Frederick Rosen
(Oxford University Press)
Mill, arguably the most famous Utilitarian philosopher, was also one of nineenth-century England’s most vocal social critics.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)
Fear and Trembling, edited and translated by Edna H. Hong and Howard V. Hong (Princeton University Press) Either/Or, edited and translated by Edna H. Hong and Howard V. Hong (Princeton University Press) Kierkegaard, widely considered the “father of existentialism,” wrote philosophy under pseudonyms.
Karl Marx (1818–1883)
Karl Marx: Selected Writings, 2d edition, edited by David McLellan (Oxford University Press)
Along with coauthor, Friedrich Engels, Marx critiqued the social, economic, and political conditions of capitalism.
Franz Brentano (1838–1917)
Descriptive Psychology, translated by Benito Müller (Routledge Publishers)
Brentano is best known for his contributions to the philosophy of mind, but wrote across a number of philosophical topics.
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
The Essential Peirce, 2 vols., edited by Nathan Houser, Christian Kloesel, and the Peirce Edition Project (Indiana University Press)
The founder of American Pragmatism, Peirce wrote across areas of philosophy.
William James (1842–1910)
The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (Harvard University Press)
American Pragmatist, William James worked in philosophy, psychology, and physiology.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
The Nietzsche Reader, edited by Keith Ansell Pearson and Duncan Large (Wiley Blackwell Publishers)
Contemporary Philosophy
Gottlob Frege (1848–1923)
Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, 3rd ed., translated by Peter Geach and Max Black (Blackwell Publishers)
Frege was a mathematician and logician who contributed to the development of modern logic.
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938)
Cartesian Meditations, translated by Dorion Cairns (Kluwer Publishers) Experience and Judgment, translated by J. S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Routledge Publishers)
Known as the founder of phenomenology, Husserl worked across philosophical areas.
Henri Bergson (1859–1941)
Bergson: Key Writings, edited by Keith Ansell Pearson and John Mullarkey, (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Bergson’s work in phenomenology influenced thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (Free Press)
Whitehead is best known for his work in philosophy of science and mathematical logic. With Bertrand Russell, he wrote Principia Mathematica.
George Santayana (1863–1952)
The Birth of Reason and Other Essays by George Santayana, edited by Daniel Cory (Columbia University Press)
Santayana wrote across genres, from philosophy to poetry and cultural criticism.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)
The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, edited by John G. Slater (Routledge Publishers) Russell wrote across areas of philosophy but is best known for his work in mathematical logic. With Alfred North Whitehead, he wrote Principia Mathematica.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1973
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by C. K. Ogden (Routledge Publishers)
Philosophical Investigations, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, and edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and R. Rhees (Blackwell Publishers)
A towering figure of twentieth-century analytic philosophy, Wittgenstein’s work is typically divided into “early” and “later” periods.
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)
Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward S. Robinson (Blackwell Publishers)
The Heidegger Reader, translated by Jerome Veith and edited by Günter Figal (Indiana University Press)
Heidegger worked in phenomenology and existentialism. A controversial figure, Heidegger was a member of the National Socialist Party, and never explicitly denounced Nazism.
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002)
Truth and Method, translated by Donald Marshall and Joel Weinsheimer (Continuum Press) Gadamer was a distinctive thinker in the hermeneutical tradition.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)
Being and Nothingness, translated by Hazel E. Barnes (Philosophical Library) Existentialism is a Humanism, translated by Carol Macomber (Yale University Press)
Sartre was an existentialist. In addition to philosophy, he wrote novels, plays, and political essays. Among his best-known works is his seminal lecture, “Existentialism is a Humanism.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961)
Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Donald Landes (Routledge Publishers)
Merleau-Ponty was an existentialist and phenomenologist.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–2000)
The Second Sex, translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (Vintage Publishing)
De Beauvoir, an existentialist, wrote across a number of philosophical topics, but is best known for her feminist work, The Second Sex.
W.V.O. Quine (1908–2000)
From a Logical Point of View (Harvard University Press)
Quine practiced analytic philosophy across a number of areas. He is best known for his paper, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.”
A.J. Ayer (1910–1989)
Language, Truth, and Logic (Dover Books)
Ayer worked across philosophical areas from the perspective of logical positivism and verificationism.
J. L. Austin (1911–1960)
How to Do Things with Words, 2d ed., edited by J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà (Harvard University Press)
Austin was a philosopher of language, epistemologist, and ethicist. He is best known for How to Do Things with Words.
Donald Davidson (1917–2003)
Essays on Actions and Events (Clarendon Press) Truth, Language and History: Philosophical Essays, edited by Marcia Cavell (Oxford University Press)
Davidson worked on semantic theory, epistemology, and ethics.
P. F. Strawson (1919–2006)
Philosophical Writings (Oxford University Press)
Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (Methuen Publishing)
Strawson worked in metaphysics, epistemology, and the history of philosophy. Among his most famous essays is “Freedom and Resentment.”
John Rawls (1921–2002)
A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press)
Rawls was a towering figure in twentieth-century political thought, advancing a position of egalitarian liberalism.
Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995)
Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Patton (Columbia University Press)
The Deleuze Reader, edited by Constantin V. Boundas (Columbia University Press)
Deleuze, who considered himself a metaphysician, wrote on thinkers as diverse as Hume, Spinoza, and Nietzsche.
Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
Discipline and Punish, translated by Alan Sheridan (Pantheon Press)
History of Madness, translated by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (Routledge Publishers) The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow (Pantheon Press)
Foucault, associated with structuralist and post-structuralist movements, worked in history and philosophy—often at the intersection of the two as a genealogist of ideas.
Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
The Essential Chomsky, edited by Anthony Arnove (The New Press)
Language and Problems of Knowledge (M.I.T. Press)
A linguist, Chomsky works across a range of philosophical topics and politics.
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004)
Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Spivak (The Johns Hopkins University Press) A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, edited by Peggy Kamuf (Columbia University Press)
Derrida introduced deconstruction, a technique for critiquing literary and philosophical texts, which he also applied to a wide range of issues and topics.
Richard Rorty (1931–2007)
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press)
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge University Press)
Rorty, a pragmatist, wrote across areas of philosophy.
John Searle (b. 1932)
Minds, Brains and Science (Harvard University Press)
Searle is a philosopher of language and mind. He is best known for his Chinese Room thought experiment presented in a critique of the view that “strong” artificial intelligence is capable of understanding.
Amartya Sen (b. 1933)
The Idea of Justice (Harvard University Press)
Sen is a political philosopher and economist.
Thomas Nagel (b. 1937)
The View From Nowhere (Oxford University Press)
Mortal Questions (Canto Classics)
Nagel works across philosophical issues, from the meaning of life to consciousness. He is best known for his essay, “What is it like to be a bat?” The works listed here are introductory texts.
Robert Nozick (1938–2002)
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books)
Nozick worked primarily in political philosophy, and is best known for advancing a
libertarian position.
T.M. Scanlon (b. 1940)
What We Owe to Each Other (Harvard University Press) Scanlon is an ethicist who works across a number of related subjects.
Derek Parfit (1942–2017)
Reasons and Persons (Oxford University Press) Parfit worked on issues in and around philosophy of mind.
Daniel Dennett (b. 1942)
Consciousness Explained (Little, Brown, and Co.) Freedom Evolves (Penguin Books)
Peter Singer (b. 1946)
Animal Liberation (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
Practical Ethics, 2nd edition(Cambridge University Press) Singer is an ethicist who argues for, among other positions, animal rights.
Cornel West (b. 1953)
Race Matters (Beacon Press)
The Cornel West Reader (Civitas Books) West works across areas in philosophy.
Kwame Anthony Appiah (b. 1954)
Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (W. W. Norton & Co.) The Ethics of Identity (Princeton University Press)
Appiah works on gender, race, sex, and politics.
Judith Butler (b. 1956)
Gender Trouble, Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Publishers) Butler is a feminist philosopher.
The following contains works not mentioned above, but worth adding to your reading list of works in, or translated into, English:
Philosophy of Art (Aesthetics)
- Monroe Beardsley, The Aesthetic Point of View (Cornell University Press)
- Noel Carroll, Beyond Aesthetics (Cambridge University Press) and Theories of Art Today (University of Wisconsin Press)
- Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Oxford University Press)
- Stephen Davis, The Philosophy of Art (Oxford University Press)
- Terry Eagelton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Basil Blackwell)
Philosophy of Language and Logic
- Rudolph Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World, translated by E. George (Open Court Classics)
- Paul Grice, Studies in the Way of Words (Harvard University Press)
- Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Harvard University Press)
- Scott Soames, Beyond Rigidity: The Unfinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity (Oxford University Press)
- Alfred Tarski, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, papers from 1923 to 1938, translated by J. H. Woodger and edited by John Corcoran (Hackett Publishing)
Philosophy of Religion
- William P. Alston, Perceiving God (Cornell University Press)
- Brian Davies, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (Continuum Press)
- John Hick, Philosophy of Religion (Prentice-Hall Publishers)
- J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford University Press)
- D. Z. Phillips, Religion without Explanation (Oxford University Press)
- Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate (Oxford University Press)
- Peter van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil (Oxford University Press)
Philosophy of Science
- Rudolph Carnap, Philosophical Foundations of Physics, edited by Martin Gardner (Basic Books)
- Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (Verso Press)
- Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Cornell University Press)
- Carl G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science (Prentice-Hall Publishers)
- Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions (Oxford University Press)
- Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press)
- Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, (Routledge)
- Images of Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism, edited by Paul M. Churchland and Clifford
- A. Hooker (University of Chicago Press)
