Library
The books, and what each one argues. Where a text is out of copyright you can read the whole thing here.
- A Theory of JusticeRawls's 1971 systematic statement of justice as fairness, developing the original position thought experiment, the two principles of justice, and the framework that revived political philosophy as a major analytic subfield.PhilosophyJohn Rawls
- A Treatise of Human NatureHume's 1739–1740 first major work, in three books, attempting to apply the experimental method to the human mind — the most ambitious early statement of British empiricism.PhilosophyDavid Hume
- AntifragileSome systems gain from volatility, and the practical task is arranging exposures so that surprises help more than they hurt.BusinessNassim Nicholas Taleb · 2012
- ApologyPlato's account of Socrates's defense speech at his 399 BCE trial in Athens, the foundational text on the relation between philosophy and the political community that condemns it.PhilosophyPlato
- Being and NothingnessSartre's 1943 major work of phenomenological-existentialist philosophy, developing systematic analyses of consciousness, freedom, bad faith, interpersonal experience, and the structures of human existence.PhilosophyJean-Paul Sartre
- Being and TimeHeidegger's 1927 foundational work, the major philosophical event of the twentieth century in continental philosophy: a systematic phenomenological analysis of Dasein as the entry point into the question of the meaning of being.PhilosophyMartin Heidegger
- Bondage of the WillLuther's 1525 treatise replying to Erasmus's Diatribe on Free Will, arguing that the human will after the Fall has no power in matters of salvation and that salvation is wholly the work of divine grace — a foundational text of Reformation theology and a major position in the long debate over freedom and grace.PhilosophyJohn Calvin
- Built to SellA service business only has value apart from its owner when it does one repeatable thing through a documented process that other people can run.Business2011
- CapitalMarx's three-volume major theoretical work of systematic political economy, analyzing the structure, dynamics, and internal contradictions of capitalist society.PhilosophyKarl Marx
- City of GodAugustine's vast late work in twenty-two books on history, politics, and theology, interpreting human history as the unfolding of two intermingled communities oriented respectively to God and to self.PhilosophyAugustine of Hippo
- Competitive StrategyIndustry structure, described by five forces, sets available profitability — and a defensible position requires choosing cost leadership or differentiation rather than both.BusinessMichael E. Porter · 1980
- ConfessionsAugustine's autobiographical and philosophical work in thirteen books, the founding text of Western autobiography and one of the most influential single works in Latin Christian thought.PhilosophyAugustine of Hippo
- Crisis of European SciencesHusserl's late masterpiece composed in the shadow of Nazi Germany that substantially develops the analysis of the life-world and treats the natural sciences as having lost contact with their grounding in pre-theoretical lived experience.PhilosophyEdmund Husserl
- Critique of Pure ReasonKant's foundational work of Critical philosophy, demonstrating that the mind contributes structuring conditions (space, time, the categories) to all possible experience, and establishing the limits of theoretical knowledge.PhilosophyImmanuel Kant
- De AnimaAristotle's treatise on the soul as the form of a living body, analyzing the faculties of nutrition, sensation, and intellect across plants, animals, and human beings.PhilosophyAristotle
- Decisive TreatiseAverroes's late-twelfth-century juridical defense of philosophy from within Islamic legal categories, arguing that systematic rational inquiry is religiously obligatory for those qualified and laying out the doctrine of interpretation that reconciles philosophical conclusions with scriptural authority.PhilosophyBoethius
- Deep WorkSustained concentration is becoming rare as it becomes valuable, and it has to be scheduled rather than fitted around interruptions.Business2016
- Democracy and EducationDewey's 1916 systematic statement of progressive education theory, treating schools as miniature democratic communities and education as the cultivation of dispositions for inquiry-based participation rather than transmission of fixed content.PhilosophyJohn Dewey
- Dialectic of EnlightenmentThe 1947 work by Horkheimer and Adorno composed during their wartime California exile, developing the thesis that the Enlightenment project of emancipation through reason has produced its own opposite in the dominance of instrumental rationality and the culture industry.PhilosophyMax Horkheimer
- Dialogues Concerning Natural ReligionHume's posthumously published 1779 dialogue, the most rigorous critique of natural theology in the philosophical tradition, presenting and analyzing the major arguments for God's existence through three philosophical characters.PhilosophyDavid Hume
- Discipline and PunishFoucault's 1975 genealogical history of the European penal system that analyzed the transformation from the spectacle of public execution to the disciplinary techniques of the modern prison, developing the concepts of discipline, surveillance, and the Panopticon.PhilosophyMichel Foucault
- Discourse on MethodDescartes's 1637 short methodological work, the first major French-language philosophical treatise, containing the famous cogito argument and the four rules of method.PhilosophyRené Descartes
- EnchiridionEpictetus's handbook of Stoic ethics, compiled by his student Arrian as a short, portable distillation of the longer Discourses.PhilosophyEpictetus
- Essay Concerning Human UnderstandingLocke's foundational work of modern empiricism, in four books, arguing against innate ideas and developing the doctrine that all knowledge derives from sensation and reflection.PhilosophyJohn Locke
- Ethics (Spinoza)Spinoza's 1677 major work, structured geometrically (definitions, axioms, propositions, demonstrations) and developing a comprehensive metaphysics, philosophy of mind, theory of the emotions, and account of human freedom from a small set of opening assumptions.PhilosophyBaruch Spinoza
- Fear and TremblingKierkegaard's 1843 pseudonymous work on Abraham, the binding of Isaac, the teleological suspension of the ethical, and the nature of faith — the founding text of religious existentialism.PhilosophySøren Kierkegaard
- Foundations of ArithmeticFrege's 1884 informal statement of the logicist program, arguing that arithmetic is reducible to logic and providing the conceptual foundation for the formal derivation later attempted in the Grundgesetze.PhilosophyGottlob Frege
- Groundwork of the Metaphysics of MoralsKant's 1785 short foundational work of moral philosophy, presenting the categorical imperative and the structure of autonomous rational will in their most concise and accessible form.PhilosophyImmanuel Kant
- How to Make Our Ideas ClearPeirce's 1878 Popular Science Monthly paper containing the founding statement of the pragmatic maxim and the central methodological proposal of the pragmatist tradition.PhilosophyCharles Sanders Peirce
- Itinerarium Mentis in DeumBonaventure's 1259 short work organizing the six-stage ascent of the mind to God, modeled on the six-winged seraph that Francis of Assisi had seen at La Verna, and integrating Augustinian theology with the Franciscan contemplative tradition.PhilosophyBonaventure
- John's GospelThe fourth canonical Gospel, distinguished from the Synoptics by its high Christology, its Logos prologue, and its sustained appropriation of Greek philosophical vocabulary into Christian revelation.Philosophy
- Letters to LuciliusSeneca's 124 surviving philosophical letters to his friend Lucilius, the most extensive and accessible body of practical Stoic ethical writing in the Roman corpus.PhilosophySeneca
- Logical InvestigationsHusserl's two-volume 1900-1901 work that founded the phenomenological tradition by reversing his earlier psychologism and establishing the structures of meaning and conceptual content as the proper objects of a rigorous descriptive science.PhilosophyEdmund Husserl
- MeditationsMarcus Aurelius's private philosophical notebooks, twelve books of Stoic reflections composed during the later years of his reign as Roman emperor.PhilosophyMarcus Aurelius
- Meditations on First PhilosophyDescartes's foundational work of modern philosophy, six meditations developing the method of systematic doubt, the cogito, and the reconstruction of knowledge from indubitable foundations.PhilosophyRené Descartes
- MetaphysicsAristotle's foundational treatise on being qua being, substance, causation, potentiality and actuality, and the unmoved mover — the work that gave Western metaphysics its name and most of its categories.PhilosophyAristotle
- MindsetWhether you believe ability is fixed or developable changes how you respond to difficulty, and beliefs about ability are shaped by how effort and results are praised.BusinessCarol Dweck · 2006
- MonadologyLeibniz's 1714 short systematic statement of the mature metaphysics, presenting reality as composed of infinitely many simple, indivisible substances (monads) coordinated through pre-established harmony.PhilosophyG.W. Leibniz
- Naming and NecessityKripke's 1980 book based on the January 1970 Princeton lectures that revived essentialist metaphysics, developed the causal-historical theory of reference, and produced the framework of necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori truths.PhilosophySaul Kripke
- Nicomachean EthicsAristotle's foundational treatise on virtue, practical wisdom, friendship, and the structure of the good human life — the work that gave Western virtue ethics its canonical form.PhilosophyAristotle
- Of GrammatologyDerrida's 1967 founding work of deconstruction, developing the analysis of the Western metaphysics of presence through the critique of the privileging of speech over writing and introducing the concept of différance.PhilosophyJacques Derrida
- On the Genealogy of MoralityNietzsche's 1887 work of three essays analyzing the historical and psychological sources of moral judgment, organized around the contrast between aristocratic and slave moralities.PhilosophyFriedrich Nietzsche
- PeakExpertise comes from practice with specific conditions — targeting weakness at the edge of ability with feedback — rather than from experience or talent.BusinessK. Anders Ericsson · 2016
- PhaedoPlato's dialogue on the immortality of the soul, set on the day of Socrates's execution and containing the first systematic statement of the Theory of Forms.PhilosophyPlato
- Phenomenology of SpiritHegel's 1807 foundational work tracing the dialectical development of consciousness through successive shapes from sense-certainty through absolute knowing.PhilosophyG.W.F. Hegel
- Philosophical InvestigationsWittgenstein's posthumous 1953 masterwork developing the account of meaning as use, the analysis of language as practice organized into language-games, and the famous private language argument.PhilosophyLudwig Wittgenstein
- PoeticsAristotle's short treatise on tragedy, epic, and the principles of literary composition — the founding work of Western literary theory.PhilosophyAristotle
- PoliticsAristotle's foundational treatise on the political community, the varieties of constitutions, and the relation between political life and human flourishing.PhilosophyAristotle
- Poor Charlie's AlmanackGood judgement requires the major ideas from several disciplines, and problems are often best approached by asking what would guarantee failure.BusinessCharlie Munger · 2005
- PragmatismJames's 1907 book, from eight public lectures — the most readable statement of pragmatism, and the one whose loose formulation of truth gave its critics everything they needed.Philosophy