Reading list
The best philosophy books of all time
A good philosophy book changes what you notice afterwards. This list ranks the classics that most reliably do that, from ancient Athens and China to the start of the twentieth century, and leaves out the modern ones only because they are not free yet.
25 books, all free to read
If you are new to all of it, the beginners' list is the gentler way in. This one is for when you want the whole shelf.
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1. The Republic
by Plato
Justice, the soul and the ideal city, and the cave. Whitehead said all of Western philosophy is footnotes to Plato; this is the main text.
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2. Nicomachean Ethics
by Aristotle
Aristotle on happiness as a life of virtue practised daily. The most practical great book of philosophy.
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3. Meditations
by Marcus Aurelius
The Stoic emperor's notebook, and one of the most widely read philosophy books today.
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4. Tao Te Ching
by Laozi
The Tao Te Ching: eighty-one short chapters on yielding, simplicity and the way.
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5. Analects
by Confucius
Confucius in conversation with his students: ritual, duty and how to be a decent person.
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6. Philosophical Works with the Meditations on First Philosophy
by René Descartes
Descartes doubts everything he can and rebuilds knowledge on one certainty.
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7. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
by David Hume
Hume's short, devastating questions about cause, reason and miracles.
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8. Beyond Good and Evil
by Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche attacks every philosopher before him, in sharp aphorisms.
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10. Leviathan
by Thomas Hobbes
Hobbes builds the state out of fear, and modern political philosophy begins.
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12. The Social Contract
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau on freedom, the general will and the chains of society.
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15. The Consolation of Philosophy
by Boethius
Boethius, condemned to death, talks with Philosophy herself.
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16. Thus Spake Zarathustra
by Friedrich Nietzsche
Zarathustra comes down the mountain with news: God is dead. Nietzsche's strangest and most famous book.
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17. The Genealogy of Morals
by Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche on where good and evil came from. His most systematic book.
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18. Utilitarianism
by John Stuart Mill
The greatest happiness of the greatest number, defended in a short book.
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19. The Varieties of Religious Experience
by William James
William James on religious experience as a fact of psychology. Generous and fascinating.
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20. Pragmatism
by William James
James on pragmatism: an idea is true if it works. Lectures, so easy to follow.
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21. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein's numbered propositions on language and the world. Short and very hard, and it ends in silence.
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22. A Treatise of Human Nature
by David Hume
Hume's first and fullest book, which he said fell dead-born from the press.
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23. The Problems of Philosophy
by Bertrand Russell
Russell's short map of the problems, a good last book or a good first one.
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25. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
by Mary Wollstonecraft
Wollstonecraft's 1792 argument that women are reasoning beings owed an education.
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Read them free
Every book on this list is free in Doomreader: open one and it reads as short posts you scroll, with your place kept and its best pages a tap away. You can listen to any of them free too, read aloud by your device.