100 Works in Philosophy

Posted on August 13, 2008
Filed Under Philosophy |

BA19A3A6-3CBD-4415-9EC1-76A296B532DC.jpgBrandon has up a post on 100 Works in Philosophy. As he says,

…a list of a hundred books, each providing a relatively accessible portal to philosophy, likely to have something of interest to a very wide range of people, in order to encourage a wider reading in philosophy, and perhaps an interest in philosophy among those who might be turned off by anything too academic.

So here’s the list interspersed with whether I’ve read it and the occasional comment.

1. Voltaire, Candide - read

OK this is a fantastic book that everyone ought read. It’s been too long since I last picked this up now that I think about it. If you’re familiar with the philosophy of the time - especially Leibniz - then it’ll be even better. Great philosophy as satire.

2. Dante, Divine Comedy - read

An other one everyone ought read. The structure symbolizes as much as the actual words do. Knowing a bit of the history around it helps one understand how much of a breakthrough it was. It’s been way too long since I last read this. This and some Nietzsche were my two favorite books I had to read for a college class.

3. Plato, Apology - read

It’s hardly my favorite. If I had to pick just one Platonic text it’d probably be Euthyphro. But this is good.

4. Xenophon, Apology - read

I read this in college a long time ago and can barely remember it.

5. Berkeley, Alciphron

6. Aquinas, Collationes super Credo in Deum - read

I’m not a big fan of Aquinas although there are some parts I really like. I’m not a terrible fan of this text though as it doesn’t seem that relevant to modern philosophy.

7. Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II

I’ve never even heard of that one.

8. Scotus, A Treatise on God as First Principle - read

I really like Scotus although he’s one of those philosophers you have to read and then reread. This is a great work. Even folks who aren’t theists can pick something up from this one. (Some argue that Scotus was a big influence on both Heidegger and Peirce)

9. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

I’ve never read any Boethius. I need to.

10. Descartes, Discourse on Method - read

Probably important to read if only to understand a lot of basis for how people just assume things work. A huge effect on our culture. Read it if only to see where things went wrong.

11. Hume, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences”

12. O. K. Bouwsma, “Descartes’ Evil Genius”

13. Gilson, Forms and Substances in the Arts

14. Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum - read

I think reading some neoPlatonists is important. I’m not sure I’d offer Bonaventure as an introduction. (Although the eText has a nice brief intro) But then Plotinus is far worse. The neoPlatonists are difficult philosophers and far more subtle and sublime than often given credit for.

15. Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi; attr.), Zhuangzi

16. Fa-tsang, Treatise on the Golden Lion

17. Xuedoe/Yuanwu, The Blue Cliff Record

18. Sartre, No Exit

I really don’t like Sartre.

19. Chesterton, Manalive

20. Shaw, Saint Joan

What, no Man - Superman?

21. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy”

22. Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers - read

I’m not sure this would be the book I’d give people to figure this stuff out though. I don’t think I’ve read this one since college.

23. Darwin, The Descent of Man - read

While Darwin is important historically I’m not sure he’s the best source to read for an intro to the ideas.

24. Kingsley, Hypatia

25. James, “The Will to Believe” - read

One of my favorite writings of James although it’s also a text that can give folks some misunderstandings of him.

26. Carroll, “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles” - read

27. Whewell, On the Principles of English University Education

28. Faraday, The Chemical History of a Candle

I ought read this. I’ve never read any Faraday and there for a while I was into reading scientists of that era.

29. Masham, Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Virtuous Christian Life

30. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World - read

As I’ve often said I’m never sure if I’m understanding Whitehead right since I seem to read him so differently than the process thinkers I talk to.

31. Lull, Book of the Gentile

I’ve read a lot on Lull but never actually nay of his works.

32. Ibn Tufayl, Hayy ibn Yaqzan

33. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

34. Butler, Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel

35. Epictetus, Enchiridion

36. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations - read

I love the Stoics and probably have studied them more than any other Greek philosophical movement other than Plato proper. However this counts as the most disappointing book in ancient philosophy I’ve ever read.

37. Johnson, The History of Rasselas

38. More, Utopia - read

A must read. I have a post I’ve been wanting to write on political discussion, idealogues and utopias. Maybe it’s the pragmatist in me but I’m pretty suspicious of anything based upon a utopian scheme.

39. Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

40. Bacon, Essays - read

I think it was because I take so much scientific thinking for granted, but I always found Bacon disappointing. Yes he was probably groundbreaking at the time. So one has to be thinking of what he’s acting against. But reading for general relevancy? It’s just not worth it.

41. Justin Martyr, First Apology - read

But I have to confess I don’t really remember it well.

2. Minucius Felix, Octavius

43. O’Brien, The Third Policeman
44. ***, IV Maccabees - read

I went through a phase where I read most of the main apocryphal and pseudopigraphal works. Both OT and NT. Plus all the gnostic stuff and then a few others of that ilk.

45. Langland, Piers Plowman

46. Lewis, Abolition of Man

47. ***, Cleanness

48. Mill, Utilitarianism - read

I really don’t agree with Mill but I do think that this along with some of Bentham’s writings ought be required reading for everyone. Even if you disagree philosophically there’s a lot to be said for the general thrust of things.

49. Anselm, On Freedom of Choice (PDF)

I’ve not read that particular essay surprisingly. But I’ve read a lot of other of his writings and I think he’s pretty important to read.

50. Abelard, Historia Calamitatum

One of these days I need to read some Abelard.

51. Ambrose, On the Duties of the Clergy

52. Kant, “Perpetual Peace”

I’ve never read this one. I find Kant one of the hardest philosophers to read. I much prefer reading about him even though normally that’s not something I advocate in philosophy.

53. Cicero, De Officiis

54. Pascal, Pensées - read

Unfortunately read a long time ago. I need to read it again as I know I’d read it quite differently now. I’ve enjoyed Dreyfus’ existentialist lectures where he discusses Pascal a bit.

55. Sun Tzu, The Art of War - read

Good, but not as good as you’ve heard. More useful to meditate on.

56. Clausewitz, On War - read

Good. Better than Sun Tzu but also probably not as great as you heard. The interesting bit is how much he talks politics.

57. Shelley, “Queen Mab”

58. Pope, An Essay on Man

59. Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus - partial

I made it partway through. I really need to go back through Spinoza one of these days but somehow whenever I try I end up reading Leibniz.

60. Beattie, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth

61. Montaigne, Apology for Raymond Sebond - read

I think reading Montaigne to learn how to write is worthwhile. I don’t find his content that interesting. But were I trying to really write rather than merely blog I’d definitely read him.

62. Casanova, History of My Life

63. Lucian, Hermotimus

64. Lorris/Meun, The Romance of the Rose

65. Sophocles, Antigone - read

Once again a long time ago.

66. Christine de Pisan, Book of the City of Ladies

67. Augustine, Confessions

Some of the works in the list I’m not sure is the idea work by the author to read. However Confessions is very worth reading even if you aren’t religious. There’s a lot philosophically interesting in it as well not to mention very interesting rhetoric. Many date the modern notion of psychological time to Augustine here and arguably reading Augustine’s discussion is still the best place to begin thinking on the subject.

68. Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance (PDF)

I need to read some Nicholas of Cusa. It’s been on my list for a long time. One of these days I’ll have free time, will finish up my current interests and turn back to medieval philosophy.

69. Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

70. Abbott, Flatland - read

A great book but not as relevant to thinking through modern physics as some portray it.

71. Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

72. Gilman, Herland

73. Saadia, Beliefs and Opinions

74. Lessing & Mendelssohn, “Pope a Metaphysician!”

75. Hume, “A Dialogue”

76. Menkin, The Love of the Righteous

77. Lessing, Nathan the Wise

78. Chateaubriand, The Genius of Christianity

79. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra - read

You know I really, really love this book. But it’s really not the idea introduction to Nietzsche.

80. Eliot, Romola

81. Maritain, Theonas

82. ***, The Great Learning

83. Stapledon, Sirius

84. Eco, The Name of the Rose - read

Eco’s two first books, this and Foucault’s Pendulum are masterpieces. His other fictional books are great disappointments. But this really is both a great introduction to medieval philosophy as well as modern critiques of it and nihilism. A deep book on many levels as well as a very interesting Sherlock Holmes like mystery.

85. Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen

86. Vico, De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione (On the Study Methods of Our Time)

87. Fichte, The Vocation of Man

88. Edwards, Freedom of the Will

89. Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

Interesting choice for Roussea although I don’t know him well enough to say I’d disagree. It’s definitely not what most read by him.

90. Shaftesbury, “Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor” (PDF)

91. Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua

92. Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight of Western Thought

93. Kant, “On the Question: What is Enlightnment?” - read

I need to reread this one. One of the better ones for a more casual read of Kant.

94. Austen, Mansfield Park

95. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

96. Duhem, German Science

I need, need, need to read some Duhem one of these days. A grave hole in my reading. More so than probably any other one on this list.

97. Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew

98. Dryden, Religio Laici

99. Chaucer, The Parson’s Tale - read

As with so many it was required and read as a Freshman and I remember absolutely zilch from it.

100. Teresa of Avila, Life of Teresa of Avila, by Herself

So what would I add? Here’s a few:

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

I think this is a far better introduction to Nietzsche unless you are interested in him as a poet.

Anselm, Proslogion

I really love that book if only for some structural thoughts on how to approach some difficult philosophical problems. I disagree with Anselm although he’s always a fruitful read.

Plato, Euthyphro

Probably more relevant in some ways than the Apology although Socrates death is always a useful discussion to get people thinking about thinking.

Leibniz, The Monadology

OK, maybe not that easy, although I find him an easy guy to read. I just enjoy thinking about it even though he’s clearly wrong. But thinking through where he was wrong and how that would change things is very worthwhile. Probably one of those places you can always delve in.

Peirce, On a New List of Categories

Hart, Strategy

OK, some may quibble here. But it’s at least as relevant as Clauswitz or Sun Tzu and arguably better.

Confucius, Analects

Great book. Actually one of my favorites of eastern literature.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

I love the opening even though I don’t like the philosophy. But it is interesting comparing this work to certain western classics.

Feynman, The Character of Physical Law.

I wasn’t sure which to include. In a way his quasi-autobiographical anecdotes Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman is better at capturing a kind of stance scientists take. But it also has a lot that turn some people off. (i.e. his misogyny at times)

Beyond that I’d probably delete a bunch. I’d probably throw in some classic essays of Putnam, Davidson, Quine, Ruissell, Grice and so forth.

Comments

8 Responses to “100 Works in Philosophy”

Where is Schopenhauer? Definitely one of the more readable philosophers. Kierkegaard is also missing. A lot of these are not really what I would think of as philosophy. Confederacy of Dunces was great fun, but what is the philosophy angle? Mansfield Park?

I agree that most Sartre is rather tedious, but give No Exit a try - it’s a short play that’s actually pretty funny.

Johnson’s Rasselas is one of my favorite books. Also a short and easy read. Sort of a Candide without the humor, or with a more subtle humor.

In Praise of Folly is a great satire. Historia Calamitatum shows one of the most egotistical minds of all time, who still manages to remain a sympathetic figure. I always wanted to read Sic et Non, but it’s so long.

Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy is one of those prison classics. Boethius is also important in medieval music theory. His texts on music theory formed the basis of the study of that part of the quadrivium for centuries. Abelard, incidentally, was also a musician, the author of, among other things, the hymn, O quanta qualia.

Great list (as if my list of books I need to read was not long enough already):

I would add:

Kierkegaard’s Postscript

Varieties of Religious Experience, James

Philosophy of As If, H. Vaihinger

Here are a few of contemporary treasures in philosophy of science I would add:

Mindsight, Colin McGinn

The Dappled World : A Study of the Boundaries of Science Nancy Cartwright (Not the same one as the voice of Bart Simpson)

The Empirical Stance, Bas C. van Fraassen

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett

Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality, William Wimsatt

None of the works on the list were intended to be idea introductions; hence the avoiding of standard college fare, which consists almost entirely of works selected in order to introduce you to ideas, and therefore skips most of the more broadly interesting works in the history of philosophy. Some of them happen to be incidentally, though; Alciphron, for instance, is a much better introduction to Berkeley that the Principles or Three Dialogues. And several of the works on the list are on the list for reasons that would usually be missed, and deliberately so; Darwin’s work, for instance, is not on the list for evolutionary reasons, but because it is a work of moral philosophy (explicitly so, although this seems usually to be missed by a lot of readers of it).

Bill,

All of the works have a pretty obvious philosophy angle, I think, although in some cases it is less explicit than others. Mansfield Park is a very, very easy one; it’s a narrative exploration of the virtue of constancy, and touches virtually all the themes of early modern virtue ethics in one form or another. Confederacy of Dunces parodies themes from the Consolation of Philosophy; parodies are always tricky but, as with Candide, they can be thought-provoking even thought (as with Candide!) they distort in order to be funny.

I’ve read very little Schopenhauer, and one of the constraints on the list was that I had to have read it in order to put it on (a very constraining constrain); so that’s why he’s not there. Kierkegaard, unfortunately, was jut an oversight. He would be a great addition to the list.

Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” is on international relations and is quite accessible, particularly but Kant standards.

This list strikes me as one that was made in the 1950’s and it almost completely ignores political philosophy, with the above Kant peace and Mill being the exception.

“an interest in philosophy among those who might be turned off by anything too academic.” If you have an interest in philosophy but are turned off by anything too academic, you actually do not really have an interest in philosophy.

It is so utterly impossible to imagine this list being made in the 1950s that I found that rather funny. Of course, the list does (deliberately and explicitly) skew pastward in order to avoid the prejudice that philosophy is merely what we in the recent past have done, simply because it’s what we in the recent past have done; and as I read much less political philosophy than in other fields, it’s not surprising that it’s underrepresented.

As to the last paragraph, that is, of course, one of the attitudes this list was meant to oppose. Indeed, I’m not sure it’s even a rationally sustainable position: historically, whether major philosophical work was academic in tone and style and purpose has depended not on anything to do with the philosophical work itself but on the quality of the university infrastructure; thus philosophy becomes most wholly academic in the periods in history that see the university at its most dynamic and expansive, most notably the high Middle Ages and the period (in which arguably we still find ourselves) after the Prussian reforms. Outside those periods philosophy tends, with some small islands of exceptions, to have a popular rather than an academic orientation. So, for instance, there are periods where a great deal of significant philosophical work is done by journalists, or civil servants, or librarians, or the like, writing for the public, rather than by academics writing for academics. If we actually took your statement seriously, we’d have to reject Descartes, Hume, Mill, and others as not doing work of philosophical interest.

It is not about being an academic, but about making academic arguments which Hume and Mill obviously made.

Hume and Mill did not have academic position because they refused to sign allegiances to the church of England.

Was Einstein writing for the simple folk because he was a clerk?

Maybe I am too much of an analytical snob. I am okay with that.

Brandon I didn’t mean to move the discussion here from your blog. More just draw attention to an interesting list.

One thing I did like about your list is how it covered many eras. Although the Renaissance could use a bit more I suppose - but then Renaissance philosophy is always problematic. There’s always that partial break away from Scholastic philosophy often towards more Platonic approaches (either pagan or more Christianized) but they never really seemed to do it too rigorously. One could, I suppose, see the Rationalists like Descartes doing the Renaissance right.

I still think that 20th century analytic philosophy with the typical situation of short papers is often very readable. Something like Thomas Nagel’s “What is it Like to be a Bat?” is very approachable, if perhaps somewhat challenging. (But arguably no more challenging than some of the works you have up there - a little commentary by a teacher would get most students over the hurdle)

Chris H. said,

It is not about being an academic, but about making academic arguments which Hume and Mill obviously made.

I have no clue what meaning is being attached to ‘academic’ here. But in a sense it doesn’t matter, since it certainly isn’t what I meant, wsince I was taking it as a professional designation: i.e., the use of ‘academic’ that would apply to a situation in which people researching in universities insofar are focusing primarily on writing the sorts of things that interest people researching in universities. (Einstein may have been a clerk, but his argument was very much directed to researchers of his profession, and is styled accordingly. Contrariwse, when Einstein was later an academic, in addition to his academic works he also occasionally wrote popular ones, which were not directed professionally at researchers.) There’s a place for that, plenty of places, actually; but there’s more to philosophy than that.

Clark,

I don’t think you moved the discussion anywhere; here’s as good a place to have a discussion about it as any.

One of the purposes of the list (but only one) was to be a little devious and subversive. There are cases here that are provably philosophical that aren’t usually considered such (Austen’s a great point; Ryle, MacIntyre, and a whole stream of others have shown that while Austen’s moral philosophy isn’t systematic — obviously she’s primarily focusing on writing the novel rather than discussing, say, constancy — it is surprisingly substantive). And there are cases that are a bit more borderline, but that I think, and obviously think that I have good reason to think, are nonetheless natural ‘ins’ to all sorts of interesting philosophical issues, if you got someone to be interested in the work itself. In a sense, part of the point of the list is to say that there are more things in philosophy than most people dream. So the diversity is very, very deliberate.

I agree that ideally the Renaissance would be better represented, much as Chris H. is right that it would be nice to have more political philosophy. Perhaps when I’m older and have read a larger selection of the books whose making has no end. I also agree that Nagel’s “What is it Like to be a Bat?” is a very good candidate — actually, I think many of Nagel’s works would be good examples. While I think solid candidates for a list of this very odd sort form a very small percentage of the total output, I do think it would be entirely possible to build a list that served the same function, entirely out of papers written by 20th century people usually thought of as analytic philosophers. Bouwsma and Anscombe ended up on the list, but there are plenty of others that could have been chosen. Part of the point of the list is that philosophy is much vaster and wider and varied and, indeed, interesting, than you’d usually get from a more standard recommendation on “philosophical works to read.” So I’m all for any suggested candidates that would be likely to show to a lot of people that the universe of philosophy is not small and dry and narrow.

BTW, I’ve added a few thoughts at the end of the original post.

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