List of important publications in philosophy

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This is a list of important publications in philosophy, organized by field.

Some reasons why a particular publication might be regarded as important:

• Topic creator – A publication that created a new topic
• Breakthrough – A publication that changed scientific knowledge significantly
• Influence – A publication which has significantly influenced the world or has had a massive impact on the teaching of philosophy.

Historical texts

Western philosophy

Ancient philosophy

• Plato, Charmides
• Plato, Lysis
• Plato, Laches
• Plato, Protagoras
• Plato, Euthydemus
• Plato, Cratylus
• Plato, Phaedrus
• Plato, Ion
• Plato, Symposium
• Plato, Meno
• Plato, Euthyphro
• Plato, Apology
• Plato, Crito
• Plato, Phaedo
• Plato, Gorgias
• Plato, The Republic
• Plato, Timaeus
• Plato, Critias
• Plato, Parmenides
• Plato, Theaetetus
• Plato, Sophist
• Plato, Statesman
• Plato, Philebus
• Plato, Laws
• Organon:
  • Categories
  • De Interpretatione
  • Prior Analytics
  • Posterior Analytics
  • Topics
  • On Sophistical Refutations
• Aristotle, Physics
• Aristotle, On the Heavens
• Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption
• Aristotle, Meteorology
• Aristotle, Metaphysics
• Aristotle, On the Soul
• Aristotle, Parva Naturalia:
  • Sense and Sensibilia
  • On Memory
  • On Sleep
  • On Dreams
  • On Divination in Sleep
  • On Length and Shortness of Life
  • On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration
• Aristotle, On Breath
• Aristotle, History of Animals
• Aristotle, Parts of Animals
• Aristotle, Movement of Animals
• Aristotle, Progression of Animals
• Aristotle, Generation of Animals
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
• Aristotle, Politics
• Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians
• Aristotle, Rhetoric
• Aristotle, Poetics
• Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
• Epictetus, Discourses, AD 101
• Epictetus, Enchiridion, AD 135
• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
• Plotinus, Enneads

Medieval philosophy

• Augustine of Hippo, Enchiridion
• Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, c. AD 397
• Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, early 5th century
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, c. 500
• Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed
• Maimonides, Mishneh Torah
• Yehuda Halevi, Kuzari
• Saadia Gaon, Emunoth ve-Deoth
• Al-Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers
• Averroes, The Incoherence of the Incoherence
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, c. 1260
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae

Modern philosophy

• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, 1532
• Sir Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning
• Sir Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
• René Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
• René Descartes, Discourse on Method
• René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
• René Descartes, Objections Against the Meditations and Replies
• Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
• Blaise Pascal, Provincial Letters
• Blaise Pascal, Pensées
• Gottfried Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics
• Gottfried Leibniz, Monadology
• Gottfried Leibniz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding
• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651
• John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
• John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 1689
• Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
• Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
• David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 1788
• Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, 1785
• Phenomenology of Spirit
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Right
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History
• Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
• Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1843
• Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1843
• Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women
• Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
• Karl Marx, Das Kapital
• John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
• John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
• John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
• Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
• Charles Sanders Peirce, Logic of Relatives, 1870

Eastern philosophy

• Sun Tzu, The Art of War, approx. 600 BC
• Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, approx. 1600 AD

Buddhist philosophy

• Abhidhamma
• Nagarjuna, Mulamadhyamakakarika (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way)

Confucianism

• Five Classics, edited or compiled by Confucius
  • The I Ching
  • The Shi Jing or The Book of Odes
  • The Classic of Rites
  • The Classic of History
  • The Spring and Autumn Annals
• Four Books, selected by Zhu Xi (1130 – 1200)
  • Confucius and Zeng Zi, The Great Learning
  • Confucius, The Analects of Confucius
  • Zisi, The Doctrine of the Mean
  • Mencius, The Mencius
• Xun Zi, Xunzi

Hindu philosophy

• The Upanishads
• The Bhagavad Gita ("The Song of God")
• Samkhya school:
  • Isvarakrsna, Sankhya Karika
• Nyaya school:
  • Aksapada Gautama, Nyaya Sutras
• Vaisheshika school:
  • Kanada, Vaishashik Darshana
• Yoga school:
  • Patañjali, Yoga Sutras
  • Swami Swatamarama, Hatha Yoga Pradipika
• Vedanta school:
  • Vyasa, Brahma Sutras

Chinese Legalism

• Han Feizi, Han Feizi

Taoism

• Lao Zi, Tao Te Ching, approx. 6th century BC
• Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu),
• Liezi, Liezi

Mohism

• Mozi, Mozi

Contemporary philosophy

Epistemology

• Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (1912)
• G.E. Moore, A Defence of Common Sense (1925)
• Edmund Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? (1963)
• Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979)
• Alain Badiou, Being and Event (1988)

Metaphysics

• John Dewey, Experience and Nature, 1929
• William James, Pragmatism
• G. E. Moore, The Refutation of Idealism, 1903
• Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (a.k.a. The Tractatus)
• Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality
• Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
• A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic
• Rudolf Carnap, Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology
• D.M. Armstrong, Universals and Scientific Realism
• W.V.O. Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism
• W.V.O. Quine, On What There Is
• Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity
• Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons
• David Kellogg Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds
• Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
• Alain Badiou, Being and Event
• John McDowell, Mind and World

Philosophy of biology

• Elliott Sober, The Nature of Selection
• Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell, 1945
• Ruth Garrett Millikan, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories
• Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Philosophy of chemistry

• J. van Brakel, Philosophy of Chemistry, Leuven University Press, 2000.

Philosophy of mind

• David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind and The Character of Consciousness
• Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
• Edmund Husserl, Ideas, 1913
• Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, 1900-1901
• Thomas Nagel, What Is it Like to Be a Bat?
• Hilary Putnam, The Meaning of Meaning
• Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 1949
• Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, 1956

Philosophy of physics

• Hans Reichenbach, The Philosophy of Space and Time
• John Stuart Bell, On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox, 1964

Philosophy of psychology

• William James, The Principles of Psychology
• Donald Davidson, The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme

Philosophy of religion

• Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds, 1967
• Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, 1979
• William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, 1979
• J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, 1982
• Jordan Howard Sobel, Logic and Theism, 2004

Philosophy of science

• Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science, 1892
• Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, 1954
• Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1959
• Thomas Samuel Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962
• Hans Reichenbach, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy
• Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, 1975
• Bas C. van Fraassen, The Scientific Image, 1980

Ethics, value, and social philosophy

Aesthetics

• Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art
• R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art
• Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory
• Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, 1968
• Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of judgment, 1790

Ethics

• G. E. M. Anscombe, Modern Moral Philosophy
• Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia
• Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices and Natural Goodness
• David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement
• Alan Gewirth, Reason and Morality
• Allan Gibbard, Thinking How to Live
• Susan Hurley, Natural Reasons
• Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality
• Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity
• John McDowell, Values as Secondary Qualities
• Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
• J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong
• G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica
• Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness
• Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons
• Derek Parfit, On What Matters
• Peter Railton, Facts, Values, and Norms
• W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good
• Thomas M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other
• Samuel Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism
• Michael A. Smith, The Moral Problem
• Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
• Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation

Freedom and responsibility

• Jean Paul Sartre, No Exit
• P. F. Strawson, Freedom and Resentment
• Derk Pereboom, Living without Free Will

Bioethics

• Paul Ramsey, The Patient as a Person
• Paul Ramsey, Fabricated Man
• Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion"

Business ethics

• Tibor R. Machan, The Morality of Business: A Profession for Human Wealthcare (2007)

Feminism

• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Existentialism

• Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
• Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism"

Philosophy of economics

• Kenneth Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values
• Karl Marx, Wage Labour and Capital
• Ludwig von Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
• Elizabeth S. Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics

Philosophy of education

• B.F. Skinner, Walden Two
• John Dewey, Democracy and Education
• Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Philosophy of history

• R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History

Philosophy of law

• John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights
• H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, 1994
• Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law
• Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire

Political philosophy

• Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971
• Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
• Lenin, V.I. State and Revolution
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Postcolonialism

• Edward Said, Orientalism

Logic, language, and mathematics

Logic and philosophy of logic

• Charles Sanders Peirce, "How to Make Our Ideas Clear"
• Gottlob Frege, Begriffsschrift
• Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, 1910-1913
• Kurt Gödel, "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems", 1931
• Saul Kripke, "Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic"
• Alfred Tarski, "The Concept of Truth"
• Truth and Method
• Donald Davidson, "Truth and Meaning"

Philosophy of language

• Gottlob Frege, "Sense and Reference"
• Bertrand Russell, "On Denoting"
• Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
• J. L. Austin, "A Plea for Excuses"
• Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity
• H. P. Grice, "Logic and Conversation"
• Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language
• Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

Philosophy of mathematics

• Mark Balaguer, Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics
• Paul Benacerraf What Numbers Could not Be
• Paul Benacerraf, Mathematical Truth
• Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings
• Logic, Logic and Logic

See also

• List of years in philosophy

References

• Berrand Russell entry by Andrew David Irvine in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Further reading

• What Are the Modern Classics? The Baruch Poll of Great Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, Douglas P. Lackey, Philosophical Forum 30(4): 329-346 (1999).
• American Philosophical Association
• Epistemology Research Guide
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Annotated Bibliography on Analysis
• Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: An Annotated Bibliography
• London Philosophy Study Guide