List of important publications in philosophy

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This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

This is a list of important publications in philosophy, organized by field. The publications on this list are regarded as important because they have served or are serving as one or more of the following roles:

• Foundation – A publication whose ideas would go on to be the foundation of a topic or field within philosophy.
• Breakthrough – A publication that changed or added to philosophical knowledge significantly.
• Influence – A publication that has had a significant impact on the academic study of philosophy or the world.

Historical philosophical texts

European and Islamic philosophy

Ancient philosophy

• Parmenides (c. early 5th century). On Nature.
• Plato (early period, c. 399 – c. 387 BC). Apology.
• Plato (early period). Crito.
• Plato (early period). Euthyphro.
• Plato (early period). Gorgias.
• Plato (early period). Protagoras.
• Plato (early transitional period, c. 387 – c. 380 BC). Cratylus.
• Plato (early transitional period). Meno.
• Plato (middle period, c. 380 – c. 360 BC). Phaedo.
• Plato (middle period). Symposium.
• Plato (late transitional period, c. 360 – c. 355 BC). Parmenides.
• Plato (late transitional period). Theaetetus.
• Plato (late transitional period). Phaedrus.
• Plato (late period, c. 355 – c. 347 BC). Laws.
• Plato (late period). Timaeus.
• Plato (Bk. 1, early period. Bks. 2-10, late period). The Republic.
• Aristotle (fl. 384 – 322 BC). Organon.
• Aristotle. Physics.
• Aristotle. Metaphysics.
• Aristotle. On the Soul.
• Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics.
• Aristotle. Politics.
• Aristotle. Rhetoric.
• Aristotle. Poetics.
• Lucretius (fl. 99 – 55 BC). On the Nature of Things.
• Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BC – 65AD). Letters from a Stoic
• Marcus Aurelius (161 – 180 AD). Meditations.
• Epictetus (125 AD). Enchiridion.
• Plotinus (270 AD). Enneads.

Medieval philosophy

• Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, c. AD 397
• Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, early 5th century
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, c. 500
• Avicenna, The Book of Healing
• Avicenna, Proof of the Truthful
• 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
• Anselm, Proslogion
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, c. 1260
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae

Early modern philosophy

Title page of Advancement of Learning by Francis Bacon

• Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, 1509 (printed 1511)
• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513 (printed 1532)
• Sir Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620
• Hugo Grotius, De iure belli ac pacis, 1625
• René Descartes, Discourse on the Method , 1637
• René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641
• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651
• Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670
• Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, 1677
• Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1677
• John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 1689
• John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689
• Gottfried Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, 1686
• Gottfried Leibniz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, 1704 (printed 1765)
• Gottfried Leibniz, Théodicée, 1710
• Gottfried Leibniz, Monadology, 1714 (printed 1720)
• George Berkeley, Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710
• David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 1738–1740
• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748
• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 1751
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, 1750
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile: or, On Education, 1762
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762
• Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759
• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 1781
• Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, 1785
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 1788
• Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, 1790
• Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Foundations of the Science of Knowledge, 1794
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit , 1807
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Science of Logic, 1812–1817
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, 1820
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, printed 1837
• Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 1819–1859
• Auguste Comte, Course of Positive Philosophy, 1830-1842
• Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1843
• Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1843
• Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, 1844
• Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, 1844
• Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
• Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867–1894
• John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1861–1863
• John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor Mill, The Subjection of Women, 1869
• Herbert Spencer, System of Synthetic Philosophy, 1862-1892
• Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 1874
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883–1891
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886
• Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887
• Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, 1896

Asian philosophy

Indian philosophy

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

Thirukkural

Chinese philosophy

Zhou Dynasty

• Kongzi, Analects (likely written later by followers)
• Kongzi, Five Classics (compiled)
• Sunzi, Art of War
• Laozi, Dao De Jing

Warring States

• Mengzi, [The] Mengzi
• Han Fei, [The] Han Feizi

Song Dynasty

• Zhou Dunyi, The Taiji Tushuo
• Zhu Xi, Four Books [compiled]
• Zhu Xi, Reflections on Things at Hand, 1175

Japanese philosophy

Pre-Meiji Buddhism

• Kukai, Attaining Enlightenment in this Very Existence, 817
• Honen, One-Sheet Document, 1212
• Shinran, Kyogyoshinsho, 1224
• Dogen Zenji, Shōbōgenzō, 1231-1253
• Hakuin Ekaku, Wild Ivy

Early modern

• Zeami Motokiyo, Style and Flower, approx. 1400 AD
• Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, approx. 1600 AD

Contemporary philosophical texts

Phenomenology and existentialism

• Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations (1900/1901)
• Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (1913)
• Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1927)
• Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations (1931)
• Albert Camus, Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943)
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1945)
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960)

Hermeneutics and deconstruction

• Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (1960)
• Paul Ricœur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (1965)
• Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (1967)

Structuralism and post-structuralism

• Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (1966)
• Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (1968)
• Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972-1980)
• Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman (1974)
• Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975)

Critical theory and Marxism

• Georg Lukacs, "History and Class Consciousness" (1923)
• Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (1941)
• Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)
• Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (1945)
• Louis Althusser, Reading Capital (1965)
• Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics (1966)
• Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action (1981)
• Alain Badiou, Being and Event (1988)

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)
• Stanley Cavell,The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (1979,1999)
• Roderick Chisholm, A Theory of Knowing
• Alvin Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition
• Alvin Goldman, "What is Justified Belief?"
• John McDowell, Mind and World
• Susan Haack, Evidence and Enquiry
• Laurence Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge
• Stephen Stich, The Fragmentation of Reason
• Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits
• Keith DeRose, The Case for Contextualism
• Jason Stanley, Knowledge and Practical Interest
• Hilary Kornblith, Knowledge and its Place in Nature
• Jonathan Kvanvig, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding
• David K. Lewis, Elusive Knowledge
• Willard van Orman Quine, "Epistemology Naturalized"
• Peter Unger, Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism

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
• 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
• John McDowell, Mind and World
• Timothy Williamson, Modal Logic as Metaphysics
• Stephen Mumford, Dispositions
• Theodore Sider, Writing the Book of the World
• David Chalmers, Constructing the World
• James Ladyman, Don Ross, David Spurrett, John Collier, Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized

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
• Thomas Nagel, "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?"
• Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere
• Hilary Putnam, The Meaning of Meaning
• Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 1949
• Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, 1956
• John Searle, Intentionality
• Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind
• Ruth Millikan, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories.
• Jerry Fodor, The Language of Thought
• Jerry Fodor, The Modularity of Mind
• Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind
• Tyler Burge, Anti-Individualism and the Mental
• Paul Churchland, Eliminative Materialism and Propositional Attitudes
• Stephen Stich, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science
• David K. Lewis, An Argument for the Identity Theory

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
• Alvin Plantinga, 'Is Belief in God Properly Basic', 1981
• Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, 1979
• William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument, 1979
• J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, 1982
• Dewi Zephaniah Phillips, 'Religion Without Explanation'
• J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason, 1993
• William Rowe, 'The Evidential Argument from Evil: A Second Look', 1996

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
• David K. Lewis, 'How to Define Theoretical Terms', 1970.
• Bas C. van Fraassen, The Scientific Image, 1980
• Larry Laudan, 'The Demise of the Demarcation Problem', 1983

Aesthetics

• R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art
• Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, 1968
• Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art
• Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory

Ethics and value theory

Ethics

• G. E. M. Anscombe, Modern Moral Philosophy
• 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 and 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
• Peter Singer, Practical Ethics
• Michael A. Smith, The Moral Problem
• Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

Meta-ethics

• P. F. Strawson, Freedom and Resentment

Bioethics

• Don Marquis, "Why Abortion is Immoral"
• 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)

Identity

• Judith Butler, 'Performative Acts and Gender Constitution', (1988)
• Edward Said, Orientalism

Social philosophy

Philosophy of economics

• Kenneth Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values
• 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
• Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy 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
• Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty
• Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice

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"
• Donald Davidson, "Truth and Meaning"

Philosophy of language

• Gottlob Frege, "On Sense and Reference"
• Bertrand Russell, "On Denoting"
• Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
• Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and Object
• J. L. Austin, "A Plea for Excuses"
• J. L. Austin, "How To Do Things With Words"
• Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity
• H. P. Grice, "Logic and Conversation"
• Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language
• Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? (1969)
• John Searle, Speech Acts
• Cora Diamond, What Nonsense Might Be
• Robert Brandom, Making it Explicit
• David K. Lewis, 'General Semantics'
• David Chalmers, 'Two Dimensional Semantics'

Philosophy of mathematics

• Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica
• Paul Benacerraf What Numbers Could not Be
• Paul Benacerraf, Mathematical Truth
• Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings
• George Boolos, Logic, Logic and Logic
• Imre Lakatos, Proofs and Refutations
• Penelope Maddy, Second Philosophy.
• Hartry Field, Science without Numbers: The Defence of Nominalism.

Chinese and Japanese thought

• Feng Youlan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 1934
• Feng Youlan, New Rational Philosophy, 1939
• Kitaro Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, 1911
• Kitaro Nishida, From the Acting to the Seeing, 1923–27
• Suzuki Daisetsu Teitaro, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism, 1934
• Nishitani Keiji, Religion and Nothingness, 1961

See also

• List of years in philosophy

References

• Irvine, Andrew David. "Bertrand Russell". In Zalta, Edward N. 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