Philosopher Works 1-10

The Republic

Plato — Ideal society ruled by philosopher-kings; Allegory of the Cave, Forms, and Noble Lie.

Symposium

Plato — Discussion of love; Diotima's ladder of love and the myth of humans split in half.

Meno

Plato — Socrates teaches a slave boy geometry to demonstrate recollection.

Phaedo

Plato — Socrates' final hours and four arguments for the soul's immortality.

Ion

Plato — Poets are divinely inspired; reciters are compared to rings on a magnetic chain.

Seventh Letter

Plato — Account of involvement in Sicilian politics with Dion and Dionysius.

Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle — Golden mean between extremes; eudaimonia or human flourishing.

Poetics

Aristotle — Tragedy, catharsis, hamartia, and mimesis or imitation.

Physics

Aristotle — Nature, change, purpose, and the four causes.

Metaphysics

Aristotle — Fundamental questions about being, substance, and ultimate causes.

On the Parts of Animals

Aristotle — Biology and teleology; nature acts toward purposes or ends.

Organon

Aristotle — Six logical works including Categories, which classifies predicates.

Critique of Pure Reason

Immanuel Kant — Phenomena vs. noumena; synthetic a priori knowledge; space and time as forms of intuition.

Critique of Practical Reason

Immanuel Kant — Moral philosophy, freedom, duty, and the categorical imperative.

Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Immanuel Kant — Universal moral laws; treat people as ends rather than merely means.

Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

Immanuel Kant — Introduction to transcendental idealism and the limits of knowledge.

Perpetual Peace

Immanuel Kant — Political conditions necessary for lasting peace between nations.

What Is Enlightenment?

Immanuel Kant — Sapere aude, meaning dare to know; think for yourself.

Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason

Immanuel Kant — Interpreting religion through reason and moral principles.

Apology

Socrates (written by Plato) — Defense at trial; gadfly, corrupting the youth, and unexamined life.

Crito

Socrates (written by Plato) — Refuses to escape prison because he believes he must respect Athens' laws.

Euthyphro

Socrates (written by Plato) — Euthyphro dilemma about whether the gods love something because it is good.

Gorgias

Socrates (written by Plato) — Debates rhetoric, justice, and whether wrongdoing harms the soul.

Phaedrus

Socrates (written by Plato) — Soul as a charioteer controlling two winged horses; divine madness.

Symposium (Socrates)

Socrates (written by Plato) — Recounts Diotima's teaching about love.

The Gay Science

Friedrich Nietzsche — God is dead; madman; eternal recurrence and the demon in The Greatest Weight.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Friedrich Nietzsche — Übermensch; mankind as a rope between animal and Overman.

On the Genealogy of Morality

Friedrich Nietzsche — Master vs. slave morality; ressentiment, guilt, and ascetic ideals.

Beyond Good and Evil

Friedrich Nietzsche — Critique of traditional morality and philosophical assumptions.

Human, All Too Human

Friedrich Nietzsche — A Book for Free Spirits; rejection of traditional ideas about genius and morality.

The Birth of Tragedy

Friedrich Nietzsche — Apollonian order vs. Dionysian chaos and ecstasy.

Untimely Meditations

Friedrich Nietzsche — Includes Schopenhauer as Educator and On the Use and Disadvantage of History.

Twilight of the Idols

Friedrich Nietzsche — Criticizes Socrates and traditional philosophical values.

On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

Friedrich Nietzsche — Human concepts and truths are constructed through language and metaphor.

Meditations on First Philosophy

René Descartes — Evil demon, method of doubt, melting wax, Cogito, and mind-body dualism.

Discourse on Method

René Descartes — Systematic doubt and a method for finding certain knowledge.

Treatise on Man

René Descartes — Body as a machine; animal spirits and pineal gland.

Passions of the Soul

René Descartes — How emotions and bodily processes interact with the soul.

The World

René Descartes — Physical universe and its mechanical laws.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

John Locke — Tabula rasa; simple and complex ideas; prince and cobbler; sortal identity.

Two Treatises of Government

John Locke — Natural rights, labor theory of property, and right of revolution.

A Letter Concerning Toleration

John Locke — Religious tolerance, with exclusions for Catholics and atheists.

Some Thoughts Concerning Education

John Locke — Education, upbringing, and respecting children's development.

The Reasonableness of Christianity

John Locke — Rational interpretation of Christian belief.

Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina

John Locke — Political framework drafted for the Carolina colony.

Das Kapital

Karl Marx — Capitalism, commodities, surplus value, exploitation, and commodity fetishism.

The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx (with Engels) — Class struggle; specter haunting Europe; workers of the world unite.

Critique of the Gotha Programme

Karl Marx — Criticizes socialist party platform; from each according to ability, to each according to needs.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Karl Marx — Napoleon III; history repeats first as tragedy, then as farce.

Grundrisse

Karl Marx — Economic manuscripts developing ideas about labor, capital, and surplus value.

Theses on Feuerbach

Karl Marx — Human beings understood through social relations; philosophy should change the world.

The Poverty of Philosophy

Karl Marx — Criticism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's economic ideas.

The Civil War in France

Karl Marx — Defense and analysis of the Paris Commune.

The Civil War in the United States

Karl Marx — Writings about the American Civil War and slavery.

A Treatise of Human Nature

David Hume — Understanding, passions, morals; reason as slave to passions; is–ought problem.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

David Hume — Hume's fork; relations of ideas vs. matters of fact; causation and miracles.

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

David Hume — Cleanthes, Philo, Demea; God's existence and the design argument.

Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

David Hume — Includes Of Superstition and Enthusiasm and Of the Standard of Taste.

My Own Life

David Hume — Autobiographical account of his career and writings.

Political Discourses

David Hume — Essays on economics, commerce, and political subjects.

Being and Nothingness

Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism) — Bad faith; waiter who identifies entirely with his job; being-in-itself vs. being-for-itself.

Existentialism Is a Humanism

Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism) — Existence precedes essence; young man choosing between army and mother.

No Exit

Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism) — Inez, Garcin, and Estelle trapped together in Hell.

Being and Time

Martin Heidegger (Existentialism) — Dasein, the human mode of being.

Fear and Trembling

Søren Kierkegaard (Existentialism) — Abraham and Isaac; leap of faith; Agnes and the merman.

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir (Existentialism) — Feminist existentialism and the idea that womanhood is socially constructed.

The Ethics of Ambiguity

Simone de Beauvoir (Existentialism) — Sub-man and adventurer; existentialist ethics.

Critique of Dialectical Reason

Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism) — Practico-inert; seriality; existentialism and Marxism.

Way to Wisdom

Karl Jaspers (Existentialism) — Introduction to philosophy by an existentialist thinker.

Irrational Man

William Barrett (Existentialism) — English-language examination of existentialist philosophy.

Marx's Concept of Man

Erich Fromm (Existentialism) — Humanist interpretation of Marx associated with existentialist themes.