72 Philosophy Books Everyone Should Read

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

The Institute of Art and Ideas, 77 Books

The Institute of Art and Ideas asked experts across the philosophy discipline to put together a list of their recommended philosophy books that everyone should read.

This list was originally published in 2018 and was added to this site about 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
1083 Upanishads Unknown -799 Indian Sanskrit
14830 Abhinavagupta Abhinavagupta 1016 Indian Sanskrit
15915 Milinda Panha Unknown -100 Mulitple Pali
15915 The Fundamental Wisdom Of The Middle Way Nagarjuna, Jay L. Garfield -150 Unknown Sanskrit
17161 Dignaga's Investigation Of The Percept Douglas Duckworth 2016 Unknown English
15915 A Guide To The Bodhisattva Way Of Life Santideva 700 Indian Sanskrit
621 Analects Confucius -479 Chinese Classical chinese
585 Tao Te Ching Lao Tsu -300 Chinese Classical chinese
8342 Platform Sutra Huineng 713 Chinese Chinese
8511 Euthyphro Plato -399 Greek Ancient greek
2420 A Mathematician's Apology G. H. Hardy 1940 British English
7021 Crito Plato -389 Greek Ancient greek
1647 Phaedo Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
402 The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle -334 Greek Ancient greek
2922 Discourses Of Epictetus Epictetus -108 Greek Greek
405 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin
14752 On The Ends Of Good And Evil Marcus Tullius Cicero 45 Roman Latin
1054 Letters from a Stoic Seneca 64 Roman Latin
14730 Musonius Rufus Musonius Rufus, Cynthia King -30 Mixed Greek
313 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
17161 Japanese Philosophy John C. Maraldo, Thomas P. Kasulis, James W. Heisig 2011 American English
14985 Treasury Of The True Dharma Eye Kazuaki Tanahashi 2010 Japanese Japanese
15915 An Inquiry Into The Good Nishida Kitarō 1911 Japanese Japanese
15915 Watsuji Tetsuro's Rinrigaku Watsuji Tetsuro 1937 Japanese Japanese
14985 The Body Yasuo Yuasa 1987 Japanese Japanese
3551 The Improvement of Human Reason Ibn Tufayl 1170 Arabic Arabic
15915 Averroes George F. Hourani 1961 American English
17161 The Philosophical Works Of Al Kindi Peter Adamson, Peter E. Pormann 2012 Unknown English
1459 The City of God Augustine 413 Roman Latin
3291 On Being And Essence Thomas Aquinas 1256 Italian Latin
14821 Summulae De Dialectica John Buridan, Gyula Klima 1350 French Latin
15915 Tattvachintamani Gaṅgeśa 1321 Indian Sanskrit
15915 The Padārthatattvanirūpaṇam Of Raghunātha śiromaṇi Karl H. Potter 1957 Unknown Sanskrit
15915 Gadādhara's Śaktivāda Gadādharabhaṭṭācārya 1650 Unknown Sanskrit
1030 Meditations on First Philosophy Rene Descartes 1641 French Latin
2149 Tractatus Theologico Politicus Baruch de Spinoza 1670 Dutch Latin
1327 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding John Locke 1689 British English
952 Two Treatises of Government John Locke 1689 British English
1997 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding David Hume 1748 Scottish English
1190 The Spirit Of The Laws Montesquieu 1748 French French
939 Émile Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 French French
458 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
1295 Phenomenology of Mind G. W. F. Hegel 1807 German German
15915 Idealism And The Endgame Of Theory F. W. J. Schelling 1800 German German
774 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
173 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
140 The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir 1949 French French
16806 The Tale Of The Eloquent Peasant R. B. Parkinson 1971 Egyptian Egyptian
17161 La Charte Du Mandé Et Autres Traditions Du Mali Aboubakar Fofana, Jean-Louis Sagot 2003 French Unknown
15915 Treatise Of Zera Yacob Zera Yacob 1667 Ethiopian Ge'ez
15915 Mi'raj Al Su'ud Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti, Hunqick J. 1615 Malian Unknown
17161 Sage Philosophy Henry Odera Oruka 1990 Kenyan English
2635 Logical Investigations Edmund Husserl 1900 German German
15915 The Apriori Foundations Of The Civil Law Adolf Reinach 1913 German German
15915 The Literary Work Of Art Roman Ingarden 1931 Polish German
408 The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus 1942 French French
638 Being and Nothingness Jean Paul Sartre 1943 French French
5523 The Logic of Scientific Discovery Karl Popper 1934 Austrian German
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
17161 Against Method Paul Feyerabend 1975 German English
1342 The Principles of Psychology William James 1890 American English
14726 De Anima Aristotle -350 Greek Ancient greek
17161 The Routledge Handbook Of Panpsychism William Seager 2020 Canadian English
4865 The Foundations Of Arithmetic Gottlob Frege 1884 German German
14820 Logic And Knowledge Bertrand Russell 1956 British English
369 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein 1921 Austrian German
440 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
9707 Black Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon 1952 French French
2273 The Wretched of the Earth Frantz Fanon 1961 Algerian French
2369 The Arcades Project Walter Benjamin 1982 German German
1539 On the Genealogy of Morality Friedrich Nietzsche 1887 German German
1959 Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault 1975 French French
17161 Spurs Jacques Derrida 1976 French French
17161 Justice As Fairness John Rawls 2001 American English
17161 If You're An Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? G. A. Cohen 2000 British English
17161 Justice For Hedgehogs Ronald Dworkin 2011 American English