72 Philosophy Books Everyone Should Read

This is one of the 743 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.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
1079 Upanishads Unknown -799 Indian Sanskrit
14742 Abhinavagupta Abhinavagupta 1016 Indian Sanskrit
15786 Milinda Panha Unknown -100 Mulitple Pali
15786 The Fundamental Wisdom Of The Middle Way Nagarjuna, Jay L. Garfield -150 Unknown Sanskrit
17008 Dignaga's Investigation Of The Percept Douglas Duckworth 2016 Unknown English
15786 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
8327 Platform Sutra Huineng 713 Chinese Chinese
8493 Euthyphro Plato -399 Greek Ancient greek
2413 A Mathematician's Apology G. H. Hardy 1940 British English
7010 Crito Plato -389 Greek Ancient greek
1645 Phaedo Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
400 The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle -334 Greek Ancient greek
2916 Discourses Of Epictetus Epictetus -108 Greek Greek
405 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin
14665 On The Ends Of Good And Evil Marcus Tullius Cicero 45 Roman Latin
1052 Letters from a Stoic Seneca 64 Roman Latin
14647 Musonius Rufus Musonius Rufus, Cynthia King -30 Mixed Greek
312 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
17008 Japanese Philosophy John C. Maraldo, Thomas P. Kasulis, James W. Heisig 2011 American English
14901 Treasury Of The True Dharma Eye Kazuaki Tanahashi 2010 Japanese Japanese
15786 An Inquiry Into The Good Nishida Kitarō 1911 Japanese Japanese
15786 Watsuji Tetsuro's Rinrigaku Watsuji Tetsuro 1937 Japanese Japanese
14901 The Body Yasuo Yuasa 1987 Japanese Japanese
3546 The Improvement of Human Reason Ibn Tufayl 1170 Arabic Arabic
15786 Averroes George F. Hourani 1961 American English
17008 The Philosophical Works Of Al Kindi Peter Adamson, Peter E. Pormann 2012 Unknown English
1459 The City of God Augustine 413 Roman Latin
3285 On Being And Essence Thomas Aquinas 1256 Italian Latin
14734 Summulae De Dialectica John Buridan, Gyula Klima 1350 French Latin
15786 Tattvachintamani Gaṅgeśa 1321 Indian Sanskrit
15786 The Padārthatattvanirūpaṇam Of Raghunātha śiromaṇi Karl H. Potter 1957 Unknown Sanskrit
15786 Gadādhara's Śaktivāda Gadādharabhaṭṭācārya 1650 Unknown Sanskrit
1027 Meditations on First Philosophy Rene Descartes 1641 French Latin
2138 Tractatus Theologico Politicus Baruch de Spinoza 1670 Dutch Latin
1325 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding John Locke 1689 British English
951 Two Treatises of Government John Locke 1689 British English
1992 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding David Hume 1748 Scottish English
1188 The Spirit Of The Laws Montesquieu 1748 French French
938 Émile Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 French French
457 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
1295 Phenomenology of Mind G. W. F. Hegel 1807 German German
15786 Idealism And The Endgame Of Theory F. W. J. Schelling 1800 German German
773 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
16650 The Tale Of The Eloquent Peasant R. B. Parkinson 1971 Egyptian Egyptian
17008 La Charte Du Mandé Et Autres Traditions Du Mali Aboubakar Fofana, Jean-Louis Sagot 2003 French Unknown
15786 Treatise Of Zera Yacob Zera Yacob 1667 Ethiopian Ge'ez
15786 Mi'raj Al Su'ud Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti, Hunqick J. 1615 Malian Unknown
17008 Sage Philosophy Henry Odera Oruka 1990 Kenyan English
2631 Logical Investigations Edmund Husserl 1900 German German
15786 The Apriori Foundations Of The Civil Law Adolf Reinach 1913 German German
15786 The Literary Work Of Art Roman Ingarden 1931 Polish German
406 The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus 1942 French French
636 Being and Nothingness Jean Paul Sartre 1943 French French
5513 The Logic of Scientific Discovery Karl Popper 1934 Austrian German
414 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
17008 Against Method Paul Feyerabend 1975 German English
1340 The Principles of Psychology William James 1890 American English
14643 De Anima Aristotle -350 Greek Ancient greek
17008 The Routledge Handbook Of Panpsychism William Seager 2020 Canadian English
4855 The Foundations Of Arithmetic Gottlob Frege 1884 German German
14732 Logic And Knowledge Bertrand Russell 1956 British English
367 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein 1921 Austrian German
438 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
9685 Black Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon 1952 French French
2263 The Wretched of the Earth Frantz Fanon 1961 Algerian French
2360 The Arcades Project Walter Benjamin 1982 German German
1537 On the Genealogy of Morality Friedrich Nietzsche 1887 German German
1954 Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault 1975 French French
17008 Spurs Jacques Derrida 1976 French French
17008 Justice As Fairness John Rawls 2001 American English
17008 If You're An Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? G. A. Cohen 2000 British English
17008 Justice For Hedgehogs Ronald Dworkin 2011 American English