The Greatest Philosophical Books of All Time

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This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 759 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
405 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin
408 The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus 1942 French French
410 The Razor's Edge W. Somerset Maugham 1944 British English
412 Jacques the Fatalist and His Master Denis Diderot 1796 French French
417 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas Kuhn 1962 American English
431 Memoirs From Beyond the Grave François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand 1849 French French
434 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 1943 American English
438 Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953 Austrian German
440 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
442 The Magus John Fowles 1965 British English
444 The Man Who Was Thursday G. K. Chesterton 1908 British English
445 I'm Not Stiller Max Frisch 1954 Swiss German
446 Joseph and His Brothers Thomas Mann 1933 German German
458 Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1781 German German
461 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
462 The Prophet Kahlil Gibran 1923 Lebanese English
463 The Songs of Maldoror Comte de Lautréamont 1868 French French
465 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
468 Daniel Deronda George Eliot 1876 British English
473 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
479 Four Quartets T. S. Eliot 1943 British English
485 Tristes Tropiques Claude Lévi-Strauss 1955 French French
491 Bouvard et Pécuchet Gustave Flaubert 1881 French French
493 Auto Da Fé Elias Canetti 1935 Bulgarian German
494 The Third Policeman Flann O'Brien 1967 Irish English
498 The Immoralist André Gide 1902 French French
504 Her Lover Albert Cohen 1968 Swiss French
505 The Quran Unknown 610 Arabic Arabic
506 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
516 Season of Migration to the North Al-Tayyib Salih 1966 Sudanese Arabic
517 Being and Time Martin Heidegger 1927 German German
518 The Odes Horace 23 Roman Latin
527 The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 French French
528 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick 1968 American English
529 Life Is a Dream Pedro Calderón de la Barca 1635 Spanish Spanish
531 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
532 The Passion According to G.H. Clarice Lispector 1964 Brazilian Portuguese
534 Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie 1988 British English
537 The Waning of the Middle Ages Johan Huizinga 1919 Dutch Dutch
543 Discourse on Method Rene Descartes 1637 French French
553 The Dispossessed Ursula K. Le Guin 1974 American English
557 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 1903 American English
561 The Recognitions William Gaddis 1955 American English
568 The Mandarins Simone de Beauvoir 1954 French French
582 Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 1946 Austrian German
585 Tao Te Ching Lao Tsu -300 Chinese Classical chinese
591 Stories of Guy de Maupassant Guy de Maupassant 1880 French French
592 The Sleepwalkers Hermann Broch 1932 Austrian German
593 Complete Poems of Giacomo Leopardi Giacomo Leopardi 1831 Italian Italian
596 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
603 Barabbas Par Lagerkvist 1950 Swedish Swedish
604 The Blind Owl Ṣādiq Hidāyat 1937 Iranian Persian
609 The Opposing Shore Julien Gracq 1951 French French
610 Requiem Anna Akhmatova 1963 Russian Russian
616 The Rebel Albert Camus 1951 French French
618 Poems of W. H. Auden W. H. Auden 1930 British English
619 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles 1949 American English
621 Analects Confucius -479 Chinese Classical chinese
622 Elective Affinities Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1809 German German
627 The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus Christopher Marlowe 1604 British English
631 The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder 1927 American English
632 Dom Casmurro Machado de Assis 1899 Brazilian Portuguese
634 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 1974 American English
638 Being and Nothingness Jean Paul Sartre 1943 French French
639 Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke 1790 British English
645 A Study of History Arnold J. Toynbee 1934 British English
646 The Varieties of Religious Experience William James 1902 American English
650 The Flanders Road Claude Simon 1960 French French
653 Summa Theologica Thomas Aquinas 1274 Italian Latin
654 The Praise of Folly Erasmus 1511 Dutch Latin
657 The Elementary Particles Michel Houellebecq 1998 French French
659 Mythologies Roland Barthes 1957 French French
664 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy Joseph A. Schumpeter 1942 Austrian English
666 Humboldt's Gift Saul Bellow 1975 American English
667 The Book of Job Unknown -600 Israeli Hebrew
682 The Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper 1945 British English
689 Anton Reiser Karl Philipp Moritz 1785 German German
695 Boys Alive Pier Paolo Pasolini 1955 Italian Italian
697 The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald 1995 German German
721 Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1795 German German
724 Michael Kohlhaas Heinrich von Kleist 1810 German German
728 Erewhon Samuel Butler 1872 British English
730 Petersburg Andrei Bely 1913 Russian Russian
732 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul 1979 Trinidadian English
736 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Edward FitzGerald 1859 British English
740 Silence Shūsaku Endō 1966 Japanese Japanese
743 On Liberty John Stuart Mill 1859 British English
744 Moscow to the End of the Line Venedikt Yerofeev 1970 Russian Russian
749 The Fire Next Time James Baldwin 1963 American English
753 Henderson The Rain King Saul Bellow 1959 American English
756 The Labyrinth of Solitude Octavio Paz 1950 Mexican Spanish
766 Adolphe Benjamin Constant 1816 Swiss French
768 A Glastonbury Romance John Cowper Powys 1932 British English
769 A Voyage To Arcturus David Lindsay 1920 Scottish English
774 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
780 Maxims François duc de La Rochefoucauld 1665 French French
785 The Stechlin Theodor Fontane 1898 German German
787 Quotations from Chairman Mao Mao 1964 Chinese Chinese
796 The Fall Albert Camus 1956 French French
797 The Manuscript Found in Saragossa Jan Potocki 1805 Polish French
807 The Book of the City of Ladies Christine De Pizan 1405 French French
809 Poems by Machado Antonio Machado 1907 Spanish Spanish
812 Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot T. S. Eliot 1963 British English
816 The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia Samuel Johnson, Abraham Raimbach, Robert Smirke 1759 British English
826 Voss Patrick White 1957 Australian English
829 The Road to Serfdom Friedrich von Hayek 1944 Austrian English
830 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
835 The Art of War Sun Tzu -500 Chinese Classical chinese
844 Civilization and Its Discontents Sigmund Freud 1930 Austrian German
846 A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy Laurence Sterne 1768 British English
848 Der Judenstaat Theodor Herzl 1896 Austro-Hungarian German
850 The Revolt of the Masses José Ortega y Gasset 1930 Spanish Spanish
851 Essays, First And Second Series Ralph Waldo Emerson 1841 American English
863 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Galileo 1632 Italian Italian
870 Economy and Society Max Weber 1922 German German
873 Call to Arms Lu Xun 1922 Chinese Chinese
874 The Last Samurai Helen DeWitt 2000 American English
880 Orthodoxy G. K. Chesterton 1908 British English
881 Utopia Thomas More 1516 British Latin
883 Thaïs Anatole France 1890 French French