364 Must Read Philosophy Books

List Academy
September 18, 2021
September 29, 2023
Education

बेहतरीन दर्शनशास्त्र की पुस्तकें: दर्शन वह ज्ञान है जो परम सत्य और प्रकृति के सिद्धांतों और उनके कारणों से संबंधित है। दर्शन वास्तविकता की परीक्षा के लिए एक दृष्टिकोण है। दार्शनिक चिंतन मूल रूप से जीवन के अर्थ की खोज का पर्याय है।

वास्तव में, दर्शन स्वत्व का विज्ञान है, अर्थात प्रकृति और समाज, और मानव विचार और अनुभूति की प्रक्रिया के सामान्य नियम। दर्शन सामाजिक चेतना के रूपों में से एक है।

दर्शनशास्त्र क्या है ?

दर्शनशास्त्र उस अनुशासन का नाम है जो सत्य और ज्ञान की खोज करता है। व्यापक अर्थों में दर्शन तार्किक, व्यवस्थित और व्यवस्थित विचार की कला है। यह अनुभव और परिस्थिति के अनुसार पैदा होता है। यही कारण है कि दुनिया के अलग-अलग लोगों ने समय-समय पर अपने अनुभवों और परिस्थितियों के अनुसार अलग-अलग तरह के जीवन दर्शन को अपनाया है।

बेहतरीन दर्शनशास्त्र की पुस्तकें

A Book of Luminous Things

For A Book of Luminous Things, the Nobel prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz chose 300 of the world’s greatest poems written over the centuries, memorable for making the reality of the world concrete and instantaneous.

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A History Of Indian Philosophy

In this volume of philosophy book elaborate Buddhist and Jaina Philosophy and the six systems of Hindu thought; Samkara School of Vedanta besides the philosophy of the Yoga-vasistha and the Bhagavadgita; detailed account of the principal dualistic and pluralistic system; the Bhagavata Purana, Madhva and his school; and Southern Schools of Saivism.

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A Brief History of Time

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a book on theoretical cosmology by English physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who had no prior knowledge of physics and people who are interested in learning something new about interesting subjects.
In A Brief History of Time, Hawking writes in non-technical terms about the structure, origin, development and eventual fate of the Universe, which is the object of study of astronomy and modern physics. He talks about basic concepts like space and time, basic building blocks that make up the Universe (such as quarks) and the fundamental forces that govern it (such as gravity). He writes about cosmological phenomena such as the Big Bang and black holes.

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A History of Western Philosophy

A History of Western Philosophy is a 1945 book by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. A survey of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the early 20th century, it was criticised for Russell’s over-generalization and omissions, particularly from the post-Cartesian period, but nevertheless became a popular and commercial success, and has remained in print from its first publication. When Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, A History of Western Philosophy was cited as one of the books that won him the award. Its success provided Russell with financial security for the last part of his life.

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A New Model of the Universe

A New Model of the Universe Written by Ouspensky. Ouspensky analyzes some ancient movements, both East and West, associating them with modern ideas, and explains them in the light of twentieth-century discoveries and speculation in physics and philosophy.

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A Theory of Justice

A Theory of Justice is a 1971 work of political philosophy and ethics by the philosopher John Rawls, in which the author attempts to provide a moral theory alternative to utilitarianism and that addresses the problem of distributive justice (the socially just distribution of goods in a society). The theory uses an updated form of Kantian philosophy and a variant form of conventional social contract theory. Rawls’s theory of justice is fully a political theory of justice as opposed to other forms of justice discussed in other disciplines and contexts.

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An Essay on Man

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a work by John Locke concerning the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. It first appeared in 1689 (although dated 1690) with the printed title An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. He describes the mind at birth as a blank slate (tabula rasa, although he did not use those actual words) filled later through experience. The essay was one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern philosophy, and influenced many enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley.
Book I of the Essay is Locke’s attempt to refute the rationalist notion of innate ideas. Book II sets out Locke’s theory of ideas, including his distinction between passively acquired simple ideas—such as “red,” “sweet,” “round”—and actively built complex ideas, such as numbers, causes and effects, abstract ideas, ideas of substances, identity, and diversity. Locke also distinguishes between the truly existing primary qualities of bodies, like shape, motion and the arrangement of minute particles, and the secondary qualities that are “powers to produce various sensations in us” such as “red” and “sweet.”

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A Preface to Morals

Walter Lippmann was an influential journalist and political theorist of the 20th century. A Preface to Morals, his best-known and most influential book, was first published in 1929.

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An Essay on the Principle of Population

The book An Essay on the Principle of Population was first published anonymously in 1798, but the author was soon identified as Thomas Robert Malthus. The book warned of future difficulties, on an interpretation of the population increasing in geometric progression (so as to double every 25 years) while food production increased in an arithmetic progression, which would leave a difference resulting in the want of food and famine, unless birth rates decreased.While it was not the first book on population, Malthus’s book fuelled debate about the size of the population in Britain and contributed to the passing of the Census Act 1800. This Act enabled the holding of a national census in England, Wales and Scotland, starting in 1801 and continuing every ten years to the present. The book’s 6th edition (1826) was independently cited as a key influence by both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in developing the theory of natural selection.

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Areopagitica

Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England is a 1644 prose polemic by the English poet, scholar, and polemical author John Milton opposing licensing and censorship. Areopagitica is among history’s most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression. Many of its expressed principles have formed the basis for modern justifications.

Bhagavad-Gita As It Is

The Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is is a translation and commentary of the Bhagavad Gita by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), commonly known as the Hare Krishna movement. The Bhagavad Gita emphasizes a path of devotion toward the personal God, Krishna. It was first published in 1968 in English by Macmillan Publishers, and is now available in nearly sixty languages. It is primarily promoted and distributed by followers of ISKCON. The Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is is considered by adherents of the ISKCON movement and many Vedic scholars to be one of the finest literary works of Vaishnavism translated into English.

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Collected Essays of George Orwell

George Orwell covers in this selection of essays, from his childhood schooling and writing profession to his thoughts on the Spanish Civil War and British Imperialism.

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The Analects

The Analects also known as the Analects of Confucius, is an ancient Chinese book composed of a large collection of sayings and ideas attributed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius and his contemporaries, traditionally believed to have been compiled and written by Confucius’s followers. It is believed to have been written during the Warring States period (475–221 BC), and it achieved its final form during the mid-Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD).

A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (commonly called Treatise) is a 1710 work, in English, by Irish Empiricist philosopher George Berkeley. This book largely seeks to refute the claims made by Berkeley’s contemporary John Locke about the nature of human perception. Whilst, like all the Empiricist philosophers, both Locke and Berkeley agreed that we are having experiences, regardless of whether material objects exist, Berkeley sought to prove that the outside world (the world which causes the ideas one has within one’s mind) is also composed solely of ideas. Berkeley did this by suggesting that “Ideas can only resemble Ideas” – the mental ideas that we possess can only resemble other ideas (not material objects) and thus the external world consists not of physical form, but rather of ideas. This world is (or, at least, was) given logic and regularity by some other force, which Berkeley concludes is God.

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A Treatise of Human Nature

A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1739–40) is a book by Scottish philosopher David Hume, considered by many to be Hume’s most important work and one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. The Treatise is a classic statement of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. In the introduction Hume presents the idea of placing all science and philosophy on a novel foundation: namely, an empirical investigation into human nature. Impressed by Isaac Newton’s achievements in the physical sciences, Hume sought to introduce the same experimental method of reasoning into the study of human psychology, with the aim of discovering the “extent and force of human understanding”.

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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume, published in English in 1748. It was a revision of an earlier effort, Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, published anonymously in London in 1739–40. Hume was disappointed with the reception of the Treatise, which “fell dead-born from the press,” as he put it, and so tried again to disseminate his more developed ideas to the public by writing a shorter and more polemical work.
The end product of his labours was the Enquiry. The Enquiry dispensed with much of the material from the Treatise, in favor of clarifying and emphasizing its most important aspects. For example, Hume’s views on personal identity do not appear. However, more vital propositions, such as Hume’s argument for the role of habit in a theory of knowledge, are retained.

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An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

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Apology (Plato)

The Apology of Socrates (Greek: Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους, Apología Sokrátous; Latin: Apologia Socratis), written by Plato, is a Socratic dialogue of the speech of legal self-defence which Socrates spoke at his trial for impiety and corruption in 399 BC.Specifically, the Apology of Socrates is a defence against the charges of “corrupting the youth” and “not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other daimonia that are novel” to Athens (24b).Among the primary sources about the trial and death of the philosopher Socrates (469–399 BC), the Apology of Socrates is the dialogue that depicts the trial, and is one of four Socratic dialogues, along with Euthyphro, Phaedo, and Crito, through which Plato details the final days of the philosopher Socrates.

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At the Feet of the Master

At the Feet of the Master is a book attributed to Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), authored when he was fourteen years old. Written under the name Alcyone, it was first published in 1910. The work was closely related to the so-called World Teacher Project, a contemporary messianic endeavor launched by the Theosophical Society. The book is considered a spiritual classic and was still in print as of 2012. By that time it had been published in dozens of editions and had been translated in many languages; by 2004 early editions were in the public domain. Throughout its publication history the work has also generated controversy, regarding the author’s identity.

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Avesta

The Avesta is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in Avestan language. The Avesta texts fall into several different categories, arranged either by dialect, or by usage. The principal text in the liturgical group is the Yasna, which takes its name from the Yasna ceremony, Zoroastrianism’s primary act of worship, and at which the Yasna text is recited.

Capital of Pain

Capitale de la douleur (Capital of Pain) is a book of poems by French surrealist poet Paul Éluard. The collection was first published in 1926.

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Corpus Aristotelicum

The Corpus Aristotelicum is the collection of Aristotle’s works that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle’s works that were lost or intentionally destroyed, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle’s school. Reference to them is made according to the organization of Immanuel Bekker’s nineteenth-century edition, which in turn is based on ancient classifications of these works.

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Daybreak

The Dawn of Day or Dawn or Daybreak is an 1881 book by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The Nietzsche scholar Keith Ansell-Pearson writes that Dawn is the least studied of all of Nietzsche’s works.

The Death of Virgil

The Death of Virgil (German: Der Tod des Vergil) is a 1945 novel by the Austrian author Hermann Broch. The narrative reenacts the last hours of life of the Roman poet Virgil, in the port of Brundisium (Brindisi), whence he had accompanied the emperor Augustus, his decision – frustrated by the emperor – to burn his Aeneid, and his final reconciliation with his destiny. Virgil’s heightened perceptions as he dies recall his life and the age in which he lives. The poet is in the interval between life and death, just as his culture hangs between the pagan and Christian eras. As he reflects, Virgil recognises that history is at a cusp and that he may have falsified reality in his attempt to create beauty.

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The Vedanta-sutra (brahma Sutras) Of Badarayana

The Brahma Sūtras (Sanskrit: ब्रह्म सूत्र) is a Sanskrit text, attributed to the sage Badarayana or sage Vyasa, estimated to have been completed in its surviving form in approx. 400-450 CE, while the original version might be ancient and composed between 500 BCE and 200 BCE.The text systematizes and summarizes the philosophical and spiritual ideas in the Upanishads.

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A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792), written by the 18th-century British proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th century who believed that women should not receive a rational education.

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Aristotle’s Way

In this handbook to his timeless teachings, Professor Edith Hall shows how ancient thinking is precisely what we need today, even if you don’t know your Odyssey from your Iliad. In ten practical lessons we come to understand more about our own characters and how to make good decisions.

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Art and Illusion

Art and Illusion, A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, is a 1960 book of art theory and history by Ernst Gombrich, derived from the 1956 A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. The book had a wide impact in art history, but also in history (e.g. Carlo Ginzburg, who called it “splendid”), aesthetics (e.g. Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art), semiotics (Umberto Eco’s Theory of Semiotics), and music psychology (Robert O. Gjerdingen’s schema theory of Galant style music).
In Art and Illusion, Gombrich argues for the importance of “schemata” in analyzing works of art: he claims that artists can only learn to represent the external world by learning from previous artists, so representation is always done using stereotyped figures and methods.

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Aspects of the Novel

Aspects of the Novel is a book compiled from a series of lectures delivered by E. M. Forster at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1927, in which he discussed the English language novel. By using examples from classic texts, he highlights the seven universal aspects of the novel: story, characters, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm.Some critics have taken issue with the fact that Forster, as a renowned novelist, formulated a normative theory of how to write prose. W. Somerset Maugham commented that, having read the book, “I learned that the only way to write novels was like Mr. E.M. Forster.” Virginia Woolf, reviewing Aspects of the Novel in Nation and Athenaeum, on the other hand, praised some aspects of the book. According to Woolf, Forster, unlike other male critics, never exercises stern authority to save the lady (i.e. fiction), he merely acts as a casual friend who happens to have been admitted into the bedroom. Woolf concedes, however, that this is ultimately not very helpful when it comes to formulating rules: “So then we are back in the old bog; nobody knows anything about the laws of fiction”.

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Atlas Shrugged

Atlas Shrugged is a 1957 novel by Ayn Rand. Rand’s fourth and final novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing. Atlas Shrugged includes elements of science fiction, mystery, and romance, and it contains Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism in any of her works of fiction. The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is “the role of man’s mind in existence”. The book explores a number of philosophical themes from which Rand would subsequently develop Objectivism. In doing so, it expresses the advocacy of reason, individualism, and capitalism, and depicts what Rand saw to be the failures of governmental coercion.
The book depicts a dystopian United States in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws and regulations. Railroad executive Dagny Taggart and her lover, steel magnate Hank Rearden, struggle against “looters” who want to exploit their productivity. Dagny and Hank discover that a mysterious figure called John Galt is persuading other business leaders to abandon their companies and disappear as a strike of productive individuals against the looters. The novel ends with the strikers planning to build a new capitalist society based on Galt’s philosophy of reason and individualism.
Atlas Shrugged received largely negative reviews after its 1957 publication, but achieved enduring popularity and ongoing sales in the following decades. After several unsuccessful attempts to adapt the novel for film or television, a film trilogy based on it was released from 2011 to 2014. The book has also achieved currency among libertarian and conservative thinkers and politicians.

Bad Science

Bad Science is a book by Ben Goldacre, criticising mainstream media reporting on health and science issues. It was published by Fourth Estate in September 2008. It has been positively reviewed by the British Medical Journal and the Daily Telegraph and has reached the Top 10 bestseller list for Amazon Books. It was shortlisted for the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize. Bad Science or BadScience is also the title of Goldacre’s column in The Guardian and his website.

Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson or An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man is the first volume of the All and Everything trilogy written by the Greek-Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff. The All and Everything trilogy also includes Meetings with Remarkable Men (first published in 1963) and Life Is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am’ (first privately printed in 1974).

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Enquiry Concerning Political Justice

Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness is a 1793 book by the philosopher William Godwin, in which the author outlines his political philosophy. It is the first modern work to expound anarchism.

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Ethics (Spinoza book)

Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (Latin: Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata), usually known as the Ethics, is a philosophical treatise written in Latin by Benedictus de Spinoza. It was written between 1661 and 1675 and was first published posthumously in 1677.
The book is perhaps the most ambitious attempt to apply the method of Euclid in philosophy. Spinoza puts forward a small number of definitions and axioms from which he attempts to derive hundreds of propositions and corollaries, such as “When the Mind imagines its own lack of power, it is saddened by it”, “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death”, and “The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal.”

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Jacques the Fatalist

Jacques the Fatalist and his Master is a novel by Denis Diderot, written during the period 1765–1780. The first French edition was published posthumously in 1796, but it was known earlier in Germany, thanks to Schiller’s partial translation, which appeared in 1785 and was retranslated into French in 1793, as well as Mylius’s complete German version of 1792.

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Poetics

Aristotle’s Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. In this text Aristotle offers an account of ποιητική, which refers to poetry or more literally “the poetic art,” deriving from the term for “poet; author; maker,”. Aristotle divides the art of poetry into verse drama (to include comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play), lyric poetry, and epic.

Selected Essays Of T. S. Eliot

Selected Essays, 1917-1932 is a collection of prose and literary criticism by T. S. Eliot. Eliot’s work fundamentally changed literary thinking and Selected Essays provides both an overview and an in-depth examination of his theory. It was published in 1932 by his employers, Faber & Faber, costing 12/6 . In addition to his poetry, by 1932, Eliot was already accepted as one of English Literature’s most important critics. In this position he was instrumental in the reviving interest in the long‐neglected Jacobean playwrights.

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Atlas

An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic features and political boundaries, many atlases often feature geopolitical, social, religious and economic statistics. They also have information about the map and places in it.

The Wisdom of Insecurity

In this fascinating book, Alan Watts explores man’s quest for psychological security, examining our efforts to find spiritual and intellectual certainty in the realms of religion and philosophy. The Wisdom of Insecurity underlines the importance of our search for stability in an age where human life seems particularly vulnerable and uncertain.

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Utopia

Utopia”A little, true book, not less beneficial than enjoyable, about how things should be in a state and about the new island Utopia” is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More (1478–1535), written in Latin and published in 1516. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social, and political customs. Many aspects of More’s description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.

Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān

Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān is an Arabic philosophical novel and an allegorical tale written by Ibn Tufail (c. 1105 – 1185) in the early 12th century in Al-Andalus. The name by which the book is also known include the Latin: ‘The Self-Taught Philosopher’; and English: The Improvementt of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan. Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān was named after an earlier Arabic philosophical romance of the same name, written by Avicenna during his imprisonment in the early 11th century, even though both tales had different stories.

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A Mathematician's Apology

A Mathematician’s Apology is a 1940 essay by British mathematician G. H. Hardy, which offers a defence of the pursuit of mathematics. Central to Hardy’s “apology” — in the sense of a formal justification or defence (as in Plato’s Apology of Socrates) — is an argument that mathematics has value independent of possible applications. Hardy located this value in the beauty of mathematics, and gave some examples of and criteria for mathematical beauty. The book also includes a brief autobiography, and gives the layman an insight into the mind of a working mathematician.

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A Study of History

A Study of History is a 12-volume universal history by the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, published from 1934–1961. It received enormous popular attention but according to historian Richard J. Evans, “enjoyed only a brief vogue before disappearing into the obscurity in which it has languished.” Toynbee’s goal was to trace the development and decay of 19 world civilizations in the historical record, applying his model to each of these civilizations, detailing the stages through which they all pass: genesis, growth, time of troubles, universal state, and disintegration.
The 19 major civilizations, as Toynbee sees them, are: Egyptian, Andean, Sinic, Minoan, Sumerian, Mayan, Indic, Hittite, Hellenic, Western, Orthodox Christian (Russia), Far Eastern, Orthodox Christian (main body), Persian, Arabic, Hindu, Mexican, Yucatec, and Babylonic. There are four “abortive civilizations” (Abortive Far Western Christian, Abortive Far Eastern Christian, Abortive Scandinavian, Abortive Syriac) and five “arrested civilizations” (Polynesian, Eskimo, Nomadic, Ottoman, Spartan), for a total of 28.

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An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

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Being and Nothingness

Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (French: L’Être et le néant : Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique), sometimes published with the subtitle A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 book by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. In the book, Sartre develops a philosophical account in support of his existentialism, dealing with topics such as consciousness, perception, social philosophy, self-deception, the existence of “nothingness”, psychoanalysis, and the question of free will.
While a prisoner of war in 1940 and 1941, Sartre read Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), which uses the method of Husserlian phenomenology as a lens for examining ontology. Sartre attributed the course of his own philosophical inquiries to his exposure to this work. Though influenced by Heidegger, Sartre was profoundly skeptical of any measure by which humanity could achieve a kind of personal state of fulfillment comparable to the hypothetical Heideggerian “re-encounter with Being”. In Sartre’s account, man is a creature haunted by a vision of “completion” (what Sartre calls the ens causa sui, meaning literally “a being that causes itself”), which many religions and philosophers identify as God. Born into the material reality of one’s body, in a material universe, one finds oneself inserted into being. In accordance with Husserl’s notion that consciousness can only exist as consciousness of something, Sartre develops the idea that there can be no form of self that is “hidden” inside consciousness. On these grounds, Sartre goes on to offer a philosophical critique of Sigmund Freud’s theories, based on the claim that consciousness is essentially self-conscious.
Being and Nothingness is regarded as both the most important non-fiction expression of Sartre’s existentialism and his most influential philosophical work, original despite its debt to Heidegger. Many have praised the book’s central notion that “existence precedes essence”, its introduction of the concept of bad faith, and its exploration of “nothingness”, as well as its novel contributions to the philosophy of sex. However, the book has been criticized for its abstruseness and for its treatment of Freud.

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Beyond Freedom and Dignity

Beyond Freedom and Dignity is a 1971 book by American psychologist B. F. Skinner. Skinner argues that entrenched belief in free will and the moral autonomy of the individual (which Skinner referred to as “dignity”) hinders the prospect of using scientific methods to modify behavior for the purpose of building a happier and better-organized society.
Beyond Freedom and Dignity may be summarized as an attempt to promote Skinner’s philosophy of science, the technology of human behavior, his conception of determinism, and what Skinner calls “cultural engineering”.

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Beyond Good and Evil

Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (German: Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft) is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that expands the ideas of his previous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra with a more critical and polemical approach. It was first published in 1886.
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality. Specifically, he accuses them of founding grand metaphysical systems upon the faith that the good man is the opposite of the evil man, rather than just a different expression of the same basic impulses that find more direct expression in the evil man. The work moves into the realm “beyond good and evil” in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual.

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Biographia Literaria

Biographia Literaria, or in full Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, is an autobiography in discourse by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which he published in 1817, in two volumes of twenty-three chapters. The first intended title of the work was Autobiographia Literaria. The formative influences of the work were Wordsworth’s theory of imagination, Kantian view of imagination as a shaping power (for which Coleridge later coined the neologism “esemplastic”), and David Hartley and the Associationist psychology.

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Candide

Candide, ou l’Optimisme ( kon-DEED, French: [kɑ̃did] (listen)) is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best (1759); Candide: or, The Optimist (1762); and Candide: Optimism (1947). It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism by his mentor, Professor Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide’s slow and painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes Candide with, if not rejecting Leibnizian optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, “we must cultivate our garden”, in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, “all is for the best” in the “best of all possible worlds”.
Candide is characterized by its tone as well as by its erratic, fantastical, and fast-moving plot. A picaresque novel with a story similar to that of a more serious coming-of-age narrative (Bildungsroman), it parodies many adventure and romance clichés, the struggles of which are caricatured in a tone that is bitter and matter-of-fact. Still, the events discussed are often based on historical happenings, such as the Seven Years’ War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. As philosophers of Voltaire’s day contended with the problem of evil, so does Candide in this short theological novel, albeit more directly and humorously. Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers. Through Candide, he assaults Leibniz and his optimism.Candide has enjoyed both great success and great scandal. Immediately after its secretive publication, the book was widely banned to the public because it contained religious blasphemy, political sedition, and intellectual hostility hidden under a thin veil of naïveté. However, with its sharp wit and insightful portrayal of the human condition, the novel has since inspired many later authors and artists to mimic and adapt it. Today, Candide is considered as Voltaire’s magnum opus and is often listed as part of the Western canon. It is among the most frequently taught works of French literature. The British poet and literary critic Martin Seymour-Smith listed Candide as one of the 100 most influential books ever written.

The Canon of Medicine

The Canon of Medicine is an encyclopedia of medicine in five books compiled by Persian Muslim physician-philosopher Avicenna and completed in 1025. It presents an overview of the contemporary medical knowledge of the Islamic world, which had been influenced by earlier traditions including Greco-Roman medicine (particularly Galen), Persian medicine, Chinese medicine and Indian medicine.

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Catiline Orations

The Catiline or Catilinarian Orations (Latin: M. Tullii Ciceronis Orationes in Catilinam) are a set of speeches to the Roman Senate given in 63 BC by Marcus Tullius Cicero, one of the year’s consuls, accusing a senator, Lucius Sergius Catilina (Catiline), of leading a plot to overthrow the Roman Senate. Most accounts of the events come from Cicero himself. Some modern historians, and ancient sources such as Sallust, suggest that Catiline was a more complex character than Cicero’s writings declare, and that Cicero was heavily influenced by a desire to establish a lasting reputation as a great Roman patriot and statesman. This is one of the best-documented events surviving from the ancient world, and has set the stage for classic political struggles pitting state security against civil liberties.

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Civil Disobedience

Resistance to Civil Government, called Civil Disobedience for short, is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War (1846–1848).

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Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

The Collected Poems was composed by Stevens himself shortly before his death, and includes all of his published poems, covering more than four decades. The collection was first published in the US in 1954.

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Common Sense

Common Sense is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine marshaled moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776 at the beginning of the American Revolution and became an immediate sensation.
It was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time (2.5 million), it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history. As of 2006, it remains the all-time best-selling American title and is still in print today.Common Sense made public a persuasive and impassioned case for independence, which had not yet been given serious intellectual consideration. Paine connected independence with common dissenting Protestant beliefs as a means to present a distinctly American political identity and structured Common Sense as if it were a sermon. Historian Gordon S. Wood described Common Sense as “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era.”The text was translated into French by Antoine Gilbert Griffet de Labaume in 1790.

Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. It is the second of Dostoevsky’s full-length novels following his return from ten years of exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his “mature” period of writing. The novel is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in literature.

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Critique of Pure Reason

Critique of Pure Reason (German: Kritik der reinen Vernunft; 1781; second edition 1787) is a book by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in which the author seeks to determine the limits and scope of metaphysics. Also referred to as Kant’s “First Critique”, it was followed by his Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and Critique of Judgment (1790). In the preface to the first edition, Kant explains that by a “critique of pure reason” he means a critique “of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive independently of all experience” and that he aims to reach a decision about “the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics.”

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Cybernetics

Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine is a book written by Norbert Wiener and published in 1948. It is the first public usage of the term “cybernetics” to refer to self-regulating mechanisms. The book laid the theoretical foundation for servomechanisms (whether electrical, mechanical or hydraulic), automatic navigation, analog computing, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and reliable communications.
A second edition with minor changes and two additional chapters was published in 1961.

Das Kapital

Das Kapital, also known as Capital: A Critique of Political Economy is a foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy, economics and politics by Karl Marx. Marx aimed to reveal the economic patterns underpinning the capitalist mode of production in contrast to classical political economists such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill.

De rerum natura

De rerum natura (Latin: [deː ˈreːrʊn naːˈtuːraː]; On the Nature of Things) is a first-century BC didactic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. The poem, written in some 7,400 dactylic hexameters, is divided into six untitled books, and explores Epicurean physics through poetic language and metaphors. Namely, Lucretius explores the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna (“chance”), and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities.

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Democracy in America

De La Démocratie en Amérique published in two volumes, (the first in 1835 and the second in 1840) is a classic French text by Alexis de Tocqueville. Its title translates as On Democracy in America, but English translations are usually simply entitled Democracy in America. In the book, Tocqueville examines the democratic revolution that he believed had been occurring over the previous several hundred years.

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Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo) is a 1632 Italian-language book by Galileo Galilei comparing the Copernican system with the traditional Ptolemaic system. It was translated into Latin as Systema cosmicum (English: Cosmic System) in 1635 by Matthias Bernegger. The book was dedicated to Galileo’s patron, Ferdinando II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who received the first printed copy on February 22, 1632.In the Copernican system, the Earth and other planets orbit the Sun, while in the Ptolemaic system, everything in the Universe circles around the Earth. The Dialogue was published in Florence under a formal license from the Inquisition. In 1633, Galileo was found to be “vehemently suspect of heresy” based on the book, which was then placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, from which it was not removed until 1835 (after the theories it discussed had been permitted in print in 1822). In an action that was not announced at the time, the publication of anything else he had written or ever might write was also banned in Catholic countries.

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Discourse on the Method

Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. It is best known as the source of the famous quotation “Je pense, donc je suis” (“I think, therefore I am”, or “I am thinking, therefore I exist”), which occurs in Part IV of the work. A similar argument, without this precise wording, is found in Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), and a Latin version of the same statement Cogito, ergo sum is found in Principles of Philosophy (1644).

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Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy is a long Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered to be the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem’s imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

Eichmann in Jerusalem

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a 1963 book by political theorist Hannah Arendt. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, reported on Adolf Eichmann’s trial for The New Yorker. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1964.

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Either/Or

Either/Or is the first published work of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Appearing in two volumes in 1843 under the pseudonymous editorship of Victor Eremita, it outlines a theory of human existence, marked by the distinction between an essentially hedonistic, aesthetic mode of life and the ethical life, which is predicated upon commitment.

The Enneads

The Enneads (Greek: Ἐννεάδες), fully The Six Enneads, is the collection of writings of Plotinus, edited and compiled by his student Porphyry (c. AD 270). Plotinus was a student of Ammonius Saccas and they were founders of Neoplatonism. His work, through Augustine of Hippo, the Cappadocian Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and several subsequent Christian and Muslim thinkers, has greatly influenced Western and Near-Eastern thought.

Escape from Freedom

Escape from Freedom is a book by the Frankfurt-born psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, first published in the United States by Farrar & Rinehart in 1941 with the title Escape from Freedom and a year later as The Fear of Freedom in UK by Routledge & Kegan Paul. It was translated into German and first published in 1952 under the title ‘Die Angst vor der Freiheit’ (The Fear of Freedom). In the book, Fromm explores humanity’s shifting relationship with freedom, with particular regard to the personal consequences of its absence. His special emphasis is the psychosocial conditions that facilitated the rise of Nazism.

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Fathers and Sons

Fathers and Sons (Russian: «Отцы и дети»; Otcy i deti, IPA: [ɐˈtsɨ i ˈdʲetʲi]; archaic spelling Отцы и дѣти), also translated more literally as Fathers and Children, is an 1862 novel by Ivan Turgenev, published in Moscow by Grachev & Co. It is one of the most acclaimed Russian novels of the 19th century.

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Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is a book by Irish writer James Joyce. It has been called “a work of fiction which combines a body of fables … with the work of analysis and deconstruction”. It is significant for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works in the Western canon. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years and published in 1939, Finnegans Wake was Joyce’s final work. The entire book is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, which blends standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words to unique effect.

First Principles

The first principles are given by the British philosopher Herbert Spencer. First Principles was published in 1862.

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Four Quartets

Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published over a six-year period. The first poem, Burnt Norton, was published with a collection of his early works (1936’s Collected Poems 1909–1935.) After a few years, Eliot composed the other three poems, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding, which were written during World War II and the air-raids on Great Britain. They were first published as a series by Faber and Faber in Great Britain between 1940 and 1942 towards the end of Eliot’s poetic career (East Coker in September 1940, Burnt Norton in February 1941, The Dry Salvages in September 1941 and Little Gidding in 1942.) The poems were not collected until Eliot’s New York publisher printed them together in 1943.

Fragments

Fragments are the work of Heraclitus. The ancient writings of Heraclitus were inadequate and misleading, and as Kirk wrote, understanding was often hindered by excessive dogma and the selective use of fragments.

Gitanjali

Gitanjali is a collection of poems by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore received the Nobel Prize for Literature, largely for the English translation, Song Offerings. It is part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. Its central theme is devotion, and its motto is ‘I am here to sing thee songs’ (No. XV).

God Speaks

God Speaks: The Theme of Creation and Its Purpose (ISBN 978-0-915828-02-9) is the principal book by Meher Baba, and the most significant religious text used by his followers. It covers Meher Baba’s view of the process of Creation and its purpose and has been in print continuously since 1955.

Guerrilla Warfare

Guerrilla Warfare (Spanish: La Guerra de Guerrillas) is a military handbook written by Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. Published in 1961 following the Cuban Revolution, it became a reference for thousands of guerrilla fighters in various countries around the world. The book draws upon Guevara’s personal experience as a guerrilla soldier during the Cuban Revolution, generalizing for readers who would undertake guerrilla warfare in their own countries.
The book identifies reasons for, prerequisites, and lessons of guerrilla warfare. The principal reason to conduct guerrilla warfare within a country is because all peaceful and legal means of recourse have been exhausted. The most important prerequisite for conducting guerrilla warfare in a country is the popular support of its people for the guerrilla army. Che asserted that the success of the Cuban Revolution provided three lessons: popular forces can win a war against a regular army, guerrillas can create their own favorable conditions (not needing to wait for ideal conditions to take shape), and in underdeveloped America, the basic place of operation for a guerrilla army is the countryside.

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Histories (Tacitus)

Histories (Latin: Historiae) is a Roman historical chronicle by Tacitus. Written c. 100–110, it covers c. 69–96, a period which includes the Year of Four Emperors following the downfall of Nero, as well as the period between the rise of the Flavian dynasty under Vespasian and the death of Domitian.Together, the Histories and the Annals amounted to 30 books. Saint Jerome refers to these books explicitly, and about half of them have survived. Although scholars disagree on how to assign the books to each work, traditionally, fourteen are assigned to Histories and sixteen to the Annals. Tacitus’ friend Pliny the Younger referred to “your histories” when writing to Tacitus about the earlier work.By the time Tacitus had completed the Histories, it covered Roman history from AD 69, following Nero’s death, to AD 96, the end of Domitian’s reign. The Annals deals with the five decades before Nero, from AD 14, the reign of Tiberius, to AD 68, when Nero died.

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I and Thou

Ich und Du, usually translated as I and Thou (You), is a book by Martin Buber, published in 1923, and first translated from German to English in 1937.

The I Ching: Or, Book of Changes

The I Ching or Yi Jing, usually translated as Book of Changes or Classic of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text and among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC), over the course of the Warring States period and early imperial period (500–200 BC) it was transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the “Ten Wings”.

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In Search of the Miraculous

In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching is a 1949 book by Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky which recounts his meeting and subsequent association with George Gurdjieff. It is widely regarded as the most comprehensive account of Gurdjieff’s system of thought ever published. It is regarded as “fundamental textbook” by many modern followers of Gurdjieff’s teachings, who often use it as a means of introducing new students to Gurdjieff’s system of self-development.

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Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Introduction to Psychoanalysis or Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (German: Einführung in die Psychoanalyse) is a set of lectures given by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in 1915–1917 (published 1916–1917, in English 1920). The 28 lectures offer an elementary stock-taking of his views of the unconscious, dreams, and the theory of neuroses at the time of writing, as well as offering some new technical material to the more advanced reader.The lectures became the most popular and widely translated of his works. However, some of the positions outlined in Introduction to Psychoanalysis would subsequently be altered or revised in Freud’s later work; and in 1932 he offered a second set of seven lectures numbered from 29–35—New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis—as complement (though these were never read aloud and featured a different, sometimes more polemical style of presentation).

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Japji Sahib

Japji Sahib is the Sikh thesis, that appears at the beginning of the Guru Granth Sahib – the scripture of the Sikhs. It was composed by Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. It begins with Mool Mantra and then follow 38 paudis (stanzas) and completed with a final Salok by Guru Nanak Dev Ji at the end of this composition. The 38 stanzas are in different poetic meters.

Jesus The Son Of Man

In Jesus Son of Man, Jesus is portrayed through the words of 77 contemporaries who knew him. Gibran allows the reader to see Jesus through the eyes of a group of people, enemies, and friends. Khalil Gibran was a Lebanese-American artist, poet, and author. And he is still celebrated as a literary hero.

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Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, written by American author Richard Bach and illustrated by Russell Munson, is a fable in novella form about a seagull who is trying to learn about life and flight, and a homily about self-perfection. Bach wrote it as a series of short stories that were published in Flying magazine in the late 1960s. It was first published in book form in 1970, and by the end of 1972 over a million copies were in print. Reader’s Digest published a condensed version, and the book reached the top of the New York Times Best Seller list, where it remained for 37 weeks. In 1972 and 1973, the book topped the Publishers Weekly list of bestselling novels in the United States.
In 2014 the book was reissued as Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The Complete Edition, which added a 17-page fourth part to the story.

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Journey to the End of the Night

Journey to the End of the Night (French: Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1932) is the first novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work follows the adventures of Ferdinand Bardamu in the First World War, colonial Africa, the United States and the poor suburbs of Paris where he works as a doctor.
The novel won the Prix Renaudot in 1932 but divided critics due to the author’s pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his innovative writing style based on working class speech, slang and neologisms. It is now widely considered to be one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

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Kabbalah

Kabbalah is an esoteric method, discipline, and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist in Judaism is called a Mequbbāl. The definition of Kabbalah varies according to the tradition and aims of those following it, from its religious origin as an integral part of Judaism, to its later adaptations in Western esotericism (Christian Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah). Jewish Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal God—the mysterious Ein Sof—and the mortal, finite universe (God’s creation). It forms the foundation of mystical religious interpretations within Judaism.

Karma Yoga (book)

Karma Yoga (The Yoga of action) is a book of lectures by Swami Vivekananda, as transcribed by Joseph Josiah Goodwin. It was published in February 1896 in New York City. Swami Vivekananda delivered a number of lectures in his rented rooms at 228 W 39th Street in New York City from December 1895 to January 1896. In 1895 friends and supporters of Swami Vivekananda hired Goodwin, a professional stenographer, who transcribed some of the lectures which were later published as this book. Goodwin later became a follower of Vivekananda.

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Life of Pi

Life of Pi is a Canadian philosophical novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist is Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, an Indian Tamil boy from Pondicherry who explores issues of spirituality and metaphysics from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger which raises questions about the nature of reality and how it is perceived and told. He is part of a Hindi speaking family.
The novel has sold more than ten million copies worldwide. It was rejected by at least five London publishing houses before being accepted by Knopf Canada, which published it in September 2001. The UK edition won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction the following year. It was also chosen for CBC Radio’s Canada Reads 2003, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee.The French translation L’Histoire de Pi was chosen in the French CBC version of the contest Le Combat des livres, where it was championed by Louise Forestier. The novel won the 2003 Boeke Prize, a South African novel award. In 2004, it won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Best Adult Fiction for years 2001–2003. In 2012 it was adapted into a feature film directed by Ang Lee with a screenplay by David Magee.

Life: A User's Manual

Life: A User’s Manual (the original title is La Vie mode d’emploi) is Georges Perec’s most famous novel, published in 1978, first translated into English by David Bellos in 1987. Its title page describes it as “novels”, in the plural, the reasons for which become apparent on reading. Some critics have cited the work as an example of postmodern fiction, but Perec preferred to avoid labels and his only long-term affiliation with any movement was with the Oulipo or OUvroir de LIttérature POtentielle.
La Vie mode d’emploi is a tapestry of interwoven stories and ideas as well as literary and historical allusions, based on the lives of the inhabitants of a fictitious Parisian apartment block, 11 rue Simon-Crubellier (no such street exists, although the quadrangle Perec claims Simon-Crubellier cuts through does exist in Paris XVII arrondissement). It was written according to a complex plan of writing constraints, and is primarily constructed from several elements, each adding a layer of complexity.

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Light on the Path

This book is of very ancient origin, written in the archaic form of Sanskrit. In its present form, it was given to England through Mabel Collins, a member of The Theosophical Society. The first edition of this book was published in 1885.

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Listen, Little Man!

Listen, Little Man! (German: Rede an den kleinen Mann) is a 1945 essay by Austro-Hungarian-American psychologist Wilhelm Reich outlining his libertarian socialist political philosophy, in particular its views on direct action as the only means for the working class to achieve liberation. It was translated into English in 1948 by Theodore Peter Wolfe.

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Mahabharata

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Ramayaṇa. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes and their successors.

Mahabharata

Malone Dies

Malone Dies is a novel by Samuel Beckett. It was first published in 1951, in French, as Malone meurt, and later translated into English by the author. Malone Dies contains the famous line, “Nothing is more real than nothing” – a metatextual echo of Democritus’ “Naught is more real than nothing,” which is referenced in Beckett’s first published novel, Murphy (1938).

Man and His Symbols

Man and His Symbols is the last work undertaken by Carl Jung before his death in 1961. First published in 1964, it is divided into five parts, four of which were written by associates of Jung: Marie-Louise von Franz, Joseph L. Henderson, Aniela Jaffé, and Jolande Jacobi. The book, which contains numerous illustrations, seeks to provide a clear explanation of Jung’s complex theories for a wide non-specialist readership.

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Man's Fate

Man’s Fate is a 1933 novel written by André Malraux. It was translated into English twice, both translations appearing in 1934, one by Haakon Chevalier under the title Man’s Fate, published by Harrison Smith & Robert Haas in New York and republished by Random House as part of their Modern Library from 1936 on, and the other by Alastair MacDonald under the title Storm in Shanghai, published by Methuen in London and republished, still by Methuen, in 1948 as Man’s Estate, to become a Penguin pocket in 1961. Currently the Chevalier translation is the only one still in regular print.

Man's Search for Meaning

Man’s Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then immersively imagining that outcome. According to Frankl, the way a prisoner imagined the future affected his longevity. The book intends to answer the question “How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?” Part One constitutes Frankl’s analysis of his experiences in the concentration camps, while Part Two introduces his ideas of meaning and his theory called logotherapy.

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Masnavi

The Masnavi, or Masnavi-ye-Ma’navi (Persian: مثنوی معنوی‎), also written Mathnawi, or Mathnavi, is an extensive poem written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi, also known as Rumi. The Masnavi is one of the most influential works of Sufism, commonly called “the Quran in Persian”. It has been viewed by many commentators as the greatest mystical poem in world literature. The Masnavi is a series of six books of poetry that together amount to around 25,000 verses or 50,000 lines. It is a spiritual text that teaches Sufis how to reach their goal of being truly in love with God.

Meditations

Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from AD 161 to 180, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement.

Meetings with Remarkable Men

Meetings with Remarkable Men’, autobiographical in nature, is the second volume of the All and Everything trilogy written by the Greek-Armenian spiritual teacher G. I. Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff started working on the Russian manuscript in 1927, revising it several times over the coming years. An English translation by A. R. Orage was first published in 1963.

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Memoirs of Hadrian

Memoirs of Hadrian is a novel by the Belgian-born French writer Marguerite Yourcenar about the life and death of Roman Emperor Hadrian. First published in France in French in 1951 as Mémoires d’Hadrien, the book was an immediate success, meeting with enormous critical acclaim. Although the historical Hadrian wrote an autobiography, it has been lost.
The book takes the form of a letter to Hadrian’s adoptive grandson and eventual successor “Mark” (Marcus Aurelius). The emperor meditates on military triumphs, love of poetry and music, philosophy, and his passion for his lover Antinous, all in a manner similar to Gustave Flaubert’s “melancholy of the antique world.”

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Mere Christianity

Mere Christianity is a 1952 theological book by C. S. Lewis, adapted from a series of BBC radio talks made between 1941 and 1944, while Lewis was at Oxford during the Second World War. Considered a classic of Christian apologetics, the transcripts of the broadcasts originally appeared in print as three separate pamphlets: The Case for Christianity (Broadcast Talks in the UK) (1942), Christian Behaviour (1943), and Beyond Personality (1944). Lewis was invited to give the talks by James Welch, the BBC Director of Religious Broadcasting, who had read his 1940 book, The Problem of Pain.

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Metamorphoses

The Metamorphoses is an 8 AD Latin narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid, considered his magnum opus. Comprising 11,995 lines, 15 books and over 250 myths, the poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework.
Although meeting the criteria for an epic, the poem defies simple genre classification by its use of varying themes and tones. Ovid took inspiration from the genre of metamorphosis poetry, and some of the Metamorphoses derives from earlier treatment of the same myths; however, he diverged significantly from all of his models.

On Growth and Form

The book covers many topics including the effects of scale on the shape of animals and plants, large ones necessarily being relatively thick in shape; the effects of surface tension in shaping soap films and similar structures such as cells; the logarithmic spiral as seen in mollusc shells and ruminant horns; the arrangement of leaves and other plant parts.

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On the Genealogy of Morality

It consists of a preface and three interrelated treatises that expand and follow through on concepts Nietzsche sketched out in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). The three treatises trace episodes in the evolution of moral concepts with a view to confronting “moral prejudices”, specifically those of Christianity and Judaism. Some Nietzsche scholars consider Genealogy to be a work of sustained brilliance and power as well as his masterpiece.

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On the Origin of Species

On the Origin of Species more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin that is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Darwin’s book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection.

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On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) of the Polish Renaissance. The book, first printed in 1543 in Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire, offered an alternative model of the universe to Ptolemy’s geocentric system, which had been widely accepted since ancient times.

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One Two Three... Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science

One Two Three… Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science is a popular science book by theoretical physicist George Gamow, first published in 1947, but still (as of 2020) available in print and electronic formats. The book explores a wide range of fundamental concepts in mathematics and science, written at a level understandable by middle school students up through “intelligent layman” adults.

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One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society is a 1964 book by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, in which the author offers a wide-ranging critique of both contemporary capitalism and the Communist society of the Soviet Union, documenting the parallel rise of new forms of social repression in both these societies, as well as the decline of revolutionary potential in the West.

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Orientalism

Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the eponymous term “Orientalism” as a critical concept to describe the West’s commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of “The East,” i.e. the Orient. Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power.According to Said, in the Middle East, the social, economic, and cultural practices of the ruling Arab elites indicate they are imperial satraps who have internalized a romanticized version of Arab Culture created by French, British and later, American, Orientalists. Examples used in the book include critical analyses of the colonial literature of Joseph Conrad, which conflates a people, a time, and a place into one narrative of an incident and adventure in an exotic land.Through the critical application of post-structuralism in its scholarship, Orientalism influenced the development of literary theory, cultural criticism, and the field of Middle-Eastern studies, especially with regards to how academics practice their intellectual inquiries when examining, describing, and explaining the Middle East. Moreover, the scope of Said’s scholarship established Orientalism as a foundational text in the field of postcolonial studies, by denoting and examining the connotations of Orientalism, and the history of a given country’s post-colonial period.As a public intellectual, Edward Said debated historians and scholars of area studies, notably, historian Bernard Lewis, who described the thesis of Orientalism as “anti-Western.” For subsequent editions of Orientalism, Said wrote an Afterword (1995): 329–52 and a Preface (2003): xi–xxiii addressing discussions of the book as cultural criticism.

Outlines of Pyrrhonism

“Pyrrhonism” refers to an ancient school of philosophy. Its followers were skeptical to the extreme, and refrained from passing judgment on anything, preferring to be always inquiring into the nature of reality. Sextus Empiricus (about 160 A.D. – 210 A.D.) was a Greek physician and philosopher.

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Pensées

The Pensées (“Thoughts”) is a collection of fragments written by the French 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Pascal’s religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the Pensées was in many ways his life’s work. It represented Pascal’s defense of the Christian religion, and the concept of “Pascal’s wager” stems from a portion of this work.

Phenomenology Of Mind

The Phenomenology of Mind, idealist philosopher Georg Hegel (1770–1831) defied the traditional epistemological distinction of objective from subjective and developed his own dialectical alternative. Remarkable for the breadth and profundity of its philosophical insights, this work combines psychology, logic, moral philosophy, and history to form a comprehensive view that encompasses all forms of civilization.

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Philosophical Investigations

Philosophical Investigations is a work by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The book was published posthumously in 1953. Wittgenstein discusses numerous problems and puzzles in the fields of semantics, logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of action, and philosophy of mind, putting forth the view that conceptual confusions surrounding language use are at the root of most philosophical problems.

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Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a 1974 nonfiction narrative book by American author Annie Dillard. Told from a first-person point of view, the book details an unnamed narrator’s explorations near her home, and various contemplations on nature and life. The title refers to Tinker Creek, which is outside Roanoke in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Dillard began writing Pilgrim in the spring of 1973, using her personal journals as inspiration. Separated into four sections that signify each of the seasons, the narrative takes place over the period of one year.

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Principia Ethica

Principia Ethica is a 1903 book by the British philosopher G. E. Moore, in which the author insists on the indefinability of “good” and provides an exposition of the naturalistic fallacy. Principia Ethica was influential, and Moore’s arguments were long regarded as path-breaking advances in moral philosophy, though they have been seen as less impressive and durable than his contributions in other fields.

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Psychoanalysis And The Unconscious

This book is Written in D. H. Lawrence’s most productive period, ‘Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious’ (1921) and ‘Fantasia of the Unconscious’ (1922) were undertaken initially in response to psychoanalytic criticism of his novel Sons and Lovers. They soon developed more generally to propose an alternative to what Lawrence perceived as the Freudian psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious and the incest motive. The essays also develop his ideas about the upbringing and education of children, about marriage, and about social and even political action. Lawrence described them as ‘this pseudo-philosophy of mine which was deduced from the novels and poems, not the reverse.

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Psychological Types

Psychological Types is a book by Carl Jung that was originally published in German by Rascher Verlag in 1921, and translated into English in 1923, becoming volume 6 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. In the book, Jung proposes four main functions of consciousness: two perceiving or non-rational functions (Sensation and Intuition), and two judging or rational functions (Thinking and Feeling).

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Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung is a book of statements from speeches and writings by Mao Zedong , the former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, published from 1964 to about 1976 and widely distributed during the Cultural Revolution. The most popular versions were printed in small sizes that could be easily carried and were bound in bright red covers, thus commonly becoming known internationally as the Little Red Book.

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Reflections On The Revolution In France

Reflections on the Revolution in France is a political pamphlet written by the Irish statesman Edmund Burke and published in November 1790. It is fundamentally a contrast of the French Revolution to that time with the unwritten British Constitution and to a significant degree, an argument with British supporters and interpreters of the events in France. One of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution.

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Rights of Man

Rights of Man (1791), a book by Thomas Paine, including 31 articles, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. Using these points as a base it defends the French Revolution against Edmund Burke’s attack in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). It was published in two parts in March 1791 and February 1792.

Scepticism and Animal Faith

Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923) is a later work by Spanish-born American philosopher George Santayana. He intended it to be “merely the introduction to a new system of philosophy,” a work that would later be called The Realms of Being, which constitutes the bulk of his philosophy, along with The Life of Reason. Scepticism is Santayana’s major treatise on epistemology; after its publication, he wrote no more on the topic. His preface begins humbly, with Santayana saying.

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Schott's Original Miscellany

Schott worked as a photographer from 1996 to 2003, specialising in portraits of politicians and celebrities. He was commissioned by a range of editorial and commercial clients, including The Independent, The Sunday Times, Sunday Business, Reader’s Digest, and the Institute of Directors. A profile in The Times said “his subjects included John Prescott, who was rude, and Sir Roy Strong, who had “the most wonderful, doleful eyes” and told him: “You must realise I’m awfully photogenic.” Tony Blair asked Schott if he’d like to see then-baby Leo; Cherie barked at him not to take too long as they were about to have lunch.

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selected writings

Composed during a critical time in the evolution of European intellectual life, the works of Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327) are some of the most powerful medieval attempts to achieve a synthesis between ancient Greek thought and the Christian faith.

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Spiritual Sayings

Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil GibranKahlil Gibran 1883-1931Author of The Prophet Poet, philosopher, and artist, was born in Lebanon, a land that has produced many prophets. The millions of Arabic-speaking peoples familiar with his writings in that language consider him the genius of his age. But he was a man whose fame and influence spread far beyond the Near East. His poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages.

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Summa Theologica

The Summa Theologiae or Summa Theologica (transl. ’Summary of Theology’), often referred to simply as the Summa, is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274), a scholastic theologian and Doctor of the Church. It is a compendium of all of the main theological teachings of the Catholic Church, intended to be an instructional guide for theology students, including seminarians and the literate laity. Presenting the reasoning for almost all points of Christian theology in the West, topics of the Summa follow the following cycle: God; Creation, Man; Man’s purpose; Christ; the Sacraments; and back to God.

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Syntactic Structures

Syntactic Structures is an influential work in linguistics by American linguist Noam Chomsky, originally published in 1957. It is an elaboration of his teacher’s, Zellig Harris’s, model of transformational generative grammar. A short monograph of bout a hundred pages, Chomsky’s presentation is recognized as one of the most significant studies of the 20th century. It contains the now-famous sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”, which Chomsky offered as an example of a grammatically correct sentence that has no discernible meaning.

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Tales Of The Hasidim

Tales of the Hasidim is a book of collected tales by Martin Buber. It is based on stories—both written and spoken—based in the Hasidim. Buber wrote these tales based on the lore of the Baal Shem Tov. Many of the stories are parables passed down via both the written and spoken word. Tales of the Hasidim was originally published in Hebrew by Schocken Press in Israel in 1946 under the title Or HaGanuz. It was translated into English by Olga Marx and published in 1947.

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Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching, along with the Zhuangzi, is a fundamental text for both philosophical and religious Taoism. It also strongly influenced other schools of Chinese philosophy and religion, including Legalism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, which was largely interpreted through the use of Taoist words and concepts when it was originally introduced to China.

The Affluent Society

The book sought to clearly outline the manner in which the post–World War II United States was becoming wealthy in the private sector but remained poor in the public sector, lacking social and physical infrastructure, and perpetuating income disparities. The book sparked much public discussion at the time. It is also credited with popularizing the term “conventional wisdom”.

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The Age Of Reason

The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a work by English and American political activist Thomas Paine, arguing for the philosophical position of deism. It follows in the tradition of 18th-century British deism, and challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the Bible. It was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807. It was a best-seller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival.

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The American Political Tradition

The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It is a 1948 book by Richard Hofstadter, an account of the ideology of previous Presidents of the United States and other political figures. Hofstadter’s introduction argues that the major political traditions in the United States, despite contentious battles, have all “shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition … [T]hey have accepted the economic virtues of a capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man”.

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The Art Of Memory

The Art of Memory is a 1966 non-fiction book by British historian Frances A. Yates. The book follows the history of mnemonic systems from the classical period of Simonides of Ceos in Ancient Greece to the Renaissance era of Giordano Bruno, ending with Gottfried Leibniz and the early emergence of the scientific method in the 17th century. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, its publication was “an important stimulus to the flowering of experimental research on imagery and memory.

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The Artist's Way

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity is a 1992 self-help book by American author Julia Cameron. The book was written to help people with artistic creative recovery, which teaches techniques and exercises to assist people in gaining self-confidence in harnessing their creative talents and skills. Correlation and emphasis is used by the author to show a connection between artistic creativity and a spiritual connection with God.

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The Beauty Myth

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women is a nonfiction book by Naomi Wolf, originally published in 1990 by Chatto & Windus in the UK and William Morrow & Co (1991) in the United States. The basic premise of The Beauty Myth is that as the social power and prominence of women have increased, the pressure they feel to adhere to unrealistic social standards of physical beauty has also grown stronger because of commercial influences on the mass media.

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The Book Of The City Of Ladies

The Book of the City of Ladies is perhaps Christine de Pizan’s most famous literary work, and it is her second work of lengthy prose. Pizan uses the vernacular French language to compose the book, but she often uses Latin-style syntax and conventions within her French prose. The book serves as her formal response to Jean de Meun’s popular Roman de la Rose.

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The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

This story tells us Alan Watts asks what is the cause of the illusion that the self is a separate ego, housed in a bag of skin, and which confronts a universe of physical objects that are alien to it. Rather a person’s identity (their ego) binds them to the physical universe, creating a relationship with their environment and other people.

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The Origins Of Totalitarianism

The Origins of Totalitarianism, like many of Arendt’s books is structured as three essays, “Antisemitism”, “Imperialism” and “Totalitarianism”. The book describes the various preconditions and subsequent rise of anti-Semitism in central, eastern, and western Europe in the early-to-mid 19th century; then examines the New Imperialism, from 1884 to the start of the First World War (1914–18); then traces the emergence of racism as an ideology, and its modern application as an “ideological weapon for imperialism”, by the Boers during the Great Trek in the early 19th century (1830s–40s).

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The Castle

The Castle is a 1926 novel by Franz Kafka. In it a protagonist known only as “K.” arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle supposedly owned by Count Westwest. Kafka died before he could finish the work, but suggested it would end with K. dying in the village, the castle notifying him on his death bed that his “legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there.

The City In History

The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects is a 1961 National Book Award winner by American historian Lewis Mumford. It was first published by Harcourt, Brace & World (New York). Mumford argues for a world not in which technology rules, but rather in which it achieves a balance with nature.

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The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party (German: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is an 1848 pamphlet by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London just as the Revolutions of 1848 began to erupt, the Manifesto was later recognised as one of the world’s most influential political documents.

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The Dhammapada

The Dhammapada (Sanskrit: Dharmapada) is a collection of sayings of the Buddha in verse form and one of the most widely read and best known Buddhist scriptures. The original version of the Dhammapada is in the Khuddaka Nikaya, a division of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism.

The Drowned Book

Bahauddin, Rumi’s father, was not only a major force in the development of Islamic spirituality, but also a deeply influential force in his son’s life. In this, the first ever substantial English version of a wonderful but virtually unknown book, Bahauddin proves to be a daring, spiritual genius. His voice comes through the delightful, passionate craft of Coleman Barks, who transforms the Persian translations of John Moyne into fresh spiritual literature.

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The Feminine Mystique

The Feminine Mystique is a book by Betty Friedan that is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States. It was published on February 19, 1963 by W. W. Norton. In 1957, Friedan was asked to conduct a survey of her former Smith College classmates for their 15th anniversary reunion; the results, in which she found that many of them were unhappy with their lives as housewives, prompted her to begin research for The Feminine Mystique, conducting interviews with other suburban housewives, as well as researching psychology, media, and advertising.

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The First and Last Freedom

The First and Last Freedom is a book by 20th-century Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986). Originally published 1954 with a comprehensive foreword by Aldous Huxley, it was instrumental in broadening Krishnamurti’s audience and exposing his ideas. It was one of the first Krishnamurti titles in the world of mainstream, commercial publishing, where its success helped establish him as a viable author.

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The Frontier In American History

The Frontier in American History” is a seminal essay by the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner which advanced the Frontier Thesis of American history. It was presented to a special meeting of the American Historical Association at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois in 1893, and published later that year first in Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, then in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association.

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The General Theory Of Employment, Interest And Money

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money of 1936 is a book by English economist John Maynard Keynes. It caused a profound shift in economic thought, giving macroeconomics a central place in economic theory and contributing much of its terminology – the “Keynesian Revolution”. It had equally powerful consequences in economic policy, being interpreted as providing theoretical support for government spending in general, and for budgetary deficits, monetary intervention and counter-cyclical policies in particular.

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The Golden Bough

The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (retitled The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion in its second edition) is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough was first published in two volumes in 1890; in three volumes in 1900; and in twelve volumes in the third edition, published 1906–1915.

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The Golden Verses

The Golden Verses are a collection of moral exhortations comprising 71 lines written in dactylic hexameter. They are traditionally attributed to Pythagoras. The exact origins of the Golden Verses are unknown and there are varying opinions regarding their dating.

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The Gospel Of Sri Ramakrishna

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna is an English translation of the Bengali religious text Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita by Swami Nikhilananda. The text records conversations of Ramakrishna with his disciples, devotees and visitors, recorded by Mahendranath Gupta, who wrote the book under the pseudonym of “M.” The first edition was published in 1942.

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The Gulag Archipelago

The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was first published in 1973, and translated into English, and French, the following year.

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The Harmony Of The Worlds

The Harmony of the World, 1619 is a book by Johannes Kepler. In the work, written entirely in Latin, Kepler discusses harmony and congruence in geometrical forms and physical phenomena. The final section of the work relates his discovery of the so-called “third law of planetary motion”.

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The Importance Of Living

The Importance of Living is a wry, witty antidote to the dizzying pace of the modern world. Lin Yutang’s prescription is the classic Chinese philosophy of life: Revere inaction as much as action, invoke humor to maintain a healthy attitude, and never forget that there will always be plenty of fools around who are willing-indeed.

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The Interpretation Of Dreams

The Interpretation of Dreams is an 1899 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, and discusses what would later become the theory of the Oedipus complex.

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I Am That

I Am That is a compilation of talks on Shiva Advaita (Nondualism) philosophy by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a Hindu spiritual teacher who lived in Mumbai. The English translation of the book from the original Marathi recordings was done by Maurice Frydman, edited by Sudhakar S. Dixit and first published in 1973 by Chetana Publications. The book was revised and reedited in July 1981.

The Liberal Imagination

The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (1950) is a collection of sixteen essays by American literary critic Lionel Trilling, published by Viking in 1950. The book was edited by Pascal Covici, who had worked with Trilling when he edited and introduced Viking’s Portable Matthew Arnold in 1949.

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The Light Of Asia

The Light of Asia, or The Great Renunciation (Mahâbhinishkramana), is a book by Sir Edwin Arnold. The first edition of the book was published in London in July 1879. In the form of a narrative poem, the book endeavours to describe the life and time of Prince Gautama Buddha, who, after attaining enlightenment, became the Buddha, The Awakened One. The book presents his life, character, and philosophy in a series of verses. It is a free adaptation of the Lalitavistara.

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The Lives Of A Cell

The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974) is collection of 29 essays written by Lewis Thomas for the New England Journal of Medicine between 1971 and 1973. Throughout his essays, Thomas touches on subjects as various as biology, anthropology, medicine, music (showing a particular affinity for Bach), etymology, mass communication, and computers.

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The Logic Of Scientific Discovery

The Logic of Scientific Discovery is a 1959 book about the philosophy of science by the philosopher Karl Popper. Popper rewrote his book in English from the 1934 (imprint ‘1935’) German original, titled Logik der Forschung. Zur Erkenntnistheorie der modernen Naturwissenschaft, which literally translates as, “Logic of Research: On the Epistemology of Modern Natural Science”.

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The Mind And Society

The Mind and Society (Italian: Trattato di Sociologia Generale, lit. “Treatise on General Sociology”) is a 1916 book by the Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923). In this book Pareto presents the first sociological cycle theory, centered on the concept of an elite social class.

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The Mirror And The Lamp

M.H. Abrams has given us a remarkable study, admirably conceived and executed, a book of quite exceptional and no doubt lasting significance for a number of fields – for the history of ideas and comparative literature as well as for English literary history, criticism and aesthetics.

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The Mismeasure Of Man

The Mismeasure of Man is a 1981 book by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The book is both a history and critique of the statistical methods and cultural motivations underlying biological determinism, the belief that “the social and economic differences between human groups—primarily races, classes, and sexes—arise from inherited, inborn distinctions and that society, in this sense, is an accurate reflection of biology.

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The Myth Of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus is a 1942 philosophical essay by Albert Camus. Influenced by philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche, Camus introduces his philosophy of the absurd. The absurd lies in the juxtaposition between the fundamental human need to attribute meaning to life and the “unreasonable silence” of the universe in response.

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The New Science

The New Science is the major work of Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. It was first published in 1725 to little success, but has gone on to be highly regarded and influential in the philosophy of history, sociology, and anthropology. The central concepts were highly original and prefigured the Age of Enlightenment.

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The Praise Of Folly

In Praise of Folly, also translated as The Praise of Folly is an essay written in Latin in 1509 by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam and first printed in June 1511. Inspired by previous works of the Italian humanist Faustino Perisauli [it] De Triumpho Stultitiae, it is a satirical attack on superstitions, other traditions of European society and on the Western Church.

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The Prince

The Prince is a 16th-century political treatise written by Italian diplomat and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli as an instruction guide for new princes and royals. The general theme of The Prince is of accepting that the aims of princes – such as glory and survival – can justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends.

The Proper Study Of Mankind

Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of our time and one of its finest writers. The Proper Study of Mankind brings together his most celebrated writing: here the reader will find Berlin’s famous essay on Tolstoy, “The Hedgehog and the Fox”; his penetrating portraits of contemporaries from Pasternak and Akhmatova to Churchill and Roosevel.

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The Psychology Of Man's Possible Evolution

Reading them as a book gives practically no measure of the scale of time and study needed to realize, even partially, the ideas which are expressed or why Ouspensky expressed them in this short form. In the forty or fifty years since the lectures were composed, analytical, introspective psychology has captured the interest of the masses.

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The Republic

The Republic is a Socratic dialogue, authored by Plato around 375 BC, concerning justice , the order and character of the just city-state, and the just man. It is Plato’s best-known work, and has proven to be one of the world’s most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically.

The Road To Serfdom

The Road to Serfdom is a book written between 1940 and 1943 by Austrian-British economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek. Since its publication in 1944, The Road to Serfdom has been an influential and popular exposition of liberalism. It has been translated into more than 20 languages and sold over two million copies (as of 2010).

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The Second Sex

The Second Sex is a 1949 book by the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women throughout history. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book in about 14 months between 1946 and 1949.

The Secret Doctrine

The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy, is a pseudo-scientific esoteric book originally published as two volumes in 1888 written by Helena Blavatsky. The first volume is named Cosmogenesis, the second Anthropogenesis. It was an influential example of the revival of interest in esoteric and occult ideas in the modern age, in particular because of its claim to reconcile ancient eastern wisdom with modern science.

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The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene is a 1976 book on evolution by the Ethologist Richard Dawkins, in which the author builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams’s Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966). Dawkins uses the term “selfish gene” as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution (as opposed to the views focused on the organism and the group), popularising ideas developed during the 1960s by W. D. Hamilton and others.

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The Sickness unto Death

The Sickness Unto Death is a book written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. A work of Christian existentialism, the book is about Kierkegaard’s concept of despair, which he equates with the Christian concept of sin, which he terms, “the sin of despair.”

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The Social Contract

“Social Agreement” redirects here. For the Greek political party, see Social Agreement (Greece). For Rousseau’s 1762 treatise on the concept, see The Social Contract. For other uses, see Social Contract. The original cover of Thomas Hobbes’s work Leviathan (1651), in which he discusses the concept of the social contract theory In moral and political philosophy, the social contract is a theory or model that originated during the Age of Enlightenment and usually concerns the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.

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The Stranger

The Stranger’s first edition consisted of only 4,400 copies, which was so few that it could not be a best-seller. Since the novella was published during the Nazi occupation of France, there was a possibility that the Propaganda-Staffel would censor it, but a representative of the Occupation authorities felt it contained nothing damaging to their cause, so it was published without omissions.

The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a book about the history of science by the philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in science in which scientific progress was viewed as “development-by-accumulation” of accepted facts and theories.

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The Sufis

The Sufis is one of the best known books on Sufism by the writer Idries Shah. First published in 1964 with an introduction by Robert Graves, it introduced Sufi ideas to the West in a format acceptable to non-specialists at a time when the study of Sufism had largely become the reserve of Orientalists.

The Taming Of Chance

The Taming of Chance has been described as ground-breaking. The book received positive reviews from the statistician Dennis Lindley in Nature, the philosopher Stephen P. Turner in the American Journal of Sociology, the historian of science Theodore M. Porter in American Scientist and in Poetics Today, and Timothy L. Alborn in Isis. The book received mixed reviews from the philosopher Margaret Schabas in Science and Bruce Kuklick in American Historical Review.

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The Theater And Its Double

The Theatre and Its Double was originally published 1 February 1938 as part of Gallimard’s Métamorpheses Collection in an edition limited to 400 copies. The books consists of Artaud’s collected essays on theatre dating from the early thirties, many of which were published in Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). Artaud was in “a near catatonic state in the mental hospital of Sainte-Anne” in Paris when the book was finally published.

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The Three Pillars Of Zen

Through explorations of the three pillars of Zen–teaching, practice, and enlightenment–Roshi Philip Kapleau presents a comprehensive overview of the history and discipline of Zen Buddhism

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The Tibetan Book Of The Dead

The first complete translation of a classic Buddhist text on the journey through living and dying. Graced with opening words by His Holiness The Dalai Lama, the Penguin Deluxe Edition of The Tibetan Book of the Dead is “immaculately rendered in an English both graceful and precise.

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The Trial And Death Of Socrates

Plato is among the most influential philosophers of all time. Along with his teacher Socrates and his pupil Aristotle, he can be said to have laid the foundations for Western philosophy, science and ethics, as well as establishing the first academy for higher learning in the Western world.

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The Varieties Of Religious Experience

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a book by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James. It comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which were delivered at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland between 1901 and 1902.

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The Wealth Of Nations

The Wealth of Nations, is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith. First published in 1776, the book offers one of the world’s first collected descriptions of what builds nations’ wealth, and is today a fundamental work in classical economics. By reflecting upon the economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the book touches upon such broad topics as the division of labour, productivity, and free markets.

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The Will To Power

The will to power is a prominent concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The will to power describes what Nietzsche may have believed to be the main driving force in humans. However, the concept was never systematically defined in Nietzsche’s work, leaving its interpretation open to debate. Alfred Adler incorporated the will to power into his individual psychology.

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The Yoga Sutras

The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali is a collection of Sanskrit sutras (aphorisms) on the theory and practice of yoga – 195 sutras (according to Vyāsa and Krishnamacharya) and 196 sutras (according to other scholars including BKS Iyengar). The Yoga Sutras was compiled sometime between 500 BCE and 400 CE, by the sage Patanjali in India who synthesized and organized knowledge about yoga from much older traditions.

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The Zen Teaching Of Huang Po: On The Transmission Of Mind

This complete translation of the original collection of sermons, dialogues, and anecdotes of Huang Po, the illustrious Chinese master of the Tang Dynasty, allows the Western reader to gain an understanding of Zen from the original source, one of the key works in its teachings; it also offers deep and often startling insights into the rich treasures of Eastern thought.

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Thoughts And Meditations

This collection of thoughts by Kahlil Gibran, author of “The Prophet,” “The Broken Wings,” “The Voice of the Master,” and other twentieth-century classics, demonstrates three major aspects of his genius. Here is the fiery prophet, assailing the corruptions of Syrian governmental and upper social circles with the wrath and scorn of Biblical seers.

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189

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality sometimes titled Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, is a 1905 work by Sig mund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author advances his theory of sexuality, in particular its relation to childhood.

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190

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts written and published between 1883 and 1892. Much of the work deals with ideas about the Übermensch, the death of God, the will to power, and eternal recurrence, some of which – along with Zarathustra himself – appeared in Nietzsche’s earlier book The Gay Science.

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191

Tractatus Logico-philosophicus

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (widely abbreviated and cited as TLP) is the only book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that was published during his lifetime. It is recognized by philosophers as a significant philosophical work of the twentieth century.

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Tristes Tropiques

Tristes Tropiques (the French title translates literally as “Sad Tropics”) is a memoir, first published in France in 1955, by the anthropologist and structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss. It documents his travels and anthropological work, focusing principally on Brazil, though it refers to many other places, such as the Caribbean and India.

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Two Essays On Analytical Psychology

Two Essays on Analytical Psychology is volume 7 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, presenting the core of Carl Jung’s views about psychology. Known as one of the best introductions to Jung’s work, the volumes includes the essays “The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious” and “On the Psychology of the Unconscious.”

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Wandering On The Way

Acclaimed for his authoritative translation of the Tao Te Ching, Victor Mair, one of the foremast translators of ancient Chinese, reclaims for the modern reader another of the great books of Eastern wisdom. Although less well known in the West than the Tao Te Ching, the work of Chuang Tzu is every bit its equal as a classic of Taoist thought.

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Who Am I?: The Teachings Of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

A set of questions and answers on Self-enquiry that were put to Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi by Sri M. Sivaprakasam Pillai in 1902.

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Writing Degree Zero

Writing Degree Zero is a book of literary criticism by Roland Barthes. First published in 1953, it was Barthes’ first full-length book and was intended, as Barthes writes in the introduction, as “no more than an Introduction to what a History of Writing might be.”

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Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

When Zen Flesh, Zen Bones was published in 1957 it became an instant sensation with an entire generation of readers who were just beginning to experiment with Zen. Over the years it has inspired leading American Zen teachers, students, and practitioners. Its popularity is as high today as ever.

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Zen Teaching of Instantaneous Awakening

Zen teaching of instantaneous awakening A complete translation of the teaching of the Chinese Ch’an Master Hui Hai by John Blofeld, with a foreword by Charles Luk Hui Hai, was one of the great Ch’an (Zen) Masters. He was a contemporary of both Ma Tsu and Huang Po, those early masters who established Ch’an after the death of Hui Neng, the sixth Patriarch.

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Écrits

In this book, Brilliant and innovative, Jacques Lacan’s work lies at the epicenter of modern thought about otherness, subjectivity, sexual difference, the drives, the law, and enjoyment. This new translation of his complete works offers welcome, readable access to Lacan’s seminal thinking on diverse subjects touched upon over the course of his inimitable intellectual career.

The Open Society And Its Enemies

The Open Society and Its Enemies is a work on political philosophy by the philosopher Karl Popper, in which the author presents a “defence of the open society against its enemies”, and offers a critique of theories of teleological historicism, according to which history unfolds inexorably according to universal laws.

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On Liberty

On Liberty is a philosophical essay by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill. Published in 1859, it applies Mill’s ethical system of utilitarianism to society and state. Mill suggests standards for the relationship between authority and liberty. He emphasizes the importance of individuality, which he considers prerequisite to the higher pleasures—the summum bonum of utilitarianism.

Walden

Walden or, Life in the Woods is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and—to some degree—a manual for self-reliance.

Civilization And Its Discontents

Civilization and Its Discontents is a book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It was written in 1929 and first published in German in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (“The Uneasiness in Civilization”). Exploring what Freud sees as the important clash between the desire for individuality and the expectations of society, the book is considered one of Freud’s most important and widely read works.

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204

Zorba the Greek

Zorba the Greek is a novel written by the Cretan author Nikos Kazantzakis, first published in 1946. It is the tale of a young Greek intellectual who ventures to escape his bookish life with the aid of the boisterous and mysterious Alexis Zorba.

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Siddhartha

Siddhartha is a 1922 novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Gautam Buddha. The book, Hesse’s ninth novel, was written in German, in a simple, lyrical style. It was published in the U.S.

Gandhi: An Autobiography

Mohandas K. Gandhi is one of the most inspiring figures of our time. In his classic autobiography he recounts the story of his life and how he developed his concept of active nonviolent resistance, which propelled the Indian struggle for independence and countless other nonviolent struggles of the twentieth century.

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Grundrisse: Foundations Of The Critique Of Political Economy

The Grundrisse Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy is a lengthy, unfinished manuscript by the German philosopher Karl Marx. The series of seven notebooks was rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for purposes of self-clarification, during the winter of 1857–8. Left aside by Marx in 1858, it remained unpublished until 1939.

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Hsin Hsin Ming

This book provides an intuitive insight into the heart of Zen through a translation of Seng-Ts’an’s poem, Hsin Hsin Ming. Reading through the pages you will become familiar with the basic principles of Zen with an interesting collection of perspectives from Quantum Physics to more traditional views of Taoism.

Ideas And Opinions

A new edition of the most definitive collection of Albert Einstein’s popular writings, gathered under the supervision of Einstein himself. The selections range from his earliest days as a theoretical physicist to his death in 1955; from such subjects as relativity, nuclear war or peace, and religion and science, to human rights, economics, and government.

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Life Is Real Only Then, When 'i Am'

Begun in 1934 this book, this final volume of Gurdjieff’s trilogy, All and Everything, is a primary source for Gurdjieff’s ideas, methods, and biography. Gurdjieff offers guidance to his “community of seekers,” through a selection of talks given in 1930, autobiographical material crucial to understanding his ideas.

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Major Works: Selected Philosophical Writings

Major Works is the finest single-volume anthology of influential philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s important writings. Featuring the complete texts of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, The Blue and Brown Books: Studies for ‘Philosophical Investigations,’ and On Certainty, this new collection selects from the early, middle, and later career of this revolutionary thinker, widely recognized as one of the most profound minds of all time.

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The Nature and Destiny of Man

The Nature and Destiny of Man is one of the important works of the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. The book is partly based on his 1939 Gifford lecture. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked it the 18th greatest non-fiction book of the 20th century.

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Our Life With Mr. Gurdjieff

This eyewitness account of Gurdjieff’s early teaching years in Russia and France, is written by two of his followers. This edition includes material based on the authors original Russian notes.

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214

Studies In Iconology

In the book Studies in Iconology, the themes and concepts of Renaissance art are analysed and related to both classical and medieval tendencies.

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Tertium Organum

In this book – This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

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The Art Of War

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The work, which is attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu (“Master Sun”, also spelled Sunzi), is composed of 13 chapters.

The Book Of Lieh-tzŭ: A Classic Of Tao

The Lieh-Tzu ranks with the Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu as one of the most eloquent and influential expositions of Taoist philosophy. This definitive translation by Professor Graham does full justice to the subtlety of thought and literary effectiveness of the text. A. C. Graham is one of the most distinguished Sinologists working today.

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The Dialogues Of Plato

In this book – “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates’s ancient words are still true, and the ideas sounded in Plato’s “Dialogues” still form the foundation of a thinking person’s education.

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The Essential Writings Of Ralph Waldo Emerson

The definitive collection of Emerson’s major speeches, essays, and poetry, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson chronicles the life’s work of a true “American Scholar.” As one of the architects of the transcendentalist movement, Emerson embraced a philosophy that championed the individual, emphasized independent thought, and prized “the splendid labyrinth of one’s own perceptions.”

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The Fundamental Wisdom Of The Middle Way: Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

In the book The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Jay L. Garfield provides a clear and eminently readable translation of Nagarjuna’s seminal work, offering those with little or no prior knowledge of Buddhist philosophy a view into the profound logic of the Mulamadhyamikakarika.

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The Island Within

Here is Nelson’s luminously wise account of his exploration of an unnamed island in the Pacific Northwest. This book revises our own relationship with nature, allowing us to observe it and also to participate in it with reverence and a sense of wonder.

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The Diamond Sutra and The Sutra of Hui-Neng

The Diamond Sutra, composed in India in the 4th century CE, is one of the most treasured works of Buddhist literature & is the oldest existing printed book in the world. It’s known as the Diamond Sutra because its teachings are said to be like diamonds that cut away all dualistic thought, releasing one from the attachment to objects & bringing one to the further shore of enlightenment.

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The World As Will And Idea

In this book The World as Will and Idea (1819) holds that all nature, including man, is the expression of an insatiable will to life; that the truest understanding of the world comes through art and the only lasting good through ascetic renunciation.

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An Inquiry into the Good

An Inquiry into the Good, also known as A Study of Good, is a 1911 book by the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida. The work has been described as a masterpiece. Influence and reception Graham Parkes described An Inquiry into the Good as a “masterpiece”. He wrote that was made possible by the Japanese interest in western philosophy that began with the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

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Autobiography of a Yogi

Autobiography of a Yogi is an autobiography of Paramahansa Yogananda (5 January 1893–7 March 1952) first published in 1946. Paramahansa Yogananda was born as Mukunda Lal Ghosh in Gorakhpur, India, into a Bengali Hindu family.

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Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is a 1989 book by the American philosopher Richard Rorty, based on two sets of lectures he gave at University College, London and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In contrast to his earlier work, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Rorty mostly abandons attempts to explain his theories in analytical terms and instead creates an alternate conceptual schema to that of the “Platonists” he rejects.

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De anima

On the Soul (Latin: De Anima) is a major treatise written by Aristotle c. 350 BC. His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations. Thus plants have the capacity for nourishment and reproduction, the minimum that must be possessed by any kind of living organism.

Discipline and Punish

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a 1975 book by French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age based on historical documents from France.

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229

Discourses Of Epictetus

In this book the stress on endurance, self-restraint, and power of the will to withstand calamity can often seem coldhearted. It is Epictetus, a lame former slave exiled by Emperor Domitian, who offers by far the most precise and humane version of Stoic ideals.

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Essays and Aphorisms

One of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer believed that human action is determined not by reason but by ‘will’ – the blind and irrational desire for physical existence. This selection of his writings on religion, ethics, politics, women and many other themes is taken from Schopenhauer’s last work, Parerga and Paralipomena, which he published in 1851

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Essentials of Indian Philosophy

This text provides a concise, connected account of Indian philosophy. An introductory chapter summarizes Vedic religion and philosophy, then Indian thought is considered in chapters dealing respectively with the early post-Vedic period and the age of the systems. A brief historical survey accompanies each natural division of the subject, in addition to an exposition of its theory of knowledge, ontology and practical teaching

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Existentialism Is a Humanism

Existentialism Is a Humanism is a 1946 work by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, based on a lecture by the same name he gave at Club Maintenant in Paris, on 29 October 1945. In early translations, Existentialism and Humanism was the title used in the United Kingdom; the work was originally published in the United States as Existentialism, and a later translation employs the original title.

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A New History of Western Philosophy

A New History of Western Philosophy is a 2010 book by the British philosopher and theologian Anthony Kenny, consisting of a history of Western philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the present day. The book consists of four separate parts which were originally released separately during the period 2004–07. The book is dedicated to memory of Georg Henrik von Wright.

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Against Method

Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge is a 1975 book about the philosophy of science by Paul Feyerabend, in which the author argues that science is an anarchic enterprise, not a nomic (customary) one. In the context of this work, the term anarchy refers to epistemological anarchy.

Black Skin, White Masks

Black Skin, White Masks is a 1952 book by Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist and intellectual from Martinique. The book is written in the style of autoethnography, in which Fanon shares his own experiences while presenting a historical critique of the effects of racism and dehumanization, inherent in situations of colonial domination, on the human psyche.

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Cicero On Ends

There is also poetry, some original, some as translations from the Greek. In the fourteenth century Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters of which more than 800 were written by Cicero and nearly 100 by others to him. These afford a revelation of the man all the more striking because most were not written for publication. Six rhetorical works survive and another in fragments. Philosophical works include seven extant major compositions and a number of others; and some lost.

Confessions of Saint Augustine

The Confessions of Saint Augustine in order to distinguish the book from other books with similar titles. Its original title was Confessions in Thirteen Books, and it was composed to be read out loud with each book being a complete unit. Confessions is generally considered one of Augustine’s most important texts. It is widely seen as the first Western Christian autobiography ever written and was an influential model for Christian writers throughout the Middle Ages. Professor Henry Chadwick wrote that Confessions will “always rank among the great masterpieces of western literature.”

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Dignāga's Investigation of the Percept: A Philosophical Legacy in India and Tibet

This volume provides a comprehensive history of the text in India and Tibet from 5th century India to the present day. This team of philologists, historians of religion and philosophers who specialize in Tibetan, Sanskrit and Chinese philosophical literature has produced the first study of the text and its entire commentarial tradition.

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How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali is a major work on the practice of yoga and meditation. Through these ancient aphorisms you will learn how to control your mind and achieve inner peace and freedom. Although these methods were taught over 2,000 years ago, they are as alive and effective today as they have ever been.

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How to Live

How to Live or a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer is a book by Sarah Bakewell, first published by Chatto & Windus in 2010, and by Other Press on September 20, 2011. It is about the life of the 16th-century French nobleman, wine grower, philosopher, and essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. In it, Bakewell “roughly maps out Montaigne’s life against the questions he raises along the way,” drawing the answers to these questions from his Essays.

The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch

The “Platform Sutra” records the teachings of Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch, who is revered as one of the two great figures in the founding of Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism. This translation is the definitive English version of the eighth-century Ch’an classic. Phillip B. Yampolsky has based his translation on the Tun-huang manuscript, the earliest extant version of the work. A critical edition of the Chinese text is given at the end of the volume.

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If You're An Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?

This book presents G. A. Cohen’s Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1996. Focusing on Marxism and Rawlsian liberalism, Cohen draws a connection between these thought systems and the choices that shape a person’s life. In the case of Marxism, the relevant life is his own: a communist upbringing in the 1940s in Montreal, which induced a belief in a strongly socialist egalitarian doctrine.

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Indian Philosophy

Indian Philosophy : This classic work is a general introduction to Indian philosophy that covers the Vedic and Epic periods, including expositions on the hymns of the Rig Veda, the Upanisads, Jainism, Buddhism and the theism of the Bhagvadgita. Long acknowledged as a classic, this pioneering survey of Indian thought charts a fascinating course through an intricate history.

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Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding

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An Introduction to Indian Philosophy

An Introduction to Indian Philosophy: termed by Srila Prabhupada as ‘very authoritative’, while introducing the reader to the spirit, vast ocean of knowledge and outlook of Indian philosophy, also helps him to grasp thoroughly the central ideas. Philosophy, in its widest etymological sense, means ‘love of knowledge’. It tries to search for knowledge of himself, the world and God, and describes the Indian way of life as we know it.

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Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook

Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, readers of English can now access in a single volume the richness and diversity of Japanese philosophy as it has developed throughout history. Leading scholars in the field have translated selections from the writings of more than a hundred philosophical thinkers from all eras and schools of thought, many of them available in English for the first time.

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Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement is a 2001 book of political philosophy by the philosopher John Rawls, published as a restatement of his 1971 classic A Theory of Justice (1971). The restatement was made largely in response to the significant number of critiques and essays written about Rawls’s 1971 book on this subject.

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Justice for Hedgehogs

This book Develops original theories on a variety of issues, including: moral skepticism, literary, artistic, and historical interpretation, free will, ancient moral theory, being good and living well, liberty, equality, law, more.

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Krishna: The Man & His Philosophy

Krishna: The Man & His Philosophy: This book main statement is ‘White contains all the colors of the spectrum yet it seems to be colourless; it contains all these colours in such synthesis that they all disappear’.

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Freedom from the Known

Freedom from the Known is a book by Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), originally published 1969. The book contains excerpts from previously unpublished Krishnamurti talks selected and edited by Mary Lutyens. Lutyens was one of his authorized biographers and a lifelong friend.

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Last Days of Socrates

In this book – The trial and death of Socrates (469-399 BC) have almost as central a place in Western consciousness as the trial and death of Jesus. In four superb ‘dialogues’, Plato provided the classic account. Socrates spent a lifetime analysing ethical issues, and the Euthyphro finds him outside the court-house, still debating the nature of piety with an arrogant acquaintance. The Apology is both a robust rebuttal to the charges of impiety and corrupting young minds and a definitive defence of the philosopher’s life.

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Letters From a Stoic

Letters from a Stoic is a collection of 124 letters that Seneca the Younger wrote at the end of his life, during his retirement, after he had worked for the Emperor Nero for more than ten years. They are addressed to Lucilius Junior, the then procurator of Sicily, who is known only through Seneca’s writings. Regardless of how Seneca and Lucilius actually corresponded, it is clear that Seneca crafted the letters with a broad readership in mind.

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Logic and Knowledge

Logic and Knowledge has been acclaimed as the most widely-used university text for teaching Russell’s philosophy. Ten essays, including the landmark On Denoting, which extend through fifty years in the life of one of the great philosophers of our time. Many of Bertrand Russell’s most important essays in logic and the theory of knowledge were not easily available until Professor Marsh collected them together in 1956.

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Logical Investigations

The Logical Investigations (1900–1901; second edition 1913) are a two-volume work by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, in which the author discusses the philosophy of logic and criticizes psychologism, the view that logic is based on psychology. The work has been praised by philosophers for helping to discredit psychologism, Husserl’s opposition to which has been attributed to the philosopher Gottlob Frege’s criticism of his Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891).

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Long Pilgrimage: The Life and Teaching of Sri Govindananda Bharati

The book takes the form of six essays covering the life and teachings of Shri Govindananda Bharati, known at the time of his death as the Shivapuri Baba. The first chapter describes his origins from his birth in 1826 in Kerala, his religious training and preparation and his 40 year circumambulation of the world, meeting all the major world leaders of his day, and his forty year retirement in a forest hut outside Kathmandu.

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Lucretius On the Nature of Things

Lucretius On the Nature of Things is a first-century BC didactic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. The poem, written in some 7,400 dactylic hexameters, is divided into six untitled books, and explores Epicurean physics through poetic language and metaphors. Namely, Lucretius explores the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena.

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Meditations On The First Philosophy

Meditations on First Philosophy: in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated is a philosophical treatise by René Descartes first published in Latin in 1641. The French translation was published in 1647 as Méditations Métaphysiques. The title may contain a misreading by the printer, mistaking animae immortalitas for animae immaterialitas, as suspected by A. Baillet.

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Monsignor Quixote

Monsignor Quixote is a novel by Graham Greene, published in 1982. The book is a pastiche of the classic 1605 and 1615 Spanish novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes with many moments of comedy, but also offers reflection on matters such as life after a dictatorship, Communism, and the Catholic faith.

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Moravagine

Moravagine is a 1926 novel by Blaise Cendrars, published by Grasset. It is a complex opus, with a central figure (the Moravagine character) like a dark persona of the author which he gets rid of through writing. Its genesis took a decade (with Cendrars hinting at it as early as 1917) and Cendrars never stopped working on it. In 1956, the author somewhat rewrote the text, added a postface and a section titled “Pro domo: How I wrote Moravagine”.

Gaius Musonius Rufus

Gaius Musonius Rufus was a Roman Stoic philosopher of the 1st century AD. He taught philosophy in Rome during the reign of Nero and so was sent into exile in 65 AD, returning to Rome only under Galba. He was allowed to stay in Rome when Vespasian banished all other philosophers from the city in 71 AD although he was eventually banished anyway, returning only after Vespasian’s death. A collection of extracts from his lectures still survives. He is also remembered for being the teacher of Epictetus and Dio Chrysostom.

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Nature and Selected Essay

Through his writing and his own personal philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson unburdened his young country of Europe’s traditional sense of history and showed Americans how to be creators of their own circumstances. His mandate, which called for harmony with, rather than domestication of, nature, and for a reliance on individual integrity, rather than on materialistic institutions, is echoed in many of the great American philosophical and literary works of his time and ours, and has given an impetus to modern political and social activism.

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Nausea

Nausea is a philosophical novel by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, published in 1938. It is Sartre’s first novel and, in his own opinion, one of his best works. The novel takes place in ‘Bouville’ a town similar to Le Havre, and it concerns a dejected historian, who becomes convinced that inanimate objects and situations encroach on his ability to define himself, on his intellectual and spiritual freedom, evoking in the protagonist a sense of nausea.

New Atlantis

New Atlantis is an incomplete utopian novel by Sir Francis Bacon, published posthumously in 1626. It appeared unheralded and tucked into the back of a longer work of natural history, Sylva sylvarum (forest of materials). In New Atlantis, Bacon portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge, expressing his aspirations and ideals for humankind.

Nicomachean Ethics

The Nicomachean Ethics is the name normally given to Aristotle’s best-known work on ethics. The work, which plays a pre-eminent role in defining Aristotelian ethics, consists of ten books, originally separate scrolls, and is understood to be based on notes from his lectures at the Lyceum. The title is often assumed to refer to his son Nicomachus, to whom the work was dedicated or who may have edited it. Alternatively, the work may have been dedicated to his father, who was also called Nicomachus.

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Nicomachean Ethics

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Notes from Underground

Notes from Underground is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and is considered by many to be one of the first existentialist novels. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man), who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg.

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Novum Organum

The Novum Organum fully Novum Organum, sive Indicia Vera de Interpretatione Naturae (“New organon, or true directions concerning the interpretation of nature”) or Instaurationis Magnae, Pars II (“Part II of The Great Instauration”), is a philosophical work by Francis Bacon, written in Latin and published in 1620. The title is a reference to Aristotle’s work Organon, which was his treatise on logic and syllogism. In Novum Organum, Bacon details a new system of logic he believes to be superior to the old ways of syllogism. This is now known as the Baconian method.

On Being and Essence

In this book – A small error at the outset can lead to great errors in the final conclusions, as the Philosopher says in I De Caelo et Mundo cap. 5 (271b8-13), and thus, since being and essence are the things first conceived of by the intellect, as Avicenna says in Metaphysicae I, cap.

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On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy

On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy or The Decisive Treatise, Determining the Nature of the Connection between Religion and Philosophy, with the latter often shortened to The Decisive Treatise) is an Islamic philosophical treatise written by Andalusian Muslim polymath and philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126–1198), in which the author “critically examine the alleged tension between philosophy and religion” and concludes that philosophy (in particular, Aristotelian philosophy) is not in opposition to—and in fact, works in tandem with—Islamic thought.

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Outlines of Indian Philosophy

According to this book the beginning of Indian Philosophy takes us very far back to about the middle of the second millennium before Christ.The speculative activity begun so early was continued till a century or two ago, so that the history that is narrated in the following pages cover a period of over thirty centuries. During this long period Indian thought developed practically unaffected by outside influence and it has evolved several systems of philosophy.

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Reasons and Persons

Reasons and Persons is a 1984 book by the philosopher Derek Parfit, in which the author discusses ethics, rationality and personal identity. It is divided into four parts, dedicated to self-defeating theories, rationality and time, personal identity and responsibility toward future generations.

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Philosophy as a Way of Life

This book presents a history of spiritual exercises from Socrates to early Christianity, an account of their decline in modern philosophy, and a discussion of the different conceptions of philosophy that have accompanied the trajectory and fate of the theory and practice of spiritual exercises.

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Resurrection

Resurrection first published in 1899, was the last novel written by Leo Tolstoy. Also translated as The Awakening. The book is the last of his major long fiction works published in his lifetime. Tolstoy intended the novel as an exposition of the injustice of man-made laws and the hypocrisy of the institutionalized church.

Rhinoceros and Other Plays

In this book Rhinoceros, as in his early plays, Ionesco startles audiences with a world that invariably erupts in explosive laughter and nightmare anxiety. A rhinoceros suddely apears in a small town, tramping through its peaceful streets. Soon there are two, then three, until the “movement” is universal: a transformation of average citizens into beasts, as they learn to “move with the times.” Finally, only one man remains.

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Sage Philosophy

Sage Philosophy is an anthology of three main parts: Part one contains papers by Odera Oruka clearing the way and arguing about his research over the last decade on indigenous sages in Kenya. Part Two introduces verbatim interviews with a given number of those sages, while Part Three consists of published papers by scholars who are critics or commentators on the Oruka project.

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Second Treatise of Government

Two Treatises of Government is a work of political philosophy published anonymously in 1689 by John Locke. The First Treatise attacks patriarchalism in the form of sentence-by-sentence refutation of Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, while the Second Treatise outlines Locke’s ideas for a more civilized society based on natural rights and contract theory.

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The House of the Dead

The House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical novel published in 1860–2 in the journal Vremya by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, which portrays the life of convicts in a Siberian prison camp. The novel has also been published under the titles Memoirs from the House of The Dead, Notes from the Dead House (or Notes from a Dead House), and Notes from the House of the Dead.

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278

Seneca : Letters from a Stoic

Seneca: Letters from a Stoic, is a collection of 124 letters that Seneca the Younger wrote at the end of his life, during his retirement, after he had worked for the Emperor Nero for more than ten years. They are addressed to Lucilius Junior, the then procurator of Sicily, who is known only through Seneca’s writings. Regardless of how Seneca and Lucilius actually corresponded, it is clear that Seneca crafted the letters with a broad readership in mind.

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Songs of Milarepa

Songs of Milarepa a classic status comparable to that of the Mahabharata and the Bible, and revere its author as probably the best single exemplar of the religious life. Milarepa was an eleventh-century Buddhist poet and saint, a cotton-clad yogi who avoided the scholarly institutions of his time and wandered from village to village, teaching enlightenment and the path to Buddhahood through his spontaneously composed songs.

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Sophie’s World

Sophie’s World is a 1991 novel by Norwegian writer Jostein Gaarder. It follows Sophie Amundsen, a Norwegian teenager, who is introduced to the history of philosophy as she is asked “Who are you?” in letters from an unknown philosopher. Sophie’s World became a best-seller in Norway and won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1994.

Read More About Sophie’s World / Source

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Guru Granth Sahib

The Guru Granth Sahib is the central holy religious scripture of Sikhism, regarded by Sikhs as the final, sovereign and eternal Guru following the lineage of the ten human gurus of the religion. The Adi Granth, its first rendition, was compiled by the fifth guru, Guru Arjan (1564–1606). Its compilation was completed on 29 August 1604 and first installed inside Golden Temple in Amritsar on 1 September 1604.

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282

Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf is the tenth novel by German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse. Originally published in Germany in 1927, it was first translated into English in 1929. The novel was named after the German name for the steppe wolf. The story in large part reflects a profound crisis in Hesse’s spiritual world during the 1920s.

Story of the Eye

Story of the Eye consists of several vignettes, centered around the sexual passion existing between the unnamed late adolescent male narrator and Simone, his primary female partner. Within this episodic narrative two secondary figures emerge: Marcelle, a mentally ill sixteen-year-old girl who comes to a sad end, and Sir Edmund, a voyeuristic English émigré aristocrat.

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284

Stranger in a Strange Land

Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians, and explores his interaction with and eventual transformation of Terran culture.

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Summulae de Dialectica

This volume is the first annotated translation in any language of the entire text of the Summulae de dialectica, by the Parisian master of arts John Buridan (1300-1358). One of the most influential works in the history of late medieval philosophy, the Summulae is Buridan’s systematic exposition of his nominalist philosophy of logic.

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286

Tattvacintāmaṇi

Tattvacintāmaṇi is a treatise in Sanskrit authored by 12th-century CE Indian logician and philosopher Gangesa Upadhyaya also known as Gangesvara Upadhyaya. The title may be translated into English as “A Thought-jewel of Truth.” The treatise is also known as Pramāṇa-cintāmaṇi (“A Thought-jewel of Valid Knowledge”). The treatise introduced a new era in the history of Indian logic.

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The 48 Laws of Power

The 48 Laws of Power (1998) is a non-fiction book by American author Robert Greene. The book is a bestseller, selling over 1.2 million copies in the United States, and is popular with prison inmates and celebrities. The 48 Laws of Power is popular with well-known rappers, entrepreneurs, celebrities, athletes and actors including 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Kanye West, The Kid Laroi, Busta Rhymes, Ludacris, DJ Premier, Drake, Dov Charney, Brian Grazer, Andrew Bynum, Chris Bosh, Michael Jackson, Courtney Love and Will Smith.

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288

The Alchemist

The Alchemist is a novel by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho that was first published in 1988. Originally written in Portuguese, it became a widely translated international bestseller. An allegorical novel, The Alchemist follows a young Andalusian shepherd in his journey to the pyramids of Egypt, after having a recurring dream of finding a treasure there.

The Arcades Project

Arcades Project was an unfinished project of German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, written between 1927 and 1940. An enormous collection of writings on the city life of Paris in the 19th century, it was especially concerned with Paris’ iron-and-glass covered “arcades” (known in French as the passages couverts de Paris).

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The Art of the Soluble: Creativity and Originality in Science

This collection of eight pieces by Sir Peter Medawar, who shared the Nobel Prize in 1960 for his work in graft rejection leading to advances in the toleration of transplants, is anchored by the last two essays, “Two Conceptions of Science” and “Hypothesis and Imagination.” The point of the title is made in a review of Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation, which Medawar finds disappointing.

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The Bijak

Bijak Bhagat is the main authentic work of Kabir, this work is considered to be the holy book of Kabir Panth. Masi kagad chhuon nahi kalam gahaon nahi haath (Sakhi 187) How many people, after reading this, fall under the illusion that Kabir Saheb did not even touch the pen-paper. Therefore, Bijak is not his creation, but of the variables. But this notion is completely illusory. If he did not touch the ‘Masi-Kagad’, then he did it through his mouth.

The Black Prince

The Black Prince is remarkable for the structure of its narrative, consisting of a central story bookended by forewords and post-scripts by characters within it. It largely consists of the description of a period in the later life of the main character, ageing London author Bradley Pearson, during which time he falls in love with the daughter of a friend and literary rival, Arnold Baffin.

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293

The Book of Joy

The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World is a book by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu published in 2016 by Cornerstone Publishers. In this nonfiction, the authors discuss the challenges of living a joyful life.

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The Book of Mirdad

The Book of Mirdad is an allegorical book of philosophy by Lebanese author Mikha’il Na’ima. The book was first published in Lebanon in 1948 and was initially written in English, with Na’ima later translating it into Arabic. Na’ima initially sought to have the book published in London, where it was rejected for “[advancing] a religion with ‘a new dogma'”.

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295

The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov, also translated as The Karamazov Brothers, is the last novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger from January 1879 to November 1880. Dostoevsky died less than four months after its publication.

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The City of God

The City of God, is a book of Christian philosophy written in Latin by Augustine of Hippo in the early 5th century AD. The book was in response to allegations that Christianity brought about the decline of Rome and is considered one of Augustine’s most important works, standing alongside The Confessions, The Enchiridion, On Christian Doctrine, and On the Trinity.

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The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne

This Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Essays is translated from the French and edited with an introduction and notes by M.A. Screech. In 1572 Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and reflection. There he wrote his constantly expanding ‘assays’, inspired by the ideas he found in books contained in his library and from his own experience.

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The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne

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299

The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton

The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton celebrates this author’s genius in a thoughtfully assembled book that provides new modern-spelling versions of Milton’s texts, expert commentary, and a wealth of other features that will please even the most dedicated students of Milton’s canon. Edited by a trio of esteemed scholars, this volume is the definitive Milton for our time.

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The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne

In this book- This Modern Library edition contains all of John Donne’s great metaphysical love poetry. Here are such well-known songs and sonnets as “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” “The Extasie,” and “A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day,” along with the love elegies “Jealosie,” “His Parting From Her,” and “To His Mistris Going to Bed.” Presented as well are Donne’s satires, epigrams, verse letters, and holy sonnets, along with his most ambitious and important poems, the Anniversaries.

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The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka

The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka is a compilation of all of Kafka’s short stories. With the exception of three novels (The Trial, The Castle and Amerika), this collection includes all of his narrative work. The book was originally edited by Nahum N. Glatzer and published by Schocken Books in 1971. It was reprinted in 1995 with an introduction by John Updike.

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The Complete Works Of Swami Vivekananda

All the nine published volumes of Swami Vivekananda’s works are available here. All proceeds from the sale of this book are donated to Advaita Ashrama, founded by Swami Vivekananda. In these volumes we have not only a principles to the world at large, but also, to its own children, the Charter of the Hindu faith. For the first time in history, Hinduism itself forms here the subject of generalization of a Hindu mind of the highest order.

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The Complete Works of Plato

In his introductory essay, John Cooper explains the presentation of these works, discusses questions concerning the chronology of their composition, comments on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote, and offers guidance on approaching the reading and study of Plato’s works.

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The Concept of Mind

The Concept of Mind is a 1949 book by philosopher Gilbert Ryle, in which the author argues that “mind” is “a philosophical illusion hailing chiefly from René Descartes and sustained by logical errors and ‘category mistakes’ which have become habitual.”

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The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Confessions is an autobiographical book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in order to distinguish it from Saint Augustine’s Confessions. Covering the first fifty-three years of Rousseau’s life, up to 1765, it was completed in 1769, but not published until 1782, four years after Rousseau’s death, even though Rousseau did read excerpts of his manuscript publicly at various salons and other meeting places.

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The Course of Positive Philosophy

The Course of Positive Philosophy (Cours de Philosophie Positive) was a series of texts written by the French philosopher of science and founding sociologist, Auguste Comte, between 1830 and 1842. Within the work he unveiled the epistemological perspective of positivism. The works were translated into English by Harriet Martineau and condensed to form The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (1853).

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The Daily Stoic

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living is a daily devotional book of stoic philosophy co-authored by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. It is Holiday’s fifth book and Hanselman’s debut as an author. The Daily Stoic is an original translation of selections from several stoic philosophers including Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Zeno and others.

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The Daodejing: A short book on Daoist philosophy

The Dao de jing set forth an alternative vision of reality in a world torn apart by violence and betrayal. Daoism, as this subtle but enduring philosophy came to be known, offers a comprehensive view of experience grounded in a full understanding of the wonders hidden in the ordinary. Now in this luminous new translation, based on the recently discovered ancient bamboo scrolls, China scholars Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall bring the timeless wisdom of the Dao de jing into our contemporary world.

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The Destiny of the Mind East and West

This book must be read to understand the collapse of Democracy, occurring as you read this review and suddenly realize that the Maya Prophecy is true but so too is my Prophecy in Matthew 24 and the time is shorted by the “Way of the Kings of the East” who of course are the 4 Horsemen: William of England, Barack of Ethiopia, Hemas Kla Lee Lee Kla of Quadra’s Island and KitmKaldo of Beijing.

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310

The Dharma Bums

The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The basis for the novel’s semi-fictional accounts are events occurring years after the events of On the Road. The main characters are the narrator Ray Smith, based on Kerouac, and Japhy Ryder, based on the poet and essayist Gary Snyder, who was instrumental in Kerouac’s introduction to Buddhism in the mid-1950s.

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The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It chronicles the experiences of a man who decides that there is nothing of any value in the world. Slipping into nihilism with “terrible anguish”, he is determined to commit suicide. However, after a chance encounter with a young girl, he begins an inner journey that re-instills a love for his fellow man. The story first appeared in Dostoevsky’s self-published monthly journal A Writer’s Diary in 1877.

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The Fall by Camus

The Fall (French: La Chute) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus. First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. Set in Amsterdam, The Fall consists of a series of dramatic monologues by the self-proclaimed “judge-penitent” Jean-Baptiste Clamence, as he reflects upon his life to a stranger.

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The Forty Rules of Love

The Forty Rules of Love is a novel written by Turkish author Elif Shafak, The book was published in March 2009. It is about Maulana Jalal-Ud-Din, known as Rumi and his companion Shams Tabrizi. This book explains how Shams transformed a scholar into a Sufi (mystic) through love. More than 750,000 copies of this book were sold in Turkey and France.

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The Foundations of Arithmetic

The Foundations of Arithmetic (German: Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik) is a book by Gottlob Frege, published in 1884, which investigates the philosophical foundations of arithmetic. Frege refutes other theories of number and develops his own theory of numbers. The Grundlagen also helped to motivate Frege’s later works in logicism.

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The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom is a self-help book by bestselling author Don Miguel Ruiz with Janet Mills. The book offers a code of conduct claiming to be based on ancient Toltec wisdom that advocates freedom from self-limiting beliefs that may cause suffering and limitation in a person’s life.

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The Garden of the Prophet

The title of the book tells us the meaning – The Garden of The Prophet, which Gibran intended as a companion to his masterpiece The Prophet, is a lyrical celebration of the mystical beauty of Nature.

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The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game is the last full-length novel by the German author Hermann Hesse. It was begun in 1931 and published in Switzerland in 1943 after being rejected for publication in Germany due to Hesse’s anti-Fascist views. In 1946, Hesse won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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The Guide for the Perplexed

The Guide for the Perplexed is a work of theology by Maimonides. It seeks to reconcile Aristotelianism with Rabbinical Jewish theology by finding rational explanations for many events in the text. It was written in Classical Arabic using the Hebrew alphabet in the form of a three-part letter to his student, Rabbi Joseph ben Judah of Ceuta, the son of Rabbi Judah, and is the main source of Maimonides’ philosophical views, as opposed to his opinions on Jewish law.

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The Literary Work of Art

The Literary Word of Art establishes the groundwork for a philosophy of literature, i.e., an ontology in terms of which the basic general structure of all lliterary works can be determined. This “essential anatomy” makes basic tools and concepts available for rigorous and subtle aesthetic analysis.

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The Magic Mountain

The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in German in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of twentieth-century German literature. Mann started writing what was to become The Magic Mountain in 1912. It began as a much shorter narrative which revisited in a comic manner aspects of Death in Venice, a novella that he was preparing for publication.

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The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities is an unfinished modernist novel in three volumes and various drafts, by the Austrian writer Robert Musil. The novel is a “story of ideas”, which takes place in the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy’s last days, and the plot often veers into allegorical digressions on a wide range of existential themes concerning humanity and feelings.

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The Mathnawi

Mathnavi, is an extensive poem written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi, also known as Rumi. The Masnavi is one of the most influential works of Sufism, commonly called “the Quran in Persian”. It has been viewed by many commentators as the greatest mystical poem in world literature. The Masnavi is a series of six books of poetry that together amount to around 25,000 verses or 50,000 lines.

The Meditations

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The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus

In this book – This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world’s literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

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The Moviegoer

The Moviegoer is the debut novel by Walker Percy, first published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf in 1961. It won the U.S. National Book Award. Time included the novel in its “Time 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005”. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Moviegoer sixtieth on its list of the hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge was Rainer Maria Rilke’s only novel. It was written whilst Rilke lived in Paris, and was published in 1910. The novel is semi-autobiographical, and is written in an expressionistic style. The work was inspired by Sigbjørn Obstfelder’s work A Priest’s Diary and Jens Peter Jacobsen’s second novel Niels Lyhne of 1880, which traces the fate of an atheist in a merciless world.

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The Order of Things

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines, 1966) by Michel Foucault, proposes that every historical period has underlying epistemic assumptions, ways of thinking, which determined what is truth and what is acceptable discourse about a subject, by delineating the origins of biology, economics, and linguistics.

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The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India: A Historical Comparison

In this book- the origins and early form of Indian and Greek philosophy, and the striking similarities between them, in their entire societal and religious context. The cities of Greece and northern India were distinctive by virtue of being pervasively monetised, which was a central factor in their metaphysical transformation.

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329

The Orlando Furioso

Orlando furioso- The Frenzy of Orlando, more literally Raging Roland) is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532. Orlando Furioso is a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo’s unfinished romance Orlando Innamorato (Orlando in Love, published posthumously in 1495).

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330

The Phenomenology of the Spirit

The Phenomenology of Spirit is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s most widely discussed philosophical work; its German title can be translated as either The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind. Hegel described the work, published in 1807, as an “exposition of the coming to be of knowledge”.

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The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī

This volume renders into English the philosophical writings of the first philosopher of Islam: al-Kindi, known as the “Philosopher of the Arabs.” One of the greatest figures of medieval philosophy, al-Kindi initiated the process of integrating Greek philosophical ideas into Islamic culture. He was deeply involved in the translation of Greek philosophy and science into Arabic, and wrote on a wide range of philosophical and scientific topics including metaphysics, theology, psychology, cosmology, ethics, and medicine.

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332

The Principles of Psychology

The Principles of Psychology is an 1890 book about psychology by William James, an American philosopher and psychologist who trained to be a physician before going into psychology. There are four methods from James’ book: stream of consciousness (James’ most famous psychological metaphor); emotion (later known as the James–Lange theory); habit (human habits are constantly formed to achieve certain results); and will (through James’ personal experiences in life).

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The Problems of Philosophy

The Problems of Philosophy is a 1912 book by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, in which the author attempts to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. He introduces philosophy as a repeating series of (failed) attempts to answer the same questions: Can we prove that there is an external world? Can we prove cause and effect?

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The Prophet

The Prophet is a book of 26 prose poetry fables written in English by the Lebanese-American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran. It was originally published in 1923 by Alfred A. Knopf. It is Gibran’s best known work. The Prophet has been translated into over 100 different languages, making it one of the most translated books in history, and it has never been out of print.

The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism

The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism provides a high-level comprehensive examination and assessment of the subject – its history and contemporary development. It offers 28 chapters, appearing in print here for the first time, from the world’s leading researchers on panpsychism.

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336

The Rubaiyat

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed “the Astronomer-Poet of Persia”. Although commercially unsuccessful at first, FitzGerald’s work was popularised from 1861 onward by Whitley Stokes, and the work came to be greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites in England.

The Sea, The Sea

The Sea, the Sea: is a tale of the strange obsessions that haunt a self-satisfied playwright and director as he begins to write his memoirs. Murdoch’s novel exposes the motivations that drive her characters – the vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world.

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The Shape of Ancient Thought

This unparalleled comparative study of early Eastern and Western philosophy challenges every existing belief about the philosophical foundations of Western civilization. Spanning thirty years of intense intellectual inquiry and research, the author proves what many scholars before him have sensed but couldnʼt empirically explain.

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The Six Systems Of Indian Philosophy

The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy by Friedrich Max Müller is a goldmine of comprehensive account of six major systems of Indian philosophical thought. It addresses descriptively the key thoughts in Vedanta, Uttara-Mimamsa and Purva-Mimamsa, Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya-Vaisheshika, and Vaisheshika systems. The book seriously focuses on one major finding that Indian religion and the major philosophies of the land are well connected with the character of the inhabitants of India.

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The Spirit of the Laws

The Spirit of Laws is a treatise on political theory, as well as a pioneering work in comparative law, published in 1748 by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu. Originally published anonymously, partly because Montesquieu’s works were subject to censorship, its influence outside France was aided by its rapid translation into other languages. In 1750 Thomas Nugent published the first English translation.

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The Story of Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers is a 1926 book by Will Durant, in which he profiles several prominent Western philosophers and their ideas, beginning with Socrates and Plato and on through Friedrich Nietzsche. Durant attempts to show the interconnection of their ideas and how one philosopher’s ideas informed the next.

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The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant

This is one of the masterpieces from the golden age of Egyptian literature in the Middle Kingdom. Although the Tale has been much studied and quoted, there has never been a full parallel edition of the manuscripts. This volume fills that gap and provides a standard text to serve as a basis for future research.

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The Talmud: Selected Writings

The Talmud: Selected Writings translated by Ben Zion Bokser introduced by Ben Zion Bokser and Baruch M. Bokser preface by Robert Goldenberg Study with all your heart and soul that you may know God’s ways and be attentive to His Torah. Guard His Torah in your heart and keep the fear of Him before your eyes. Guard your lips from every sin, and purify and sanctify yourself from fault and wrongdoing, and God will be with you everywhere.

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a 1984 novel by Milan Kundera, about two women, two men, a dog and their lives in the 1968 Prague Spring period of Czechoslovak history. Although written in 1982, the novel was not published until two years later, in a French translation . The original Czech text was published the following year.

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The Unnamable

The Unnamable is a 1953 novel by Samuel Beckett. It was originally published in French as L’Innommable and later translated by the author into English. Grove Press published the English edition in 1958. Following the completion of Malone Dies in 1948, Beckett spent three months writing Waiting for Godot before beginning work on The Unnamable, which he completed in 1950.

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

The book Untethered Soul begins by walking you through your relationship with your thoughts and emotions, helping you uncover the source and fluctuations of your inner energy. It then delves into what you can do to free yourself from the habitual thoughts, emotions, and energy patterns that limit your consciousness. Finally, with perfect clarity, this book opens the door to a life lived in the freedom of your innermost being

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The Voice of the Master

In the book – The Voice of the Master speaks stiringly of the victory of faith over grief and love over loneliness. “Of Marriage,” “Of the Divinity of Man,” “Of Reason and Knowledge,” “Of Love and Equality” – these are some of the themes Gibran searches in this volume, offering fresh insight into many of life’s most perplexing riddles.

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The Voice of the Master

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The Walled Garden of Truth

The Walled Garden of Truth has been constantly read and employed as a classic and Sufi textbook. “Sanai’s fame has always rested on his Hadiqa; it is the best known and in the East by far the most esteemed of his works; it is in virtue of this work that he forms one of the great trio of Sufi teachers—Sanai, Attar, Jalaludin Rumi.”

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The Wisdom of China and India

The book includes a very extensive collection of exerpts from Indian and Chinese Buddhist texts such as Rigveda, Upanishads, Ramayana, Panchatantra, Dhammapada, Tao, Confucius, and much more. Includes glossary of Hindu terms, pronunciation of Chinese names, and table of Chinese dynasties.

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The Simpsons and Philosophy

The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer is a non-fiction book analyzing the philosophy and popular culture effects of the American animated sitcom, The Simpsons, published by Open Court. The book is edited by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard and Aeon J. Skoble, each of whom also wrote one of the eighteen essays in the book.

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Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy received a positive review from the philosopher Mark Sainsbury in Mind. Sainsbury described the book as well-written, but criticized Blackburn’s discussion of knowledge. The writer Peter Edidin wrote in The New York Times that the book “found a sizable audience”, noting that more than 30,000 hardcover copies had been sold and that “Oxford has asked Mr. Blackburn to follow up with Being Good, a guide to the philosophy of ethics”.

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Thyestes

This book Thyestes is a tragedy by the great Stoic philosopher Seneca. This edition has been translated into readable prose for 21st century audience.

Total Freedom - Krishnamurti

Now the trustees of Krishnamurti’s work have gathered his very best and most illuminating writings and talks to present in one volume the truly essential ideas of this great spiritual thinker.Total Freedom includes selections from Krishnamurti’s early works, his ‘Commentaries on Living’, and his discourses on life, the self, meditation, sex and love.

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Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) or Theologico-Political Treatise was one of the most controversial texts of the early modern period. In it, Spinoza expounds his views on contemporary Jewish and Christian religion and critically analyses the Bible which underlies both.

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Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dōgen’s Shobo Genzo

Treasury of the True Dharma Eye is a monumental work, considered to be one of the profoundest expressions of Zen wisdom ever put on paper, and also the most outstanding literary and philosophical work of Japan. It is a collection of essays by Eihei Dogen (1200–1253), founder of Zen’s Soto school.

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Under the Net

Under the Net is a 1954 novel by Iris Murdoch. It was Murdoch’s first published novel. Set in London, it is the story of a struggling young writer, Jake Donaghue. Its mixture of the philosophical and the picaresque has made it one of Murdoch’s most popular novels. It is dedicated to Raymond Queneau.

Upanishad

The Upanishads are late Vedic Sanskrit texts of Hindu philosophy which form the foundations of Hinduism. They are the most recent part of the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, and deal with meditation, philosophy, and ontological knowledge; other parts of the Vedas deal with mantras, benedictions, rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices.

What does it all mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy

In this book cogent and accessible introduction to philosophy, the distinguished author of Mortal Questions and The View From Nowhere sets forth the central problems of philosophical inquiry for the beginning student. Arguing that the best way to learn about philosophy is to think about its questions directly, Thomas Nagel considers possible solutions to nine problems.

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360

Zen and Japanese Buddhism

This book is written by Daisetz T. Suzuki, In this book – The interest of the Japanese people in culture, with all its manifold efflorescence, have increased with the Zen- a form of Buddhism.

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361

Zen and Japanese Buddhism

This book is written by Daisetz T. Suzuki, In this book – The interest of the Japanese people in culture, with all its manifold efflorescence, have increased with the Zen- a form of Buddhism.

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362

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values is a book by Robert M. Pirsig first published in 1974. It is a work of fictionalized autobiography, and is the first of Pirsig’s texts in which he explores his “Metaphysics of Quality”. Pirsig received 121 rejections before an editor finally accepted the book for publication—and he did so thinking it would never generate a profit.

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363

Émile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the “best and most important” of all his writings. Due to a section of the book entitled “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar”, Emile was banned in Paris and Geneva and was publicly burned in 1762, the year of its first publication.

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364

Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra

The Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra or Bodhicaryāvatāra translated into English as A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, is a Mahāyāna Buddhist text written c. 700 AD in Sanskrit verse by Shantideva (Śāntideva), a Buddhist monk at Nālandā Monastic University in India which is also where it was composed. It has ten chapters dedicated to the development of bodhicitta (the mind of enlightenment) through the practice of the six perfections (Skt. Pāramitās).

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The history of Indian philosophy is very old, but the word philosophy was first used by Pythagoras in the sense of philosophy. Philosophy as a distinct discipline and science was developed by Plato.

It originated in slave-owning society as a science that integrated the sum total of man’s knowledge of the objective world and himself. This was quite natural due to the low level of development of knowledge in the early stages of human history.

In the process of development of social production and accumulation of scientific knowledge, various sciences apart from philosophy and philosophy began to develop as an independent science.

Philosophy as a distinct discipline was born out of the need to expand the general view of the world and to develop principles of reason, logic and knowledge of how to think about reality, setting common grounds and rules. The fundamental question of philosophy as a separate science is the problem of the relation of consciousness to itself, of consciousness to matter.

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