If you had to philosophize…

For some reason, Philosophy is the least understood of all subjects in the Humanities as a choice of study that someone would consciously take up. I’ve always had a hard time explaining to people what Philosophy is about or indeed why one should ever study it in the first place. Plenty of people have asked me for a good book on Philosophy that will “give them a broad and general idea”, and I have rarely been able to comply with this request.

Its not that books like this do not exist, several do and some are excellent as well. The trouble with me, is the acceptance of the idea that an entire discipline can be summarized in one book. Its like asking a Historian to recommend one complete book on all facets of History.

Normally, in situations like this I tell people I’m willing to point them to books they should read on Philosophy which cover at least some substantial philosophical thought in original. This too is a terribly deficient way of readind up on Philosophy, but it appears to me, to be better than the alternatives.

Here’s a list of Philosophical writings (or texts if you like) that are on my essential reading list (fifty titles) for Philosophy. Several of these don’t classify strictly as texts of philosophy, some deal with language, science, physics and even literature.

1. Plato – The Republic, The Symposium and The Apology
2. Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics, The Politics
3. Epicurus – Sovran Maxims
4. Cicero – On Friendship and Old Age
5. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
6. St. Augustine – Confessions
7. Severinus Boethius – The Consolation of Philosophy
8. Desiderius Erasmus – In Praise of Folly
9. Thomas More – Utopia
10. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince
11. Nicolaus Copernicus – Revolutions of Celestial Orbs
12. Francis Bacon – The Advancement of Learning
13. René Descartes – Meditations of First Philosophy, Discourse on Method
14. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan
15. Blaise Pascal – Thoughts
16. Baruch Spinoza – Ethics
17. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
18. John Locke – An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
19. Gottfried Leibniz – Monadology
20. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge
21. David Hume – Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
22. Jean- Jacques Rousseau – The Social Contract
23. Adam Smith – The Wealth of Nations
24. Immanuel Kant – The Critique of Pure and Practical Reason, The Metaphysics of Morals
25. Jeremy Bentham – Principles of Morals and Legislation
26. Thomas Paine – The Rights of Man
27. Mary Wollstonecraft – The Vindication of the Rights of Women
28. Le Marquis De Sade – Philosophy in the Boudoir
29. Auguste Comte – Positive Philosophy
30. Carl Von Clausewitz – On War
31. Hegel – The Philosophy of Religion
32. Arthur Schopenhauer – The World as Will and Idea
33. Marx and Engels – The German Ideology
34. John Stuart Mill – On Liberty , A System of Logic
35. Henry D Thoreau – Walden
36. Charles Darwin – On the Origin of Species
37. Friedrich Nietzsche -Beyond Good and Evil
38. William James – Varieties of Religious Experience
39. Sigmund Freud – Psychoanalysis
40. Albert Einstein – Relativity
41. Ludwig Wittgenstein – Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
42. Adolf Hitler – My Struggle
43. A. J. Ayer – Language, Truth + Logic
44. Jean-Paul Sartre – Existentialism as Humanism
45. Alan Turning – Computing Machinery and Intelligence
46. Karl Popper – The Logic of Scientific Discovery
47. Thomas Samuel Kuhn – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
48. Simone de Beauvoir – The Second Sex
49. Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov
50. Franz Kafka: The Trial, The Castle, Metamorphosis

There are probably many many more that should have made it to this list, still, I think anyone looking to read Philosophy beyond the mere crash course should look at these.