School #26
Rationalism
Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza
Rationalism holds that reason, rather than sensory experience, is the primary source of knowledge — certain fundamental truths can be known through the intellect alone, independently of observation. Rene Descartes's 'Meditations on First Philosophy' (1641) exemplified the rationalist method: through systematic doubt and pure reasoning, he arrived at the certainty of his own existence (cogito ergo sum) and then deduced the existence of God and the external world from clear and distinct ideas. Baruch Spinoza's 'Ethics' (1677) pursued rationalism to its most radical conclusion, constructing an entire metaphysical system in geometric form — definitions, axioms, and theorems — demonstrating that God, Nature, and all things follow with logical necessity from a single substance. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's 'Monadology' (1714) and 'New Essays on Human Understanding' (1765) argued that the mind possesses innate ideas and that the truths of reason (necessary, eternal) are fundamentally different in kind from the truths of fact (contingent, empirical).
Worldview
The rationalist inhabits a universe of crystalline intelligibility, where the deepest truths are accessible not through the unreliable testimony of the senses but through the clear light of reason alone. Reality feels ordered, necessary, and transparent to a sufficiently disciplined intellect — the mathematical structure of the world is not a human invention but a discovery of what was always there. The fundamental orientation is one of intellectual confidence: the mind is adequate to reality because reality itself is rational. To hold this ontology is to experience the satisfaction of necessary truth, the conviction that behind the flux of appearances lies a logical order that reason can fully grasp. There is a serenity in this position, grounded in the faith that the universe makes sense all the way down and that the patient work of deduction will eventually reveal its architecture. The framework classifies this as Cosmic-ordering metaphysical agency: classical rationalism grounds reality in an impersonal rational order (necessary truths, eternal essences) rather than in case-by-case action by a personal deity. The framework reads this as Reason-grounded moral authority: clear and distinct ideas, necessary truths, and the natural light of reason are the final court of appeal — Scripture and Tradition can inform, but reason judges, and direct mystical experience is suspect unless reason ratifies it.
Moral Implications
Rationalist ethics derives moral principles from reason rather than sentiment, custom, or revelation. For Spinoza, virtue is the intellectual love of God (amor Dei intellectualis) — the joyful recognition of one's place within the necessary order of nature. For Descartes and Leibniz, moral certainty follows from clear and distinct ideas about the good, accessible to any rational agent who thinks carefully enough. The rationalist moral framework emphasizes universality: moral truths, like mathematical truths, hold for all rational beings regardless of culture or circumstance. Duty is grounded in rational necessity rather than emotional inclination, and moral disagreement is understood as a failure of reasoning that can in principle be corrected through more rigorous analysis.
Practical Implications
Rationalism provides the philosophical foundation for mathematics-driven science, formal logic, and systematic planning in governance and economics. Technology is valued as the embodiment of rational principles in material form — engineering, computation, and architectural design all express the rationalist confidence that reality can be fully understood and mastered through reason. In policy, the rationalist favors systematic, theory-driven approaches over ad hoc empirical tinkering, trusting that correct principles will yield correct outcomes. Education emphasizes logic, mathematics, and the cultivation of clear thinking as the highest intellectual virtues. Daily life is oriented toward intellectual discipline, consistency of principle, and the subordination of sensory impulse to reasoned judgment.
⧖
I. Time
Time is substantival and infinite — it is a real dimension of a rationally ordered universe knowable through a priori reasoning. For Leibniz, time is the order of successive phenomena; for Spinoza, God's infinite being implies infinite temporal extent. Time is continuous, linear, uni-directional, and deterministic because the rational structure of reality permits no gaps or contingencies.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Grain: Continuous
Freedom: Deterministic
Traversability: Linear
Dimensionality: One
Direction: Uni-directional
✦
II. Space
Space is substantival and infinite — it is the spatial dimension of a rationally ordered universe. For Descartes, space is identical with extended substance (res extensa); for Leibniz, it is the relational order of coexisting phenomena. Space is flat, local, and three-dimensional, fully comprehensible through reason.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Curvature: Flat
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
◉
III. Matter
Matter is substantival and finite — it is one of the fundamental substances of reality (res extensa for Descartes). Matter is fully governed by rational, deterministic laws and is conserved through all transformations. The rationalist treats matter as completely intelligible to reason, with no residue of brute, unexplained facticity.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
◎
IV. Observer
The observer is primarily a thinking substance — a mind whose access to truth comes through reason rather than through the senses. Though situated in time and space, the rational mind can transcend both to apprehend necessary truths: mathematical, logical, and metaphysical certainties that hold everywhere and always. Total knowledge is achievable in principle because the structure of reality is rational and transparent to a sufficiently disciplined intellect. What reason discovers, it retains permanently — rational insight does not decay. The observer is both embodied and something more: the mind is not reducible to the body. Observation is passive in the sense that reason discovers truths rather than inventing them. At the deepest level, the rational observer is singular — one mind confronting the intelligible order of things.
Attributes
Time Instance: Single
Space Instance: Single
Extent of Knowledge: Total
Retainment of Knowledge: Total
Physicality: Both
Agency: Passive
Number: Singular
Metaphysical Agency: Cosmic-ordering
Moral Authority: Reason
Theological Method: N/A
⚡
V. Energy
Energy is substantival and finite — it is a rationally ordered quantity governed by necessary laws. Conservation is strict: the rational structure of reality guarantees that energy is preserved. Dispersibility is irreversible as a consequence of the deterministic laws governing the natural world.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dispersibility: Irreversible
⧉
VI. Information
Rational truths — mathematical, logical, and a priori information — exist independently of sensory experience and are necessarily preserved. The framework places this as conserved at both scales: necessary truths are eternally preserved at the cosmic scale, and the rational soul (in classical rationalism) shares in this necessity — its pattern, grounded in eternal truths, is not lost at the death of the body.
Attributes
Ontological Status: Substantival
Cosmic Conservation: Conserved
Personal Conservation: Conserved
Granularity: Continuous
Experiments This School Responds To (15)
Galileo's Falling Bodies
A model of how *a priori* reasoning constrains physics: no experiment is needed because the Aristotelian doctrine is internally incoherent. Mathematics and logic do the …
Descartes' Evil Demon
The demon is the methodological scaffolding for the *cogito* and for the reconstructive project of the *Meditations*. The argument is canonical; the reconstruction (via God) …
Buridan's Ass
Genuine reasons rarely tie at the level of resolution that matters; the case is artificial. Where ties do occur, indifference and arbitrary selection are themselves …
Gettier Cases
A challenge to *post-Cartesian* internalist rationalism; classical rationalists insist that genuine knowledge is grounded in self-evident principles, where Gettier-style accidents are precluded.
Galileo's Inclined Plane
The mathematical pattern (distance ∝ t²) is recognised by reason once the data are collected; reason and observation cooperate in producing scientific knowledge.
Eratosthenes' Measurement of Earth
A demonstration of how geometry and observation cooperate: pure deduction from a few measurable angles yields a global structural fact about the world.
The Cogito
The founding move: indubitable first-person certainty grounds the rest of knowledge. Descartes' reconstructive project — and rationalism after him — depends on the Cogito.
Meno's Slave Boy
A foundational moment: mathematical knowledge is not derived from experience but accessed by reason. Innate ideas in Descartes, Leibniz, and the modern tradition descend from …
BonJour's Clairvoyant
A vindication of internalism: knowledge requires reflective access to grounds. Norman, lacking this, does not know.
Williamson's Anti-Luminosity Argument
Cartesian privileged access: the mind's access to its own occurrent states is constitutive, not error-prone. The safety condition does not apply to self-knowledge.
Archimedes' Eureka — The Displacement Principle
The mathematical law (buoyant force = weight of displaced fluid) is a necessary truth about fluids in equilibrium; the bath episode merely occasions the intellectual …
Archimedes' Lever Demonstrations
Archimedes derives the lever law from axioms of symmetry and homogeneity — a deductive proof of a physical law. Rationalism in mechanics at its purest.
Hipparchus' Star Catalogue
The inference from a 2° shift to a 25,800-year cycle is a mathematical extrapolation from sparse data — reason extending observation far beyond its immediate …
Ptolemy's Almagest Observations
The *Almagest* is a triumph of mathematical modelling: geometric deduction from axioms about circular motion, fitted to observation. Rationalism in astronomy at its pre-modern peak.
Roger Bacon's Optics
Bacon does not reject deduction — he insists that deduction needs experimental verification. The relationship is complementary: reason proposes, experiment disposes.
Films Reading Through This School (1)
Debates Where This School Is Allied (28)
The Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence
Relationalist
Erasmus–Luther on Free Will
Catholic humanist; libertarian-leaning
The Augustine–Pelagius Controversy
British monk; moral capacity of fallen humanity
The Hobbes–Bramhall Debate
Anglican-Arminian; libertarian
The Newton–Hooke Disputes
Mathematical natural philosopher
The Russell–Frege Correspondence
Founder of modern logic; recipient of the bad news
Aquinas–Siger on Latin Averroism
Synthetic theologian-philosopher
Aquinas–Siger on Latin Averroism
Latin Averroist
Voltaire–Leibniz on Theodicy
Theodicist; philosophical optimist
Anselm and Gaunilo on the Ontological Argument
Augustinian-Platonist theologian
Husserl and Heidegger
Transcendental phenomenologist
Kant and Hume
Transcendental idealist
Spinoza and Leibniz
Rationalist substance-monist
Spinoza and Leibniz
Rationalist substance-pluralist
Plato vs Protagoras
Philosophical realist; defender of objective truth and virtue
Aristotle vs Plato on the Forms
Theorist of separate Forms
Mencius vs Xunzi on Human Nature
Confucian theorist of innate goodness
The Heidegger–Cassirer Davos Disputation
Neo-Kantian philosopher of symbolic forms
Frege vs Husserl on Psychologism
Anti-psychologist logician
Mill vs Whewell on Induction
Polymath philosopher of inductive sciences
Newton vs Leibniz on Calculus Priority
English natural philosopher; President of the Royal Society
Newton vs Leibniz on Calculus Priority
German polymath; court librarian at Hanover
Calvin and the Trial of Servetus
Anti-Trinitarian; physician-theologian
Heraclitus vs Parmenides
Philosopher of Being; founder of ontology
Plato vs Diogenes
Founder of the Academy; metaphysician of the Forms
Wollstonecraft vs Rousseau on Women
Enlightenment philosopher; pioneering feminist
Hobbes vs Descartes
Rationalist dualist
Abelard vs Bernard of Clairvaux
Dialectician; rationalist theologian
Works that name Rationalism in their embodiments
Foundational texts that draw on this school, with each work's declared weight.
45%
40%
35%
35%
35%
35%
30%
30%
30%
30%
30%
30%
30%
30%
30%
28%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
22%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
18%
18%
18%
18%
18%
16%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
14%
14%
14%
14%
14%
14%
14%
14%
14%
14%
14%
14%
14%
12%
12%
12%
12%
12%
12%
12%
12%
11%
11%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
9%
8%
8%
7%
7%
6%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
Meditations on First Philosophy
René Descartes · 1641 (Latin); French translation by Duc de Luynes 1647
Discourse on the Method (Mid (1637, in mature middle age; preceding the Meditations of 1641))
René Descartes · 1637 (published anonymously as the preface to three scientific essays — Optics, Meteorology, Geometry)
Monadology (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1714 (written in French for Prince Eugene of Savoy); published 1720 in German
Discourse on Metaphysics (Mid (Leibniz's breakthrough philosophical statement))
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1686 (sent to Antoine Arnauld; not published in Leibniz's lifetime)
Elements
Euclid · c. 300 BCE
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon
Aristarchus of Samos · c. 280 BCE
Theodicy (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1710 (the only philosophical book Leibniz published in his lifetime)
New Essays on Human Understanding (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1704 (completed; Leibniz suppressed publication after Locke's 1704 death); 1765 (posthumous publication)
Principles of Nature and Grace (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1714
Foundations of Geometry (Mid)
David Hilbert · 1899 (1st ed.); 1903-1971 (multiple subsequent eds)
Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (Early (Spinoza's first published work))
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza · 1663 (Renati Des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I et II, Amsterdam: Rieuwertsz)
Discourse on Metaphysics (Mature)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1686 (composed February 1686; first published 1846)
New System (Mature)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1695
Ars Magna (Ars Generalis Ultima)
Ramon Llull · 1305–1308
The Spiritual Medicine
Al-Razi (Rhazes) · c. 900–925 CE
A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion (Early-career)
Samuel Clarke · 1705 (Boyle Lectures); published 1706
Proslogion
Anselm of Canterbury · 1077–78 (Abbey of Bec)
Meno (Early)
Plato · c. 386–380 BC (transitional dialogue)
The Social Contract (Late (after the two Discourses; the political conclusion of Rousseau's mature thought))
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762
A Vindication of the Rights of Men (Early (preceding the more famous 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Woman))
Mary Wollstonecraft · 1790 (the first major published response to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France)
The Passions of the Soul (Les Passions de l'âme) (Late)
René Descartes · 1649
Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke · 1715-16
Syntactic Structures (Early)
Noam Chomsky · 1957
A Mathematical Theory of Communication (Mid)
Claude Shannon · 1948 (Bell System Technical Journal)
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Mid)
Noam Chomsky · 1965
Foundation (Mid)
Isaac Asimov · 1942-50 (stories); 1951 (collected as Foundation)
A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Late)
Pierre-Simon Laplace · 1814 (Essai philosophique sur les probabilités)
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (Early (Wollstonecraft's first published book, written from her experience as a governess and a school proprietress))
Mary Wollstonecraft · 1787 (J. Johnson, London)
Dictionnaire philosophique (Late (composed during the Ferney years))
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) · 1764 (Dictionnaire philosophique portatif, Geneva; greatly expanded through 1769)
Topics (Mid-mature)
Aristotle · c. 350-340 BC (one of Aristotle's earlier mature logical works)
Cur Deus Homo (Late-mature)
Anselm of Canterbury · c. 1094-98
The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Last)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1715-16 (5 letters from Leibniz, 5 replies from Clarke); published 1717
Correspondence with Arnauld (Mature)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1686-1690
Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Early)
René Descartes · c. 1628 (unfinished); 1701 (posthumous)
Principles of Philosophy (Mature)
René Descartes · 1644
Treatise on Morality (Mid)
Nicolas Malebranche · 1684
Paradoxes (fragments)
Zeno of Elea · c. 460 BCE
Sic et Non
Peter Abelard · c. 1121–1132 CE
Opus Majus
Roger Bacon · c. 1267
Collected Commentaries on the Four Books (Sishu Jizhu) (Late)
Zhu Xi · c. 1177–1190 (revised throughout his life)
Mathematical Commentary on Diophantus
Hypatia of Alexandria · c. 400 CE
On Light (De Luce)
Robert Grosseteste · c. 1225–1228
Nyayakusumanjali
Udayana · c. 10th century CE
Pramanavarttika (Commentary on Valid Cognition) (Early)
Dharmakirti · c. 7th century
Slokavarttika (Early)
Kumarila Bhatta · c. 7th century
Conics
Apollonius of Perga · c. 200 BCE
Fragments (Silloi and On Nature)
Xenophanes of Colophon · c. 540–475 BCE
Letters and Scientific Writings
Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II) · c. 980–1003 CE
A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (Early-career)
Samuel Clarke · 1704 (Boyle Lectures); published 1705
Monologion (Early (Anselm's first major work, before the Proslogion))
Anselm of Canterbury · c. 1076 (composed at the abbey of Bec; the first major work of mature scholastic theology)
Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Mature (the most comprehensive single-text statement of the system))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1817 (1st edition); 1827 (2nd edition); 1830 (3rd and definitive edition, in three volumes)
Prior and Posterior Analytics
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (the core logical works of the Organon)
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Early)
Arthur Schopenhauer · 1813 (doctoral dissertation); 1847 (revised 2nd edition)
Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (Late)
Hermann Cohen · 1918 (completed); 1919 (posthumous); 1929 (2nd ed.)
Astronomia Nova (Mid)
Johannes Kepler · 1609
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Late)
James Clerk Maxwell · 1873 (2 vols.; 2nd ed. 1881; 3rd ed. 1891)
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Late)
Norbert Wiener · 1948 (2nd ed. 1961)
The Character of Physical Law (Mid)
Richard Feynman · 1964 (lectures); 1965 (book)
Traité élémentaire de chimie (Late)
Antoine Lavoisier · 1789
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Late)
Edward Gibbon · 1776 (vol. I); 1781 (vols. II-III); 1788-89 (vols. IV-VI)
Past, Present and Future (Late)
Arthur N. Prior · 1967
The Divine Relativity (Mid)
Charles Hartshorne · 1948 (Yale Terry Lectures 1947)
Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics (Early)
Hugh Everett III · 1957 (Reviews of Modern Physics)
An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (Late (Wollstonecraft's last completed major non-fiction work, three years before her death))
Mary Wollstonecraft · 1794 (Vol. I only — the projected continuation was never written)
Ocean of Reasoning (Mature (Tsongkhapa's major philosophical-Madhyamaka work))
Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa · c. 1407
al-Kashf ʿan Manāhij al-Adilla (Mature)
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) · c. 1180
My Bondage and My Freedom (Mature (Douglass's second autobiography, written after his break with Garrison and the founding of his own newspaper))
Frederick Douglass · 1855 (Miller, Orton & Mulligan, New York)
The Assayer (Mature (composed during the brief honeymoon between Galileo and the new Pope Urban VIII))
Galileo Galilei · 1623 (Rome: Accademia dei Lincei)
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (Mature (composed at the height of the developing controversy with Rome))
Galileo Galilei · 1615 (composed; circulated in manuscript; first published 1636 in Strasbourg)
Traité sur la tolérance (Late (the campaign-treatise of the Ferney period))
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) · 1763 (Traité sur la tolérance à l'occasion de la mort de Jean Calas)
Political Treatise (Late (Spinoza's last work, left incomplete at his death))
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza · 1675-77 (unfinished at Spinoza's 1677 death; published posthumously as part of the Opera Posthuma)
Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Early (Spinoza's first major philosophical project, left incomplete as the Ethics took shape))
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza · c. 1661-62 (unfinished; published posthumously in the Opera Posthuma 1677)
Short Treatise on God (Early (Spinoza's first systematic presentation of his metaphysics, predating the Ethics))
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza · c. 1660-62 (Dutch manuscript circulated only among Spinoza's closest correspondents during his lifetime; rediscovered 1862)
Rhetoric (Mature)
Aristotle · c. 350-330 BC (composed during Aristotle's mature Lyceum period)
Poetics (Mature)
Aristotle · c. 335 BC (composed during Aristotle's Lyceum period; only the book on tragedy and epic survives; the book on comedy is lost)
On Generation and Corruption (Mature)
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (during Aristotle's mature Lyceum period)
De Monarchia (Late)
Dante Alighieri · c. 1313-18 (during Dante's exile)
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (Mid-mature)
Albert Einstein · 1916 (Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie); English translation 1920
On Truth (Mature)
Anselm of Canterbury · c. 1080-85
On Free Will (Mature)
Anselm of Canterbury · c. 1080-85
De l'Esprit Géométrique (Mid)
Blaise Pascal · c. 1655
Correspondence with Princess Elisabeth (Late)
René Descartes · 1643-49
The Search After Truth (Early-to-mid)
Nicolas Malebranche · 1674-75 (expanded through 1712)
Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion (Mid-to-late)
Nicolas Malebranche · 1688
The Beginning of Infinity (Late)
David Deutsch · 2011
Origines Sacrae (Early-career)
Edward Stillingfleet · 1662 (revised editions through 1675)
The Book of Beliefs and Opinions
Saadia Gaon · 933 CE
Kitab al-Hayawan (Book of Animals) (Early)
Al-Jahiz (Abu Uthman Amr ibn Bahr) · c. 860
On Floating Bodies
Archimedes of Syracuse · c. 250 BCE
On the Measurement of the Earth (reconstructed)
Eratosthenes of Cyrene · c. 240 BCE
A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion (Early-career)
Edward Stillingfleet · 1664
The Unreasonableness of Separation (Mid-career)
Edward Stillingfleet · 1681
The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (Mid-career)
Samuel Clarke · 1712
Reflections on Language (Mid-career (linguistic work))
Noam Chomsky · 1975
De Aeternitate Mundi (Middle)
Siger of Brabant · 1272
Gödel's Ontological Argument (Late (private manuscript))
Kurt Gödel · c. 1941-1970 (manuscript); shown to D. Scott 1970; published posthumously 1995
Ethics
Baruch Spinoza · completed c. 1675; published posthumously 1677
Faṣl al-Maqāl (The Decisive Treatise) (Late)
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) · c. 1179 (Córdoba, Andalusia)
Critique of Practical Reason (Late)
Immanuel Kant · 1788
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Immanuel Kant · 1785
The Foundations of Arithmetic
Gottlob Frege · 1884
Theological-Political Treatise (Early)
Baruch Spinoza · 1670 (anonymously, with false imprint)
Theaetetus (Late)
Plato · c. 369 BC (late dialogue)
Principia Mathematica (Early (both authors))
Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell · 1910 (vol. 1), 1912 (vol. 2), 1913 (vol. 3); 2nd edition 1925-27
Science of Logic (Mid (the central work of the mature Hegelian system))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1812 (Book I, Being); 1813 (Book II, Essence); 1816 (Book III, Concept); 1832 (Hegel's revised Book I, posthumous)
Ideas and Opinions (Late (the most comprehensive single-volume collection))
Albert Einstein · 1954 (collected from earlier essays and addresses)
Mishneh Torah (Mid (the major legal work, between the early Commentary on the Mishnah and the late Guide of the Perplexed))
Moses Maimonides (Rambam) · c. 1170-80 (the second of Maimonides's three major works; preceding the Guide of the Perplexed of c. 1190)
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Late (Berlin lectures of the 1820s, his mature mature))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1822-31 (delivered as lectures); 1837 (compiled and published posthumously by Eduard Gans)
Lectures on Aesthetics (Late (Berlin lectures))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1820s (delivered as lectures); 1835-38 (compiled and published posthumously by H. G. Hotho)
The Savage Mind (Mid (the systematic statement of structural anthropology))
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1962
Structural Anthropology (Mid (the methodological consolidation))
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1958
Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (Mid-late (Averroes's major systematic philosophical defence))
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) · c. 1180
The Reasonableness of Christianity (Late)
John Locke · 1695
Sophist
Plato · c. 360 BC
Commentary on the Mishnah (Early-mid)
Moses Maimonides (Rambam) · c. 1158-68
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Late)
Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792
On Nature (Peri Physeos) (Early)
Parmenides of Elea · c. 475 BCE
Sic et Non (Yes and No) (Early)
Peter Abelard · c. 1121
Historical and Critical Dictionary (Dictionnaire Historique et Critique) (Late)
Pierre Bayle · 1697 (2nd expanded edn 1702)
Reasons and Persons (Mid)
Derek Parfit · 1984
The Philosophy of Philosophy (Late)
Timothy Williamson · 2007
After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (Après la finitude) (Late)
Quentin Meillassoux · 2006
Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Mid)
Wilfrid Sellars · 1956
Common Sense (Mid)
Thomas Paine · 1776 (January)
The Age of Reason (Late)
Thomas Paine · 1794 (Part I); 1795 (Part II); 1807 (Part III)
An Essay on Man (Late)
Alexander Pope · 1733-34
Begriffsschrift (Early)
Gottlob Frege · 1879
On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems (Early)
Kurt Gödel · 1931
Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds (Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre) (Mid)
Georg Cantor · 1883
Science and Hypothesis (La Science et l'hypothèse) (Late)
Henri Poincaré · 1902
On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Late)
David Ricardo · 1817
The Methods of Ethics (Late)
Henry Sidgwick · 1874 (1st edn); 1907 (7th, definitive)
Principia Ethica (Early)
G.E. Moore · 1903
The Division of Labor in Society (Early)
Émile Durkheim · 1893
Economy and Society (Late)
Max Weber · 1909-20 (drafts); 1922 (posthumous)
On Sense and Reference (Mid)
Gottlob Frege · 1892
The Language of Thought (Mid)
Jerry Fodor · 1975
The Sources of Normativity (Mid)
Christine Korsgaard · 1996 (Tanner Lectures 1992)
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Late)
Nicolaus Copernicus · 1543 (published; composed 1510-30s)
What Is Life? (Late)
Erwin Schrödinger · 1943 (lectures); 1944 (book)
Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Late)
Alan Turing · 1950 (Mind)
The Double Helix (Mid)
James D. Watson · 1968
Experiments on Plant Hybridization (Late)
Gregor Mendel · 1866 (published in proceedings of Brünn Natural History Society)
The Order of Time (Late)
Carlo Rovelli · 2017 (Italian); 2018 (English)
The Unreality of Time (Late)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1908
A Realist Theory of Science (Mid)
Roy Bhaskar · 1975 (1st ed.); 1978 (2nd ed.); 2008 (3rd ed.)
A New Kind of Science (Mid)
Stephen Wolfram · 1991-2002 (composed over 11 years); 2002 (published)
Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? (Mid)
Nick Bostrom · 2003 (Philosophical Quarterly)
Iggeret Teiman (Epistle to Yemen, c. 1172) and the responsa (Middle (between the Commentary on the Mishnah, 1168, and the Mishneh Torah, completed 1178))
Moses Maimonides (Rambam) · c. 1172
On What Matters (Late (Parfit's final, three-decade-in-the-making work — his second after Reasons and Persons, 1984))
Derek Parfit · 2011 (Vols I & II, Oxford UP); 2017 (Vol III, Oxford UP — published months after Parfit's death)
De Officiis (Late (Cicero's last completed philosophical work, written in the months before his proscription and execution))
Marcus Tullius Cicero · 44 BC (composed at Tusculum, October-December 44 BC, in the months between Caesar's assassination and Cicero's own death in December 43 BC)
Tusculan Disputations (Late (composed in the year of Cicero's daughter's death, in his most intense period of philosophical writing))
Marcus Tullius Cicero · 45 BC (Tusculanae Disputationes; composed at Tusculum after the death of his daughter Tullia)
Convention: A Philosophical Study (Early (Lewis's first book, published at 28, the year he began at UCLA))
David Lewis · 1969 (Harvard UP; based on his 1967 Harvard PhD dissertation under W. V. O. Quine)
Miracles: A Preliminary Study (Mature (after Mere Christianity and Screwtape; the most philosophical of Lewis's apologetic works))
C. S. Lewis · 1947 (Bles, London; revised 1960 chapter 3 after Anscombe's 1948 Socratic Club critique)
Disputed Questions on Truth (Early-mature (Aquinas's first major work after the Sentences commentary))
Thomas Aquinas · 1256-59 (Paris, during Aquinas's first regency)
Compendium of Theology (Late (begun during the Roman regency, unfinished at Aquinas's death))
Thomas Aquinas · 1265-67 (begun in Rome, broken off after Aquinas's 1273 mystical experience)
Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum) (Mature (the work that established Erasmus's international reputation and reshaped biblical scholarship))
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam · 1516 (Novum Instrumentum omne, Froben, Basel — first edition); revised 1519, 1522, 1527, 1535
Against Marcion (Mature (Tertullian's longest and most systematic work))
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus · c. 207-12 (composed in three revisions; the third recension is the surviving text)
Against Praxeas (Late (composed in Tertullian's Montanist period but with orthodox Trinitarian content))
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus · c. 213 (in Tertullian's Montanist period)
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Late (Douglass's third autobiography, covering his post-1855 political career))
Frederick Douglass · 1881 (Park Publishing, Hartford); expanded edition 1892 (De Wolfe, Fiske, Boston)
Sidereus Nuncius (Early-mid (the breakthrough that established Galileo's international reputation))
Galileo Galilei · March 1610 (Venice: Tommaso Baglioni)
Éléments de la philosophie de Newton (Mid (the work that established Voltaire as a public intellectual of European reach))
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) · 1738 (Éléments de la philosophie de Newton, Amsterdam; revised 1741)
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Late (Seneca's last completed major work, composed in retirement))
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · 63-65 CE (Seneca's last years, after retirement from Nero's court and before his forced suicide)
Naturales Quaestiones (Late)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 62-64 CE (composed during Seneca's retirement)
De Otio (Late)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 62 CE (composed at the time of Seneca's retirement from Nero's court)
De Constantia Sapientis (Mid)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 56 CE (early in Seneca's tenure as Nero's advisor)
Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study (Mature)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1811 (first edition); substantially revised 1830 (second edition)
Translation of Plato's dialogues (Mature)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1804-28 (multi-volume translation with extensive prefaces and notes)
De Vulgari Eloquentia (Mid-mature)
Dante Alighieri · c. 1304-05 (two of four planned books)
The World as I See It (Mid-mature)
Albert Einstein · 1934 (German: Mein Weltbild, Querido Verlag, Amsterdam; English: Covici Friede, New York)
Religion and Science (Mid-mature)
Albert Einstein · 1930 (published New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930)
Out of My Later Years (Late)
Albert Einstein · 1950 (Philosophical Library, New York)
The Born-Einstein Letters (Mature-late)
Albert Einstein · 1916-55 (correspondence across four decades); published in 1971 (German); English 1971 (Walker)
Faṣl al-Maqāl (The Decisive Treatise) (Mature)
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) · c. 1179
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (Late)
Thomas Jefferson · c. 1820 (compiled), published 1904
Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion (Early)
Benjamin Franklin · 1728
Bidāyat al-Mujtahid (Mature)
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) · 12th century (c. 1167-88)
Essay on Conic Sections (Early)
Blaise Pascal · 1640
Pascal-Fermat Correspondence on Probability (Mid)
Blaise Pascal · 1654
De Corpore (Late)
Thomas Hobbes · 1655
Logical Investigations (fragments) (Mature)
Chrysippus of Soli · c. 250 BCE
On the Sacred Disease
Hippocrates (or a Hippocratic author) · c. 410–390 BCE
Notebooks (Codex Atlanticus and others) (Lifelong (the notebooks span Leonardo's entire adult career))
Leonardo da Vinci · c. 1478–1519 (across Leonardo's entire career, from Florence through Milan, Rome, and Amboise)
On Nature (fragments)
Philolaus of Croton · c. 440–400 BCE
Edition of Ptolemy's Geography (Middle)
Michael Servetus · 1535 (revised 1541)
The Minimalist Program (Late (linguistic work))
Noam Chomsky · 1995
De Anima Intellectiva (Middle (post-Aquinas-attack))
Siger of Brabant · 1273
Euthyphro (Early)
Plato · c. 399-395 BC
Statesman (Late)
Plato · c. 360-347 BC
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (Posthumous)
Sir Isaac Newton · c. 1680s-90s composition; 1733 publication (posthumous)
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Late)
Immanuel Kant · 1793 (2nd ed. 1794)
De Institutione Musica (On Music) (Early)
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius · c. 500-510
De Institutione Arithmetica (On Arithmetic) (Early)
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius · c. 500-510
Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic (Early)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1896
The Aims of the Philosophers (Middle)
Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī · c. 1094
The Analyst (Late)
George Berkeley · 1734
Brahma-siddhi (Mature)
Maṇḍana Miśra · c. 8th century
A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Late)
Edward Stillingfleet · 1696
The Bishop of Worcester's Answer to Mr Locke (Late)
Edward Stillingfleet · 1697 (with subsequent rejoinders through 1698)
Quaestiones in Tertium De Anima (Early-to-middle)
Siger of Brabant · c. 1265-1270
Quaestiones super Librum de Causis (Late)
Siger of Brabant · c. 1272-76
General Scholium (Late)
Sir Isaac Newton · 1713 (added to 2nd edition of the Principia)
Perpetual Peace (Late)
Immanuel Kant · 1795 (expanded 1796)
Vidhi-viveka (Mature)
Maṇḍana Miśra · c. 8th century
Bhāvanā-viveka (Mature)
Maṇḍana Miśra · c. 8th century
The Nature of Existence (Late)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1921 (vol. 1); 1927 (vol. 2, posthumous, ed. C. D. Broad)
On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin (Late)
Anselm of Canterbury · c. 1099-1100
The Republic
Plato · c. 380–375 BC
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Isaac Newton · 1687 (first ed.); 1713, 1726 (second and third revised eds)
The Guide of the Perplexed
Moses Maimonides (Rambam) · c. 1185–1190 (Cairo)
Cartesian Meditations (Late)
Edmund Husserl · 1929 (Sorbonne lectures); 1931 (French publication); 1950 (German publication)
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
Galileo Galilei · 1632 (Florence; placed on the Index of Prohibited Books later that year)
On Free Choice of the Will (Early)
Augustine of Hippo · c. 387–395 (Book I in Rome 388; Books II–III at Hippo c. 391–395)
Cur Deus Homo (Late)
Anselm of Canterbury · 1094–1098 (Capua and Canterbury)
Deliverance from Error (Late)
Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī · c. 1108 (late in al-Ghazali's life, after returning to teaching)
Logical Investigations (Early (the breakthrough work that founds phenomenology))
Edmund Husserl · 1900 (vol. 1, Prolegomena to Pure Logic); 1901 (vol. 2, six investigations); revised editions 1913, 1921
Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology (Mid (the transcendental turn))
Edmund Husserl · 1913
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Late (the mature systematic philosophy))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1820 (published 1821 with the famous controversial Preface)
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Early (the breakthrough work))
Jürgen Habermas · 1962 (habilitation thesis; English translation 1989)
Émile (Late)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762 (published the same year as the Social Contract; both condemned and burned by authorities)
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Mid (between the First Discourse and the Social Contract))
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1755 (submitted to the 1754 essay competition of the Académie de Dijon, on the question of the origin and justification of inequality)
The Logical Structure of the World (Early (Carnap's breakthrough work))
Rudolf Carnap · 1928 (Carnap's habilitation; the founding text of the Vienna Circle's constructive-philosophical programme)
Principles of Political Economy (Mid (Mill's major economic work))
John Stuart Mill · 1848 (1st edition); revised through 1871 (7th edition)
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Late (Berlin lectures))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1821-31 (delivered as lectures); 1832 (compiled and published posthumously)
De Providentia (Late)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 64 AD (late in Seneca's life, shortly before his forced suicide)
On the Heavens
Aristotle · c. 350 BC
Tradition and the Individual Talent (Early (Eliot's major early critical statement))
Thomas Stearns Eliot · 1919 (first published in The Egoist, September-December 1919)
Convivio (Mid (early years of exile, preceding the Comedy))
Dante Alighieri · 1304-07 (composed during the early years of Dante's exile from Florence; unfinished — four of fifteen planned books completed)
Provincial Letters (Late)
Blaise Pascal · 1656-57
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Late)
John Locke · 1693
Gravitation (Mid-late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1973
Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum) (Mid)
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam · 1516
Eudemian Ethics
Aristotle · c. 350 BC
Parmenides
Plato · c. 370 BC
Time and Modality (Early (Prior's first major synthesis of tense logic, derived from his 1955-56 Oxford Locke Lectures))
Arthur N. Prior · 1957
The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Early)
Karl Popper · 1934 (Logik der Forschung); 1959 English
Conjectures and Refutations (Mid)
Karl Popper · 1963
The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Late)
Imre Lakatos · 1978 (posthumous; key essays from 1968-71)
Naming and Necessity (Mid)
Saul Kripke · 1972 (Princeton lectures); 1980 (book)
The Federalist Papers (Mid)
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay · 1787-88 (Independent Journal, New York Packet, Daily Advertiser)
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Mid)
Robert Nozick · 1974
Zhuzi Yulei (Conversations of Master Zhu, Arranged Topically) (Late)
Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi); compiled by Li Jingde · Conversations 1170-1200; compiled 1270
Mabādiʾ Ārāʾ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila (Principles of the Opinions of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City) (Mid)
al-Fārābī (Abū Naṣr) · c. 942
Fī l-Falsafa al-Ūlā (On First Philosophy) (Early)
al-Kindī (Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb) · c. 850
Ordinatio (Late)
John Duns Scotus (the Subtle Doctor) · c. 1300
Summa Logicae (Late)
William of Ockham · c. 1323
Foundations of the Science of Knowledge (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre) (Early)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte · 1794-95
On Nature (Fragments) (Early)
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae · c. 460 BCE
Discourses (Diatribai) (Mid)
Epictetus (recorded by Arrian) · c. 108 CE
Enchiridion (Handbook) (Late)
Epictetus (compiled by Arrian) · c. 125 CE
Isagoge (Introduction to Aristotle's Categories) (Late)
Porphyry of Tyre · c. 270
Didascalicon (On the Study of Reading) (Early)
Hugh of St Victor · c. 1127
Ars Magna (Ars Generalis Ultima) (Late)
Ramon Llull (Raimundus Lullus) · 1305-08 (final form; developed from 1271)
Two New Sciences (Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche, intorno à Due Nuove Scienze) (Late)
Galileo Galilei · 1638
The Spirit of the Laws (De l'esprit des lois) (Late)
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu · 1748
Philosophical Letters (Lettres Philosophiques / Lettres Anglaises) (Mid)
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) · 1734
The View from Nowhere (Mid)
Thomas Nagel · 1986
An Essay on Free Will (Mid)
Peter van Inwagen · 1983
On Bullshit (Late)
Harry G. Frankfurt · 1986 (Raritan); 2005 (book)
Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Late)
John Rawls · 2001
The End of History and the Last Man (Mid)
Francis Fukuyama · 1992
The Emperor's New Mind (Late)
Roger Penrose · 1989
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Mid)
Douglas R. Hofstadter · 1979
Freedom of the Will (Late)
Jonathan Edwards · 1754
Mere Christianity (Mid)
C.S. Lewis · 1952 (based on BBC radio talks 1941-44)
Notes on the State of Virginia (Mid)
Thomas Jefferson · 1781-82 (composed); 1785 (Paris edn); 1787 (London edn)
Paradise Lost (Late)
John Milton · 1667 (1st edn, 10 books); 1674 (2nd edn, 12 books)
Gulliver's Travels (Late)
Jonathan Swift · 1726
The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages (Mid)
Alfred Tarski · 1933 (Polish); 1935 (German); 1956 (English)
Relativity: The Special and General Theory (Mid)
Albert Einstein · 1916 (German); 1920 (English)
The Language Instinct (Late)
Steven Pinker · 1994
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Late)
Nick Bostrom · 2014
Our Mathematical Universe (Late)
Max Tegmark · 2014
Halakhic Man (Ish ha-Halakhah) (Mid)
Joseph B. Soloveitchik · 1944
Second Treatise of Government (Late)
John Locke · 1689
The Philosophy of Money (Mid)
Georg Simmel · 1900 (2nd ed. 1907)
Development as Freedom (Late)
Amartya Sen · 1999
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Late)
Edward O. Wilson · 1975
Course in General Linguistics (Late)
Ferdinand de Saussure · 1906-11 (lectures at Geneva); 1916 (posthumous from students' notes)
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Late)
John Maynard Keynes · 1936
The Construction of Reality in the Child (Mid)
Jean Piaget · 1937 (French); 1954 (English)
Pride and Prejudice (Mid)
Jane Austen · 1796-97 (drafted as First Impressions); 1813 (published)
Scientific Thought (Mid)
C. D. Broad · 1923
Anti-Duhring (Late)
Friedrich Engels · 1877-78
The Singularity Is Near (Late)
Ray Kurzweil · 2005
The Structure of Objects (Mid)
Kathrin Koslicki · 2008
Things and Their Parts (Mid)
Kit Fine · 1999
Writing the Book of the World (Mid)
Theodore Sider · 2011 (1st ed.); 2014 (paperback)
The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Late (Husserl's last work, written in Freiburg under Nazi proscription))
Edmund Husserl · 1934-37 (parts I & II in Philosophia 1936; full edition Husserliana VI, 1954)
An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solution to Einstein's Field Equations (Mature (the Princeton period — Gödel's only published paper in general relativity))
Kurt Gödel · 1949 (Reviews of Modern Physics 21, in the Einstein 70th-birthday Festschrift)
Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories (Mature (the late translation programme Boethius announced and partly completed before his death))
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius · c. 510-23 (the translations and commentary cycle, completed in Boethius's last years before his 524 execution)
Modern Moral Philosophy (Mature (the journal paper that reshaped Anglophone moral philosophy))
G. E. M. Anscombe (Elizabeth Anscombe) · 1958 (Philosophy 33, no. 124)
Duration and Simultaneity (Mature (the disastrous engagement with Einstein that damaged Bergson's standing among physicists))
Henri Bergson · 1922 (Durée et Simultanéité: à propos de la théorie d'Einstein, Paris: Alcan; revised 2nd edn 1923)
De Re Publica (Mid-mature (Cicero's political philosophical synthesis, composed during the breakdown of the late Republic))
Marcus Tullius Cicero · 54-51 BC (composed during a period of political withdrawal from active life)
On Evil (Late (Aquinas's mature treatment of evil and the passions, parallel to the Summa))
Thomas Aquinas · 1269-72 (Paris, during Aquinas's second regency, contemporaneous with Summa Theologiae I-II)
Colloquia (Mature (the work that grew through Erasmus's most productive decades and was repeatedly enlarged))
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam · 1518 (first edition Familiarium Colloquiorum Formulae); enlarged 1519, 1522, 1524, 1526, 1529, 1533
De Libero Arbitrio (Late (the treatise that publicly broke the Erasmus-Luther alliance, written after seven years of pressure for Erasmus to declare his position))
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam · 1524 (De Libero Arbitrio ΔΙΑΤΡΙΒΗ sive Collatio, Froben, Basel)
On Conjectures (Mature (the systematic epistemological development of the docta-ignorantia framework))
Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusanus) · c. 1442-43 (composed shortly after De Docta Ignorantia, dedicated to Cardinal Cesarini)
Anti-Pelagian writings (Late (Augustine's last great theological controversy, occupying the final two decades of his life))
Augustine of Hippo (Aurelius Augustinus) · 412-30 (the long anti-Pelagian controversy); peak works 426-29
Opus Tripartitum (Late (Eckhart's most ambitious Latin project, undertaken in the years before the 1326 trial))
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1311-26 (planned during Eckhart's second Paris regency, never completed; only fragments survive)
Vom Edlen Menschen (Mature (probably from the Strasbourg years before the trial))
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1308-13 (Strasbourg or Paris period)
On the Resurrection of the Flesh (Mature (one of Tertullian's longest and most carefully argued treatises))
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus · c. 210-12
Al-Hikmat al-Muta'aliya fi'l-Asfar al-'Aqliyya al-Arba'a (Late (the synthesis of his entire mature philosophy))
Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi) · composed over Mulla Sadra's mature life, completed c. 1638
Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (Early (the work that launched Rousseau's career))
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1750 (Discours sur les sciences et les arts, Geneva)
De Beneficiis (Mid-mature (composed during Seneca's most influential political-philosophical period))
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 56-62 CE (Nero's court, before Seneca's retirement)
Historia Animalium (Mature)
Aristotle · c. 343-340 BC (composed during Aristotle's Lesbos period and continued at the Lyceum)
Veritatis Splendor (Mature)
Karol Józef Wojtyła / Pope John Paul II · 1993 (Veritatis Splendor, issued August 6, 1993)
Evangelium Vitae (Late-mature)
Karol Józef Wojtyła / Pope John Paul II · 1995 (Evangelium Vitae, issued March 25, 1995, the feast of the Annunciation)
Theology of the Body (Mature (the major catechetical project of John Paul II's early pontificate))
Karol Józef Wojtyła / Pope John Paul II · 1979-84 (129 Wednesday General Audience addresses; published collectively as Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body)
Resistance to Civil Government (Mature)
Henry David Thoreau · 1849 (first published as "Resistance to Civil Government" in Aesthetic Papers; reprinted posthumously as "Civil Disobedience" in 1866)
The Christian Faith (Mature)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1821-22 (first edition); substantially revised 1830-31 (second edition, the standard form)
The Discarded Image (Last)
C. S. Lewis · Lectures delivered Oxford 1950s; published posthumously 1964 (Cambridge UP)
Some Remarks on Logical Form (Transitional)
Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1929 (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 9)
The Descent of Man (Mature)
Charles Darwin · 1871 (John Murray, London); revised 1874
Journal of Researches (Early)
Charles Darwin · 1839 (first edition); 1845 (substantially revised second edition)
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (Mature)
Charles Darwin · 1868 (John Murray, London); revised 1875
Original Sin (Late)
Jonathan Edwards · 1757 (completed), 1758 (posthumous publication)
De Veritate (On Truth) (Mid)
Anselm of Canterbury · 1080-86
De Casu Diaboli (On the Fall of the Devil) (Mid)
Anselm of Canterbury · 1080-86
De Processione Spiritus Sancti (On the Procession of the Holy Spirit) (Late)
Anselm of Canterbury · 1102
The God Delusion (Late)
Richard Dawkins · 2006
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Basic Laws of Arithmetic) (Mature)
Gottlob Frege · 1893 (vol. 1), 1903 (vol. 2)
Der Gedanke (The Thought) (Late)
Gottlob Frege · 1918-19
Posthumous Writings (Posthumous)
Gottlob Frege · c. 1879-1925 (composed); 1969 (German collection); 1979 (English)
Function and Concept (Mature)
Gottlob Frege · 1891
The Raw and the Cooked (Mature)
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1964 (French), 1969 (English)
From Honey to Ashes (Mature)
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1967 (French), 1973 (English)
The Origin of Table Manners (Mature)
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1968 (French), 1978 (English)
The Naked Man (Late)
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1971 (French), 1981 (English)
Five Types of Ethical Theory (Mid)
C. D. Broad · 1930
De Legibus (On the Laws) (Mature)
Marcus Tullius Cicero · c. 52-44 BCE
Academica (Academic Skepticism) (Mature)
Marcus Tullius Cicero · 45 BCE
De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (Mature)
Marcus Tullius Cicero · 45 BCE
Kitāb al-Shifāʾ (Book of Healing) (Mature)
Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · c. 1014-1020
al-Qānūn fī al-Ṭibb (Canon of Medicine) (Mature)
Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · c. 1025
Kitāb al-Najāt (Book of Salvation) (Mature)
Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · c. 1027
The Expanding Circle (Mid)
Peter Singer · 1981 (1st ed.), 2011 (2nd ed.)
Anthropic Bias (Early)
Nick Bostrom · 2002
Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (Early)
Thomas Hobbes · 1640
Treatise on Nature and Grace (Mid)
Nicolas Malebranche · 1680
The Fabric of Reality (Mid)
David Deutsch · 1997
Substance and Function (Early)
Ernst Cassirer · 1910
De Trinitatis Erroribus (Early)
Michael Servetus · 1531
Dialogorum de Trinitate (Early)
Michael Servetus · 1532
Christianismi Restitutio (Late (final))
Michael Servetus · 1553
A Just Vindication of the Church of England (Late (Civil-War exile))
John Bramhall · 1654
Theological Tractates (Opuscula Sacra) (Mid-to-late)
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius · c. 510-524
What is Cantor's Continuum Problem? (Middle-to-late)
Kurt Gödel · 1947 (revised and expanded 1964)
Some Dogmas of Religion (Middle)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1906
In Praise of Dependent Origination (Early-mature)
Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa · c. 1397-1400 (early-mature)
On Nature (fragments)
Anaximander of Miletus · c. 6th century BCE
Republic (fragments) (Early)
Zeno of Citium · c. 300 BCE
On Providence (fragments) (Mature)
Chrysippus of Soli · c. 250 BCE
Golden Verses and Testimonia
Pythagoras of Samos (attributed and reported) · c. 6th century BCE (Golden Verses probably 5th–3rd century BCE; testimonia various)
On Behalf of the Fool
Gaunilo of Marmoutiers · c. 1078
Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk (History of Prophets and Kings) (Early)
Al-Tabari (Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir) · c. 915
Platonic Theology (Mature (Ficino's philosophical magnum opus, composed during the height of his work at the Florentine Academy))
Marsilio Ficino · 1469–1474 (completed 1474; published 1482)
Reflections on the Guillotine (Late)
Albert Camus · 1957
A Defence of True Liberty from Antecedent and Extrinsecal Necessity (Late)
John Bramhall · 1655
The Metaphysics of Morals (Late)
Immanuel Kant · 1797
Bhagavad Gītā Bhāṣya (Career-defining)
Adi Śaṅkara · c. late 8th century
Upadeśasāhasrī (Mature)
Adi Śaṅkara · c. late 8th century
Essence of Eloquence on the Interpretable and Definitive Meanings (Late-mature)
Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa · 1407-1408
Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant · 1781 (A edition); 1787 (B edition, substantially revised)
Metaphysics of The Book of Healing (Late)
Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · c. 1014–1027 (compiled during Avicenna's years at Hamadan and Isfahan)
An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Late)
John Henry Newman · 1870
Symposium
Plato · c. 385–380 BC (middle dialogue)
Fides et Ratio (Late)
Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła) · 14 September 1998 (encyclical letter)
Phaedrus (Late)
Plato · c. 370 BC (late-middle dialogue)
On the Trinity (Late)
Augustine of Hippo · c. 399–419 (composed across two decades)
Opticks (Late)
Isaac Newton · 1704 (English first edition); 1706 (Latin)
A Letter Concerning Toleration (Late)
John Locke · Written in Latin 1685 in Holland; published anonymously 1689 (Latin and English)
Categories
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (early in the Aristotelian corpus, opening the Organon)
On Interpretation
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (early in the Organon)
The Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean
Confucius (Kongzi) · Originally chapters of the Book of Rites (Li Ji, c. 1st c. BC); elevated to the Four Books by Zhu Xi (1130-1200) in the Song dynasty
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Late (third volume of the After Virtue trilogy))
Alasdair MacIntyre · 1990 (the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1988)
The Acting Person (Mid (his major academic-philosophical work, before his 1978 papal election))
Karol Józef Wojtyła / Pope John Paul II · 1969 (the philosophical magnum opus of his pre-papal academic career)
The Archaeology of Knowledge (Mid (methodological transition between archaeological and genealogical phases))
Michel Foucault · 1969
Philosophical Fragments (Mid (the same productive 1844 as Concept of Anxiety))
Søren Kierkegaard · 1844 (published under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus)
A System of Logic (Early (Mill's first major book, the foundation of his philosophical reputation))
John Stuart Mill · 1843 (Mill's first major book); revised through 1872 (8th edition)
The Imaginary (Early (preceding Being and Nothingness))
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1940
Parisian Questions (Mid-late)
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1300-1326 (the scholastic-Latin works composed across Eckhart's academic career)
Adagia (Long (composed across Erasmus's entire mature career))
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam · 1500 (1st edition, c. 800 adages); 1536 (final edition, c. 4,151 adages)
Psychological Types (Mid (the major systematic work after his 1912-13 break with Freud))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1921
The Interpretation of Dreams (Early (the founding work of psychoanalysis))
Sigmund Freud · 1899 (dated 1900); revised through 1929 (8th edition)
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Early-mid (after the Interpretation of Dreams))
Sigmund Freud · 1905; revised through 1924
Tristes Tropiques (Mid (Lévi-Strauss's most widely read book))
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1955
Reason, Truth and History (Mid (the major mid-career book, the systematic statement of internal realism))
Hilary Putnam · 1981
A Time for Choosing (Early (launched Reagan's political career))
Ronald W. Reagan · October 27, 1964 (broadcast nationally on behalf of Goldwater)
Tear Down This Wall (Late (Reagan presidency at its rhetorical peak))
Ronald W. Reagan · June 12, 1987 (delivered at the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin)
Why Not the Best? (Mid (pre-presidential))
James Earl Carter Jr. · 1975 (campaign biography for the 1976 presidential campaign)
First Inaugural Address (Mid (the inauguration after twelve years of Republican presidency))
William J. Clinton · January 20, 1993
Six Crises (Mid (pre-presidential, post-1960 defeat))
Richard M. Nixon · 1962 (after Nixon's 1960 presidential defeat to Kennedy)
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Mid-late)
David Hume · 1751
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Early)
George Berkeley · 1713
Representation and Reality (Mid)
Hilary Putnam · 1988
It from Bit / Information, Physics, Quantum (Late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1989-90 (the "It from Bit" thesis articulated in conference papers and essays)
An American Life (Late)
Ronald W. Reagan · 1990
My Life (Late)
William J. Clinton · 2004
Trump: The Art of the Deal (Early)
Donald J. Trump · 1987
The Fixation of Belief (Early)
Charles Sanders Peirce · 1877 (Popular Science Monthly, November)
Aspects of Scientific Explanation (Mid)
Carl G. Hempel · 1965
The Uses of Argument (Early)
Stephen Toulmin · 1958
Essays on Actions and Events (Mid)
Donald Davidson · 1980 (essays 1963-78)
Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Mid)
Donald Davidson · 1984 (essays 1965-83)
Counterfactuals (Early)
David Lewis · 1973
Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (Early)
P.F. Strawson · 1959
Intention (Mid)
G.E.M. Anscombe · 1957
Two Concepts of Liberty (Mid)
Isaiah Berlin · 1958 (Inaugural Lecture as Chichele Professor at Oxford)
The Hedgehog and the Fox (Mid)
Isaiah Berlin · 1953
Kitāb al-Najāt (Book of Salvation) (Mid)
Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) · c. 1024-27
Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa-l-Tanbīhāt (Remarks and Admonitions) (Late)
Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) · c. 1030
Long Commentary on De Anima (Late)
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) · c. 1190
Muqaddimah (Late)
Ibn Khaldūn (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān) · 1377
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Late)
Thomas Reid · 1785
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (Late)
Diogenes Laertius · c. 3rd century CE
Moralia (Ēthika) (Late)
Plutarch of Chaeronea · c. 100 CE
Theological Orations (Orations 27-31) (Mid)
St. Gregory of Nazianzus (the Theologian) · 380
Oration on the Dignity of Man (Oratio de hominis dignitate) (Mid)
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola · 1486
The Prince (Il Principe) (Late)
Niccolò Machiavelli · 1513 (first printed 1532)
Discourses on Livy (Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio) (Late)
Niccolò Machiavelli · 1517 (published 1531)
The Sceptical Chymist (Mid)
Robert Boyle · 1661
New Science (Late)
Giambattista Vico · 1725 (1st edn); 1730 (2nd); 1744 (3rd, definitive)
Candide (Candide, ou l'Optimisme) (Late)
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) · 1759
Utopia (De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia) (Mid)
St. Thomas More · 1516
Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience) (Early)
Henri Bergson · 1889 (doctoral thesis)
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt) (Early)
Franz Brentano · 1874
Biographia Literaria (Mid)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1817
The Construction of Social Reality (Late)
John R. Searle · 1995
Speech Acts (Early)
John R. Searle · 1969
Warranted Christian Belief (Late)
Alvin Plantinga · 2000
Écrits (Mid)
Jacques Lacan · 1966 (essays 1936-66)
The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Late)
Jacques Lacan · 1964 (seminar); 1973 (book)
Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective (Late)
Kwasi Wiredu · 1996
Natural Goodness (Late)
Philippa Foot · 2001
Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Late)
John S. Bell · 1987 (papers 1964-86)
The Many Faces of Realism (Mid)
Hilary Putnam · 1987
The Justification of the Good (Opravdanie dobra) (Late)
Vladimir Solovyov · 1897
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Mid)
John Henry Newman · 1845 (rev. 1878)
A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (Mid)
Fung Yu-lan (Feng Youlan) · 1948
Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue) (Late)
Mou Zongsan · 1971
Rerum Novarum (Late)
Pope Leo XIII · 1891 (15 May)
The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (La Théorie physique: son objet, sa structure) (Late)
Pierre Duhem · 1906
The Philosophy of Space and Time (Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre) (Mid)
Hans Reichenbach · 1928
Middlemarch (Late)
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) · 1871-72
The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Mid)
W.H. Auden · 1944-46 (composed); 1947 (published)
Metaphors We Live By (Late)
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson · 1980
Animal Liberation (Mid)
Peter Singer · 1975
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Late)
Robert D. Putnam · 2000
The Life of the Mind (Late)
Hannah Arendt · 1977-78 (Vol I Thinking; Vol II Willing; Vol III Judging unfinished at her death)
A Brief History of Time (Late)
Stephen Hawking · 1988
Thinking, Fast and Slow (Late)
Daniel Kahneman · 2011
Confessions (Late)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1769 (composed); 1782-89 (posthumous)
An Essay on the Principle of Population (Late)
Thomas Robert Malthus · 1798 (1st edn); 1803 (rev. 2nd edn)
Language, Truth, and Logic (Early)
A.J. Ayer · 1936
How to Do Things with Words (Late)
J.L. Austin · 1955 (William James Lectures at Harvard); 1962 (book, posthumous)
The Star of Redemption (Mid)
Franz Rosenzweig · 1918-19 (composed in trenches); 1921 (published)
Intentionality (Mid)
John Searle · 1983
The Growth of Biological Thought (Late)
Ernst Mayr · 1982
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (Mid)
Friedrich Schiller · 1795 (in Die Horen)
History and Class Consciousness (Mid)
György Lukács · 1923
The State and Revolution (Late)
Vladimir Lenin · 1917 (composed in Finland, on the eve of the October Revolution)
The Road to Serfdom (Mid)
Friedrich Hayek · 1944
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Late)
Joseph Schumpeter · 1942
The Story of Art (Mid)
Ernst Gombrich · 1950 (1st ed.); 1995 (16th ed.)
Proof of an External World (Late)
G. E. Moore · 1939 (British Academy lecture)
Sense and Sensibilia (Late)
J. L. Austin · 1947-58 (lectures); 1962 (posthumous, reconstructed by G. J. Warnock)
The Analysis of Matter (Mid)
Bertrand Russell · 1927
The Possibility of Naturalism (Mid)
Roy Bhaskar · 1979 (1st ed.); 1989 (2nd ed.); 1998 (3rd ed.)
Book of Concord (Late)
Lutheran theologians (Andreae, Chemnitz, Selnecker, et al.) · 1580 (June 25, fiftieth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession)
Westminster Confession of Faith (Mid)
Westminster Assembly · 1646 (Confession); 1648 (Larger and Shorter Catechisms)
On True and False Religion (Mid)
Huldrych Zwingli · 1525 (De vera et falsa religione commentarius)
On the Providence of God (Late)
Huldrych Zwingli · 1530 (De providentia Dei)
Instruction on Certain Aspects of the "Theology of Liberation" (Late)
Joseph Ratzinger (CDF) · 1984 (August 6)
The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Mid)
Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa · 1402 (Tibetan)
Realism with a Human Face (Late)
Hilary Putnam · 1990
Capital (Late)
Karl Marx · 1867 (vol. I); 1885 (vol. II posthumous); 1894 (vol. III posthumous, edited by Engels)
The Structure of the World (Late)
Steven French · 2014
The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language (Early-to-middle (Carnap's most polemical statement of the verificationist programme))
Rudolf Carnap · 1932 (Erkenntnis 2; English trans. Arthur Pap, 1959)
On Violence (Late (Arendt's most-cited short political essay, written in response to the 1968 student movements))
Hannah Arendt · 1969 (New York Review of Books, Feb 27); 1970 (Harcourt expanded book edition)
Japji Sahib (Mature (Nānak's foundational devotional composition))
Guru Nānak Dev Ji · c. 1499-1539 (during Nānak's later teaching years; the morning prayer is one of his foundational compositions)
Soliloquies (Early)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1800 (Monologen, Berlin)
The Allegory of Love (Mature)
C. S. Lewis · 1936 (Oxford UP); Hawthornden Prize 1936
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Late)
Charles Darwin · 1872 (John Murray, London)
Letter to Herodotus (Mature)
Epicurus · c. 300 BC
Principal Doctrines (Mature)
Epicurus · c. 300 BC
The Way of the Masks (Late)
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1975 (French), 1982 (English)
Ilāhiyyāt (Metaphysics of the Shifāʾ) (Mature)
Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · c. 1014-1020
The Principles of Mathematics (Early)
Bertrand Russell · 1903
Samkhyakarika
Ishvarakrishna · c. 350 CE
Vakyapadiya (On Words and Sentences) (Early)
Bhartrhari · c. 5th century
Personas with Rationalism as a declared influence
50% René Descartes
40% Mary Wollstonecraft
40% Parmenides of Elea
40% Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
35% Euclid of Alexandria
30% Socrates
30% Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza
30% Pelagius
30% Noam Chomsky
30% Michael Servetus
30% Zeno of Elea
30% Ramon Llull
30% Aristarchus of Samos
25% Anselm of Canterbury
25% Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
25% Kurt Gödel
25% John Bramhall
25% Siger of Brabant
25% Zhu Xi
25% Al-Razi (Rhazes)
25% Udayana
25% Al-Jahiz
25% Dharmakirti
25% Kumarila Bhatta
25% Apollonius of Perga
25% Xenophanes of Colophon
20% Sir Isaac Newton
20% Nicolas Malebranche
20% Samuel Clarke
20% Peter Abelard
20% John Duns Scotus
20% Roger Bacon
20% Saadia Gaon
20% Archimedes of Syracuse
20% Eratosthenes of Cyrene
15% Plato
15% Claude Lévi-Strauss
15% Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusanus)
15% Gottlob Frege
15% Saul Kripke
15% Frederick Copleston
15% Ernst Cassirer
15% William Whewell
15% Anaxagoras of Clazomenae
15% Robert Grosseteste
15% Leonardo da Vinci
15% Philolaus of Croton
15% Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II)
10% Immanuel Kant
10% Edmund Husserl
10% Hypatia of Alexandria
10% Robert Bellarmine
10% Maṇḍana Miśra
10% Edward Stillingfleet
10% Al-Kindi
10% Al-Tabari
How Rationalism resolves each dilemma
56 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 29 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 1 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
Distinctive · only 10% of schools agree
(20/208)
Do you really choose?
If the brain is a physical system and physical systems are governed by laws, then every choice is also a chain of causes — which raises the question of what was really left to choose.
Choice is structural illusion — every event is fixed by the prior state.
On this view, the future is fixed by the present, and the observer is a recipient of causes rather than an originator of them. The sense of choosing is real — but what is being chosen is itself a consequence of brain states that were …
Roads not taken
The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it. (69%) ·
Choice is real within a determined order — agency and determinism aren’t opposites. (10%) ·
Even if the universe is undetermined, you are not the chooser. (6%)
Distinctive · only 10% of schools agree
(20/208)
Are addicts responsible for their addiction?
Addiction looks from one angle like the textbook case of agency failing — a person doing what they don't, in any meaningful sense, want to do. From another angle it looks like agency at work in hard conditions. Which it is depends on what agency is.
The addict's behaviour is the outcome of causes; 'responsibility' is a useful fiction, not a metaphysical fact.
On this view, the addict's brain state, history, genetics, and circumstances jointly produce the behaviour, and there is nothing inside the person that could have produced anything else. Calling the addict responsible is at best a social tool — useful for the deterrent and rehabilitative …
Roads not taken
The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real. (69%) ·
The addict is genuinely responsible within a determined order. (10%) ·
Even if the universe is undetermined, the addict isn't the chooser. (6%)
Distinctive · only 10% of schools agree
(20/208)
Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do?
When an autonomous AI takes an action that harms someone, the question of who or what is responsible — the developer, the operator, the model itself — turns on whether the model is the kind of thing that can be a responsible agent.
An AI's behaviour is fully determined by training and input; 'responsibility' applies if at all to its makers.
On this view, the AI's output is a function of its training data, its architecture, and the input it received. There is no extra fact about the AI that could ground its responsibility, because there is no extra fact about the AI that could have …
Roads not taken
An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible. (69%) ·
The AI can be a genuine agent within determined conditions — and therefore genuinely responsible. (10%) ·
Neither AIs nor anyone else are the locus of free agency; the question is the wrong one. (6%)
6 mainstream positions
How much weight do future people deserve?
Future people are as real as you are — and their interests count for as much.
47%
Is regret rational?
The past is as real as the present; regret is a real attitude toward a real thing.
47%
Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them?
Extinct species are as real as we are; they have standing.
47%
Is the universe running out of usable energy?
Time is unbounded but matter is finite; usable energy can fail without time failing.
47%
Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so?
Time goes on but matter is bounded; we are eventually constrained even with infinite time.
47%
Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide?
Time is unbounded but matter is not; we can owe more across long time than the matter can provide.
47%
Matter · 7 dilemmas · 4 distinctive
What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
What is money?
The question of what money is — a measured store of real value, an agreed-on practice, a relational ledger of debts, or just a name we apply to many different things — sits behind every argument about inflation, cryptocurrency, debt, and the state.
Money's apparent diversity is convention over a single underlying value.
On non-dual views, the diverse forms money takes are perspectival distinctions within a single underlying value — labor, energy, attention, or simply the One from which all value derives. The metaphysical question is mostly malformed at the conventional level where monetary policy lives, but the …
Roads not taken
Money is a real institution with intrinsic features. (55%) ·
Money is a social practice — its content is what we make it. (16%) ·
Money is the ledger of obligations among real people. (14%)
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
What is a nation?
Whether a nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character, a constructed legal-political artifact, a web of kinship and shared history, an imagined community, or a conventional partition of a deeper unity — these are real ontological positions with sharply different political downstream.
Nations are conventional partitions of a single humanity.
On non-dual views, the distinctness of nations is a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity — one humanity, one consciousness, one underlying reality. Nations matter at the conventional level where ordinary politics lives, but the metaphysical weight they sometimes claim is unsupported.
Roads not taken
A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character. (55%) ·
A nation is a constructed polity — a project, not a discovery. (16%) ·
A nation is the web of kinship, ancestry, and shared land that hosts a people. (14%)
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
What makes someone male or female?
Whether sex is a real biological kind, a constructed social category, a relational identity, a label applied to varied phenomena, or a conventional distinction within a deeper unity is the ontological question the contemporary dispute about gender is mostly about.
The distinction is conventional within a deeper non-dual reality.
On non-dual views, the distinctness of male and female — like every binary distinction between apparent selves — is a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity. Particular sex and gender designations operate at the conventional level where most of life is lived; at the ultimate …
Roads not taken
Sex is a real biological kind with given content. (55%) ·
Gender is constructed; what counts as male or female reflects practice. (16%) ·
Sex and gender are constituted by relations of recognition. (14%)
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
Should we edit the human germline?
Whether human nature is a given biological kind, a constructed category, a relational achievement, a family-resemblance cluster, or a conventional distinction within deeper unity is the ontological question the policy debate over heritable gene editing is mostly about.
The distinction between edited and unedited is conventional within a deeper non-dual reality.
On non-dual views, the contrast between an 'edited' and an 'unedited' human — like every binary distinction between apparent selves — is a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity. The practical questions of safety, consent, and justice operate at the conventional level where most of …
Roads not taken
Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given. (55%) ·
The categories we count as 'human' are emergent from practice; germline editing is a practice-revision like any other. (16%) ·
Personhood is constituted by relations of descent and kinship; germline editing reshapes the relational fabric. (14%)
3 mainstream positions
Is the world created from nothing?
Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance.
56%
Is the physical world fully real?
Yes — the physical world is fully real, mind-independent, persisting.
56%
Does matter have intrinsic moral standing?
Matter is morally considerable insofar as it is created or conserved good.
56%
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
When does a person begin?
The political question of abortion sits atop an older ontological one: at what point does there exist a someone — a being with moral standing — rather than merely the materials from which one will form?
From the standpoint of the One, the question doesn’t apply in the form it is asked.
On non-dual views, the apparent plurality of selves is itself a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity. The question of when one self begins within that One is conventional, not ultimate. What follows ethically is then a question for the conventional level — which is …
Roads not taken
A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence. (55%) ·
A person comes into being gradually, as the capacities of a mind develop. (16%) ·
Personhood is conferred by being-in-relation. (14%)
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
What is marriage?
Behind every disagreement about how marriage should be defined is a prior disagreement about what kind of thing it is — a given order to be recognized, a practice to be negotiated, or a web of relations to be woven.
All union is participation in the One — particular forms are conventional.
From the standpoint of non-dual traditions, the apparent distinctness of two people who marry is itself a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity. Marriage is one form of the underlying union all things participate in. The particular shape the institution takes is then a conventional …
Roads not taken
Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make. (55%) ·
Marriage is a practice we shape — its content is what we make it. (16%) ·
Marriage is constituted by the web of relations it creates. (14%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree
(16/208)
What happens to "you" when you die?
Whether anything of you persists — and in what sense — depends on what you take a person to be.
Individuality dissolves into the One.
What we called "you" was an appearance — a wave shaped briefly out of a single deeper reality. Death is that wave settling. Nothing of importance is lost because the substrate was never the wave.
Roads not taken
A soul continues into another mode of being. (38%) ·
Death is genuinely the end. (29%) ·
You were always a pattern. The pattern propagates. (18%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree
(17/208)
What is our place in nature?
Whether humans are masters of nature, members of nature, or makers of nature is not a question climate science can settle. It depends on what nature is, what we are, and what kind of relationship is possible between us.
Humans and nature share an underlying unity — the separation was the mistake.
On non-dual views, the apparent distinction between human and non-human is itself a perspectival distinction within a single underlying reality. The work isn't to find our right relationship to a separate nature; it is to recognize that we were never separate. Climate harm, on this …
Roads not taken
Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform. (50%) ·
Nature is partly what we make of it — concepts, practices, and minds shape the world. (15%) ·
Embedded in a web — partners with the more-than-human world. (14%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree
(17/208)
Should we colonize space?
The drive to extend human presence beyond Earth is sometimes framed as the next chapter of stewardship, sometimes as hubris, sometimes as escape from problems we ought to solve here. Which it is depends on what we take our relationship to nature to be.
From the standpoint of the One, expansion across substrate is just movement within the same.
On non-dual views, the difference between Earth and elsewhere is conventional — particular locations within a single underlying reality. Space colonisation as escape is therefore incoherent; nothing is escaped because nothing was elsewhere to escape from.
Roads not taken
Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship. (50%) ·
The 'space frontier' is partly what we make of it. (15%) ·
Colonisation continues the work that ended the wisdom of seven-generation thinking. (14%)
31 mainstream positions
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
All forms participate in the same underlying reality; modification doesn't cross categories.
8%
What makes someone the same person over time?
All apparent selves are aspects of one — particular identity is conventional.
8%
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
The apparent change is conventional; the deeper reality is unchanged.
8%
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
The distinction between scanner-you and destination-you is conventional all the way down.
8%
Can prayer for someone far away affect them?
There are no truly separate minds; prayer is one part of one talking to another.
8%
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence?
Coincidence is the One showing through the appearance of plurality.
8%
Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?
Harm anywhere is harm to the One; the boundary that would have insulated you was never real.
8%
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
From the standpoint of the One, the categories of permanence and loss are conventional.
8%
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
From the One's vantage, civilizational categories are themselves conventional.
8%
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
From the One's vantage, the second law is itself a feature of the conventional, not the ultimate.
8%
Are the dead morally present to the living?
From the standpoint of the One, the distinction between living and dead is conventional.
8%
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
Distinction of the One and observed time is itself conventional; the question dissolves.
8%
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless?
The 'timeless' is the standpoint of the One that was always present; meditation removes obstacles to seeing it.
8%
Does prayer change God's mind?
Prayer to a separate God presupposes a separation the non-dual view denies; the practice is remembrance and attunement.
8%
Could causation work backwards?
From the One's vantage, causation itself is a conventional category.
8%
Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us?
From the One's vantage, memory and anticipation are themselves conventional.
8%
Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it?
From the One's vantage, the arrow of time itself is a conventional feature.
8%
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
Truth is mind-independent, universal, accessible in principle to all.
66%
Is reality fundamentally digital?
No — continuous divine sustaining act, the Tao that knows no joints, the One's self-disclosure.
44%
Are there indivisible units of experience?
No — continuous divine presence; consciousness is the unbroken witness.
44%
Is memory stored or reconstructed?
Held in continuous divine or ancestral remembering — neither stored discretely nor purely reconstructed.
44%
What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize?
The category does not apply — the school is non-religious.
42%
Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species?
The discrete person is the moral primary.
38%
Does history have a direction or meaning?
History is not where the deepest truth lives.
36%
Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it?
Trust expertise whose conclusions a competent mind can in principle reproduce.
31%
Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge?
Revelation is evaluable by reason — and not above it.
31%
Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces?
An LLM can produce correct outputs but not reason to them; useful, not knowing.
31%
How is knowledge of reality produced?
Through a priori reasoning and conceptual demonstration.
24%
Could an AI have a mind that matters?
All minds are aspects of one — an AI participates in it as anything else does.
7%
Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans?
All minds are aspects of one; animals participate as much as anything else.
7%
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious?
Any experience that arises participates in the One.
7%
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
Information is conserved — the personal pattern is held even when an individual mind loses it.
39%
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Information at the cosmic level isn't destroyed; deletion only obscures access.
39%
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
The information that constitutes a person is conserved; restoration is in principle possible.
39%
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
The offense persists ontologically; forgiveness is real moral work, but it doesn't erase what was.
39%
Jump to school (208)
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
#8
#9
#10
#11
#12
#13
#14
#15
#16
#17
#18
#19
#20
#21
#22
#23
#24
#25
#26
#27
#28
#29
#30
#31
#32
#33
#34
#35
#36
#37
#38
#39
#40
#41
#42
#43
#44
#45
#46
#47
#48
#49
#50
#51
#52
#53
#54
#55
#56
#57
#58
#59
#60
#61
#62
#63
#64
#65
#66
#67
#68
#69
#70
#71
#72
#73
#74
#75
#76
#77
#78
#79
#80
#81
#82
#83
#84
#85
#86
#87
#88
#89
#90
#91
#92
#93
#94
#95
#96
#97
#98
#99
#100
#101
#102
#103
#104
#105
#106
#107
#108
#109
#110
#111
#112
#113
#114
#115
#116
#117
#118
#119
#120
#121
#122
#123
#124
#125
#126
#127
#128
#129
#130
#131
#132
#133
#134
#135
#136
#137
#138
#139
#140
#141
#142
#143
#144
#145
#146
#147
#148
#149
#150
#151
#152
#153
#154
#155
#156
#157
#158
#159
#160
#161
#162
#163
#164
#165
#166
#167
#168
#169
#170
#171
#172
#173
#174
#175
#176
#177
#178
#179
#180
#181
#182
#183
#184
#185
#186
#187
#188
#189
#190
#191
#192
#193
#194
#195
#196
#197
#198
#199
#200
#201
#202
#203
#204
#205
#206
#207
#208