School #1
Realism
Moore, Austin, Putnam, Boyd
Realism holds that reality exists independently of human perception and thought. G. E. Moore's 'A Defence of Common Sense' (1925) and 'Proof of an External World' (1939) argued that ordinary objects — hands, tables, trees — are known with more certainty than any philosophical argument against them. J. L. Austin's 'Sense and Sensibilia' (1962) dismantled the sense-data theories that threatened this common-sense conviction. Scientific realism extends the claim beyond the observable: Hilary Putnam's 'Reason, Truth and History' (1981) and Richard Boyd's work on inference to the best explanation argue that our best scientific theories describe real, mind-independent structures, including unobservable entities like electrons and quarks, because the predictive success of science would otherwise be miraculous.
Worldview
An adherent of Realism moves through the world with a bedrock conviction that what they see, touch, and measure is genuinely there — not a projection of mind, not a social construction, not a dream. The table exists whether anyone looks at it. The electron exists whether anyone understands the equations. This creates a characteristic stance of epistemic confidence: the realist trusts that careful observation and rigorous science progressively reveal how things actually are, and that disagreements about reality can, in principle, be settled by evidence. Daily experience feels solid, straightforward, and shared — the world is a common ground, not a private theater. The framework classifies this as None metaphysical agency: agency runs entirely through natural causation, with no personal god, cosmic principle, or operative spirits over and above the physical order. The framework reads this as None for moral authority: empirical method and accumulated science adjudicate what is the case, but no source — not Scripture, Tradition, Reason, Experience, nor a community of inquirers — is treated as normatively final over how to act in the way those sources function for other clusters.
Moral Implications
Because reality is objective and knowable, moral reasoning for the realist tends toward moral realism as well — the conviction that there are moral facts, not merely moral opinions, and that ethical inquiry can make genuine progress. Cruelty is wrong not because a culture says so but because it violates something real about human well-being. This grounds a robust sense of duty: if facts about suffering and flourishing are objective, then moral obligations are binding regardless of personal preference. The realist ethic favors accountability, evidence-based policy, and the idea that ignorance of consequences does not excuse harmful action.
Practical Implications
Realism underwrites the entire enterprise of modern science and engineering: if the world is mind-independent and lawful, then technologies built on accurate theories will reliably work. Medical treatments, bridges, and climate models are trustworthy to the degree that they track objective reality. Environmentally, the realist takes ecological data seriously — species loss, carbon concentrations, and ocean acidification are real problems demanding real solutions, not matters of perspective. In daily life, the realist orientation favors empiricism over ideology, institutional transparency, and a deep respect for evidence as the arbiter of public disagreement.
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I. Time
Time is substantival and infinite — an objective, mind-independent dimension that flows in a single, deterministic direction. The realist treats time as a real container in which events occur; it would persist even if no events took place. Its structure is continuous and linear, reflecting the classical Newtonian picture that reality has a fixed temporal backdrop independent of observation.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Grain: Continuous
Freedom: Deterministic
Traversability: Linear
Dimensionality: One
Direction: Uni-directional
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II. Space
Space is substantival and infinite — an objective, mind-independent container in which objects exist and events occur. It is flat and three-dimensional, operating locally: objects interact with their immediate spatial neighbors. Space exists independently of the matter it contains, consistent with classical physics and common-sense realism.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Curvature: Flat
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
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III. Matter
Matter is substantival, finite, and locally situated — real, mind-independent stuff governed by natural laws. It is conserved: matter cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. The realist takes matter as the paradigm of what is real, the fundamental furniture of the world against which all metaphysical claims must be tested.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
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IV. Observer
The observer is a physical being rooted in a single moment and place, perceiving a world that exists entirely independent of that perception. Consciousness is present but incidental — a natural feature of a material organism, not a constitutive force in reality. The observer does not shape or alter what it perceives; it simply registers what is already there. Knowledge begins with direct sensory contact but accumulates over time through memory, records, and scientific inquiry, building an ever-more-complete picture of an objective world. Because reality is shared and mind-independent, multiple observers can verify one another's findings and converge on common truths.
Attributes
Time Instance: Single
Space Instance: Single
Extent of Knowledge: Immediate
Retainment of Knowledge: Total
Physicality: Embodied
Agency: Passive
Number: Plural
Metaphysical Agency: None
Moral Authority: None
Theological Method: N/A
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V. Energy
Finite and pre-existing, governed by natural laws. Conservation: Conserved — energy obeys the laws of thermodynamics within the objective, mind-independent world. Usage: Multiple — matter and energy can be reused and repurposed.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dispersibility: Irreversible
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VI. Information
Information is an objective feature of a mind-independent reality. Facts about the world are real informational states that persist whether or not anyone accesses them. The realist treats information as conserved in the physical sense: the laws of nature preserve a complete record of the universe's state. Information is continuous because the realist assumes reality has infinite precision. The framework distinguishes scales: information is conserved at the cosmic scale (physical law preserves the universe's informational state), but non-conserved at the personal-identity scale — when an organism dies, its particular pattern dissipates, with no soul or self that survives.
Attributes
Ontological Status: Substantival
Cosmic Conservation: Conserved
Personal Conservation: Non-conserved
Granularity: Continuous
Experiments This School Responds To (82)
The Ship of Theseus
Common-sense realism: the gradually-repaired ship is the same ship because that is what everyone has always meant by "the same ship." The reassembled hulk is, …
Galileo's Falling Bodies
Scientific realism vindicated: free-fall acceleration is the same for all bodies because that is how gravity actually works. The thought experiment reveals a feature of …
The Stern–Gerlach Experiment
Realists about quantum properties accept the empirical discreteness while debating whether the property is intrinsic to the atom prior to measurement (hidden-variable readings) or only …
Eddington's Eclipse Expedition
Scientific realism: GR really describes the spacetime geometry of the actual world. The light-bending is genuine, not a calculational artifact.
Foucault's Pendulum
Newton's reading: the existence of inertial effects without nearby reference bodies vindicates absolute space (or, in modern terms, the substantival reality of the spacetime metric).
The Cavendish Experiment
Scientific realism: gravity is a real force between masses, measurable directly in the laboratory. *G* is a genuine constant of nature, not a fitting parameter.
The Wu Experiment
Scientific realism: handedness is a genuine feature of the weak interaction, not an artifact of our conventions. The Wu experiment measures something real about nature.
LIGO Gravitational-Wave Detection
Scientific realism: gravitational waves are real physical entities propagating real disturbances in real spacetime. The detection confirms not just GR's equations but its ontology.
The Cosmic Microwave Background
The CMB is a real physical relic of a real early universe. Scientific realism reads the detection as evidence for, not just compatibility with, the …
The Millikan Oil-Drop Experiment
Scientific realism: electrons are real, discrete, carrying a definite charge. The experiment measures a property of the world, not a calculational convenience.
The Rutherford Gold-Foil Experiment
Scientific realism: the nuclear atom is real, discovered (not constructed), and its discovery gave us access to a structural feature of matter that no purely …
Plato's Cave
Common-sense realism grants the contrast between appearance and reality but resists the otherworldly gloss: ordinary objects are real, just incompletely understood.
The Sorites Paradox
Common-sense realism: heaps are real, vague-but-real objects. The paradox shows the limits of classical logic, not the unreality of ordinary things.
Newton's Prism Experiment
Scientific realism: the spectral components are real constituents of white light, discovered (not constructed) by the prism. Galilean primary qualities extended to optics.
Joule's Mechanical Equivalent of Heat
Scientific realism: energy is a real, conserved quantity, not a calculational convenience. The mechanical equivalent is a constant of nature.
Faraday's Electromagnetic Induction
Scientific realism: the field is a real physical entity, not a mathematical fiction. Faraday's lines-of-force ontology is vindicated by its predictive and unifying power.
Hertz's Electromagnetic Waves
Electromagnetic waves are real physical entities propagating through real space at a real speed. Scientific realism vindicated.
Brownian Motion / Perrin's Confirmation
Scientific realism: atoms are real. The convergence of independent methods on the same value of Avogadro's number is exactly the kind of "no-miracles" argument realists …
The Photoelectric Effect
Scientific realism: photons exist. The threshold behaviour and frequency dependence are inexplicable without granting their reality.
Pasteur's Swan-Neck Flask
Microbes are real, discrete, biologically continuous with their forebears. Scientific realism about micro-organisms vindicated.
Mendel's Pea Plants
Genes are real, discrete inherited entities — later identified with sequences of DNA. Scientific realism about molecular biology rests on this foundational discreteness.
Hubble's Redshift Law
The expansion is real; the universe had a finite beginning. Steady-state cosmologies are empirically untenable.
The Higgs Boson Discovery
The Higgs boson — and the Higgs field — are real physical entities. Scientific realism about quantum field theory vindicated.
Neutrino Oscillations
Neutrinos really change flavour; their masses are real, even if their absolute values remain to be measured. The empirical case for massive neutrinos is overwhelming.
Newton's Bucket
Newton's reading: absolute space is real and explanatorily indispensable. The bucket is a permanent argument for substantivalism.
Galileo's Ship
Physical laws are the same in all inertial frames — a genuine feature of the world, not an artifact of representation.
Compton Scattering
Scientific realism: the photon momentum is a real physical quantity, measured by its kinematic consequences.
The Hershey–Chase Experiment
DNA is the real bearer of heredity. Scientific realism vindicated at the molecular level.
The Meselson–Stahl Experiment
DNA replication is physically semi-conservative; the molecules really template their daughters in this specific way. Realism about molecular mechanism.
Galileo's Inclined Plane
Uniform acceleration is a real feature of gravitational behaviour; Galileo's law is true of the world, not just convenient.
Lavoisier's Conservation of Mass
Mass is a real conserved quantity; chemical reactions rearrange real elements. Realism about chemistry is empirically grounded.
Coulomb's Torsion Balance
The Coulomb force is a real interaction between charged bodies; the inverse-square dependence is a feature of the world, not a calculational artifact.
CP Violation in Kaon Decay
Scientific realism: there is a real asymmetry built into nature, with cosmological as well as microphysical consequences.
Bose–Einstein Condensation
The condensate is real; its emergent quantum properties (superfluidity, vortices) are real macroscopic phenomena. Realism about quantum mechanics extends decisively.
The Lamb Shift
The quantum vacuum is a real physical substrate, with measurable effects. Scientific realism about QFT vindicated at precision.
The Avery–MacLeod–McCarty Experiment
DNA is the genetic material; the empirical case is direct. Scientific realism about heritable molecules.
Quine's Gavagai
There is a fact of the matter about what "gavagai" means: the speakers refer to rabbits because rabbits are what they're typically reacting to. The …
Goodman's Grue
Common-sense realism: emeralds are green, not grue, because greenness is a real property and grueness is gerrymandered. The puzzle is a logician's artifact.
Fitch's Knowability Paradox
Fitch corroborates classical realism: there are truths that, even if knowable in principle, are not actually known. The anti-realist conflation of truth and knowability fails.
Eratosthenes' Measurement of Earth
Earth has a definite size; Eratosthenes measured it. Scientific realism vindicated at the planetary scale, two millennia before geodesy.
Galileo's Moons of Jupiter
Jupiter's moons are real bodies in orbit; the telescope is not deceiving us. Scientific realism vindicated against instrumentalist objections.
Tycho's Supernova
The new star is real and located where Tycho says it is; scientific realism about celestial observation vindicated.
Hess's Cosmic-Ray Balloon Flights
Cosmic rays are real physical entities of extraterrestrial origin; the discovery of new physical phenomena is direct.
Tonomura's Single-Electron Interference
Quantum mechanics describes real single particles whose behaviour cannot be captured by classical descriptions. The image is decisive realist evidence.
The Discovery of Pulsars
Pulsars and neutron stars are real astrophysical objects; the 1934 theoretical prediction is decisively vindicated.
The November Revolution
Quarks are real; charm exists. The pre-1974 doubts about quark-model realism are decisively dispelled.
The Discovery of W and Z Bosons
W and Z are real physical entities; the gauge bosons of the Standard Model are not calculational devices.
The Top Quark Discovery
The top quark is real; the SM particle spectrum is complete (modulo Higgs, found later).
Trapped Anti-Hydrogen at CERN ALPHA
Antihydrogen is real; its properties are measurable; antimatter is as physical as matter in every tested respect.
Lunar Laser Ranging
General relativity is empirically vindicated to extraordinary precision; the Moon's motion in Earth's and Sun's fields conforms to GR exactly.
Reid's Brave Officer
Common-sense realism: the general just *is* the same person as the schoolboy, regardless of memory. The persistence is bodily and biographical, not purely psychological.
Locke's Prince and the Cobbler
Common-sense realism splits: ordinary identity-attributions track both body and biography; the case forces a choice the everyday concept does not require.
Williams' Self and the Future
Common-sense intuition is inconstant; the case shows that ordinary identity concepts cannot survive radical hypothetical pressure without modification.
Rømer's Measurement of the Speed of Light
Light has a definite speed; the speed is finite; the measurement is a genuine discovery about the world.
Torricelli's Barometer
Vacuum is real; air has weight. The experiment opens the empirical investigation of gases.
Ørsted's Compass Deflection
Electromagnetism is a real unified phenomenon, not merely a calculational convenience.
Röntgen's X-Rays
X-rays are real electromagnetic radiation; their existence and properties are independent of our means of detection.
Discovery of Radioactivity
Radioactivity is a real physical process; atoms are not stable; nuclear structure is real and accessible.
Seafloor Spreading
Continental drift and plate tectonics describe real Earth processes; the magnetic record on the ocean floor is direct evidence.
The Cesium Atomic Clock
The cesium transition is a real, universal physical reference; the second is grounded in a feature of nature rather than convention.
JWST's Surprisingly Mature Early Galaxies
JWST is genuinely measuring something about the early universe; the observations will constrain cosmology however they resolve.
Boyle's J-Tube
PV = constant is a real feature of gases at constant temperature; the law (and its later refinement to PV = nRT) is a genuine …
The Faraday Cage
The field is real and locally zero inside the cage; the demonstration is unambiguous.
Volta's Pile
The chemical reactions and the current they produce are real and quantitatively measurable.
The Hubble Deep Fields
The galaxies are real; the cosmos genuinely contains billions of them; observation extends to billions of light-years.
Galvani's Twitching Frogs
Electrical phenomena are real in both biology and chemistry; the question was what kind of electricity, not whether.
Olbers' Paradox
The dark night sky is a real cosmological fact with deep theoretical content.
Anderson's Discovery of the Positron
Positrons and antimatter generally are real; scientific realism about predicted-then-confirmed entities is vindicated.
The Discovery of the Muon
The muon is a real new particle, with measurable properties (mass, charge, decay).
Cherenkov Radiation
The phenomenon is real, quantitatively predictable, and exploited in instrumentation. Scientific realism vindicated.
Rossi-Hall Cosmic-Ray Muon Time Dilation
Time dilation is a real physical effect, not a calculational convenience. Scientific realism about relativistic kinematics vindicated.
The Quantum Hall Effect
The Hall conductance is a real, exquisitely-precise property of 2D electron systems; its universality reflects genuine structural features of the world.
High-Tc Superconductivity
The superconducting state of cuprates is real, exotic, and resistant to standard theoretical understanding.
The First Image of a Black Hole
Black holes are real astronomical objects with measurable, imageable properties. The strong-field regime of GR is directly accessible.
WMAP and Planck CMB Anisotropy Maps
The cosmological parameters are real features of the universe, measured to percent precision; the early universe is empirically reconstructed.
The Casimir Effect
The vacuum is a real physical entity with energy density and structure; the Casimir force is its mechanical signature.
Voyager 1 Crossing the Heliopause
The heliopause is a real physical boundary, with measurable properties on either side.
Archimedes' Eureka — The Displacement Principle
The crown's composition is a fact of the matter — gold or adulterated — and the displacement test reveals it. Realism about material properties is …
Hipparchus' Star Catalogue
The stars have definite positions; precession is a real physical phenomenon. Hipparchus detected an objective structural feature of the cosmos from pure observation.
Ptolemy's Almagest Observations
The *Almagest* is a challenge for realism: a successful but false theory. If predictive success warrants belief in a theory's ontology, geocentrism should have been …
Ibn al-Haytham's Camera Obscura
Objects emit or reflect light independently of whether anyone is looking. The camera obscura shows that the image forms whether or not an observer is …
Shen Kuo's Compass Declination
The Earth's magnetic field is a real, mind-independent structure. The compass needle responds to it whether or not anyone understands why. Shen Kuo's observation is …
Films Reading Through This School (1)
Debates Where This School Is Allied (29)
The Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence
Substantivalist
The Bohr–Einstein Debates
Realist; quantum-mechanics-is-incomplete
The Russell–Copleston Debate
Jesuit / scholastic theist
The Hobbes–Bramhall Debate
Materialist; compatibilist determinist
The Newton–Hooke Disputes
Mathematical natural philosopher
The Foucault–Chomsky Debate
Naturalist; defender of human nature
Aquinas–Siger on Latin Averroism
Synthetic theologian-philosopher
Galileo and the Inquisition
Mathematical natural philosopher
Galileo and the Inquisition
Inquisitor; magisterial theologian
Berkeley vs Locke on Material Substance
Representational realist
Plato vs Protagoras
Philosophical realist; defender of objective truth and virtue
Aristotle vs Plato on the Forms
Hylomorphist; defender of immanent forms
Mencius vs Xunzi on Human Nature
Confucian theorist of cultivated goodness
Śaṅkara vs Maṇḍana Miśra
Mīmāṃsaka; bhedābheda Vedāntin
Searle vs Derrida on Speech Acts
Analytic philosopher of language
Mill vs Whewell on Induction
Polymath philosopher of inductive sciences
Locke vs Stillingfleet
Anglican bishop; defender of orthodox Trinity
Locke vs Stillingfleet
Philosopher of empirical knowledge
Newton vs Leibniz on Calculus Priority
English natural philosopher; President of the Royal Society
Bergson vs Einstein on Time
Theoretical physicist
Putnam vs Rorty on Truth
Pragmatist-realist
Confucianism vs Mohism
Gradated benevolence; ritual cultivation
James vs Russell on Pragmatism
Analytic realist
Lewis vs Stalnaker on Counterfactuals
Modal realist; analytical philosopher
Aristotle vs Democritus on Atoms
Ancient atomist
Wollstonecraft vs Rousseau on Women
Enlightenment philosopher of education and politics
Anscombe vs C.S. Lewis at the Socratic Club
Analytic philosopher; Catholic
Hobbes vs Descartes
Materialist empiricist
Hobbes vs Descartes
Rationalist dualist
Works that name Realism in their embodiments
Foundational texts that draw on this school, with each work's declared weight.
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Anna Karenina (Mid)
Leo Tolstoy · 1873-77 (serialized); 1878 (book)
A Realist Theory of Science (Mid)
Roy Bhaskar · 1975 (1st ed.); 1978 (2nd ed.); 2008 (3rd ed.)
Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle (edited by Nicomachus) · c. 340 BC (lecture notes, Lyceum period)
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
Galileo Galilei · 1632 (Florence; placed on the Index of Prohibited Books later that year)
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Late)
Thomas Reid · 1785
The Prince (Il Principe) (Late)
Niccolò Machiavelli · 1513 (first printed 1532)
War and Peace (Mid)
Leo Tolstoy · 1865-69
A Doll's House (Mid)
Henrik Ibsen · 1879 (first performed Copenhagen)
The Cherry Orchard (Late)
Anton Chekhov · 1903 (composed); 1904 (premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre)
Bleak House (Mid)
Charles Dickens · 1852-53 (serialized); 1853 (book)
The Cairo Trilogy (Mid)
Naguib Mahfouz · 1956-57 (Bayn al-Qasrayn, Qasr al-Shawq, al-Sukkariyya)
Proof of an External World (Late)
G. E. Moore · 1939 (British Academy lecture)
The Possibility of Naturalism (Mid)
Roy Bhaskar · 1979 (1st ed.); 1989 (2nd ed.); 1998 (3rd ed.)
Fathers and Sons (Mid)
Ivan Turgenev · 1860-62 (published in The Russian Messenger 1862)
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Isaac Newton · 1687 (first ed.); 1713, 1726 (second and third revised eds)
Politics
Aristotle · c. 335 BC (lecture course, Lyceum)
The Abolition of Man
C. S. Lewis · 1943 (Riddell Memorial Lectures, Durham, 1942)
The Concept of the Political (Mid)
Carl Schmitt · 1932 (revised from 1927 essay; English 1976)
Discourses on Livy (Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio) (Late)
Niccolò Machiavelli · 1517 (published 1531)
After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (Après la finitude) (Late)
Quentin Meillassoux · 2006
Middlemarch (Late)
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) · 1871-72
Kokoro (Late)
Natsume Sōseki · 1914 (serialized Asahi Shimbun)
Things Fall Apart (Mid)
Chinua Achebe · 1958
Disgrace (Late)
J. M. Coetzee · 1999
History of the Peloponnesian War (Early)
Thucydides · c. 431-411 BCE (unfinished at Thucydides's death)
Pride and Prejudice (Mid)
Jane Austen · 1796-97 (drafted as First Impressions); 1813 (published)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mid)
Mark Twain · 1876-83 (composed); 1884 (UK); 1885 (US)
My Brilliant Friend (Late)
Elena Ferrante · 2011 (Italian L'amica geniale); 2012 (English)
Sense and Sensibilia (Late)
J. L. Austin · 1947-58 (lectures); 1962 (posthumous, reconstructed by G. J. Warnock)
Scientific Thought (Mid)
C. D. Broad · 1923
The Born-Einstein Letters (Mature-late)
Albert Einstein · 1916-55 (correspondence across four decades); published in 1971 (German); English 1971 (Walker)
Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāṣya (Mature)
Madhvācārya · 13th century (Madhva c. 1238-1317)
Viṣṇu-Tattva-Nirṇaya (Mature)
Madhvācārya · 13th century
Tattvodyota (Mature)
Madhvācārya · 13th century
The Undivided Universe (Late)
David Bohm · 1993 (posthumous; Bohm died October 1992)
Old Tales Retold (Gushi Xinbian) (Late)
Lu Xun · 1922-35; 1935 collection
The Bishop of Worcester's Answer to Mr Locke (Late)
Edward Stillingfleet · 1697 (with subsequent rejoinders through 1698)
What is Cantor's Continuum Problem? (Middle-to-late)
Kurt Gödel · 1947 (revised and expanded 1964)
Another Country (Middle)
James Baldwin · 1962
If Beale Street Could Talk (Late)
James Baldwin · 1974
Metaphysics
Aristotle (compiled posthumously by Andronicus of Rhodes c. 70 BC) · c. 350 BC (lecture notes, second Athenian period)
The Problems of Philosophy (Early)
Bertrand Russell · 1912
After Virtue
Alasdair MacIntyre · 1981 (1st ed.); 1984 (2nd ed.); 2007 (3rd ed., with new prologue)
Categories
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (early in the Aristotelian corpus, opening the Organon)
Tear Down This Wall (Late (Reagan presidency at its rhetorical peak))
Ronald W. Reagan · June 12, 1987 (delivered at the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin)
Six Crises (Mid (pre-presidential, post-1960 defeat))
Richard M. Nixon · 1962 (after Nixon's 1960 presidential defeat to Kennedy)
Naming and Necessity (Mid)
Saul Kripke · 1972 (Princeton lectures); 1980 (book)
Counterfactuals (Early)
David Lewis · 1973
Muqaddimah (Late)
Ibn Khaldūn (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān) · 1377
The Philosophy of Philosophy (Late)
Timothy Williamson · 2007
Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Late)
John S. Bell · 1987 (papers 1964-86)
The Old Man and the Sea (Late)
Ernest Hemingway · 1952
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Mid)
Zora Neale Hurston · 1937
Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics (Early)
Hugh Everett III · 1957 (Reviews of Modern Physics)
Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (Late (Murdoch's longest and most ambitious philosophical book, published nine years after the Gifford Lectures))
Iris Murdoch · 1992 (Chatto & Windus, based on the 1982 Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh)
The Fragility of Goodness (Mature (the book that established Nussbaum as a major figure))
Martha Nussbaum · 1986 (Cambridge UP; revised 2001 with substantial new preface)
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)
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)
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)
On the Resurrection of the Flesh (Mature (one of Tertullian's longest and most carefully argued treatises))
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus · c. 210-12
Sidereus Nuncius (Early-mid (the breakthrough that established Galileo's international reputation))
Galileo Galilei · March 1610 (Venice: Tommaso Baglioni)
Othello (Mature)
William Shakespeare · c. 1603-04 (first performed Whitehall, 1 November 1604)
Macbeth (Mature)
William Shakespeare · c. 1606
The Sea, The Sea (Late-mature)
Iris Murdoch · 1978 (Chatto & Windus); Booker Prize 1978
Brave New World Revisited (Late)
Aldous Huxley · 1958
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (Mid-mature)
Albert Einstein · 1916 (Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie); English translation 1920
A Madman's Diary (Mid-mature)
Lu Xun · 1918
The True Story of Ah Q (Mature)
Lu Xun · 1921-22
A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime (Late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1990
Mahābhārata-Tātparya-Nirṇaya (Mature)
Madhvācārya · 13th century
Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (Mid)
David Bohm · 1957
Reclaiming Reality (Mid)
Roy Bhaskar · 1989
The Adolescent (Late)
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky · 1874-1875
Slokavarttika (Early)
Kumarila Bhatta · c. 7th century
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon
Aristarchus of Samos · c. 280 BCE
Ways a World Might Be (Late-middle)
Robert Stalnaker · 2003
A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Late)
Edward Stillingfleet · 1696
On the Flesh of Christ (Mid-to-late (Montanist period))
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus · c. 206
The First Man (Final (unfinished))
Albert Camus · c. 1958-1960 (incomplete); 1994 posthumous publication
The Roads to Freedom (Middle)
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1945-1949 (three published volumes)
Contact (Late)
Carl Sagan · 1985
On Vision and Colors (Early)
Arthur Schopenhauer · 1816
Papers in Philosophical Logic (Late)
David Lewis · 1998
Collected Philosophical Papers (Late)
G. E. M. Anscombe (Elizabeth Anscombe) · 1981 (papers c. 1950-1980)
A Writer's Diary (Late)
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky · 1873-1881
Mere Christianity
C. S. Lewis · 1941–44 (BBC talks); 1952 (single-volume book form)
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes · 1651
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke · 1689 (first ed.); fourth ed. with significant revisions 1700
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Late)
Adam Smith · 1776 (first ed.); five revised editions in Smith's lifetime
Fides et Ratio (Late)
Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła) · 14 September 1998 (encyclical letter)
De Cive (Early)
Thomas Hobbes · 1642 (Latin, Paris); English translation by Hobbes himself 1651
Two Treatises of Government (Late)
John Locke · Written c. 1679–82; published anonymously 1689
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville · Volume I 1835; Volume II 1840 (based on Tocqueville's 1831–32 American journey)
The Human Condition
Hannah Arendt · 1958
Relativity: The Special and General Theory
Albert Einstein · 1916 (German); first English 1920
The Open Society and Its Enemies
Karl R. Popper · Composed 1938–1943 in New Zealand exile; published 1945 (2 vols)
Physics
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (second Athenian period)
Opticks (Late)
Isaac Newton · 1704 (English first edition); 1706 (Latin)
Laws (Latest)
Plato · Composed late in life (final years before 347 BC); unrevised at his death
A Letter Concerning Toleration (Late)
John Locke · Written in Latin 1685 in Holland; published anonymously 1689 (Latin and English)
On Interpretation
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (early in the Organon)
The Origins of Totalitarianism (Mid (Arendt's breakthrough book))
Hannah Arendt · 1951 (with later editions adding new prefaces and material through 1968)
On Revolution (Late (after Eichmann in Jerusalem))
Hannah Arendt · 1963
The Sovereignty of Good (Mid (her major philosophical statement, alongside Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals 1992))
Iris Murdoch · 1970 (collecting essays from 1956-67)
Ideas and Opinions (Late (the most comprehensive single-volume collection))
Albert Einstein · 1954 (collected from earlier essays and addresses)
The Concept of Nature (Early-mid (preceding Science and the Modern World, 1925))
Alfred North Whitehead · 1920 (the Tarner Lectures, Trinity College Cambridge)
Moral Man and Immoral Society (Early-mid (Niebuhr's breakthrough book that established Christian realism))
Reinhold Niebuhr · 1932
The Irony of American History (Late (Niebuhr's major Cold War political-theological book))
Reinhold Niebuhr · 1952
Prior and Posterior Analytics
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (the core logical works of the Organon)
On the Heavens
Aristotle · c. 350 BC
A Time for Choosing (Early (launched Reagan's political career))
Ronald W. Reagan · October 27, 1964 (broadcast nationally on behalf of Goldwater)
Gravitation (Mid-late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1973
Runaway Horses (Late)
Yukio Mishima · 1969 (the second of the four Sea of Fertility novels)
An American Life (Late)
Ronald W. Reagan · 1990
Trump: The Art of the Deal (Early)
Donald J. Trump · 1987
The Fixation of Belief (Early)
Charles Sanders Peirce · 1877 (Popular Science Monthly, November)
Modes of Thought (Late)
Alfred North Whitehead · 1938 (Wellesley & University of Chicago lectures, 1937-38)
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)
Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Mid)
Donald Davidson · 1984 (essays 1965-83)
The Federalist Papers (Mid)
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay · 1787-88 (Independent Journal, New York Packet, Daily Advertiser)
Śrī Bhāṣya (Mid)
Rāmānuja · c. 1100
Anuvyākhyāna (Mid)
Madhvācārya · c. 1250
Two New Sciences (Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche, intorno à Due Nuove Scienze) (Late)
Galileo Galilei · 1638
The Sceptical Chymist (Mid)
Robert Boyle · 1661
The Spirit of the Laws (De l'esprit des lois) (Late)
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu · 1748
Candide (Candide, ou l'Optimisme) (Late)
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) · 1759
Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke · 1715-16
The Construction of Social Reality (Late)
John R. Searle · 1995
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)
We Have Never Been Modern (Nous n'avons jamais été modernes) (Mid)
Bruno Latour · 1991
Silent Spring (Late)
Rachel Carson · 1962
The Emperor's New Mind (Late)
Roger Penrose · 1989
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (Mid)
Mary Midgley · 1978
The Social Construction of What? (Late)
Ian Hacking · 1999
Orthodoxy (Mid)
G.K. Chesterton · 1908
The Education of Henry Adams (Late)
Henry Adams · 1907 (private printing); 1918 (public)
Don Quixote (El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha) (Late)
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra · 1605 (Part I); 1615 (Part II)
Gulliver's Travels (Late)
Jonathan Swift · 1726
The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages (Mid)
Alfred Tarski · 1933 (Polish); 1935 (German); 1956 (English)
Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds (Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre) (Mid)
Georg Cantor · 1883
Relativity: The Special and General Theory (Mid)
Albert Einstein · 1916 (German); 1920 (English)
The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) (Late)
Thomas Mann · 1912-24 (composed); 1924 (published)
1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four) (Late)
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) · 1949
Our Mathematical Universe (Late)
Max Tegmark · 2014
A Brief History of Time (Late)
Stephen Hawking · 1988
The Gulag Archipelago (Late)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 1958-68 (composed); 1973-75 (published in Russian abroad)
If This Is a Man (Se questo è un uomo) (Mid)
Primo Levi · 1947 (rev. 1958)
Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Le Capital au XXIe siècle) (Late)
Thomas Piketty · 2013 (French); 2014 (English)
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Late)
Naomi Klein · 2007
An Essay on the Principle of Population (Late)
Thomas Robert Malthus · 1798 (1st edn); 1803 (rev. 2nd edn)
Principia Ethica (Early)
G.E. Moore · 1903
On Sense and Reference (Mid)
Gottlob Frege · 1892
Intentionality (Mid)
John Searle · 1983
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Late)
James Clerk Maxwell · 1873 (2 vols.; 2nd ed. 1881; 3rd ed. 1891)
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (Mid)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1795-96
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Late)
Joseph Schumpeter · 1942
The Home and the World (Late)
Rabindranath Tagore · 1915-16 (Bengali); 1919 (English by Surendranath Tagore)
Mother Courage and Her Children (Late)
Bertolt Brecht · 1939 (composed in Swedish exile); 1941 (Zurich premiere)
Wuthering Heights (Mid)
Emily Brontë · 1846-47 (composed); 1847 (published under pseudonym Ellis Bell)
The Great Gatsby (Mid)
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1924-25
Invisible Man (Mid)
Ralph Ellison · 1945-52
2666 (Late)
Roberto Bolaño · 2001-03 (composed during fatal illness); 2004 (posthumous)
Past, Present and Future (Late)
Arthur N. Prior · 1967
Hyperobjects (Late)
Timothy Morton · 2013
The Quadruple Object (Late)
Graham Harman · 2011
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 Structure of the World (Late)
Steven French · 2014
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)
The Bell (Early-mature (Murdoch's fourth novel, the first to establish her mature manner))
Iris Murdoch · 1958 (Chatto & Windus)
Upheavals of Thought (Late-mature (Nussbaum's magnum opus, eight years in the writing after the Gifford Lectures))
Martha Nussbaum · 2001 (Cambridge UP; based on the Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, 1993)
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)
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)
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)
Physica and Causae et Curae (Mid-mature (Hildegard's middle period, between her three major visionary works))
Hildegard of Bingen · c. 1150-58 (Rupertsberg, between Scivias and Liber Vitae Meritorum)
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)
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
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)
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)
The Assayer (Mature (composed during the brief honeymoon between Galileo and the new Pope Urban VIII))
Galileo Galilei · 1623 (Rome: Accademia dei Lincei)
Custer Died for Your Sins (Mature (Deloria's breakthrough book, written at 36))
Vine Deloria Jr. · 1969 (Macmillan)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Julie (Mature (the literary high-point of Rousseau's career, between Social Contract and Émile))
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1761 (Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse: Lettres de deux amants, habitants d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes, Amsterdam)
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)
Historia Animalium (Mature)
Aristotle · c. 343-340 BC (composed during Aristotle's Lesbos period and continued at the Lyceum)
On Generation and Corruption (Mature)
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (during Aristotle's mature Lyceum period)
The Mandarins (Mature)
Simone de Beauvoir · 1954 (Gallimard; Prix Goncourt 1954)
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Mature)
Simone de Beauvoir · 1958 (Gallimard)
Old Age (Late-mature)
Simone de Beauvoir · 1970 (Gallimard)
A Very Easy Death (Late)
Simone de Beauvoir · 1964 (Gallimard)
Between the Acts (Last)
Virginia Woolf · 1940-41 (Hogarth, posthumous July 1941; Woolf died March 28, 1941)
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)
Antony and Cleopatra (Mature)
William Shakespeare · c. 1606-07
Measure for Measure (Mature)
William Shakespeare · c. 1603-04
Translation of Plato's dialogues (Mature)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1804-28 (multi-volume translation with extensive prefaces and notes)
Surprised by Joy (Late-mature)
C. S. Lewis · 1955 (Geoffrey Bles, London)
The Allegory of Love (Mature)
C. S. Lewis · 1936 (Oxford UP); Hawthornden Prize 1936
The Discarded Image (Last)
C. S. Lewis · Lectures delivered Oxford 1950s; published posthumously 1964 (Cambridge UP)
Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (Early)
Iris Murdoch · 1953 (Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge)
The Black Prince (Mature)
Iris Murdoch · 1973 (Chatto & Windus); James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1973
Eyeless in Gaza (Mid-mature)
Aldous Huxley · 1936
Purgatorio (Mature)
Dante Alighieri · c. 1314-19
De Vulgari Eloquentia (Mid-mature)
Dante Alighieri · c. 1304-05 (two of four planned books)
De Monarchia (Late)
Dante Alighieri · c. 1313-18 (during Dante's exile)
The Descent of Man (Mature)
Charles Darwin · 1871 (John Murray, London); revised 1874
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Late)
Charles Darwin · 1872 (John Murray, London)
Journal of Researches (Early)
Charles Darwin · 1839 (first edition); 1845 (substantially revised second edition)
The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (Last)
Charles Darwin · 1881 (John Murray, London) — Darwin's last book, published months before his April 1882 death
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (Mature)
Charles Darwin · 1868 (John Murray, London); revised 1875
Parable of the Sower (Mature)
Octavia E. Butler · 1993
Parable of the Talents (Late-mature)
Octavia E. Butler · 1998 (Nebula 1999)
On Truth (Mature)
Anselm of Canterbury · c. 1080-85
On Free Will (Mature)
Anselm of Canterbury · c. 1080-85
Theory of Colors (Mature)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1810 (J.G. Cotta, Tübingen)
Italian Journey (Late-mature retrospective)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1816 (parts I-II) and 1829 (part III); recounting 1786-88 journey
Go Tell It on the Mountain (Early)
James Baldwin · 1953
Notes of a Native Son (Mid-mature)
James Baldwin · 1955
Giovanni's Room (Mid-mature)
James Baldwin · 1956
Patriotism (Mid-mature)
Yukio Mishima · 1961 ("Yūkoku")
Words and Life (Late)
Hilary Putnam · 1994
The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (Late)
Hilary Putnam · 1999
Choices, Values, and Frames (Mid)
Daniel Kahneman · 2000
Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam (Late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1998
Quantum Theory and Measurement (Mid)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1983
Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Late)
David Bohm · 1980
Quantum Theory (Early)
David Bohm · 1951
De Veritate (On Truth) (Mid)
Anselm of Canterbury · 1080-86
Der Gedanke (The Thought) (Late)
Gottlob Frege · 1918-19
Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (Late)
Roy Bhaskar · 1993
Call to Arms (Nahan) (Mid)
Lu Xun · 1923
Wandering (Panghuang) (Mid)
Lu Xun · 1926
Collected Commentaries on the Four Books (Sishu Jizhu) (Late)
Zhu Xi · c. 1177–1190 (revised throughout his life)
Xunzi
Xunzi (Xun Kuang) · c. 3rd century BCE
On Floating Bodies
Archimedes of Syracuse · c. 250 BCE
On the Measurement of the Earth (reconstructed)
Eratosthenes of Cyrene · c. 240 BCE
Conics
Apollonius of Perga · c. 200 BCE
Origines Sacrae (Early-career)
Edward Stillingfleet · 1662 (revised editions through 1675)
Objective Knowledge (Late)
Karl Popper · 1972 (essays 1960-72)
Edition of Ptolemy's Geography (Middle)
Michael Servetus · 1535 (revised 1541)
The Catching of Leviathan (Late)
John Bramhall · 1658 (appended to Castigations)
Letter to Foscarini (Late)
Robert Bellarmine · 1615 (12 April)
The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis (Late)
Alan Turing · 1952
On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin (Late)
Anselm of Canterbury · c. 1099-1100
Guerrilla Metaphysics (Early)
Graham Harman · 2005
Of Induction (Mid-career polemic)
William Whewell · 1849
Our Knowledge of the Internal World (Late)
Robert Stalnaker · 2008
A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion (Early-career)
Edward Stillingfleet · 1664
The Unreasonableness of Separation (Mid-career)
Edward Stillingfleet · 1681
A Just Vindication of the Church of England (Late (Civil-War exile))
John Bramhall · 1654
Castigations of Mr Hobbes (Late)
John Bramhall · 1658
Reflections on Language (Mid-career (linguistic work))
Noam Chomsky · 1975
The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms (Final)
Charles Darwin · 1881
Expression and Meaning (Mid-career)
John Searle · 1979
Mind: A Brief Introduction (Late)
John Searle · 2004
A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic (Earliest)
Saul Kripke · 1959 (Kripke aged 18)
Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic (Early)
Saul Kripke · 1963
Philosophical Troubles (Late)
Saul Kripke · 2011 (essays 1962-2008)
The Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis (Middle)
Kurt Gödel · 1940
The Analyst (Late)
George Berkeley · 1734
The Poverty of Historicism (Mid-career)
Karl Popper · 1944-45 (Economica articles); book 1957
An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations (Mid-career)
Robert Hooke · 1674
De Potestate Summi Pontificis in Rebus Temporalibus (Late)
Robert Bellarmine · 1610
Object-Oriented Ontology (Late-middle)
Graham Harman · 2018
Summa Theologiae
Thomas Aquinas · 1265–1274 (left incomplete at Aquinas's death)
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Early)
Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1918 (drafted in the trenches); 1921 (German pub.); 1922 (Ogden English ed.)
On Liberty
John Stuart Mill · 1859
De Anima
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (second Athenian period)
On the Nature of the Gods (Late)
Marcus Tullius Cicero · 45 BC
Mencius
Meng Ke (Mencius); compiled by his disciples · c. late 4th century BC (compiled shortly after his death c. 289 BC)
Xunzi
Xun Kuang (Xunzi) · c. 280–230 BC
Summa Contra Gentiles (Early)
Thomas Aquinas · c. 1259–1265 (Paris and Italy)
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792 (London, six weeks)
The Foundations of Arithmetic
Gottlob Frege · 1884
How to Make Our Ideas Clear
Charles Sanders Peirce · 1878 (Popular Science Monthly, January)
Physics and Philosophy
Werner Heisenberg · 1958 (Gifford Lectures, St Andrews, 1955–56)
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins · 1976 (revised editions 1989, 2006)
Novum Organum
Francis Bacon · 1620 (London; intended as Part II of the never-completed Instauratio Magna)
Meno (Early)
Plato · c. 386–380 BC (transitional dialogue)
A History of Western Philosophy (Late)
Bertrand Russell · 1945
Crito (Early)
Plato · c. 399–395 BC (composed shortly after Socrates's death)
Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Late)
John Henry Newman · 1864 (in seven weekly instalments)
Political Liberalism (Late)
John Rawls · 1993 (revised 1996, with new introduction)
The Subjection of Women (Late)
John Stuart Mill · Written 1860–61 with Harriet Taylor Mill's collaboration; published 1869
The Rebel (Late)
Albert Camus · 1951
Principia Mathematica (Early (both authors))
Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell · 1910 (vol. 1), 1912 (vol. 2), 1913 (vol. 3); 2nd edition 1925-27
Gettysburg Address (Mature (Civil War))
Abraham Lincoln · November 19, 1863 (delivered 4½ months after the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863)
Second Inaugural Address (Late (six weeks before assassination))
Abraham Lincoln · March 4, 1865 (six weeks before his assassination)
Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Mid-late (the second of the After Virtue trilogy))
Alasdair MacIntyre · 1988
The Problem of Pain (Mid (post-conversion, pre-Narnia))
C. S. Lewis · 1940
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
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Mid-late (after The Human Condition, before The Life of the Mind))
Hannah Arendt · 1963 (New Yorker articles 1962-63, then book)
The Nature and Destiny of Man (Mid-late (Niebuhr's major systematic work))
Reinhold Niebuhr · 1941 (vol. I, Human Nature); 1943 (vol. II, Human Destiny) — based on the Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, 1939
Dependent Rational Animals (Late (the explicit Thomist completion of the After Virtue trilogy))
Alasdair MacIntyre · 1999
The Copernican Revolution (Early (Kuhn's first book))
Thomas Kuhn · 1957
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Early (the breakthrough work))
Jürgen Habermas · 1962 (habilitation thesis; English translation 1989)
The Social Contract (Late (after the two Discourses; the political conclusion of Rousseau's mature thought))
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762
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 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
The Plague (Mid (between The Stranger and The Rebel))
Albert Camus · 1947
Science and the Modern World (Mid (the major statement of philosophical-cultural critique, preceding the technical metaphysics of Process and Reality))
Alfred North Whitehead · 1925 (the Lowell Lectures, Harvard; the proximate prelude to Process and Reality, 1929)
The Need for Roots (Posthumous)
Simone Weil · 1943 (written for Free France in London in the months before Weil's death; published posthumously 1949)
An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Late-mid (looking back over the formative years))
Mohandas K. Gandhi · 1925-29 (originally serialised in the weekly Navajivan; the chapters cover Gandhi's life through the early Indian campaigns up to 1921)
Sister Outsider (Mid (the major prose collection of Lorde's career))
Audre Lorde · 1984 (collecting essays and speeches from the 1970s and early 1980s)
The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Late (Cone's major late book))
James Cone · 2011
Crime and Punishment (Mid (the first of Dostoevsky's great late novels))
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky · 1866 (serialised in The Russian Messenger)
Notes from Underground (Mid (the transition into the great late period))
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky · 1864
The Idiot (Mid (after Crime and Punishment, before Demons and Karamazov))
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky · 1868-69 (serialised in The Russian Messenger)
Demons (Mid-late (the third of the four great novels))
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky · 1871-72 (based partly on the 1869 Nechayev affair)
The Fall (Late (Camus's last completed novel; the Nobel followed in 1957))
Albert Camus · 1956
The Birth of the Clinic (Early-mid (between Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things))
Michel Foucault · 1963
Principles of Political Economy (Mid (Mill's major economic work))
John Stuart Mill · 1848 (1st edition); revised through 1871 (7th edition)
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)
Existence and Existents (Early (the first major book, before Time and the Other))
Emmanuel Levinas · 1935-46 (largely composed in a German prisoner-of-war camp); published 1947
The Imaginary (Early (preceding Being and Nothingness))
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1940
De Brevitate Vitae (Mid)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 49 AD
De Providentia (Late)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 64 AD (late in Seneca's life, shortly before his forced suicide)
Discourse on Metaphysics (Mid (Leibniz's breakthrough philosophical statement))
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1686 (sent to Antoine Arnauld; not published in Leibniz's lifetime)
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
Mrs Dalloway (Mid (the first major modernist novel of Woolf's maturity))
Virginia Woolf · 1925
To the Lighthouse (Mid (Woolf at the height of her powers))
Virginia Woolf · 1927
Hamlet (Mid (mature middle period))
William Shakespeare · c. 1600-01
Death and the King's Horseman (Mid (the major play of Soyinka's career))
Wole Soyinka · 1975
The Savage Mind (Mid (the systematic statement of structural anthropology))
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1962
Structural Anthropology (Mid (the methodological consolidation))
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1958
Reason, Truth and History (Mid (the major mid-career book, the systematic statement of internal realism))
Hilary Putnam · 1981
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Early (the first of Douglass's three autobiographies))
Frederick Douglass · 1845
What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (Mid (Douglass at the height of his oratorical powers))
Frederick Douglass · July 5, 1852 (delivered at Corinthian Hall, Rochester, NY, to the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society)
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)
Why Not the Best? (Mid (pre-presidential))
James Earl Carter Jr. · 1975 (campaign biography for the 1976 presidential campaign)
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 Power of the Powerless (Mid (Havel as principal Charter 77 dissident))
Václav Havel · 1978 (circulated in samizdat in Czechoslovakia)
First Inaugural Address (Mid (the inauguration after twelve years of Republican presidency))
William J. Clinton · January 20, 1993
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Early)
Arthur Schopenhauer · 1813 (doctoral dissertation); 1847 (revised 2nd edition)
Provincial Letters (Late)
Blaise Pascal · 1656-57
Achieving Our Country (Late)
Richard Rorty · 1998
Representation and Reality (Mid)
Hilary Putnam · 1988
Beloved (Mid (the Pulitzer-winning major novel))
Toni Morrison · 1987
Playing in the Dark (Mid-late)
Toni Morrison · 1992 (William E. Massey Lectures at Harvard, 1990)
The Sea of Fertility (Late (the major late work, completed the day of his 1970 ritual suicide))
Yukio Mishima · 1965-70 (Spring Snow 1965-67, Runaway Horses 1967-68, The Temple of Dawn 1968-70, The Decay of the Angel 1970-71)
The Lion and the Jewel (Early)
Wole Soyinka · 1959
Aké: The Years of Childhood (Mid)
Wole Soyinka · 1981
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Mid)
Yukio Mishima · 1956
My Life (Late)
William J. Clinton · 2004
Promises to Keep (Mid)
Joseph R. Biden Jr. · 2007
De Tranquillitate Animi (Mid-late)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 60 AD
De Vita Beata (Mid-late)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 58 AD
Eudemian Ethics
Aristotle · c. 350 BC
Sophist
Plato · c. 360 BC
Man's Search for Meaning (Mid-late)
Viktor E. Frankl · 1946 (German original); 1959 (English translation)
Letters to Olga (Mid (composed during Havel's 1979-83 imprisonment))
Václav Havel · 1979-83 (letters from prison)
The Cancer Journals (Mid)
Audre Lorde · 1980
Memory, History, Forgetting (Late)
Paul Ricoeur · 2000 (French; English 2004)
The Quest for Certainty (Late)
John Dewey · 1929 (Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, 1928-29)
Aspects of Scientific Explanation (Mid)
Carl G. Hempel · 1965
Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Late)
Michael Polanyi · 1958 (Gifford Lectures 1951-52 at Aberdeen)
The Uses of Argument (Early)
Stephen Toulmin · 1958
The Visible and the Invisible (Late)
Maurice Merleau-Ponty · 1964 (posthumous; composed 1959-61)
The Prose of the World (Mid)
Maurice Merleau-Ponty · composed 1950-52; published 1969 (posthumous)
Essays on Actions and Events (Mid)
Donald Davidson · 1980 (essays 1963-78)
Mind and World (Late)
John McDowell · 1994 (1991 John Locke Lectures at Oxford)
Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Mid)
Bernard Williams · 1985
Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (Early)
P.F. Strawson · 1959
Intention (Mid)
G.E.M. Anscombe · 1957
Truth and Other Enigmas (Mid)
Michael Dummett · 1978 (essays 1954-77)
Reflections on the Revolution in France (Late)
Edmund Burke · 1790
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Mid)
Robert Nozick · 1974
Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Early)
Michael J. Sandel · 1982 (2nd edn 1998)
Spheres of Justice (Mid)
Michael Walzer · 1983
Two Concepts of Liberty (Mid)
Isaiah Berlin · 1958 (Inaugural Lecture as Chichele Professor at Oxford)
The Hedgehog and the Fox (Mid)
Isaiah Berlin · 1953
Zhuzi Yulei (Conversations of Master Zhu, Arranged Topically) (Late)
Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi); compiled by Li Jingde · Conversations 1170-1200; compiled 1270
Ordinatio (Late)
John Duns Scotus (the Subtle Doctor) · c. 1300
Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Mid)
Catharine A. MacKinnon · 1989
Frontiers of Justice (Late)
Martha C. Nussbaum · 2006
Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color (Mid)
Kimberlé Crenshaw · 1991 (Stanford Law Review)
On Nature (Peri Physeos) (Early)
Parmenides of Elea · c. 475 BCE
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
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) (Mid)
Titus Lucretius Carus · c. 55 BCE
Isagoge (Introduction to Aristotle's Categories) (Late)
Porphyry of Tyre · c. 270
Sic et Non (Yes and No) (Early)
Peter Abelard · c. 1121
New Science (Late)
Giambattista Vico · 1725 (1st edn); 1730 (2nd); 1744 (3rd, definitive)
Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience) (Early)
Henri Bergson · 1889 (doctoral thesis)
Matter and Memory (Matière et Mémoire) (Mid)
Henri Bergson · 1896
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt) (Early)
Franz Brentano · 1874
Speech Acts (Early)
John R. Searle · 1969
Warranted Christian Belief (Late)
Alvin Plantinga · 2000
Reasons and Persons (Mid)
Derek Parfit · 1984
Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Late)
Giorgio Agamben · 1995
Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana) (Mid)
José Carlos Mariátegui · 1928
Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Late)
Bruno Latour · 2005
A Sand County Almanac (Late)
Aldo Leopold · 1949 (posthumous)
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Late)
James Lovelock · 1979
The End of History and the Last Man (Mid)
Francis Fukuyama · 1992
Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Mid)
Wilfrid Sellars · 1956
Natural Goodness (Late)
Philippa Foot · 2001
The Many Faces of Realism (Mid)
Hilary Putnam · 1987
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Mid)
John Henry Newman · 1845 (rev. 1878)
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)
Common Sense (Mid)
Thomas Paine · 1776 (January)
Twenty Years at Hull-House (Late)
Jane Addams · 1910
A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (Mid)
Fung Yu-lan (Feng Youlan) · 1948
Rerum Novarum (Late)
Pope Leo XIII · 1891 (15 May)
The Voice of the Voiceless (Late)
Óscar Romero · 1977-80 (collected pastoral letters)
Christ the Liberator: A View from the Victims (Late)
Jon Sobrino · 1999 (Spanish); 2001 (English)
Women, Race & Class (Mid)
Angela Y. Davis · 1981
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) (Mid)
Gabriel García Márquez · 1967
Begriffsschrift (Early)
Gottlob Frege · 1879
On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems (Early)
Kurt Gödel · 1931
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
Ulysses (Mid)
James Joyce · 1914-21 (composed); 1922 (published)
A Room of One's Own (Late)
Virginia Woolf · 1929
Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann) (Mid)
Marcel Proust · 1913
The Sound and the Fury (Mid)
William Faulkner · 1929
Collected Poems (Late)
Wallace Stevens · 1954 (collection of poems 1923-54)
The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (Late)
Tenzin Gyatso (14th Dalai Lama) · 2005
The Language Instinct (Late)
Steven Pinker · 1994
Syntactic Structures (Early)
Noam Chomsky · 1957
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Late)
Nick Bostrom · 2014
Escape from Freedom (Mid)
Erich Fromm · 1941
The Sociological Imagination (Mid)
C. Wright Mills · 1959
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Mid)
Erving Goffman · 1959
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (La Distinction) (Mid)
Pierre Bourdieu · 1979
The Culture of Narcissism (Late)
Christopher Lasch · 1979
Liquid Modernity (Late)
Zygmunt Bauman · 2000
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Late)
Robert D. Putnam · 2000
The Fall of Public Man (Mid)
Richard Sennett · 1977
Halakhic Man (Ish ha-Halakhah) (Mid)
Joseph B. Soloveitchik · 1944
Thinking, Fast and Slow (Late)
Daniel Kahneman · 2011
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Late)
Jonathan Haidt · 2012
Cosmopolitics (Late)
Isabelle Stengers · 2003-11 (French in 7 vols; English in 2 vols)
The Black Swan (Late)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 2007
Long Walk to Freedom (Late)
Nelson Mandela · 1994
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Late)
Malcolm X with Alex Haley · 1965
Austerlitz (Late)
W.G. Sebald · 2001
Second Treatise of Government (Late)
John Locke · 1689
Confessions (Late)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1769 (composed); 1782-89 (posthumous)
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)
How to Do Things with Words (Late)
J.L. Austin · 1955 (William James Lectures at Harvard); 1962 (book, posthumous)
The Language of Thought (Mid)
Jerry Fodor · 1975
Astronomia Nova (Mid)
Johannes Kepler · 1609
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Late)
Nicolaus Copernicus · 1543 (published; composed 1510-30s)
What Is Life? (Late)
Erwin Schrödinger · 1943 (lectures); 1944 (book)
A Mathematical Theory of Communication (Mid)
Claude Shannon · 1948 (Bell System Technical Journal)
The Growth of Biological Thought (Late)
Ernst Mayr · 1982
The Double Helix (Mid)
James D. Watson · 1968
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Late)
Edward O. Wilson · 1975
The Character of Physical Law (Mid)
Richard Feynman · 1964 (lectures); 1965 (book)
Experiments on Plant Hybridization (Late)
Gregor Mendel · 1866 (published in proceedings of Brünn Natural History Society)
Traité élémentaire de chimie (Late)
Antoine Lavoisier · 1789
The Order of Time (Late)
Carlo Rovelli · 2017 (Italian); 2018 (English)
The Art of War (Early)
Sun Tzu (Sunzi) · 5th c. BCE (Warring States era)
The Histories (Early)
Herodotus · c. 440s-420s BCE
The Annals (Late)
Tacitus (Publius Cornelius Tacitus) · c. 116-120 CE (later years of Trajan, reign of Hadrian)
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Mid)
Jacob Burckhardt · 1860
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Late)
Fernand Braudel · 1949 (1st edn); 1966 (2nd edn revised)
The State and Revolution (Late)
Vladimir Lenin · 1917 (composed in Finland, on the eve of the October Revolution)
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 Road to Serfdom (Mid)
Friedrich Hayek · 1944
The Interpretation of Cultures (Late)
Clifford Geertz · 1973
The Logic of Practice (Late)
Pierre Bourdieu · 1980 (French); 1990 (English)
Requiem (Late)
Anna Akhmatova · 1935-61 (composed and memorized); 1963 (first published abroad); 1987 (in USSR)
The Story of Art (Mid)
Ernst Gombrich · 1950 (1st ed.); 1995 (16th ed.)
North (Mid)
Seamus Heaney · 1975
Moby-Dick (Mid)
Herman Melville · 1850-51
The Handmaid's Tale (Late)
Margaret Atwood · 1985
My Name Is Red (Mid)
Orhan Pamuk · 1998 (Turkish Benim Adım Kırmızı); 2001 (English)
Blood Meridian (Late)
Cormac McCarthy · 1985
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Late)
Haruki Murakami · 1994-95 (Japanese 3 vols.); 1997 (English single volume)
The Golden Notebook (Mid)
Doris Lessing · 1957-62
The Analysis of Matter (Mid)
Bertrand Russell · 1927
Kindred (Mid)
Octavia E. Butler · 1979
A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Late)
Pierre-Simon Laplace · 1814 (Essai philosophique sur les probabilités)
A New Kind of Science (Mid)
Stephen Wolfram · 1991-2002 (composed over 11 years); 2002 (published)
Homo Deus (Late)
Yuval Noah Harari · 2015 (Hebrew); 2016 (English)
Snow Crash (Mid)
Neal Stephenson · 1992
Realism with a Human Face (Late)
Hilary Putnam · 1990
Modern Moral Philosophy (Mature (the journal paper that reshaped Anglophone moral philosophy))
G. E. M. Anscombe (Elizabeth Anscombe) · 1958 (Philosophy 33, no. 124)
Laughter (Early-mature (between Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution))
Henri Bergson · 1900 (Le Rire: Essai sur la signification du comique, Revue de Paris; book edition 1900; revised many times through 1924)
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)
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)
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
On Learned Ignorance (Mature (the founding work of Cusa's philosophical career, composed at age 39))
Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusanus) · 1440 (composed on the return voyage from the failed Council of Florence union with the Greeks)
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
The Dialogue of Divine Providence (Late (composed in Catherine's last two years, in the midst of her efforts to reform the Church and end the Avignon papacy))
Catherine of Siena (Caterina Benincasa) · c. 1377-78 (composed by dictation in ecstatic states; Catherine could read with difficulty and probably could not write)
Ocean of Reasoning (Mature (Tsongkhapa's major philosophical-Madhyamaka work))
Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa · c. 1407
Jōdo Wasan (Late)
Shinran · 1248 (Shinran in his mid-seventies)
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)
Dictionnaire philosophique (Late (composed during the Ferney years))
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) · 1764 (Dictionnaire philosophique portatif, Geneva; greatly expanded through 1769)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Topics (Mid-mature)
Aristotle · c. 350-340 BC (one of Aristotle's earlier mature logical works)
Three Guineas (Late)
Virginia Woolf · 1938 (Hogarth Press)
Gyn/Ecology (Mature)
Mary Daly · 1978 (Beacon Press)
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)
Asa Di Var (Mature)
Guru Nānak Dev Ji · c. 1500-1539 (Nānak's mature teaching years; included in the Guru Granth Sahib 1604)
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)
Politics and Conscience (Mature (composed during Havel's dissident period before the 1989 Velvet Revolution))
Václav Havel · 1984 (composed in Czechoslovakia under Communist authority; prepared as the acceptance speech for an honorary degree from the University of Toulouse that Havel could not attend)
Disturbing the Peace (Late-dissident (composed three years before the Velvet Revolution))
Václav Havel · 1985-86 (long interview composed by mail between Havel in Prague and Karel Hvížďala in West Germany)
Summer Meditations (Late (the first major post-1989 reflection on the transition from dissidence to governance))
Václav Havel · 1991 (Letní přemítání, composed during Havel's first eighteen months as Czechoslovak president after the November 1989 Velvet Revolution)
The Tempest (Last (probably Shakespeare's last sole-authored play))
William Shakespeare · c. 1610-11 (first performed Whitehall, 1 November 1611)
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Early-mature)
Henry David Thoreau · 1849 (composed during Thoreau's Walden Pond years 1845-47; published 1849 at Thoreau's own expense)
The Maine Woods (Mature-late)
Henry David Thoreau · 1846-57 (three Maine expedition narratives composed across a decade); compiled posthumously 1864
A Plea for Captain John Brown (Mature)
Henry David Thoreau · 1859 (delivered as a public address in Concord, Boston, and Worcester, October-November 1859; published 1860)
Slavery in Massachusetts (Mature)
Henry David Thoreau · 1854 (delivered at the antislavery convention, Framingham, July 4, 1854; published in The Liberator and other papers)
Representative Men (Mature)
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1850 (Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston; based on lectures delivered 1845-46)
Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study (Mature)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1811 (first edition); substantially revised 1830 (second edition)
Some Remarks on Logical Form (Transitional)
Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1929 (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 9)
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)
Letter to Herodotus (Mature)
Epicurus · c. 300 BC
Principal Doctrines (Mature)
Epicurus · c. 300 BC
Cur Deus Homo (Late-mature)
Anselm of Canterbury · c. 1094-98
Discourse on Metaphysics (Mature)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1686 (composed February 1686; first published 1846)
The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Last)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1715-16 (5 letters from Leibniz, 5 replies from Clarke); published 1717
Jesus and the Disinherited (Mature)
Howard Thurman · 1949
The Sea of Fertility (Last)
Yukio Mishima · 1965-71 (four-volume tetralogy)
Judgment Under Uncertainty (Mid)
Daniel Kahneman · 1982
Quantum: The Search for Links (Late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1989
My Early Life (Mid)
Winston Churchill · 1930
Laboratory Life (Early)
Bruno Latour · 1979
Science in Action (Mid)
Bruno Latour · 1987
An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (Late)
Bruno Latour · 2013 (French), 2013 (English)
Experiments and Observations on Electricity (Mid)
Benjamin Franklin · 1747-1750 (letters), 1751 (first edition)
Past, Present and Future (Mature)
Arthur Norman Prior · 1967
Objects of Thought (Late)
Arthur Norman Prior · 1970-71 (drafted), 1971 (posthumous publication)
On the Mind (Mature)
Democritus of Abdera · c. 420 BCE
On Forms (Peri Ideōn) (Mature)
Democritus of Abdera · c. 430 BCE
The Extended Phenotype (Mid)
Richard Dawkins · 1982
The Ancestor's Tale (Late)
Richard Dawkins · 2004 (1st ed.), 2016 (2nd ed. with Yan Wong)
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Basic Laws of Arithmetic) (Mature)
Gottlob Frege · 1893 (vol. 1), 1903 (vol. 2)
Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (Mature)
C. D. Broad · 1933 (vol. 1), 1938 (vol. 2)
Lectures on Psychical Research (Late)
C. D. Broad · 1959-60 (lectures), 1962 (book)
Essay on Conic Sections (Early)
Blaise Pascal · 1640
The Principles of Mathematics (Early)
Bertrand Russell · 1903
Our Knowledge of the External World (Mid)
Bertrand Russell · 1914
The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (Early)
Stephen Hawking · 1973
The Universe in a Nutshell (Mid)
Stephen Hawking · 2001
The Grand Design (Late)
Stephen Hawking · 2010
Parimala (Mid)
Raghavendra Swami · c. 1620-1671
Tatparya Chandrika (Mid)
Raghavendra Swami · c. 1620-1671
History of the Inductive Sciences (Mid-career)
William Whewell · 1837 (3 vols)
The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (Mid-career (companion to the History))
William Whewell · 1840 (revised 1847, 1858–60)
Novum Organon Renovatum (Late)
William Whewell · 1858
A Theory of Conditionals (Early)
Robert Stalnaker · 1968
Inquiry (Mid-career)
Robert Stalnaker · 1984
Context and Content (Mid-to-late)
Robert Stalnaker · 1999
Set Theory and Its Logic (Mid-career)
Willard Van Orman Quine · 1963 (revised 1969)
Substance and Function (Early)
Ernst Cassirer · 1910
A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (Early-career)
Samuel Clarke · 1704 (Boyle Lectures); published 1705
Micrographia (Early-career (career-defining))
Robert Hooke · 1665
Lectures de Potentia Restitutiva (Mid-career)
Robert Hooke · 1678
General Scholium (Late)
Sir Isaac Newton · 1713 (added to 2nd edition of the Principia)
On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (Early)
Alan Turing · 1936
Parts of Animals (Middle)
Aristotle · c. 350-340 BC
Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology (Late)
David Lewis · 1999
Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic (Early)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1896
Fragments and Testimonia
Thales of Miletus · c. 6th century BCE (original); testimonia preserved in sources from the 4th c. BCE onward
On Nature (fragments)
Anaximander of Miletus · c. 6th century BCE
Paradoxes (fragments)
Zeno of Elea · c. 460 BCE
"Relative State" Formulation of Quantum Mechanics
Hugh Everett III · 1957
The Minimalist Program (Late (linguistic work))
Noam Chomsky · 1995
From a Logical Point of View (Mid-career)
Willard Van Orman Quine · 1953 (essays 1939-1952)
Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (Mid-to-late)
Willard Van Orman Quine · 1969
Pursuit of Truth (Late)
Willard Van Orman Quine · 1990 (revised 1992)
A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion (Early-career)
Samuel Clarke · 1705 (Boyle Lectures); published 1706
Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei (Career-defining)
Robert Bellarmine · 1586-1593
Minds, Brains, and Programs (Mid-career)
John Searle · 1980
Parts of Classes (Late-middle)
David Lewis · 1991
The Philosophical Foundations of Physics (Late)
Rudolf Carnap · 1966 (lectures earlier)
Aquinas (Mid-career)
Frederick Copleston · 1955
Intelligent Machinery (Mid)
Alan Turing · 1948
Some Dogmas of Religion (Middle)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1906
The Analects
Compiled by Confucius's disciples and their disciples · Compiled c. 5th–3rd century BC; core sayings reflect Confucius (551–479 BC)
Capital, Volume I (Late)
Karl Marx · 1867 (German first ed.); Volume II 1885, Volume III 1894 (posthumous, ed. Engels)
The World as Will and Representation
Arthur Schopenhauer · 1818 (first ed.); 1844 (expanded with second volume); 1859 (final third edition)
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (Late)
Leo Tolstoy · Written 1890–93; banned in Russia, published 1894 in Berlin
Apology (Early)
Plato · c. 399–395 BC (shortly after Socrates's death)
The Imitation of Christ
Thomas à Kempis (traditional attribution; sometimes attributed to Geert Groote or composite) · c. 1418–1427 (Mount St Agnes monastery, Zwolle, Netherlands)
Faṣl al-Maqāl (The Decisive Treatise) (Late)
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) · c. 1179 (Córdoba, Andalusia)
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Immanuel Kant · 1785
Cur Deus Homo (Late)
Anselm of Canterbury · 1094–1098 (Capua and Canterbury)
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Early-to-late (he revised it throughout his life))
Adam Smith · 1759 (1st edition); 1790 (6th and definitive edition with substantial additions)
The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Late (post-crisis))
Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī · c. 1097-1106 (composed during al-Ghazali's years of withdrawal after the 1095 spiritual crisis)
Deliverance from Error (Late)
Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī · c. 1108 (late in al-Ghazali's life, after returning to teaching)
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)
Theodicy (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1710 (the only philosophical book Leibniz published in his lifetime)
Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology (Mid (the transcendental turn))
Edmund Husserl · 1913
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (Mid (Northampton pastorate; the major work of evangelical reflection))
Jonathan Edwards · 1746
Divine Comedy: Inferno (Late (Dante's exile years))
Dante Alighieri · c. 1308-1320 (composed during Dante's exile from Florence; completed shortly before his death in 1321)
A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (Late)
John Wesley · 1766 (with revisions through 1777; published as a unified text in 1777)
I and Thou (Mid (the foundational statement of dialogical philosophy))
Martin Buber · 1923
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Late (the mature systematic philosophy))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1820 (published 1821 with the famous controversial Preface)
Adventures of Ideas (Late (Whitehead's last major book))
Alfred North Whitehead · 1933
The Principles of Psychology (Mid (the major early work; foundational for both psychology and pragmatist philosophy))
William James · 1890 (after twelve years of writing; James later said he should not have spent so much time on it)
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)
Enchiridion Militis Christiani (Early (Erasmus's first major work))
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam · 1503 (with a famous expanded 1518 preface that became a humanist-Reformation manifesto)
Brave New World (Mid (Huxley's breakthrough novel))
Aldous Huxley · 1932
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Late (third volume of the After Virtue trilogy))
Alasdair MacIntyre · 1990 (the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1988)
Letter from Birmingham Jail (Mid (the canonical theological-political document))
Martin Luther King Jr. · April 16, 1963 (written in jail in response to a published statement by eight Alabama clergymen criticising King's direct-action methods)
Love and Responsibility (Early (his major pre-papal work; drawn from pastoral and academic teaching))
Karol Józef Wojtyła / Pope John Paul II · 1960 (the first major theological-philosophical book of the future John Paul II; based on his pastoral and academic teaching)
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)
Hind Swaraj (Early (the founding text of Gandhi's mature political-philosophical vision))
Mohandas K. Gandhi · 1909 (written aboard the Kildonan Castle in ten days during the voyage from London to South Africa)
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)
A Black Theology of Liberation (Early (the systematic founding text of the field))
James Cone · 1970 (the second of Cone's books and the systematic statement of the position announced in Black Theology and Black Power, 1969)
No Future Without Forgiveness (Late (the major reflective work after the TRC))
Desmond Tutu · 1999 (the personal-theological reflection on the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1995-98)
Nausea (Early (Sartre's first novel, before Being and Nothingness))
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1938
No Exit (Mid (alongside Being and Nothingness))
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1944 (first performed at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in May 1944)
Critique of Dialectical Reason (Late (Sartre's major late philosophical work))
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1960 (vol. I); vol. II unfinished, published posthumously 1985
Lectures on Aesthetics (Late (Berlin lectures))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1820s (delivered as lectures); 1835-38 (compiled and published posthumously by H. G. Hotho)
Madness and Civilization (Early (Foucault's breakthrough work, his doctoral dissertation))
Michel Foucault · 1961 (Foucault's doctoral dissertation)
The Archaeology of Knowledge (Mid (methodological transition between archaeological and genealogical phases))
Michel Foucault · 1969
Time and the Other (Early (the breakthrough early work, before Totality and Infinity))
Emmanuel Levinas · 1946-47 (delivered as four lectures at Collège philosophique); published 1948
Difficult Freedom (Mid (alongside Totality and Infinity))
Emmanuel Levinas · 1963 (collecting essays from the 1950s-60s)
New Essays on Human Understanding (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1704 (completed; Leibniz suppressed publication after Locke's 1704 death); 1765 (posthumous publication)
Praise of Folly (Mid (Erasmus's most widely read book))
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam · 1509 (composed during a visit to Thomas More); 1511 (first published)
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)
Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Mid-late (mature systematic statement))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1933 (essay collection, English translation by Cary F. Baynes)
King Lear (Mid-late (the major tragedies))
William Shakespeare · c. 1605-06
Confessions of a Mask (Early (the breakthrough novel that established Mishima's literary reputation))
Yukio Mishima · 1949 (Mishima's breakthrough novel, written at age 24)
Tristes Tropiques (Mid (Lévi-Strauss's most widely read book))
Claude Lévi-Strauss · 1955
Kitáb-i-Íqán (Mid (pre-declaration in 1863))
Bahá'u'lláh (Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʻAlí Núrí) · 1862 (composed in Baghdad in two days and two nights, in response to questions from one of the Báb's maternal uncles)
Kitáb-i-Aqdas (Late (the major late doctrinal-legal book))
Bahá'u'lláh (Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʻAlí Núrí) · 1873 (in 'Akká, the prison-city where Bahá'u'lláh was exiled)
Ninety-Five Theses (Early (the founding act of the Reformation))
Martin Luther · October 31, 1517 (posted to the door of All Saints' Church, Wittenberg)
The Freedom of a Christian (Early (1520 is Luther's most productive year of foundational treatises))
Martin Luther · 1520 (published in both Latin and German; the third of the three great 1520 Reformation treatises)
On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Early (1520, foundational year))
Martin Luther · 1520
Four Quartets (Late (Eliot's mature Anglo-Catholic period))
Thomas Stearns Eliot · 1936 (Burnt Norton); 1940 (East Coker); 1941 (The Dry Salvages); 1942 (Little Gidding); 1943 (collected publication)
Vita Nuova (Early (Dante's first major work))
Dante Alighieri · c. 1295
Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (Mid-late (Averroes's major systematic philosophical defence))
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) · c. 1180
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Mid-late)
David Hume · 1751
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Early)
George Berkeley · 1713
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Late)
John Locke · 1693
It from Bit / Information, Physics, Quantum (Late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1989-90 (the "It from Bit" thesis articulated in conference papers and essays)
A Cyborg Manifesto (Mid)
Donna Haraway · 1985 (first published in Socialist Review)
Staying with the Trouble (Late)
Donna Haraway · 2016
The Reasonableness of Christianity (Late)
John Locke · 1695
The Hidden Words (Early)
Bahá'u'lláh (Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʻAlí Núrí) · 1858
Myth, Literature and the African World (Mid)
Wole Soyinka · 1976
Peace with God (Early-mid)
William Franklin "Billy" Graham · 1953
Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum) (Mid)
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam · 1516
Principles of Nature and Grace (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1714
Parmenides
Plato · c. 370 BC
Systematic Theology (Mid)
Paul Tillich · 1951-63 (Vol I 1951, Vol II 1957, Vol III 1963)
Commentary on the Mishnah (Early-mid)
Moses Maimonides (Rambam) · c. 1158-68
Anasakti Yoga: The Gita According to Gandhi (Mid-late)
Mohandas K. Gandhi · 1929-32 (translations and commentaries; collected as Anasakti Yoga 1930)
Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (Early)
Paul Ricoeur · 1950 (French; English 1966)
Time and Narrative (Late)
Paul Ricoeur · 1983-85 (3 vols; English 1984-88)
Word and Object (Mid)
W.V.O. Quine · 1960
Between Facts and Norms (Late)
Jürgen Habermas · 1992 (German; English 1996)
Truth and Method (Mid)
Hans-Georg Gadamer · 1960 (German; English 1975, 2nd rev. ed. 1989)
Bodies That Matter (Early)
Judith Butler · 1993
Orientalism (Mid)
Edward W. Said · 1978
Culture and Imperialism (Late)
Edward W. Said · 1993
Can the Subaltern Speak? (Mid)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak · 1988 (essay in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture; rev. 1999 in Critique of Postcolonial Reason)
Democracy and Education (Mid)
John Dewey · 1916
Art as Experience (Late)
John Dewey · 1934 (William James Lectures at Harvard, 1931)
The Philosophy of Loyalty (Late)
Josiah Royce · 1908
Patterns of Discovery (Early)
Norwood Russell Hanson · 1958
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Mid)
Ernst Cassirer · 1923-29 (Vol I 1923, II 1925, III 1929)
Being Given (Late)
Jean-Luc Marion · 1997 (French; English 2002)
The Essence of Manifestation (Early)
Michel Henry · 1963 (French; English 1973)
Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Late)
Jan Patočka · 1975 (Czech samizdat; revised; English 1996)
Finite and Eternal Being (Late)
Edith Stein (St. Teresia Benedicta of the Cross) · 1936 (completed; published posthumously 1950)
Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Mid)
Max Scheler · 1913-16 (Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research)
The Mystery of Being (Late)
Gabriel Marcel · 1949-50 (Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen)
Philosophy (Mid)
Karl Jaspers · 1932 (3 vols; English 1969-71)
Philosophy of Existence (Late)
Karl Jaspers · 1938 (German; English 1971)
Making It Explicit (Mid)
Robert Brandom · 1994
Sources of the Self (Mid)
Charles Taylor · 1989
A Secular Age (Late)
Charles Taylor · 2007 (Gifford Lectures 1998-99 at Edinburgh, extensively expanded)
Summa Logicae (Late)
William of Ockham · c. 1323
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Late)
Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792
Justice and the Politics of Difference (Mid)
Iris Marion Young · 1990
Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Late)
Charles Hartshorne · 1984
Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Mid)
John B. Cobb Jr. · 1975
Ethics (Ethik) (Late)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer · 1940-43 (unfinished; first German edition 1949)
On Nature and Purifications (Fragments) (Early)
Empedocles of Acragas · c. 450 BCE
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (Late)
Diogenes Laertius · c. 3rd century CE
Moralia (Ēthika) (Late)
Plutarch of Chaeronea · c. 100 CE
On the Incarnation (De Incarnatione Verbi Dei) (Early)
St. Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 318
Ambigua to John (Ambigua ad Iohannem) (Late)
St. Maximus the Confessor · c. 628-30
Didascalicon (On the Study of Reading) (Early)
Hugh of St Victor · c. 1127
Historical and Critical Dictionary (Dictionnaire Historique et Critique) (Late)
Pierre Bayle · 1697 (2nd expanded edn 1702)
Philosophical Letters (Lettres Philosophiques / Lettres Anglaises) (Mid)
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) · 1734
Utopia (De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia) (Mid)
St. Thomas More · 1516
The Passions of the Soul (Les Passions de l'âme) (Late)
René Descartes · 1649
Creative Evolution (L'évolution créatrice) (Late)
Henri Bergson · 1907
Preface to Lyrical Ballads (Early)
William Wordsworth · 1800 (1st version); 1802 (expanded)
A Confession (Ispoved') (Late)
Leo Tolstoy · 1882
Consciousness Explained (Mid)
Daniel C. Dennett · 1991
Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Late)
John Rawls · 2001
Difference and Repetition (Différence et Répétition) (Mid)
Gilles Deleuze · 1968
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. 2 (Late)
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari · 1980
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)
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (Pouvoirs de l'horreur) (Mid)
Julia Kristeva · 1980
Speculum of the Other Woman (Speculum, de l'autre femme) (Mid)
Luce Irigaray · 1974
An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no Kenkyū) (Early)
Nishida Kitarō · 1911
Climate and Culture (Fūdo: ningengakuteki kōsatsu) (Mid)
Watsuji Tetsurō · 1935
African Religions and Philosophy (Mid)
John S. Mbiti · 1969 (2nd edn 1990)
Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective (Late)
Kwasi Wiredu · 1996
Philosophy of Liberation (Filosofía de la Liberación) (Mid)
Enrique Dussel · 1977
Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Mid)
Gloria Anzaldúa · 1987
The Idea of Latin America (Late)
Walter D. Mignolo · 2005
Toward the African Revolution (Late)
Frantz Fanon · 1952-1961 essays; 1964 (collection)
The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Late)
Donna J. Haraway · 2003
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Mid)
Douglas R. Hofstadter · 1979
The Claim of Reason (Mid)
Stanley Cavell · 1979
The Age of Reason (Late)
Thomas Paine · 1794 (Part I); 1795 (Part II); 1807 (Part III)
The Souls of Black Folk (Mid)
W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903
Mind, Self, and Society (Late)
George Herbert Mead · 1934 (posthumous; lectures 1928-30)
A Theology for the Social Gospel (Late)
Walter Rauschenbusch · 1917
The Long Loneliness (Late)
Dorothy Day · 1952
Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue) (Late)
Mou Zongsan · 1971
Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue) (Early)
Liang Shuming · 1921
The Importance of Living (Mid)
Lin Yutang · 1937
The Hindu View of Life (Mid)
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan · 1926 (Upton Lectures at Oxford, 1926)
The First and Last Freedom (Mid)
Jiddu Krishnamurti · 1954
Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation (Late)
Tu Weiming · 1985
Gaudium et Spes (Late)
Second Vatican Council · 1965 (7 December)
Church: Charism and Power (Igreja: carisma e poder) (Mid)
Leonardo Boff · 1981
God Is Red: A Native View of Religion (Late)
Vine Deloria Jr. · 1973 (2nd edn 1992; 3rd edn 2003)
Black Feminist Thought (Mid)
Patricia Hill Collins · 1990 (2nd edn 2000)
Paradiso (Divine Comedy, Cantica III) (Late)
Dante Alighieri · c. 1316-21
Paradise Lost (Late)
John Milton · 1667 (1st edn, 10 books); 1674 (2nd edn, 12 books)
An Essay on Man (Late)
Alexander Pope · 1733-34
Ficciones (Mid)
Jorge Luis Borges · 1944
Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot) (Mid)
Samuel Beckett · 1948-49 (composed); 1952 (French publication); 1953 (premiere)
Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili) (Mid)
Italo Calvino · 1972
A Vision (Late)
W.B. Yeats · 1925 (1st edn); 1937 (rev. 2nd edn)
Science and Hypothesis (La Science et l'hypothèse) (Late)
Henri Poincaré · 1902
The Essential Tension (Late)
Thomas S. Kuhn · 1977
The Trial (Der Process) (Late)
Franz Kafka · 1914-15 (composed); 1925 (posthumous)
The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Mid)
W.H. Auden · 1944-46 (composed); 1947 (published)
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Late)
Pema Chödrön (Deirdre Blomfield-Brown) · 1997
Raja Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature (Late)
Swami Vivekananda · 1896
Autobiography of a Yogi (Late)
Paramahansa Yogananda · 1946
Metaphors We Live By (Late)
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson · 1980
Animal Liberation (Mid)
Peter Singer · 1975
The Social Construction of Reality (Mid)
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann · 1966
The Life of the Mind (Late)
Hannah Arendt · 1977-78 (Vol I Thinking; Vol II Willing; Vol III Judging unfinished at her death)
The Sublime Object of Ideology (Mid)
Slavoj Žižek · 1989
Full Catastrophe Living (Late)
Jon Kabat-Zinn · 1990 (revised 2013)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) (Late)
Milan Kundera · 1984
The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy (Mid)
Viktor Frankl · 1946
Language, Truth, and Logic (Early)
A.J. Ayer · 1936
The Concept of Mind (Mid)
Gilbert Ryle · 1949
The Blue and Brown Books (Mid)
Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1933-35 (dictations); 1958 (published posthumously)
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Late)
Norbert Wiener · 1948 (2nd ed. 1961)
Wonderful Life (Late)
Stephen Jay Gould · 1989
Descartes' Error (Late)
António Damásio · 1994
The Castle (Late)
Franz Kafka · 1922 (composed); 1926 (posthumous)
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)
Prison Notebooks (Late)
Antonio Gramsci · 1929-35 (composed in fascist prison); 1948-51 (posthumous Italian publication)
History and Class Consciousness (Mid)
György Lukács · 1923
Thought and Language (Mid)
Lev Vygotsky · 1934 (posthumous, Vygotsky died June 1934)
The Mind of Primitive Man (Late)
Franz Boas · 1911 (1st ed.); 1938 (rev. 2nd ed.)
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Mid)
Noam Chomsky · 1965
Envy and Gratitude (Late)
Melanie Klein · 1957
Foundations of Geometry (Mid)
David Hilbert · 1899 (1st ed.); 1903-1971 (multiple subsequent eds)
The German Ideology (Early)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels · 1845-46 (composed in Brussels; published 1932 by Soviet Union)
On Photography (Late)
Susan Sontag · 1973-77 (essays in New York Review of Books); 1977 (book)
Ways of Seeing (Late)
John Berger · 1972 (BBC series and book)
Collected Poems (Late)
W. H. Auden · 1927-73 (composed); 1976 (collected)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Mid)
James Joyce · 1903-15 (composed); 1914-15 (serialized in The Egoist); 1916 (book)
Midnight's Children (Mid)
Salman Rushdie · 1979-81
Gravity's Rainbow (Mid)
Thomas Pynchon · 1968-72
Decolonising the Mind (Late)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o · 1986 (based on 1984 Robb Lectures)
The Unreality of Time (Late)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1908
The Analysis of Mind (Mid)
Bertrand Russell · 1921
Instruction on Certain Aspects of the "Theology of Liberation" (Late)
Joseph Ratzinger (CDF) · 1984 (August 6)
Anti-Duhring (Late)
Friedrich Engels · 1877-78
The Singularity Is Near (Late)
Ray Kurzweil · 2005
Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? (Mid)
Nick Bostrom · 2003 (Philosophical Quarterly)
Animism: Respecting the Living World (Late)
Graham Harvey · 2005
The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement (Mid)
Arne Naess · 1973 (Inquiry)
Capital (Late)
Karl Marx · 1867 (vol. I); 1885 (vol. II posthumous); 1894 (vol. III posthumous, edited by Engels)
Black Quantum Futurism: Theory and Practice (Late)
Rasheedah Phillips (ed.) · 2015
Men in Dark Times (Late (collected from essays spanning more than a decade))
Hannah Arendt · 1968 (Harcourt Brace; essays composed 1955-67, several in New Yorker, Merkur, etc.)
Aion (Late (one of Jung's last and most ambitious works, written in his mid-seventies))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1951 (Aion: Untersuchungen zur Symbolgeschichte, Rascher, Zurich; English trans. R.F.C. Hull, Collected Works vol. 9, pt II, 1959)
Kyōgyōshinshō (Mature)
Shinran · c. 1224; revised through c. 1247
Tannishō (Posthumous (the principal popular source for Shinran's teaching))
Shinran · c. 1290 (compiled by Yuien-bō about 30 years after Shinran's death)
Letters to the Son of the Wolf (Last (less than a year before his 1892 death))
Bahá'u'lláh (Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʻAlí Núrí) · 1891 (composed in 'Akká)
Orlando (Mature)
Virginia Woolf · 1928 (Hogarth Press)
The Waves (Mature)
Virginia Woolf · 1931 (Hogarth Press)
De Casu Diaboli (On the Fall of the Devil) (Mid)
Anselm of Canterbury · 1080-86
Pascal-Fermat Correspondence on Probability (Mid)
Blaise Pascal · 1654
The Memorandum (Early)
Václav Havel · 1965
Logical Investigations (fragments) (Mature)
Chrysippus of Soli · c. 250 BCE
Samkhyakarika
Ishvarakrishna · c. 350 CE
Personas with Realism as a declared influence
40% Winston Churchill
40% Richard M. Nixon
40% George H. W. Bush
40% Galileo Galilei
35% Albert Einstein
35% Gerald R. Ford
35% Sir Isaac Newton
30% Abraham Lincoln
30% Lyndon B. Johnson
30% Donald J. Trump
30% William Shakespeare
30% Thomas Hobbes
25% William J. Clinton
25% George W. Bush
25% Aristotle
25% Marcus Tullius Cicero
25% John Locke
25% Charles Darwin
25% Sigmund Freud
25% Samuel Clarke
25% Maṇḍana Miśra
20% C. S. Lewis
20% Hannah Arendt
20% James Earl Carter Jr.
20% Barack H. Obama
20% Joseph R. Biden Jr.
20% Virginia Woolf
20% Thomas Stearns Eliot
20% Václav Havel
20% Pierre-Simon Laplace
20% David Deutsch
20% Graham Harman
20% John Bramhall
20% Robert Hooke
20% Noam Chomsky
20% Robert Bellarmine
20% John Searle
20% William Whewell
20% Edward Stillingfleet
20% Kumarila Bhatta
20% Archimedes of Syracuse
15% Thomas Aquinas
15% Dietrich Bonhoeffer
15% Heraclitus of Ephesus
15% Ibn Rushd (Averroes)
15% Blaise Pascal
15% Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
15% Wole Soyinka
15% Roy Bhaskar
15% Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus
15% Raghavendra Swami
15% Frederick Copleston
15% Robert Stalnaker
15% Zeno of Elea
15% Zhu Xi
15% Eratosthenes of Cyrene
15% Apollonius of Perga
15% Aristarchus of Samos
10% Marcus Aurelius
10% Confucius (Kongzi)
10% Frederick Douglass
10% Ronald W. Reagan
10% Epicurus
10% Lucius Annaeus Seneca
10% Dante Alighieri
10% Octavia E. Butler
10% Madhvācārya
10% John Stuart Mill
10% Diogenes of Sinope (the Cynic)
10% Xunzi
10% Thales of Miletus
10% Anaximander of Miletus
10% Anaxagoras of Clazomenae
5% Joseph Smith Jr.
5% Zarathustra (Zoroaster)
5% Titus Lucretius Carus
How Realism resolves each dilemma
56 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 6 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, all mainstream
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%
What is money?
Money is a real institution with intrinsic features.
55%
What is a nation?
A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character.
55%
What makes someone male or female?
Sex is a real biological kind with given content.
55%
Should we edit the human germline?
Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given.
55%
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
Distinctive · only 12% of schools agree
(25/208)
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.
Subject to a real natural order we did not make.
On these views, nature is a real, ordered, mind-independent reality that we are inside of but did not construct. Our fundamental posture toward it is one of observation, discovery, and humility before laws that are not ours to make. Stewardship and conservation are real obligations, …
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 12% of schools agree
(25/208)
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.
Nature includes its limits; colonisation is bounded by what the cosmos allows.
On these views, humans operate within a given natural order whose laws and limits set the terms. Space colonisation is fine to the extent that it is actually possible — radiation, gravity wells, biological tolerances — and folly to the extent that it requires denying …
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%)
Distinctive · only 12% of schools agree
(25/208)
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
Editing the genomes of the plants and animals we eat is either the natural continuation of breeding — careful improvement of what is given — or a category error that treats biology as raw material rather than as living kind.
Biology is what it is; we modify it within real biological constraints.
On these views, organisms are real biological systems with real constraints, and genetic modification is reasonable when it works within those constraints and dangerous when it ignores them. The question is technical: does this modification do what its proponents say, with the unintended consequences they …
Roads not taken
Genetic modification is cultivation by other means. (50%) ·
What counts as a 'natural' genome is itself a construction. (15%) ·
Editing the genome cuts into the relational fabric; we should be very slow. (14%)
33 mainstream positions
Could causation work backwards?
Causation runs one way — the arrow of time is real and structural.
68%
Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us?
The asymmetry is real because time itself has a real direction.
68%
Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it?
The arrow is real and structural; the asymmetry isn't an artifact of description.
68%
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
Damage is real and permanent on the relevant timescales. There is no recovery; there is only limitation.
66%
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
Civilizational complexity is hard to build and easy to lose; recovery is at best partial.
66%
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
Entropy is what time is. The moral weight, if any, is the weight of working against the current.
66%
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
Truth is mind-independent, universal, accessible in principle to all.
66%
When does a person begin?
A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence.
55%
What is marriage?
Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make.
55%
Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?
Moral obligation tracks the relations one is in; distance does matter, structurally.
50%
Can prayer for someone far away affect them?
Prayer changes the pray-er, not the prayed-for.
47%
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence?
Coincidence is exactly what the math says it is. The pattern is in the noticer.
47%
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
The observer is in time; foreknowledge across times raises real freedom problems.
46%
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless?
Meditators are bounded observers reporting unusual brain states; the 'timeless' is metaphorical.
46%
Does prayer change God's mind?
If there is an addressee at all, it is in time; prayer is communication, and may genuinely change what comes next.
46%
Are the dead morally present to the living?
Observers are bounded by their own moment, and no further agency makes the dead present.
43%
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%
What makes someone the same person over time?
You are your body — continuity is bodily continuity.
36%
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
Same body, same person — even when the cognitive pattern has changed.
36%
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
Different body, different person — you died in the scanner.
36%
Is reality fundamentally digital?
No — continuous fields, classical limits, analog deep structure.
36%
Are there indivisible units of experience?
No — continuous Jamesian stream, phenomenological lived time.
36%
Is memory stored or reconstructed?
Reconstructed — continuous re-narrating, no fixed engrams.
36%
Does history have a direction or meaning?
History is not where the deepest truth lives.
36%
Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans?
Animal minds are real because biology is the substrate of mind.
31%
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious?
Brain tissue can in principle do what brains do; the question is integration.
31%
What happens to "you" when you die?
Death is genuinely the end.
29%
Could an AI have a mind that matters?
No — mind is what a biological brain does, and an LLM has no brain.
29%
How is knowledge of reality produced?
Through controlled empirical investigation.
17%
Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it?
Trust the method, not the institutions or the persons — and remain wary.
8%
Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge?
Revelation is not knowledge in the descriptive-empirical sense.
8%
Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces?
An LLM produces tokens; calling that 'knowledge' is a measurement choice.
8%
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone.
50%
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys.
50%
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible.
50%
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away.
50%
Jump to school (208)
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