Works

Kripke's 1980 foundational work — rigid designation, the causal-historical theory of reference, modal a posteriori

#452 · 1973

Counterfactuals (Early)

#449 · 1980 (essays 1963-78)

Lewis's 1973 foundational possible-worlds semantics for counterfactual conditionals

Essays on Actions and Events (Mid)

Donald Davidson

Davidson's 1980 collection — action, mental events, anomalous monism

#736 · 1983

Intentionality (Mid)

#450 · 1984 (essays 1965-83)

Searle's 1983 essay on intentionality as the mark of the mental and its biological basis

Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Mid)

Donald Davidson

Davidson's 1984 collection — truth-conditional semantics, radical interpretation, principle of charity

#560 · 1986

The View from Nowhere (Mid)

Thomas Nagel

Nagel's 1986 systematic philosophy of subjective-objective duality — the irreducible tension between the two viewpoints

#564 · 1986 (Raritan); 2005 (book)

On Bullshit (Late)

Harry G. Frankfurt

Frankfurt's 1986/2005 short philosophical essay — bullshit as indifference to truth, distinct from lying

#605 · 1987

The Many Faces of Realism (Mid)

#979 · 63-65 CE (Seneca's last years, after retirement from Nero's court and before his forced suicide)

Putnam's 1987 articulation of "internal realism" / pragmatic pluralism between metaphysical realism and relativism

#558 · 1995

The Construction of Social Reality (Late)

John R. Searle

Searle's 1995 foundational philosophy of social-institutional reality — collective intentionality and status functions

Roman Stoicism 9

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Late (Seneca's last completed major work, composed in retirement))

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Moral philosophy in epistolary form — the daily practice of Stoic virtue, illustrated through letters of advice to a younger friend

#11 · c. 170–180 AD

Meditations

The cosmos is a single rational order, the self is governed by reason, and what is not in one's power is not one's concern

#267 · c. 49 AD

De Brevitate Vitae (Mid)

#983 · c. 56 CE (early in Seneca's tenure as Nero's advisor)

"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it" — Seneca's short Stoic meditation on the proper use of time

De Constantia Sapientis (Mid)

#980 · c. 56-62 CE (Nero's court, before Seneca's retirement)

The wise man cannot be injured because his good is what cannot be taken from him; he cannot be insulted because no insult reaches what he is

De Beneficiis (Mid-mature (composed during Seneca's most influential political-philosophical period))

The giving and receiving of benefits is the fabric of human society — the proper conduct of benefits binds the social order together

#355 · c. 58 AD

De Vita Beata (Mid-late)

"On the happy life" — Seneca's essay on the happy life as virtue

#354 · c. 60 AD

De Tranquillitate Animi (Mid-late)

#982 · c. 62 CE (composed at the time of Seneca's retirement from Nero's court)

"On the tranquillity of mind" — Seneca's short Stoic essay on inner peace

De Otio (Late)

#268 · c. 64 AD (late in Seneca's life, shortly before his forced suicide)

Philosophical retirement is not desertion of duty — it is a different mode of serving the cosmic commonwealth

De Providentia (Late)

Why bad things happen to good men — Seneca's late Stoic theodicy explaining suffering as the discipline of philosophical character

Bahá'í Faith 8

#338 · 1858

The Hidden Words (Early)

Bahá'u'lláh's aphoristic spiritual sayings

#1351 · 1860s-70s

Tablets to the Political Leaders (Mature)

#289 · 1862 (composed in Baghdad in two days and two nights, in response to questions from one of the Báb's maternal uncles)

Bahá'u'lláh's 1860s-70s tablets to monarchs and pope

Kitáb-i-Íqán (Mid (pre-declaration in 1863))

#290 · 1873 (in 'Akká, the prison-city where Bahá'u'lláh was exiled)

The "Book of Certitude" — Bahá'u'lláh's 1862 major doctrinal work, the principal theological text of the Bahá'í Faith

Kitáb-i-Aqdas (Late (the major late doctrinal-legal book))

"The Most Holy Book" — Bahá'u'lláh's 1873 book of laws, the principal legal-doctrinal text of the Bahá'í Faith

#1353 · 1880s

Tabernacle of Unity (Late)

#959 · 1891 (composed in 'Akká)

Bahá'u'lláh's 1880s tablets on religious unity

Letters to the Son of the Wolf (Last (less than a year before his 1892 death))

A defense of the Bahá'í Faith and a survey of its essential teachings — addressed to an Iranian cleric who had ordered Bahá'í executions

#1352 · c. 1865

Tablet of Ahmad (Mature)

Bahá'u'lláh's 1865 prayer tablet

#1354 · c. 1890

Words of Paradise (Kalimát-i-Firdawsiyyih) (Late)

#8 · c. 360 BC (late dialogue)

Bahá'u'lláh's tablet — eleven leaves of practical-religious wisdom

Classical Greek philosophy / Platonism 7

Timaeus (Late)

#138 · c. 369 BC (late dialogue)

A "likely story" of how a rational Demiurge ordered the receptacle of matter into a living cosmos modelled on the Forms

Theaetetus (Late)

#69 · c. 370 BC (late-middle dialogue)

What is knowledge? — three definitions (perception, true belief, true belief with logos) examined and found inadequate; the dialogue ends in aporia

Phaedrus (Late)

#42 · c. 380 BC (middle dialogue)

The soul is a charioteer drawn by two horses — and writing is a poor cousin to living speech

Phaedo

Philosophy is preparation for death — and four arguments that the soul, being akin to the Forms, must be immortal

#7 · c. 380–375 BC

The Republic

#63 · c. 385–380 BC (middle dialogue)

Reality is the Forms; the visible world is their shadow; the just city is the just soul writ large

Symposium

#125 · c. 386–380 BC (transitional dialogue)

Eros is the ascent — from beautiful bodies, to beautiful souls, to the Beautiful itself — Diotima's ladder of love

Meno (Early)

#388 · 1935-36 (multiple versions); first published 1936 in French

Can virtue be taught? — and the slave-boy who, asked questions, recovers geometric truth he never learned

Frankfurt School critical theory 7

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Late)

#381 · 1944 (private circulation); 1947 (Amsterdam edition)

Benjamin's 1935-36 foundational essay on art, aura, and mechanical reproduction

Dialectic of Enlightenment (Mid)

Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer

Adorno and Horkheimer's 1944/47 foundational Frankfurt School critique of Enlightenment rationality

#383 · 1944-47 (composed); 1951 (published)

Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (Mid)

Theodor W. Adorno

Adorno's 1951 collection of aphoristic reflections — "Wrong life cannot be lived rightly"

#384 · 1947 (English original; German edition 1967)

Eclipse of Reason (Mid)

Max Horkheimer

Horkheimer's 1947 lectures on the historical decline of substantive reason

#386 · 1955

Eros and Civilization (Mid)

Herbert Marcuse

Marcuse's 1955 Freudo-Marxist envisioning of non-repressive civilization

#385 · 1964

One-Dimensional Man (Late)

Herbert Marcuse

Marcuse's 1964 Frankfurt School critique of advanced industrial society — "one-dimensional" people

#382 · 1966 (German; English 1973)

Negative Dialectics (Late)

Theodor W. Adorno

Adorno's 1966 magnum opus — negative dialectics as non-identity thinking

American transcendentalism 6

#1024 · 1837 (delivered August 31, 1837, at the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard; first published as An Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 1837)

The American Scholar (Mature)

#1026 · 1841 (James Munroe & Co., Boston)

America's intellectual Declaration of Independence — the scholar's vocation, the proper relation between books and life

Essays: First Series (Mature)

#184 · 1841 (twelve essays collected from earlier lectures and journal entries)

Self-Reliance, Compensation, The Over-Soul — the most concentrated statement of Emerson's transcendentalist programme

Essays: First Series (Mid (Emerson at the peak of his powers))

#1027 · 1844 (James Munroe & Co., Boston)

"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string" — Emerson's essays on the self, the Over-Soul, friendship, love, prudence, heroism, and the moral order

Essays: Second Series (Mature)

#1020 · 1849 (composed during Thoreau's Walden Pond years 1845-47; published 1849 at Thoreau's own expense)

The poet, experience, nature, politics — Emerson's second collection, more sober and philosophically mature than the First Series

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Early-mature)

#1028 · 1850 (Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston; based on lectures delivered 1845-46)

A boat trip up the Concord and Merrimack rivers — and the philosophical-poetic-religious meditations the trip occasions

Representative Men (Mature)

Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Goethe — Emerson's engagement with the great figures of Western thought as representative types of human possibility

American conservatism 5

#1363 · 1965

Where's the Rest of Me? (Early)

#1364 · 1975-79; 2001 (published)

Reagan's 1965 pre-political memoir

Reagan, In His Own Hand (Mid)

#1365 · 1981-89; 2007 (published)

Reagan's 1975-79 radio scripts

The Reagan Diaries (Late)

Reagan's 1981-89 presidential diaries

#1366 · 1983 (March 8)

Evil Empire Speech (Late)

Reagan's 1983 evil-empire speech

#1370 · 1990

In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal (Late)

#259 · 1843 (published the same day as Fear and Trembling, under the pseudonym Constantin Constantius)

Nixon's 1990 reflective memoir

Danish religious existentialism 5

Repetition (Early-mid (the same explosive 1843 as Either/Or and Fear and Trembling))

#257 · 1844 (published under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus)

Repetition as the modern category replacing Greek recollection — Kierkegaard's 1843 experimental short work on the structures of memory, freedom, and Christian temporality

Philosophical Fragments (Mid (the same productive 1844 as Concept of Anxiety))

#173 · 1844 (published under the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis)

Can a historical event be the starting point for eternal consciousness? — Kierkegaard's 1844 fragments developing the question that Concluding Unscientific Postscript will pursue at length

The Concept of Anxiety (Mid (the productive year of 1844 — Concept of Anxiety, Philosophical Fragments, etc.))

#183 · 1847 (published under his own name, not pseudonymous)

Anxiety as "the dizziness of freedom" — the existential-theological analysis of the human condition between possibility and actuality

Works of Love (Late (after the pseudonymous works; the major direct theological work))

#258 · 1850 (published under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus)

"You shall love your neighbour" — Kierkegaard's sustained meditation on Christian love as commanded, neighbourly, and concretely actualised

Practice in Christianity (Late (the last major pseudonymous work; preceding the attack on the Danish state church))

#1010 · c. 48-55 CE (either earliest or middle Pauline letter)

The practice of Christian discipleship — Kierkegaard's 1850 most demanding existential-theological work, the proximate prelude to his attack on the Danish state church

Earliest Christianity / Pauline Christianity 5

Galatians (Mature)

#1008 · c. 53-55 CE (composed in Ephesus during Paul's third missionary journey)

Justification by faith, not by works of the law — Paul's polemical manifesto, the "Magna Carta" of Christian freedom

A pastoral letter to a troubled church — addressing factions, immorality, lawsuits, marriage, food offered to idols, worship, spiritual gifts, the resurrection, and the famous "hymn to love" of chapter 13

#1009 · c. 55-56 CE (composed in Macedonia after a difficult Corinthian crisis)

2 Corinthians (Mature)

#1007 · c. 56-58 CE (composed in Corinth, near the end of Paul's third missionary journey)

When I am weak, then I am strong — Paul's most personal letter, defending his apostolic ministry through the theology of weakness

Romans (Mature (Paul's most extensive and systematic letter))

#1011 · c. 60-62 CE (from prison — Rome, Ephesus, or Caesarea)

Justification by faith, the universality of sin, the universality of grace, and the place of Israel in God's redemptive plan — Paul's most systematic theological exposition

Philippians (Late)

A prison letter of joy — and the Christological kenosis hymn that has organised Christian doctrine of incarnation for two millennia

Elizabethan-Jacobean English Renaissance drama 5

#1018 · c. 1603-04

Measure for Measure (Mature)

#1014 · c. 1603-04 (first performed Whitehall, 1 November 1604)

"Measure for measure" — a deeply ambiguous drama of sexual ethics, judicial power, and the relation between mercy and justice

Othello (Mature)

Jealousy, race, and the destruction of a good man — Iago's motiveless malignity working through Othello's capacity to be deceived

#1015 · c. 1606

Macbeth (Mature)

Ambition, regicide, and the destruction of conscience — Shakespeare's most concentrated tragic structure

#1016 · c. 1606-07

Antony and Cleopatra (Mature)

#1017 · c. 1610-11 (first performed Whitehall, 1 November 1611)

Love and empire — the fall of Antony and Cleopatra and the end of the Roman Republic

The Tempest (Last (probably Shakespeare's last sole-authored play))

Prospero on his enchanted island — magic of theatrical art, civilisation and colonisation, Shakespeare's farewell to the stage

Japanese modern literature / Mishima's aesthetic-nationalist tradition 5

#1228 · 1963

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Mature)

#1230 · 1965-67 (serial), 1969 (book)

Mishima's 1963 novel — proper-aesthetic-tragic clash of land and sea

Spring Snow (Late)

Mishima's 1969 first volume of The Sea of Fertility — Taishō-period love and Buddhist-reincarnation tetralogy

#1229 · 1968

Sun and Steel (Late)

#1265 · 1968-70 (serial), 1970 (book)

Mishima's 1968 essay — body, words, action; the aesthetic-political synthesis

The Temple of Dawn (Late)

#1231 · 1970 (completed Nov 25, 1970); 1971 (posthumous publication)

Mishima's 1970 third volume of The Sea of Fertility — Honda in Thailand, Buddhist-philosophical encounter

The Decay of the Angel (Late)

#1247 · 1964 (French), 1969 (English)

Mishima's 1971 final volume of The Sea of Fertility — completed the day of his ritual suicide

Structuralism / French structuralist anthropology 5

The Raw and the Cooked (Mature)

#1248 · 1967 (French), 1973 (English)

Lévi-Strauss's 1964 first volume of Mythologiques — structural analysis of South American myth

From Honey to Ashes (Mature)

#1249 · 1968 (French), 1978 (English)

Lévi-Strauss's 1967 second volume of Mythologiques — structural transformations of indigenous-American myth

The Origin of Table Manners (Mature)

#1250 · 1971 (French), 1981 (English)

Lévi-Strauss's 1968 third volume of Mythologiques — structural transformations across the broader Americas

The Naked Man (Late)

#1266 · 1975 (French), 1982 (English)

Lévi-Strauss's 1971 fourth volume of Mythologiques — closing synthesis of the four-volume programme

The Way of the Masks (Late)

Lévi-Strauss's 1975 study of Northwest Coast indigenous masks — structural transformations

African-American intellectual tradition / Civil Rights Movement 4

#1306 · 1958

Stride Toward Freedom (Early)

MLK's 1958 memoir of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

#1307 · 1964

Why We Can't Wait (Mid)

MLK's 1964 account of Birmingham — includes Letter from Birmingham Jail

#1308 · 1967

Where Do We Go from Here (Late)

#1309 · 1968 (February 4)

MLK's 1967 late work — political-philosophical analysis of late Civil Rights Movement

The Drum Major Instinct (Late)

MLK's February 1968 sermon — proper-religious-political instinct for service

Afrofuturist literature / Black feminist literature 4

#1334 · 1980

Wild Seed (Mid)

Butler's 1980 first volume of the Patternist series

#1335 · 1987

Dawn (Mid)

#1337 · 1995 (1st ed.), 2005 (2nd ed.)

Butler's 1987 first volume of the Xenogenesis trilogy

Bloodchild and Other Stories (Mid)

Butler's 1995 short-story collection

#1336 · 2005

Fledgling (Late)

Butler's 2005 final novel — vampire mythology reimagined

American liberal-Democratic / Evangelical-Protestant political tradition 4

#1269 · 1982

Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (Mid)

Carter's 1982 presidential memoir of the 1977-81 single term

#1270 · 1996

Living Faith (Late)

Carter's 1996 religious-political reflections

#1272 · 1997

Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith (Late)

Carter's 1997 weekly-meditations book — scriptural reflections from his Plains, GA Sunday-school teaching

#1271 · 2005

Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (Late)

#1276 · 2004 (July 27, 2004)

Carter's 2005 political-religious critique — proper-American moral-political foundations

American liberal-Democratic tradition 4

2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address (Early)

Obama's 2004 DNC keynote — "There's not a liberal America and a conservative America"

#1274 · 2006

The Audacity of Hope (Mid)

Obama's 2006 political-philosophical book — pre-presidential political vision

#1375 · 2017

Promise Me, Dad (Late)

Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Biden's 2017 memoir of his son Beau's 2015 death

#1275 · 2020

A Promised Land (Late)

#1324 · 1912-28 (essays); 1953 (English)

Obama's 2020 first volume of presidential memoir — 2008 campaign through 2011

Analytical psychology 4

Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (Mid)

Jung's major early systematic exposition of analytical psychology

#343 · 1944

Psychology and Alchemy (Late)

Alchemy as archetypal-psychological individuation process

#1325 · 1952

Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (Late)

#347 · 1957-61 (recorded conversations with Aniela Jaffé); published 1962

Jung's 1952 work — meaningful coincidence as proper-philosophical-psychological category

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Late (the major autobiographical work))

#1185 · 1965 (recorded), 1966 (released)

Jung's late autobiography — the major source for his personal-spiritual development

Avant-garde jazz / Cosmic-jazz / Afrofuturism 4

The Magic City (Mid)

#1183 · 1967-69 (recorded), 1969 (released)

Sun Ra's 1966 album — major early-cosmic-jazz statement; the title-track's 27-minute side-long composition

Atlantis (Mid)

#1184 · 1978 (recorded August 17, 1978; released 1978)

Sun Ra's 1969 album — electronic-Moog experiments and Afrofuturist mythology in cosmic-jazz form

Lanquidity (Late)

#1186 · c. 1957-1993 (recordings); compiled discography in scholarship 1990s-onward

Sun Ra's 1978 album — late-cosmic-jazz fusion of free-jazz, funk, and electronic textures

Sun Ra Discography (Late)

The Sun Ra Saturn-label discography — c. 100+ albums across c. 1957-1993

Calvinist-Reformed / Reformation 4

#1285 · 1540s-60s

Commentaries on the Bible (Mature)

#1287 · 1541 (first ed.), 1561 (revised)

Calvin's 1540s-60s biblical commentaries — major Reformed biblical-theological corpus

Ecclesiastical Ordinances of Geneva (Mature)

Calvin's 1541-61 church-political constitution of Reformed Geneva

#1288 · 1544

Brief Instruction Against the Anabaptists (Mid)

#1286 · 1545 (Latin), 1542 (French earlier version)

Calvin's 1544 polemic against the Anabaptists

Geneva Catechism (Mid)

Søren Kierkegaard (under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio)

Calvin's 1545 catechism — foundational Reformed-pedagogical text

Christian existentialism / Danish Lutheranism 4

#22 · 1843

Fear and Trembling (Early)

Faith requires a "teleological suspension of the ethical" — Abraham is great because he believes the absurd

#99 · 1843

Either/Or (Early)

Søren Kierkegaard (under the editorship of Victor Eremita)

The aesthetic life of immediate pleasure vs the ethical life of commitment — and the choice that constitutes the self

#123 · 1846

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

Søren Kierkegaard (under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus)

Truth is subjectivity — and an objective approach to Christianity is precisely how one misses it

#98 · 1849

The Sickness Unto Death (Late)

Søren Kierkegaard (under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus)

Despair is the sickness unto death — the self in misrelation to itself before God

Christian humanism / Patristics 4

#1359 · 1516

Edition of Jerome (Mature)

Erasmus's 1516 nine-volume critical edition of Jerome

#1362 · 1520

Edition of Cyprian (Mature)

Erasmus's 1520 edition of Cyprian

#1360 · 1528-29

Edition of Augustine (Late)

#1361 · 1536 (posthumous)

Erasmus's 1528-29 ten-volume critical edition of Augustine

Edition of Origen (Late)

#1147 · 5th c. BCE (traditional); chronicling events 722-481 BCE

Erasmus's posthumous 1536 edition of Origen

Confucianism / Chinese classical canon 4

The Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu) (Early)

Confucius (traditionally attributed)

Confucian classic — chronicle of the state of Lu 722-481 BCE, traditionally attributed to Confucius as compiler

#1146 · Han dynasty compilation (c. 1st c. BCE) of pre-Qin and Han materials

The Book of Rites (Liji) (Mid)

Anonymous (composed by various early Confucian writers)

Confucian classic — Han-period compendium of ritual descriptions and ethical-philosophical essays

#1144 · c. 1000-600 BCE (poems); c. 6th-5th c. BCE (compiled)

The Book of Songs (Shijing) (Early)

Anonymous (traditionally attributed to Confucius as editor)

Confucian classic c. 1000-600 BCE — 305 odes traditionally compiled by Confucius

#1145 · composed in stages c. 1100-600 BCE; compiled c. 6th-5th c. BCE; portions are later forgeries detected in Qing-period scholarship

The Book of Documents (Shujing) (Early)

Anonymous (traditionally attributed to Confucius as editor)

Confucian classic — speeches and proclamations of legendary and early-historical Chinese rulers

Continental rationalism 4

#545 · 1649

The Passions of the Soul (Les Passions de l'âme) (Late)

#273 · 1686 (sent to Antoine Arnauld; not published in Leibniz's lifetime)

Descartes's 1649 foundational treatise on the mind-body union and the six primitive passions

Discourse on Metaphysics (Mid (Leibniz's breakthrough philosophical statement))

#274 · 1704 (completed; Leibniz suppressed publication after Locke's 1704 death); 1765 (posthumous publication)

Substances, the predicate-in-subject principle, the best of all possible worlds — Leibniz's 1686 short systematic statement of his philosophical framework

New Essays on Human Understanding (Late)

Leibniz's point-by-point response to Locke's Essay — the major continental-rationalist engagement with British empiricism

#353 · 1714

Principles of Nature and Grace (Late)

Leibniz's 1714 short philosophical-theological statement — written shortly before his death, alongside the Monadology

Dvaita Vedānta / Mādhva school 4

#1435 · c. 1620-1671

Parimala (Mid)

Raghavendra's gloss on Jayatīrtha's Nyāyasudhā — major Dvaita commentary

#1436 · c. 1620-1671

Tatparya Chandrika (Mid)

Raghavendra's gloss on Vyāsatīrtha's Tātparya-chandrikā

#1437 · c. 1620-1671

Nyaya Mukura (Mid)

Raghavendra's Nyāya-Mukura — Dvaita logical-epistemological treatise

#1438 · c. 1620-1671

Bhagavata Tatparya commentary (Mid)

#371 · 1960 (French; English 1967)

Raghavendra's commentary on Madhva's Bhāgavata-Tātparya

French phenomenology / hermeneutics 4

The Symbolism of Evil (Early)

#373 · 1983-85 (3 vols; English 1984-88)

Ricoeur's 1960 phenomenological-hermeneutic study of evil through myth and symbol

Time and Narrative (Late)

#374 · 1990 (French; English 1992)

Ricoeur's 1983-85 three-volume hermeneutic study of time and narrative

Oneself as Another (Late)

#375 · 2000 (French; English 2004)

Ricoeur's 1990 Gifford Lectures on selfhood, identity, and the ethics of the other

Memory, History, Forgetting (Late)

Ricoeur's 2000 late masterwork on memory, history, and forgetting

Hindu Vedanta / Dvaita / Madhva sampradāya 4

#1141 · 13th century

Mahābhārata-Tātparya-Nirṇaya (Mature)

Madhva's 13th-c. interpretive work on the Mahābhārata — establishing the proper Dvaita reading of the epic

#1142 · 13th century

Viṣṇu-Tattva-Nirṇaya (Mature)

Madhva's 13th-c. systematic exposition — the decisive determination of the Dvaita-Vaiṣṇava metaphysical position

#1143 · 13th century

Tattvodyota (Mature)

#1140 · 13th century (Madhva c. 1238-1317)

Madhva's 13th-c. polemical work — sustained refutation of Advaita non-dualism

Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāṣya (Mature)

Madhva's 13th-c. commentary on the Brahma Sutras — founding text of Dvaita Vedanta's pluralist metaphysical realism

Late-medieval mysticism / Cusan philosophy 4

#1387 · 1458

On the Beryl (De Beryllo) (Mature)

Cusa's 1458 treatise — the beryl as image of intellectual sight

#1388 · 1462

On the Not-Other (De Non Aliud) (Late)

Cusa's 1462 treatise — the Not-Other as the proper name of God

#1389 · 1464

De Apice Theoriae (Late)

Cusa's 1464 final work — the summit of theory

#1386 · c. 1444

The Hidden God (De Deo Abscondito) (Mid)

#1281 · 1823-44 (revelations); 1835 (first ed.)

Cusa's c.1444 short dialogue on the hidden God

Latter-day Saint / Mormon tradition 4

Doctrine and Covenants (Mid)

#1284 · 1842 (March 1, 1842)

Smith's 1835 compilation of revelations — central LDS scripture

Articles of Faith (Mid)

#1283 · 1844 (April 7, 1844)

Smith's 1842 thirteen articles — concise summary of LDS distinctive doctrines

King Follett Discourse (Late)

#1282 · c. 1830-1844 (materials); 1851 (compiled)

Smith's 1844 sermon — exaltation, divine-human-progression, the proper-LDS theological-anthropology

The Pearl of Great Price (Mid)

#1379 · 1522 (NT), 1534 (complete Bible)

Joseph Smith's 1851 compilation — Book of Moses, Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith History

Lutheran / Reformation 4

Luther German Bible (Mature)

Luther's 1522-34 German Bible — major Reformation text

#1378 · 1529

Larger and Smaller Catechisms (Mature)

#1380 · 1531 (lectures); 1535 (published)

Luther's 1529 catechisms

Lectures on Galatians (Mature)

Luther's 1531/1535 great commentary on Galatians

#1381 · 1535-45

Lectures on Genesis (Late)

Luther's 1535-45 late-life lectures on Genesis

Madhyamaka Buddhism 4

#1426 · c. 150-250 AD

Vigrahavyāvartanī (Early)

Nāgārjuna's "Dispeller of Disputes" — defence of emptiness against logician critics

#1427 · c. 150-250 AD

Śūnyatāsaptati (Mid)

Nāgārjuna's "Seventy Verses on Emptiness" — concise emptiness exposition

#1428 · c. 150-250 AD

Yuktiṣaṣṭikā (Mid)

Nāgārjuna's "Sixty Verses on Reasoning" — emptiness via dependent-origination

#1429 · c. 150-250 AD

Ratnāvalī (Mid-to-late)

#418 · Material from c. 240–280 CE; Coptic redaction c. 350–450 CE

Nāgārjuna's "Precious Garland" — Madhyamaka teaching to a Sātavāhana king

Manichaeism 4

The Kephalaia

Manichaean disciples / compilers, drawing on Mani's teaching (5th century CE Coptic redaction of late 3rd-century material)

The systematic catechetical statement of Manichaean cosmology, anthropology, and ethics

#1129 · mid-3rd century CE

Living Gospel (Evangelium Vivum) (Mature)

#1130 · mid-3rd century CE

Mani's Living Gospel — first of the seven canonical Manichaean books, the principal scripture

Treasure of Life (Mature)

#1131 · mid-3rd century CE

Mani's Treasure of Life — second of the seven canonical Manichaean books

Book of Mysteries (Mature)

Mani's Book of Mysteries — third of the seven canonical books; polemical address to earlier prophets and traditions

Pure Land Buddhism / Jōdo Shinshū 4

#1402 · 1255

Yuishinshō Mon'i (Mature)

Shinran's 1255 commentary on Seikaku's Yuishinshō

#1403 · c. 1255

Kōsō Wasan (Mature)

Shinran's c.1255 hymns to the Pure-Land patriarchs

#1404 · c. 1257

Shōzōmatsu Wasan (Late)

#1405 · c. 1257-62 letters; later compilation

Shinran's c.1257 hymns on the Three Ages of Dharma

Mattōshō (Late)

Shinran's late letters compiled by disciples

Scientific naturalism / Twentieth-century popular science 4

#1197 · 1977

The Dragons of Eden (Mid)

Sagan's 1977 Pulitzer-winning study of human cognitive evolution

#1195 · 1980

Cosmos (Mid)

Sagan's 1980 popular cosmology — book companion to the PBS television series that defined late-twentieth-century scientific popularisation

#1196 · 1994

Pale Blue Dot (Late)

Sagan's 1994 reflection on the Voyager 1 photograph of Earth as a pale blue dot — humanity's cosmic position

#1198 · 1995

The Demon-Haunted World (Late)

Sagan's 1995 defence of scientific rationality against pseudoscience — the "candle in the dark" of disciplined inquiry

Sikhism / Khalsa tradition 4

#1255 · 1705

Zafarnama (Mature)

Guru Gobind Singh's 1705 Persian letter to Aurangzeb — major political-religious document

#1253 · c. 1696-1708

Dasam Granth (Mature)

Guru Gobind Singh's c.1696-1708 composite text — major Sikh scripture alongside the Guru Granth Sahib

#1254 · c. 1696-1708

Jaap Sahib (Mature)

Guru Gobind Singh's morning-prayer composition — 199 verses on the Timeless One

#1256 · c. 1696-1708

Akal Ustat (Mature)

Guru Gobind Singh's 271-verse praise of the Timeless One — major Dasam Granth composition

Theosophy / Esotericism 4

#1394 · 1877

Isis Unveiled (Early)

Blavatsky's 1877 first major Theosophical work

#1395 · 1888

The Secret Doctrine (Mature)

Blavatsky's 1888 mature Theosophical magnum opus

#1396 · 1889

The Key to Theosophy (Late)

Blavatsky's 1889 popular introduction to Theosophy

#1397 · 1889

The Voice of the Silence (Late)

#1410 · 1939 (Geist in Welt)

Blavatsky's 1889 devotional work on the spiritual path

Transcendental Thomism / Catholic theology 4

Spirit in the World (Early)

#1411 · 1941 (lectures 1937)

Rahner's 1939 transcendental-Thomist epistemological dissertation

Hearer of the Word (Early)

#1412 · 1954-1984 (23 volumes, Schriften zur Theologie)

Rahner's 1941 philosophy-of-religion lectures on hearing the Word

Theological Investigations (Mid-to-late)

Rahner's 23-volume collected theological essays (1954-1984)

#1413 · 1958

On the Theology of Death (Mid)

Rahner's 1958 theological essay on death as final-personal act

African-Christian liberation theology / Anglican prophetic theology 3

#1418 · 1982

Crying in the Wilderness (Mid)

Tutu's 1982 anti-apartheid sermons and speeches

#1419 · 1983

Hope and Suffering (Mid)

Tutu's 1983 anti-apartheid sermons and speeches

#1420 · 1994

The Rainbow People of God (Late)

Tutu's 1994 post-apartheid sermons and speeches

African-radical political tradition / Anti-apartheid struggle 3

#1279 · 1962-1990

Letters from Prison (Mid)

#1277 · 1964 (April 20, 1964)

Mandela's 1962-90 prison correspondence — major political-personal documents

Rivonia Trial Statement (Mid)

#1280 · c. 1962-2010 (materials); 2010 (compiled)

Mandela's 1964 statement from the dock — "the ideal for which I am prepared to die"

Conversations with Myself (Late)

Mandela's 2010 autobiographical-political compilation — diaries, letters, drafts

American evangelical Protestantism / Southern Baptist tradition 3

#1172 · 1977

How to Be Born Again (Mid)

Graham's 1977 evangelistic-pastoral statement — the new-birth doctrine systematically expounded

#1171 · 1997

Just As I Am (Late)

Billy Graham's 1997 autobiography — the life of the twentieth century's most prominent evangelical preacher

#1174 · 2006

The Journey: How to Live by Faith in an Uncertain World (Late)

Graham's 2006 late-life summary of practical-Christian living in an uncertain world

American moderate-conservatism 3

#1371 · 1987

Looking Forward (Mid)

#1374 · 1988 (August 18, 1988)

Bush 41's 1987 pre-presidential autobiography

Thousand Points of Light (Mid)

#1373 · 1999 (1st ed.), 2014 (revised)

Bush 41's 1988 GOP acceptance speech

All the Best (Late)

#403 · 1929 (Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, 1928-29)

Bush 41's 1999 letters collection

American pragmatism 3

The Fixation of Belief (Early)

Charles Sanders Peirce

Peirce's 1877 foundational pragmatist essay — the four methods of belief-fixation

The Quest for Certainty (Late)

#402 · 1934 (William James Lectures at Harvard, 1931)

Dewey's 1929 Gifford Lectures critiquing the spectator theory of knowledge

Art as Experience (Late)

#458 · 1978 (essays 1954-77)

Dewey's 1934 major aesthetic theory — art as the consummation of experience

British analytic philosophy / Oxford 3

#456 · 1959

Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (Early)

P.F. Strawson

Strawson's 1959 foundational descriptive metaphysics — bodies and persons as basic particulars

Truth and Other Enigmas (Mid)

Michael Dummett

Dummett's 1978 collection — anti-realism, truth, the philosophy of time

#566 · 2007

The Philosophy of Philosophy (Late)

Timothy Williamson

Williamson's 2007 defense of philosophical-metaphysical knowledge as continuous with ordinary inquiry

British empiricism / Scottish Enlightenment 3

#19 · 1748 (first published as Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding)

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Late)

All knowledge starts from impressions; causation is custom, not necessary connection; reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions

#320 · 1751

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Mid-late)

#93 · Books I & II 1739; Book III 1740 (anonymously; Hume aged 28)

"Of all the writings I have published, this was incomparably the best" — Hume's own preferred moral-philosophical statement

A Treatise of Human Nature (Early)

St. Gregory of Nazianzus (the Theologian)

Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions — and the most rigorous Newtonian science of human nature

Cappadocian patristic theology 3

#520 · 380

Theological Orations (Orations 27-31) (Mid)

Gregory of Nazianzus's 380 five Theological Orations — foundational Trinitarian theology

#519 · c. 375

On the Holy Spirit (De Spiritu Sancto) (Late)

St. Basil of Caesarea (the Great)

Basil's c. 375 foundational pneumatological treatise — defending the divinity of the Holy Spirit

#494 · c. 390

The Life of Moses (De Vita Moysis) (Late)

St. Gregory of Nyssa

Gregory of Nyssa's c. 390 foundational mystical-theological reading of Moses — perpetual ascent into God

Caribbean-Algerian decolonial thought 3

#390 · 1952 (French; English 1967)

Black Skin, White Masks (Early)

#586 · 1952-1961 essays; 1964 (collection)

Fanon's 1952 first book — phenomenological-psychoanalytic study of the colonized Black psyche

Toward the African Revolution (Late)

#389 · 1961 (French; English 1963)

Fanon's 1964 posthumous collection — major political essays on the African revolution

The Wretched of the Earth (Late)

Fanon's 1961 anti-colonial revolutionary classic — the major statement of decolonial thought

Classical Greek philosophy 3

#356 · c. 350 BC

Eudemian Ethics

Aristotle's alternate systematic ethical treatise — the less famous companion to the Nicomachean Ethics

#358 · c. 360 BC

Sophist

Plato's late dialogue on the nature of false statement and the sophist — major engagement with Parmenidean monism

#357 · c. 370 BC

Parmenides

#157 · c. 350 BC (early in the Aristotelian corpus, opening the Organon)

Plato's middle-late dialogue — the major engagement with the difficulties of the theory of Forms

Classical Greek philosophy / Aristotelian logic 3

On Interpretation

#269 · c. 350 BC (the core logical works of the Organon)

Names, verbs, propositions, opposition, and the famous sea-battle argument that haunted Western philosophy for two thousand years

Prior and Posterior Analytics

#9 · c. 340 BC (lecture notes, Lyceum period)

The systematic theory of syllogism (Prior) and demonstrative science (Posterior) — Aristotle's major logical works at the heart of the Organon

Classical Greek philosophy / Aristotelianism 3

Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle (edited by Nicomachus)

Eudaimonia is the activity of soul in accordance with virtue, in a complete life — the foundation of every later virtue ethics

#35 · c. 350 BC (lecture notes, second Athenian period)

Metaphysics

Aristotle (compiled posthumously by Andronicus of Rhodes c. 70 BC)

Being is said in many ways — substance is the focal sense — and the unmoved mover is the eternal actuality at the apex of nature

#64 · c. 350 BC (second Athenian period)

De Anima

#768 · 458 BCE (first performed at the Dionysia)

The soul is the form of the living body — and the active intellect is the puzzle that defined medieval philosophy

Classical Greek tragedy / Athenian drama 3

The Oresteia (Early)

Aeschylus

Aeschylus's 458 BCE trilogy — the transformation of bloody vengeance into civic justice

#769 · c. 405 BCE (posthumous; performed 405)

The Bacchae (Late)

Euripides

Euripides's c. 405 BCE posthumous tragedy — Dionysus, Pentheus, and the limits of rationalist order

#767 · c. 429 BCE (first performed at the Dionysia)

Oedipus Rex (Early)

Sophocles

Sophocles's c. 429 BCE Athenian tragedy of Oedipus — fate, knowledge, and self-discovery

Depth psychology / analytical psychology 3

#277 · 1921

Psychological Types (Mid (the major systematic work after his 1912-13 break with Freud))

#278 · 1933 (essay collection, English translation by Cary F. Baynes)

The eight psychological types — Jung's 1921 systematic statement of his theory of personality, including the introversion-extraversion distinction

Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Mid-late (mature systematic statement))

#306 · 1934-55 (essays composed across two decades); 1959 (compiled as Volume 9, Part 1 of the Collected Works)

The mature accessible introduction to Jungian analytical psychology — depth psychology applied to the modern spiritual condition

The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Late (the mature systematic statement of archetypal psychology))

The mature systematic statement of Jung's archetypal psychology — the collective unconscious, the archetypes (Self, Anima/Animus, Shadow, others), individuation

Foundations of quantum mechanics 3

#1204 · 1951

Quantum Theory (Early)

Bohm's 1951 graduate-level quantum-mechanics textbook — celebrated for philosophical-conceptual clarity

#1091 · 1983

Quantum Theory and Measurement (Mid)

#604 · 1987 (papers 1964-86)

Wheeler and Zurek's 1983 anthology — the canonical collection of foundational papers on quantum measurement

Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Late)

John S. Bell

Bell's 1987 collected papers — including the 1964 Bell's theorem on quantum non-locality

French Enlightenment 3

#543 · 1734

Philosophical Letters (Lettres Philosophiques / Lettres Anglaises) (Mid)

#970 · 1763 (Traité sur la tolérance à l'occasion de la mort de Jean Calas)

Voltaire's 1734 Philosophical Letters — foundational text of French Anglophilic Enlightenment

Traité sur la tolérance (Late (the campaign-treatise of the Ferney period))

#969 · 1764 (Dictionnaire philosophique portatif, Geneva; greatly expanded through 1769)

Religious tolerance is not a courtesy to be granted by the majority but the natural right of every human being — the Calas case shows what its denial costs

Dictionnaire philosophique (Late (composed during the Ferney years))

#372 · 1950 (French; English 1966)

A portable Enlightenment — short, witty, polemical entries assaulting religious fanaticism and defending tolerance, reason, and natural rights

French phenomenology 3

Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (Early)

#439 · 1964 (posthumous; composed 1959-61)

Ricoeur's 1950 phenomenological study of the voluntary and the involuntary — volume I of Philosophy of the Will

The Visible and the Invisible (Late)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Merleau-Ponty's unfinished 1964 late ontology of the "flesh of the world"

#440 · composed 1950-52; published 1969 (posthumous)

The Prose of the World (Mid)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Merleau-Ponty's unfinished posthumous study of language and expression — between Phenomenology of Perception and the late ontology

French phenomenology / Jewish religious philosophy 3

#262 · 1935-46 (largely composed in a German prisoner-of-war camp); published 1947

Existence and Existents (Early (the first major book, before Time and the Other))

#261 · 1946-47 (delivered as four lectures at Collège philosophique); published 1948

The phenomenology of existence as such — Levinas's 1947 first major book, developing the categories of fatigue, indolence, insomnia, and the il y a

Time and the Other (Early (the breakthrough early work, before Totality and Infinity))

Time, the Other, the asymmetry of the ethical relation — Levinas's 1948 lectures developing the foundational categories of his mature phenomenology

#203 · 1974

Otherwise than Being (Late (the more radical successor to Totality and Infinity, 1961))

#547 · 1889 (doctoral thesis)

Beyond being — substitution, the trace, the saying and the said. Levinas's 1974 attempt to articulate ethical responsibility in a register beyond ontology

French process philosophy / vitalism 3

Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience) (Early)

Bergson's 1889 foundational text on durée (lived duration) and free will

#548 · 1896

Matter and Memory (Matière et Mémoire) (Mid)

Bergson's 1896 major work — image-theory of perception and memory as durée

#549 · 1907

Creative Evolution (L'évolution créatrice) (Late)

Bergson's 1907 vitalist philosophy of evolution — the élan vital

German Lutheran Reformation 3

#299 · 1520

On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Early (1520, foundational year))

#298 · 1520 (published in both Latin and German; the third of the three great 1520 Reformation treatises)

Reform of the medieval sacramental system — Luther's 1520 treatise reducing the seven sacraments to the two with scriptural warrant (Baptism and the Lord's Supper)

The Freedom of a Christian (Early (1520 is Luther's most productive year of foundational treatises))

#297 · October 31, 1517 (posted to the door of All Saints' Church, Wittenberg)

"A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none; a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all" — Luther's 1520 short treatise on the paradoxical structure of Christian freedom

Ninety-Five Theses (Early (the founding act of the Reformation))

The 95 propositions against indulgences — Luther's October 31, 1517 disputation theses, the founding document of the Reformation

Greek atomism / Pre-Socratic natural philosophy 3

#1188 · c. 420 BCE

On the Mind (Mature)

Democritus's c. 420 BCE treatise — atomic theory of perception and the soul

#1187 · c. 430 BCE

The Great World-System (Megas Diakosmos) (Mature)

Democritus's c. 430 BCE lost cosmological masterwork — foundation of Greek atomism

#1190 · c. 430 BCE

On Forms (Peri Ideōn) (Mature)

Democritus's c. 430 BCE treatise — atomic shapes (ideai) as the source of perceptible qualities

Hellenistic philosophy / Epicureanism 3

#10 · c. 300 BC

Letter to Menoeceus

Death is nothing to us; the gods do not concern themselves with us; pleasure rightly understood is the absence of pain

#1057 · c. 300 BC

Letter to Herodotus (Mature)

Epicurus's short summary of his natural philosophy — atoms, void, infinite worlds

#1058 · c. 300 BC

Principal Doctrines (Mature)

#862 · 1987 (Spanish Hablar de Dios desde el sufrimiento del inocente); 1987 (English)

40 short Epicurean maxims — most-quoted statement of Epicurean ethics

Late-twentieth-century Latin American liberation theology 3

On Job (Late)

#865 · 1989 (Spanish El Dios de la vida); 1991 (English)

Gutiérrez's 1987 liberation-theological reading of Job — speaking of God from the suffering of the innocent

The God of Life (Late)

#864 · 1991 (Spanish Jesucristo liberador); 1993 (English)

Gutiérrez's 1991 mature theology of the living God of liberation

Jesus the Liberator (Late)

Jon Sobrino

Sobrino's 1991 liberation Christology — the historical Jesus from the perspective of the poor

Latin Averroism / radical Aristotelianism / Parisian arts faculty 3

#1526 · 1272

De Aeternitate Mundi (Middle)

Siger's 1272 'De Aeternitate Mundi' — Aristotelian-Averroist eternity-of-the-world against Christian creation in time

#1525 · 1273

De Anima Intellectiva (Middle (post-Aquinas-attack))

Siger's 1273 'De Anima Intellectiva' — partial retreat from strict Averroism in the wake of Aquinas's 1270 attack

#1524 · c. 1265-1270

Quaestiones in Tertium De Anima (Early-to-middle)

Siger's c. 1265-70 'Questions on De Anima III' — the radical-Averroist doctrine of the single separated intellect

Marxism / Classical political economy 3

#1329 · 1857-58

Grundrisse (Mature)

#1328 · c. 1864-75 (drafts); 1894 (Engels-edited publication)

Marx's 1857-58 notebooks — foundations of his mature economic thought

Capital, Volume III (Late)

#1327 · c. 1865-78 (drafts); 1885 (Engels-edited publication)

Marx's 1894 posthumous third volume of Capital

Capital, Volume II (Late)

Marx's 1885 posthumous second volume of Capital — circulation process

Mathematical logic / Analytic philosophy / Logicism 3

#1246 · 1891

Function and Concept (Mature)

Frege's 1891 lecture — concepts as functions

#1244 · 1918-19

Der Gedanke (The Thought) (Late)

#1245 · c. 1879-1925 (composed); 1969 (German collection); 1979 (English)

Frege's 1918 essay — the third realm of thoughts, distinct from physical and mental objects

Posthumous Writings (Posthumous)

#1401 · 1922-35; 1935 collection

Frege's posthumous unfinished work — drafts, notes, and unpublished essays

Modern Chinese literature 3

Old Tales Retold (Gushi Xinbian) (Late)

#1400 · 1924-26 prose-poems; 1927 collection

Lu Xun's 1935 satirical retellings of classical Chinese stories

Wild Grass (Yecao) (Mid)

Lu Xun's 1927 prose-poetry collection

#1399 · 1926

Wandering (Panghuang) (Mid)

#874 · 1860-62 (published in The Russian Messenger 1862)

Lu Xun's 1926 second short-story collection

Nineteenth-century Russian realist novel 3

Fathers and Sons (Mid)

Ivan Turgenev

Turgenev's 1862 Russian novel — the generational conflict and the figure of Bazarov the nihilist

#760 · 1865-69

War and Peace (Mid)

#761 · 1873-77 (serialized); 1878 (book)

Tolstoy's 1869 epic of Russian aristocratic life during the Napoleonic Wars — and the philosophy of history

Anna Karenina (Mid)

Tolstoy's 1878 novel — "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"

Psychoanalysis 3

#1319 · 1913

Totem and Taboo (Mid)

Freud's 1913 anthropological-psychoanalytic work

#1320 · 1923

The Ego and the Id (Late)

#1321 · 1934-38; 1939 (published)

Freud's 1923 structural model — id, ego, superego

Moses and Monotheism (Late)

#1178 · c. 1317-1319 (Oxford lectures)

Freud's 1939 final work — psychoanalytic-historical analysis of Judaism

Scholasticism / Late-medieval nominalism / Franciscan tradition 3

Commentary on the Sentences (Early)

Ockham's c.1317-19 Oxford lectures on the Sentences — foundational systematic theological text

#1176 · c. 1321-24

Treatise on Predestination, Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents (Mature)

Ockham's c.1321-24 treatise — divine foreknowledge and creaturely freedom; the foundational late-medieval treatment

#1175 · c. 1322-1325

Quodlibetal Questions (Mature)

#1263 · c. 1305-25 (mature period)

Ockham's c.1322-25 Quodlibeta — seven sets of disputed questions on the major topics of philosophy and theology

Scholasticism / Rhenish-Christian mysticism / Dominican tradition 3

Commentary on Genesis (Mature)

#1264 · c. 1305-25 (mature period)

Eckhart's Latin commentary on Genesis — major scholastic-mystical creation-theology

Commentary on Wisdom (Mature)

#1262 · c. 1313-26 (Paris and Cologne periods)

Eckhart's Latin commentary on Wisdom — divine Wisdom (Sapientia) as proper-philosophical-religious topic

Commentary on John (Mature)

Eckhart's Latin commentary on John — major scholastic-mystical work

Scientific naturalism / Neo-Darwinian synthesis 3

#1233 · 1982

The Extended Phenotype (Mid)

Dawkins's 1982 extension of the gene's-eye-view — the phenotype as extending beyond the organismic body

#1232 · 1986

The Blind Watchmaker (Mid)

#1235 · 2004 (1st ed.), 2016 (2nd ed. with Yan Wong)

Dawkins's 1986 popular-evolutionary work — natural selection as proper alternative to design argument

The Ancestor's Tale (Late)

Dawkins's 2004 evolutionary-pilgrimage — backward from contemporary humans through forty rendezvous to the origin of life

Scientific naturalism / Popular physics 3

#1391 · 2001

The Universe in a Nutshell (Mid)

Hawking's 2001 popular-physics sequel to Brief History of Time

#1392 · 2010

The Grand Design (Late)

#1393 · 2018 (posthumous)

Hawking and Mlodinow 2010 — controversial M-theory cosmology

Brief Answers to the Big Questions (Late)

#916 · 1958 (Chatto & Windus)

Hawking's 2018 posthumous final essays

Twentieth-century British philosophical fiction 3

The Bell (Early-mature (Murdoch's fourth novel, the first to establish her mature manner))

#1038 · 1973 (Chatto & Windus); James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1973

The ancient bell rises from the lake — and so do the buried desires of the lay community gathered beside the Imber Abbey

The Black Prince (Mature)

#1037 · 1978 (Chatto & Windus); Booker Prize 1978

Bradley Pearson, an aging writer, encounters Julian Baffin and is overwhelmed by erotic-philosophical love — Murdoch's most ambitious novel on Eros and the artistic vocation

The Sea, The Sea (Late-mature)

#993 · 1928 (Hogarth Press)

A retired theatrical director's seaside memoir — and the metaphysical study of obsession, jealousy, and self-deception that the memoir becomes

Twentieth-century English modernist literature 3

Orlando (Mature)

#994 · 1931 (Hogarth Press)

A young Elizabethan nobleman lives through four centuries and changes sex midway — founding work of modernist gender-fluid literature

The Waves (Mature)

#996 · 1940-41 (Hogarth, posthumous July 1941; Woolf died March 28, 1941)

Six characters, six soliloquies, six lives from childhood to death — Woolf's most formally experimental novel and her own choice as her best work

Between the Acts (Last)

#188 · 1951 (with later editions adding new prefaces and material through 1968)

A village pageant on a June day in 1939 — England's historical-cultural reckoning at the brink of the Second World War

Twentieth-century political philosophy 3

The Origins of Totalitarianism (Mid (Arendt's breakthrough book))

Antisemitism, imperialism, totalitarianism — Arendt's 1951 study of how Europe arrived at the death camps and the Gulag

#189 · 1963

On Revolution (Late (after Eichmann in Jerusalem))

#919 · 1969 (New York Review of Books, Feb 27); 1970 (Harcourt expanded book edition)

The lost treasure of revolution — public freedom rediscovered, then forgotten. The American success and the French failure

On Violence (Late (Arendt's most-cited short political essay, written in response to the 1968 student movements))

#380 · 1920 (German; English 1922)

Violence is not power's highest expression but its substitute when power has failed

Viennese psychoanalysis 3

Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Late)

#379 · 1927 (German; English 1928)

Freud's 1920 introduction of the death drive (Todestrieb)

The Future of an Illusion (Late)

#378 · 1930 (German; English 1930)

Freud's 1927 psychoanalytic critique of religion as collective wish-fulfillment

Civilization and Its Discontents (Late)

Freud's 1930 major late work on civilization's cost to the instinctual life

Yoruba-African drama / Anglophone African literature 3

#1148 · 1960

A Dance of the Forests (Early)

Soyinka's 1960 Nigerian-Independence play — Yoruba mythology against romantic-pan-African self-congratulation

#1149 · 1965

Kongi's Harvest (Mid)

Soyinka's 1965 political satire — the post-Independence African dictator-as-modernist

#1114 · 1975

Death and the King's Horseman (Mid)

Soyinka's 1975 tragedy — the Yoruba ritual suicide of Elesin Oba interrupted by colonial intervention

African American speculative fiction / Afrofuturism 2

#1059 · 1993

Parable of the Sower (Mature)

#1060 · 1998 (Nebula 1999)

Near-future America collapsing into climate breakdown — and Lauren Olamina's Earthseed religion

Parable of the Talents (Late-mature)

Earthseed community attacked by a theocratic American president — "Make America Great Again" predating Trump by 17 years

African-American literature / Black-feminist literature 2

#1102 · 1970

The Bluest Eye (Mid)

Morrison's 1970 debut — the destruction of Pecola Breedlove by internalised white-supremacist beauty standards

#1103 · 1973

Sula (Mid)

Morrison's 1973 novel of the friendship of Sula Peace and Nel Wright — the Bottom community of Medallion, Ohio

African-American mysticism / Christian devotion 2

#1414 · 1951

Deep Is the Hunger (Mid)

Thurman's 1951 collection of devotional meditations

#1415 · 1953

Meditations of the Heart (Mid)

Thurman's 1953 spiritual meditations — most-beloved devotional collection

Alexandrian Christianity / Christian Platonism 2

#1702 · c. 198–203 CE

Stromateis (Miscellanies)

Clement of Alexandria

A deliberately unsystematic tapestry weaving Scripture with Plato, Stoicism, and Middle Platonism to define the true Christian gnostic

#1694 · c. 248 CE

Against Celsus

Origen of Alexandria

The Church answers the philosopher — every objection of pagan reason met with Christian reasoning

American Catholic / Trappist contemplative spirituality 2

#362 · 1955

No Man Is an Island (Mid)

#224 · 1961 (expanded revision of Seeds of Contemplation, 1949)

Merton's 1955 collection of contemplative essays on Christian life

Seeds of Contemplation (1949) / New Seeds of Contemplation (Mid-late (Merton's mature contemplative theology))

#1133 · 1732-1758 (annual, twenty-six issues)

The mature statement of Merton's contemplative spirituality — the false self and the true self, contemplative prayer as participation in the divine life

American Enlightenment / Practical-republican tradition 2

Poor Richard's Almanack (Mid)

#1132 · 1771 (Part 1), 1784 (Part 2), 1788 (Part 3), 1790 (Part 4, unfinished)

Franklin's 1732-58 annual almanac — colonial America's most-read book of practical wisdom and proverbs

Autobiography (Late)

#1040 · 1904-08 essays; collected posthumously 1912

Franklin's 1771-90 unfinished autobiography — founding text of the American self-made-man tradition

American environmental philosophy 2

#591 · 1949 (posthumous)

A Sand County Almanac (Late)

Aldo Leopold

Leopold's 1949 foundational text of the land ethic — "thinking like a mountain"

#590 · 1962

Silent Spring (Late)

Rachel Carson

Carson's 1962 foundational text of the modern environmental movement — pesticides and the threat to ecological web

American Pittsburgh-school analytic philosophy 2

#599 · 1956

Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Mid)

Wilfrid Sellars

Sellars's 1956 foundational text — critique of the "Myth of the Given" and the space of reasons

#454 · 1994

Making It Explicit (Mid)

Robert Brandom

Brandom's 1994 systematic statement of inferentialist semantics — content as inferential role in social practices

American pragmatism / radical empiricism 2

Essays in Radical Empiricism (Late posthumous)

#1039 · 1909 (Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College, Oxford, May 1908)

Radical empiricism — experience as foundation of metaphysics, with relations as much given as things related

A Pluralistic Universe (Late)

#1023 · 1854 (delivered at the antislavery convention, Framingham, July 4, 1854; published in The Liberator and other papers)

The universe is plural, not monistic — James's mature constructive metaphysics against absolute idealism

American process theology 2

#502 · 1975

Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Mid)

John B. Cobb Jr.

Cobb's 1975 foundational process-theological Christology in dialogue with non-Christian religions

#501 · 1984

Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Late)

Charles Hartshorne

Hartshorne's 1984 foundational process-theological critique of classical theism's "six mistakes"

American transcendentalism / radical abolitionism 2

Slavery in Massachusetts (Mature)

#1022 · 1859 (delivered as a public address in Concord, Boston, and Worcester, October-November 1859; published 1860)

Massachusetts has become complicit in slavery through the Fugitive Slave Act — and the citizens who tolerate this complicity have themselves become slave-catchers

A Plea for Captain John Brown (Mature)

A defense of John Brown after Harpers Ferry — the most politically incendiary of Thoreau's essays

Analytic philosophy / Logical atomism 2

#1311 · 1914

Our Knowledge of the External World (Mid)

Russell's 1914 Lowell Lectures — scientific method in philosophy

#1312 · 1918

Mysticism and Logic (Mid)

Russell's 1918 essay collection

Analytic philosophy / Tense logic / Philosophy of time 2

#1180 · 1967

Past, Present and Future (Mature)

Prior's 1967 systematic statement — tense logic, the modern logic of temporal language

#1181 · 1968

Papers on Time and Tense (Late)

Prior's 1968 essay collection — major papers on the logic and philosophy of time

Analytical psychology / Depth psychology 2

#1322 · 1912

Psychology of the Unconscious (Early)

#1323 · 1957-61 (composed); 1962 (German); 1963 (English)

Jung's 1912 book marking break from Freud

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Late)

Ibn ʿArabī (Muḥyī al-Dīn)

Jung's 1961 posthumous autobiography

Andalusian-Islamic Sufism (Akbarian school) 2

#483 · c. 1202-31

al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (The Meccan Revelations) (Late)

Ibn ʿArabī's monumental 37-volume Sufi philosophical encyclopedia — the great compendium of Akbarian Sufism

#482 · c. 1229

Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam (Bezels of Wisdom) (Late)

Ibn ʿArabī (Muḥyī al-Dīn)

Ibn ʿArabī's c. 1229 foundational Sufi mystical-philosophical masterwork — 27 chapters on prophets

Anglo-American liberal political philosophy 2

#48 · 1971; revised edition 1999

A Theory of Justice

John Rawls

Justice is fairness — the principles rational persons would choose behind a veil of ignorance, ignorant of their own social position

#147 · 1993 (revised 1996, with new introduction)

Political Liberalism (Late)

John Rawls

How a free society can be just under the permanent fact of reasonable disagreement about comprehensive doctrines — public reason, overlapping consensus, and the political conception of justice

Anglo-American poststructuralist feminism 2

#395 · 1990

Gender Trouble (Early)

Judith Butler

Butler's 1990 foundational work — gender as performative, not expressive of pre-given identity

#396 · 1993

Bodies That Matter (Early)

Judith Butler

Butler's 1993 elaboration of the performativity thesis — bodies and materiality

Black liberation theology 2

#232 · 1970 (the second of Cone's books and the systematic statement of the position announced in Black Theology and Black Power, 1969)

A Black Theology of Liberation (Early (the systematic founding text of the field))

James Cone

"God is black" — Cone's 1970 systematic theology, the founding text of black liberation theology

#233 · 2011

The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Late (Cone's major late book))

James Cone

The cross of Christ and the American lynching tree as parallel sites of innocent suffering — Cone's late major work integrating theological symbolism with the historical record of racial violence

British analytic philosophy 2

#563 · 1984

Reasons and Persons (Mid)

Derek Parfit

Parfit's 1984 foundational analytic ethics and personal identity — "we are not what we believe"

#455 · 1985

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Mid)

Bernard Williams

Williams's 1985 critical engagement with the modern moral philosophy project — limits of the system-building ambition

British classical political economy 2

#719 · 1798 (1st edn); 1803 (rev. 2nd edn)

An Essay on the Principle of Population (Late)

Thomas Robert Malthus

Malthus's 1798 foundational demographic-political economy — population grows geometrically, food arithmetically

#720 · 1817

On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Late)

David Ricardo

Ricardo's 1817 foundational text of classical political economy — labor theory of value, comparative advantage

British liberalism 2

#467 · 1953

The Hedgehog and the Fox (Mid)

Isaiah Berlin

Berlin's 1953 essay — "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing"

#466 · 1958 (Inaugural Lecture as Chichele Professor at Oxford)

Two Concepts of Liberty (Mid)

Isaiah Berlin

Berlin's 1958 Inaugural Lecture — negative and positive liberty as two distinct freedoms

British ordinary-language philosophy (Oxford) 2

#724 · 1949

The Concept of Mind (Mid)

Gilbert Ryle

Ryle's 1949 foundational text — the "ghost in the machine" critique of Cartesian dualism

#725 · 1955 (William James Lectures at Harvard); 1962 (book, posthumous)

How to Do Things with Words (Late)

J.L. Austin

Austin's 1962 foundational text of speech-act theory — performatives and the three forces (locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary)

British political-literary tradition 2

#1095 · 1948

The Gathering Storm (Late)

Churchill's 1948 first volume of his Second World War — the gathering storm of 1919-1940

#1096 · 1949

Their Finest Hour (Late)

#453 · 1994 (1991 John Locke Lectures at Oxford)

Churchill's 1949 second volume — the Battle of Britain and Britain alone, May-December 1940

British-American analytic philosophy 2

#559 · 1969

Speech Acts (Early)

John R. Searle

Searle's 1969 foundational systematic philosophy of language — speech act theory after Austin

Mind and World (Late)

John McDowell

McDowell's 1994 John Locke Lectures — conceptual capacities all the way down in perception

Cambridge-Victorian philosophy of science / Kantian-influenced inductivism 2

#1467 · 1837 (3 vols)

History of the Inductive Sciences (Mid-career)

#1468 · 1840 (revised 1847, 1858–60)

Whewell's 1837 three-volume history of the inductive sciences — the founding survey of the history of natural science

The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (Mid-career (companion to the History))

#1422 · 1674-75 (expanded through 1712)

Whewell's 1840 philosophical companion to the History — the doctrine of Fundamental Ideas and the consilience of inductions

Cartesian-Augustinian rationalism / occasionalism 2

The Search After Truth (Early-to-mid)

Malebranche's 1674-75 Cartesian-Augustinian magnum opus

#1424 · 1688

Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion (Mid-to-late)

#1001 · 1993 (Veritatis Splendor, issued August 6, 1993)

Malebranche's 1688 mature philosophical-theological dialogues

Catholic moral theology / Christian personalism 2

Veritatis Splendor (Mature)

#1002 · 1995 (Evangelium Vitae, issued March 25, 1995, the feast of the Annunciation)

The splendour of truth shines in every action of the human being who is open to truth — moral truth has objective foundations, and the freedom that severs from truth becomes its own corruption

Evangelium Vitae (Late-mature)

#777 · c. 431-411 BCE (unfinished at Thucydides's death)

The Gospel of Life — the inviolable dignity of human life from conception to natural death, against the "culture of death" that organises modern society against it

Classical Greek historiography 2

History of the Peloponnesian War (Early)

Thucydides

Thucydides's c. 411 BCE founding work of critical historiography and political realism — a "possession for all time"

#778 · c. 440s-420s BCE

The Histories (Early)

Herodotus

Herodotus's 5th-c. BCE Histories — "Father of History" — Greek-Persian Wars and the wider known world

Confucianism / Ru tradition 2

#34 · Compiled c. 5th–3rd century BC; core sayings reflect Confucius (551–479 BC)

The Analects

Compiled by Confucius's disciples and their disciples

Ren, li, junzi — the cultivation of humane character through ritual propriety makes social order possible

#78 · c. late 4th century BC (compiled shortly after his death c. 289 BC)

Mencius

Meng Ke (Mencius); compiled by his disciples

Human nature is fundamentally good — the four sprouts of compassion, shame, deference, and judgement need only cultivation

Continental rationalism / Early-modern philosophy 2

#1305 · 1643-49

Correspondence with Princess Elisabeth (Late)

#1303 · c. 1628 (unfinished); 1701 (posthumous)

Descartes's 1643-49 correspondence with Princess Elisabeth

Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Early)

#429 · 1934 (Logik der Forschung); 1959 English

Descartes's c.1628 unfinished early methodological treatise

Critical rationalism 2

The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Early)

Popper's 1934 foundational falsificationist philosophy of science

#430 · 1963

Conjectures and Refutations (Mid)

#5 · c. 4th century BC (received text); Guodian bamboo slips c. 300 BC

Popper's 1963 collection on the growth of scientific knowledge through conjectures and refutations

Daoism / Daojia 2

Tao Te Ching

Attributed to Laozi (Lao Tzu); likely composite, possibly c. 4th–3rd century BC

The dao that can be named is not the eternal dao — the way of nature is yielding, paradoxical, and beyond determinate concepts

#6 · c. late 4th century BC

Zhuangzi — Inner Chapters

Zhuang Zhou (with later editorial layers; Inner Chapters most likely by his hand)

Perspective-relativity, the dream of the butterfly, and the great clod — Daoism's most playful and most radical book

Depth psychology / psychoanalysis 2

#279 · 1899 (dated 1900); revised through 1929 (8th edition)

The Interpretation of Dreams (Early (the founding work of psychoanalysis))

#280 · 1905; revised through 1924

"The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind" — Freud's 1900 founding work of psychoanalysis

Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Early-mid (after the Interpretation of Dreams))

#1012 · c. 50-51 CE (earliest surviving Pauline letter)

The infantile sexuality thesis, the polymorphously perverse, the Oedipus complex — Freud's 1905 founding work on psychosexual development

Earliest Christianity 2

1 Thessalonians (Early)

#1013 · c. 60-62 CE (composed in prison alongside Colossians)

The earliest surviving Pauline letter — eschatological questions about the parousia and the dead in Christ

Philemon (Late)

#950 · c. 207-12 (composed in three revisions; the third recension is the surviving text)

Paul's short prison letter on behalf of a runaway slave — and the principal early-Christian text on slavery, manumission, and the gospel's social implications

Early Latin Christian theology / North African Christianity 2

Against Marcion (Mature (Tertullian's longest and most systematic work))

There is one God — the Creator of the Old Testament and the Father of Jesus Christ — and the unity of the two Testaments witnesses to it

#952 · c. 210-12

On the Resurrection of the Flesh (Mature (one of Tertullian's longest and most carefully argued treatises))

#92 · Written c. 1679–82; published anonymously 1689

The same flesh that lived and died will rise — the bodily resurrection is the whole point of the Christian hope, and to spiritualise it is to abandon Christianity

Early modern liberal political philosophy 2

Two Treatises of Government (Late)

#141 · Written in Latin 1685 in Holland; published anonymously 1689 (Latin and English)

Government rests on the consent of the governed — and when it fails to protect life, liberty, and property, the people may resist

A Letter Concerning Toleration (Late)

#91 · 1642 (Latin, Paris); English translation by Hobbes himself 1651

The care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate — and toleration of religious difference is the fundamental Christian and civic virtue

Early modern political philosophy / materialist naturalism 2

De Cive (Early)

The state of nature is war; the social contract creates sovereign authority; the duty of religion is consistent with civil peace

#36 · 1651

Leviathan

The state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short; the social contract erects the Leviathan to keep us out of it

Early-modern philosophy / Materialism 2

#1383 · 1655

De Corpore (Late)

Hobbes's 1655 De Corpore on bodies, geometry, physics

#1384 · 1658

De Homine (Late)

Hobbes's 1658 De Homine on human nature

Empirio-criticism / philosophy of science / Vienna positivism (predecessor) 2

#1600 · 1895

Popular Scientific Lectures (Middle)

Mach's 1895 'Popular Scientific Lectures' — accessible philosophy-of-science statement of empirio-critical doctrine

#1601 · 1905

Knowledge and Error (Late)

Mach's 1905 'Erkenntnis und Irrtum' — systematic empirio-critical philosophy of science

English Renaissance drama 2

#283 · c. 1600-01

Hamlet (Mid (mature middle period))

"To be or not to be" — Shakespeare's c. 1600 tragedy, the longest and most-cited of his plays, the central work of English Renaissance drama

#284 · c. 1605-06

King Lear (Mid-late (the major tragedies))

St. Bonaventure (Giovanni di Fidanza)

Lear's descent into madness on the heath — Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, the most extreme exploration of suffering, ingratitude, and the bare human

Franciscan scholasticism 2

#489 · 1259

Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (The Mind's Road to God) (Mid)

Bonaventure's 1259 foundational Franciscan mystical-philosophical synthesis — six-stage ascent of the soul to God

#490 · c. 1300

Ordinatio (Late)

John Duns Scotus (the Subtle Doctor)

Duns Scotus's c. 1300 major Sentences commentary — univocity of being, formal distinction, haecceity

Frankfurt School / critical theory 2

#195 · 1962 (habilitation thesis; English translation 1989)

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Early (the breakthrough work))

#391 · 1968 (German; English 1971)

The historical emergence and modern decline of the bourgeois public sphere — the locus of rational-critical discussion that grounded liberal democracy

Knowledge and Human Interests (Early)

#27 · 1942 (Paris, under German occupation)

Habermas's 1968 work on the cognitive interests (technical, practical, emancipatory) grounding knowledge

French existentialism / absurdism 2

The Myth of Sisyphus

There is only one really serious philosophical problem — suicide. The answer is to imagine Sisyphus happy.

#155 · 1951

The Rebel (Late)

#250 · 1961 (Foucault's doctoral dissertation)

I rebel — therefore we exist. The metaphysical and historical analysis of rebellion as the proper response to absurdity, drawing the limits against totalitarian revolution

French postmodernism / Foucauldian archaeology 2

Madness and Civilization (Early (Foucault's breakthrough work, his doctoral dissertation))

The history of madness in the classical age — Foucault's 1961 doctoral dissertation that opened his career-long project

#251 · 1963

The Birth of the Clinic (Early-mid (between Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things))

The emergence of modern medical perception — Foucault's 1963 archaeology of the "medical gaze" and the modern clinic

French structural anthropology 2

#293 · 1958

Structural Anthropology (Mid (the methodological consolidation))

The collection that established structural anthropology — Lévi-Strauss's 1958 systematic methodological statement

#292 · 1962

The Savage Mind (Mid (the systematic statement of structural anthropology))

#194 · 1812 (Book I, Being); 1813 (Book II, Essence); 1816 (Book III, Concept); 1832 (Hegel's revised Book I, posthumous)

The savage mind is not the European's primitive ancestor — Lévi-Strauss's 1962 sustained argument for the rational equality of "primitive" thought

German absolute idealism 2

Science of Logic (Mid (the central work of the mature Hegelian system))

#249 · 1817 (1st edition); 1827 (2nd edition); 1830 (3rd and definitive edition, in three volumes)

The dialectical self-movement of pure concepts — Being passing into Nothing, Essence unfolding into Concept. Hegel's most ambitious and most difficult book

Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Mature (the most comprehensive single-text statement of the system))

#447 · 1932 (3 vols; English 1969-71)

Hegel's entire philosophical system in one organised text — Logic, Philosophy of Nature, Philosophy of Spirit

German existentialism 2

Philosophy (Mid)

Karl Jaspers

Jaspers's three-volume systematic existentialist philosophy (1932) — world-orientation, Existenz, metaphysics

#448 · 1938 (German; English 1971)

Philosophy of Existence (Late)

Karl Jaspers

Jaspers's 1938 short lectures on existentialism — accessible introduction to his Philosophy (1932)

German phenomenology 2

#170 · 1900 (vol. 1, Prolegomena to Pure Logic); 1901 (vol. 2, six investigations); revised editions 1913, 1921

Logical Investigations (Early (the breakthrough work that founds phenomenology))

#445 · 1913-16 (Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research)

The Prolegomena destroys psychologism in logic; the six Investigations begin to lay out the descriptive phenomenology of meaning, perception, and intentional consciousness

Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Mid)

Max Scheler

Scheler's 1913-16 foundational phenomenological ethics of material (non-formal) values

German philosophy / Continental philosophy 2

#1315 · 1881

Daybreak (Mid)

#1317 · 1888 (completed); 1908 (published, posthumous)

Nietzsche's 1881 aphoristic work on morality

Ecce Homo (Late)

#729 · 1904-05 (essays); 1920 (revised)

Nietzsche's 1888 final autobiographical work

German sociology / Verstehende Soziologie 2

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Mid)

Max Weber

Weber's 1905 classic linking the Calvinist ethic to the spirit of modern capitalism

#730 · 1909-20 (drafts); 1922 (posthumous)

Economy and Society (Late)

Max Weber

Weber's monumental 1922 posthumous systematic sociology of types of social action and authority

High medieval scholasticism / Thomistic theology 2

#933 · 1256-59 (Paris, during Aquinas's first regency)

Disputed Questions on Truth (Early-mature (Aquinas's first major work after the Sentences commentary))

#935 · 1265-67 (begun in Rome, broken off after Aquinas's 1273 mystical experience)

Truth is the conformity of intellect with thing — the foundational scholastic treatment of truth, knowledge, and divine cognition

Compendium of Theology (Late (begun during the Roman regency, unfinished at Aquinas's death))

A compact synthesis of the whole of theology around the three theological virtues — Aquinas's short summary for his secretary

High-Church Anglicanism / anti-Hobbist controversy / political-theological polemic 2

#1514 · 1658

Castigations of Mr Hobbes (Late)

#1515 · 1658 (appended to Castigations)

Bramhall's 1658 final salvo against Hobbes — including 'The Catching of Leviathan'

The Catching of Leviathan (Late)

Bramhall's 1658 'Catching of Leviathan' — arguing Hobbes is materialist-atheist, Erastian, and politically dangerous

Husserlian phenomenology / philosophical anthropology 2

#1430 · 1917

On the Problem of Empathy (Early)

Stein's 1917 phenomenological dissertation on empathy under Husserl

#1431 · 1922

Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (Early)

Stein's 1922 phenomenological investigations on psyche and community

Indigenous philosophy / Critical theory 2

#1341 · 1995

Red Earth, White Lies (Late)

Deloria's 1995 critique of Western scientific narratives about Native peoples

#1343 · 2002

Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths (Late)

#1340 · 1973 (1st ed.), 1992 (2nd ed.), 2003 (3rd ed.)

Deloria's 2002 critique of evolutionary biology and creationism alike

Indigenous philosophy / Native American religious thought 2

God Is Red (Mid)

Deloria's 1973 comparative philosophy of religion

#1342 · 1999

Spirit and Reason (Late)

Deloria's 1999 essays — Native philosophy of religion and politics

Islamic falsafa / Aristotelian philosophy 2

#1292 · c. 1014-1020

Kitāb al-Shifāʾ (Book of Healing) (Mature)

Avicenna's c.1014-20 vast philosophical encyclopedia

#1294 · c. 1027

Kitāb al-Najāt (Book of Salvation) (Mature)

#1358 · 1938 (Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture); 1959 (revised Zen and Japanese Culture)

Avicenna's c.1027 philosophical compendium — summary of the Shifāʾ

Japanese Zen Buddhism 2

Zen and Japanese Culture (Mid-Late)

#1356 · 1969 (posthumous)

Suzuki's 1959 study of Zen's influence on Japanese culture

The Field of Zen (Late)

#365 · 1949 (German); 1948 (Hebrew)

Suzuki's 1969 posthumous essay collection on Zen

Jewish religious philosophy 2

The Prophetic Faith (Late)

Buber's 1949 study of the biblical Hebrew prophets — the major work on prophetic faith

#366 · 1952

Eclipse of God (Late)

#960 · 1248 (Shinran in his mid-seventies)

Buber's 1952 essays on the modern eclipse of God — engagement with Nietzsche, Sartre, Heidegger

Jewish-Hellenistic philosophy 2

#1692 · c. 20–40 CE

On the Creation of the World

Philo of Alexandria

Genesis meets the Timaeus — God creates the intelligible world first, then stamps its pattern on matter

#1693 · c. 20–40 CE

On the Life of Moses

Philo of Alexandria

Moses as the philosopher-king Plato never found — Torah as the constitution of the rational cosmos

Jōdo Shinshū 2

Jōdo Wasan (Late)

#1625 · c. 1290 (compiled by Yuien-bō about 30 years after Shinran's death)

Devotional poetry of the Pure Land — Amida's vow, the Pure Land, the lineage of masters who transmitted the Way

Tannishō (Posthumous (the principal popular source for Shinran's teaching))

#939 · 1440 (composed on the return voyage from the failed Council of Florence union with the Greeks)

Even the good person is saved; how much more the evil — Shinran's most-quoted teachings, preserved against corruption

Late medieval / Renaissance Christian Platonism / Neoplatonic mystical theology 2

On Learned Ignorance (Mature (the founding work of Cusa's philosophical career, composed at age 39))

#940 · 1453 (composed for the Benedictine monks of Tegernsee, sent with an icon of an all-seeing face)

The infinite Maximum cannot be known by finite reason — and recognising this is itself the highest knowledge

The Vision of God (Mature (one of Cusa's most condensed and beautiful late works))

Epictetus (recorded by Arrian)

The all-seeing icon meets every viewer's gaze — and so does the God whose seeing is the source of all things' being

Late Stoic philosophy 2

#510 · c. 108 CE

Discourses (Diatribai) (Mid)

Epictetus's c. 108 CE recorded lectures — foundational late Stoic ethics of what is in our power

#511 · c. 125 CE

Enchiridion (Handbook) (Late)

Epictetus (compiled by Arrian)

Epictetus's c. 125 CE compact Stoic handbook — the most influential late Stoic text in posterity

Late-twentieth-century American process theology 2

#868 · 1976

Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Mid)

John B. Cobb Jr. and David Ray Griffin

Cobb and Griffin's 1976 founding introduction to process theology

#867 · 1989 (rev. ed.; orig. 1982)

God-Christ-Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (Late)

Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki

Suchocki's 1989 accessible introduction to process theology

Late-twentieth-century anglophone speculative fiction 2

#803 · 1974

The Dispossessed (Late)

Ursula K. Le Guin

Le Guin's 1974 anarchist-utopian science-fiction novel — an ambiguous utopia

#825 · 1985

The Handmaid's Tale (Late)

Margaret Atwood

Atwood's 1985 dystopian novel — the Republic of Gilead and reproductive coercion

Late-twentieth-century British critical realism 2

#851 · 1975 (1st ed.); 1978 (2nd ed.); 2008 (3rd ed.)

A Realist Theory of Science (Mid)

#852 · 1979 (1st ed.); 1989 (2nd ed.); 1998 (3rd ed.)

Bhaskar's 1975 founding work of critical realism — transcendental realism in philosophy of science

The Possibility of Naturalism (Mid)

#124 · c. 387–395 (Book I in Rome 388; Books II–III at Hippo c. 391–395)

Bhaskar's 1979 extension of critical realism to the social sciences

Late-twentieth-century New Age mind-body movement 2

#899 · 1989

Quantum Healing (Mid)

Deepak Chopra

Chopra's 1989 founding work of New Age mind-body medicine

#900 · 1993

Ageless Body, Timeless Mind (Late)

Deepak Chopra

Chopra's 1993 mind-body programme for reversing the aging process

Latin Christianity / Augustinian theology 2

On Free Choice of the Will (Early)

#81 · c. 399–419 (composed across two decades)

God is not the author of evil — free will is; and yet the will's very freedom is itself a divine gift

On the Trinity (Late)

The Trinity in itself, the Trinity in the human mind — the most sustained patristic analysis of God as three persons, one being

Mahayana Buddhism / Zen Buddhism 2

#1357 · 1907

Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (Early)

Suzuki's 1907 first English-language scholarly book

#1355 · 1932

The Lankavatara Sutra (Mid)

Suzuki's 1932 translation of the Lankavatara Sutra

Medieval Jewish theology and law 2

#367 · c. 1158-68

Commentary on the Mishnah (Early-mid)

#229 · c. 1170-80 (the second of Maimonides's three major works; preceding the Guide of the Perplexed of c. 1190)

Maimonides's major early systematic commentary on the Mishnah

Mishneh Torah (Mid (the major legal work, between the early Commentary on the Mishnah and the late Guide of the Perplexed))

The "Second Torah" — Maimonides's comprehensive code organising the entire Jewish legal tradition into fourteen systematic books

Medieval Latin theology 2

#1063 · c. 1080-85

On Truth (Mature)

Truth as "rectitude" — Anselm's philosophical analysis of truth in propositions, opinions, will, action, sensation, and substantial being

#1064 · c. 1080-85

On Free Will (Mature)

#1406 · 1746-1760 (first edition 1746)

Free will as the power to preserve rightness of will for its own sake — Anselm's distinctive medieval definition

Methodism / Wesleyan theology 2

Standard Sermons (Mid-to-late)

Wesley's 44 doctrinal sermons defining Methodist theology

#1407 · 1755

Notes Upon the New Testament (Mid)

Wesley's 1755 Methodist NT commentary — companion to Standard Sermons

Modern Chinese literature / May Fourth 2

#1076 · 1918

A Madman's Diary (Mid-mature)

Lu Xun's 1918 founding text — first major work in vernacular Chinese, indicting Confucian society as "cannibalistic"

#1077 · 1921-22

The True Story of Ah Q (Mature)

The great satirical portrait of the Chinese national character — Ah Q's "spiritual victory" psychology

Nineteenth-century American transcendentalism 2

#870 · 1836

Nature (Early)

#871 · 1841 (in Essays: First Series)

Emerson's 1836 founding essay of American transcendentalism — the unity of mind and Nature

Self-Reliance (Mid)

#1051 · 1868 (John Murray, London); revised 1875

Emerson's 1841 transcendentalist essay on individual moral authority — "Trust thyself"

Nineteenth-century evolutionary biology 2

The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (Mature)

#1047 · 1871 (John Murray, London); revised 1874

Domestic variation and the now-discarded theory of pangenesis — Darwin's major treatment of inheritance, ten years after Origin

The Descent of Man (Mature)

Humans as the product of evolutionary descent — and the theory of sexual selection as a major mechanism of evolutionary change

Persian classical poetry / Islamic philosophy / Iqbal's philosophy of self 2

#1214 · 1915

Asrar-i Khudi (Secrets of the Self) (Mid)

Iqbal's 1915 Persian masnavi — philosophy of the dynamic-active self against passive-quietist Sufi tradition

#1216 · 1932

Javid Nama (Book of Eternity) (Late)

#1212 · 2003 (essay), 2016 (book — French), 2019 (book — English)

Iqbal's 1932 Persian masnavi — heavenly-journey poem in the tradition of Dante and Rumi

Postcolonial studies 2

#397 · 1978

Orientalism (Mid)

Edward W. Said

Said's 1978 foundational text of postcolonial studies — Orientalism as discourse

#398 · 1993

Culture and Imperialism (Late)

Edward W. Said

Said's 1993 broader engagement with the cultural dimensions of imperialism

Postcolonial theory / Africana philosophy / Critical theory 2

Necropolitics (Mature)

#1213 · 2020 (French), 2024 (English)

Mbembe's 2003 essay and 2016 expanded book — sovereignty as the right to kill; necropolitics beyond Foucault's biopolitics

Brutalism (Late)

#271 · c. 500 BC (the fragments preserved through later authors' quotations)

Mbembe's 2020 study — brutalism as the late-modern political-philosophical form of capitalist-technological-extractivist governance

Pre-Socratic Greek philosophy 2

#2 · c. 500 BC

Fragments

Heraclitus of Ephesus

Reality is process, not substance: the world is fire, the river never the same, the logos the only stable thing

On Nature (Fragments)

Heraclitus of Ephesus

Logos, flux, unity-of-opposites — Heraclitus's gnomic philosophical fragments, the founding statement of process-philosophical thinking

Pre-Socratic natural philosophy / Milesian school 2

#1687 · c. 6th century BCE

On Nature (fragments)

Anaximander of Miletus

The apeiron as origin of all things — the first Greek prose treatise on nature, with its single surviving fragment on cosmic justice

#1686 · c. 6th century BCE (original); testimonia preserved in sources from the 4th c. BCE onward

Fragments and Testimonia

Thales of Miletus

The earliest surviving reports of Western philosophy: water as arche, the earth on water, and "all things are full of gods"

Pre-Socratic philosophy 2

#508 · c. 450 BCE

On Nature and Purifications (Fragments) (Early)

Empedocles of Acragas

Empedocles's c. 450 BCE fragments — four roots (earth, air, fire, water), love and strife, transmigration

#509 · c. 460 BCE

On Nature (Fragments) (Early)

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae

Anaxagoras's c. 460 BCE fragments — Nous (Mind) as cosmic ordering principle

Rationalism / Continental rationalism / Modern philosophy 2

#1153 · 1686-1690

Correspondence with Arnauld (Mature)

Leibniz's 1686-90 correspondence with Arnauld — major source for the development of the mature Leibnizian metaphysics

#1152 · 1695

New System (Mature)

#207 · 1503 (with a famous expanded 1518 preface that became a humanist-Reformation manifesto)

Leibniz's 1695 essay — first public statement of the doctrine of pre-established harmony

Renaissance Christian humanism / Northern Renaissance reform 2

Enchiridion Militis Christiani (Early (Erasmus's first major work))

#275 · 1509 (composed during a visit to Thomas More); 1511 (first published)

"The Christian Soldier's Handbook" — Erasmus's 1503 manual of interior Christianity, the founding text of Christian humanism and a major source for the Reformation

Praise of Folly (Mid (Erasmus's most widely read book))

Folly's satirical declamation — Erasmus's 1511 brilliant critique of contemporary religious and intellectual hypocrisy, the major work of Renaissance Christian humanism

Russian literature / Christian-anarchist literature 2

#1157 · 1886

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Late)

Tolstoy's 1886 novella — the dying magistrate Ivan Ilyich and the failure of conventional life

#1158 · 1889-1899

Resurrection (Late)

Tolstoy's 1899 novel — Nekhlyudov's repentance for Maslova, the indictment of state-criminal-justice institutions

Russian religious-philosophical tradition / Christian anarchism 2

#1155 · 1880-82

A Confession (Mid)

Tolstoy's 1882 spiritual autobiography — the religious-philosophical crisis at age 50 that drove his later Christian-anarchist work

#1156 · 1883-84

What I Believe (Mid)

Tolstoy's 1884 systematic exposition — the Sermon on the Mount as the proper foundation of Christian life

Scholasticism / Catholic-Thomistic / Medieval Benedictine 2

#1225 · 1080-86

De Veritate (On Truth) (Mid)

Anselm's c.1080-86 dialogue — the nature of truth as rectitude

#1226 · 1080-86

De Casu Diaboli (On the Fall of the Devil) (Mid)

#999 · c. 1499-1539 (during Nānak's later teaching years; the morning prayer is one of his foundational compositions)

Anselm's c.1080-86 dialogue — the angelic fall and the will-and-grace problem

Sikhism 2

Japji Sahib (Mature (Nānak's foundational devotional composition))

#1000 · c. 1500-1539 (Nānak's mature teaching years; included in the Guru Granth Sahib 1604)

There is one God, the eternal truth — Ik Onkar Sat Nam — known by direct devotional remembrance rather than by ritual or priestly mediation

Asa Di Var (Mature)

#1454 · 1521 (response to Babur's invasion)

A morning ballad in Asa raga — Nānak's extended devotional-philosophical reflection on God, creation, humility, and the ethical life

Sikhism / Sant tradition 2

Babar Vani (Mid)

Guru Nānak's 1521 prophetic-witness hymns on Babur's invasion

#1453 · c. 1500-1520

Sidh Gosht (Mid)

#856 · 1525 (De vera et falsa religione commentarius)

Guru Nānak's dialogue with the Siddhas — Adi Granth Sant exposition

Sixteenth-century Swiss Reformation 2

On True and False Religion (Mid)

Huldrych Zwingli

Zwingli's 1525 systematic theology — the founding work of Reformed (Zwinglian) Protestantism

#857 · 1530 (De providentia Dei)

On the Providence of God (Late)

Huldrych Zwingli

Zwingli's 1530 treatise on divine providence — the Reformed doctrine of universal divine governance

Spanish Carmelite mysticism 2

#530 · 1577

The Interior Castle (Castillo Interior) (Late)

St. Teresa of Ávila (Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada)

Teresa of Ávila's 1577 Interior Castle — seven mansions of the soul's mystical ascent

#529 · c. 1582-85

The Dark Night (La Noche Oscura) (Late)

St. John of the Cross (Juan de Yepes Álvarez)

John of the Cross's c. 1582-85 foundational Spanish mystical text — the "dark night of the soul"

Sufi mysticism / Mevlevi order 2

#1137 · c. 1262-1273 (transcribed during Rumi's last decade)

Fīhi mā Fīhi (Discourses) (Late)

Rumi's 13th-c. 71 prose discourses transcribed by disciples — practical Sufi instruction in everyday speech

#1138 · mid-13th century

Maktūbāt (Letters) (Mature)

Rumi's 13th-c. 147 letters — pastoral and political correspondence of the Mevlevi master

Tibetan Buddhism / Gelug school / Modern Buddhist exile literature 2

#1166 · 1962

My Land and My People (Early)

Tenzin Gyatso's 1962 first autobiography — earliest authoritative English-language account of the Tibetan crisis and exile

#1163 · 1990

Freedom in Exile (Mid)

Tenzin Gyatso's 1990 autobiography — childhood in Tibet, Chinese invasion, exile in Dharamsala

Tibetan Gelug Buddhism 2

#475 · 1402

Lam rim chen mo (The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment) (Mid)

Tsongkhapa's 1402 foundational Tibetan Gelug school systematic — comprehensive path to enlightenment

#882 · 1402 (Tibetan)

The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Mid)

#1659 · c. 17th century (mid-career)

Tsongkhapa's 1402 great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment

Transcendent Theosophy (al-Ḥikma al-Mutaʿāliya) / Twelver Shiʿi Islamic philosophy 2

Kitāb al-Mashāʿir (Mature)

#1660 · c. 17th century (mid-to-late career)

Mulla Sadra's 'Kitāb al-Mashāʿir' — concise statement of his metaphysics of wujūd (existence)

Al-Shawāhid al-Rubūbiyya (Mid-to-late)

#50 · 1929 (Sorbonne lectures); 1931 (French publication); 1950 (German publication)

Mulla Sadra's 'Al-Shawāhid al-Rubūbiyya' — major philosophical-theological treatise on the divine witnesses

Transcendental phenomenology 2

Cartesian Meditations (Late)

#903 · 1934-37 (parts I & II in Philosophia 1936; full edition Husserliana VI, 1954)

Husserl rereads Descartes as the inaugurator of phenomenology — the transcendental ego, intersubjectivity, and the constitution of the world

The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Late (Husserl's last work, written in Freiburg under Nazi proscription))

#1004 · 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)

The crisis of European reason is the forgetting of the pre-scientific lifeworld — phenomenology recovers it

Twentieth-century Czech philosophical dissidence 2

Politics and Conscience (Mature (composed during Havel's dissident period before the 1989 Velvet Revolution))

#1005 · 1985-86 (long interview composed by mail between Havel in Prague and Karel Hvížďala in West Germany)

Modern political crisis has spiritual roots — and the recovery of political life requires the recovery of the inner conditions of authentic action

Disturbing the Peace (Late-dissident (composed three years before the Velvet Revolution))

#1034 · 1936 (Oxford UP); Hawthornden Prize 1936

A long interview through which Havel surveys his life, his philosophy, and his political commitments in the years just before the 1989 Velvet Revolution

Twentieth-century English medieval-Renaissance literary scholarship 2

The Allegory of Love (Mature)

#1035 · Lectures delivered Oxford 1950s; published posthumously 1964 (Cambridge UP)

Courtly love, allegorical poetry, the medieval European literary tradition — Lewis's scholarly masterpiece on the literary form that organised European love poetry from the troubadours to Spenser

The Discarded Image (Last)

The medieval cosmological model — the discarded image of the world that organised pre-modern European literary-cultural life

Twentieth-century Japanese literature 2

#1079 · 1961 ("Yūkoku")

Patriotism (Mid-mature)

#1078 · 1965-71 (four-volume tetralogy)

Mishima's 1961 short story of a young officer's ritual suicide after the 1936 coup — prefiguring his own 1970 death

The Sea of Fertility (Last)

#1056 · 1916-55 (correspondence across four decades); published in 1971 (German); English 1971 (Walker)

Mishima's final tetralogy — completed the day of his 1970 ritual suicide, tracing reincarnation across twentieth-century Japan

Twentieth-century physics / philosophy of science 2

The Born-Einstein Letters (Mature-late)

#752 · 1964 (lectures); 1965 (book)

The Einstein-Born letters — the principal documentary record of the early-twentieth-century physics debate, especially over quantum mechanics

The Character of Physical Law (Mid)

Richard Feynman

Feynman's 1965 Messenger Lectures on the structure and character of physical laws

Western Catholicism / Scholasticism / Thomism 2

#13 · 1265–1274 (left incomplete at Aquinas's death)

Summa Theologiae

#82 · c. 1259–1265 (Paris and Italy)

Faith and reason in concord — Aristotle baptised, Augustine systematised, the act of being made foundational

Summa Contra Gentiles (Early)

#1655 · c. 4th-5th century

A philosophical case for Christian truth addressed to non-Christian readers — three books from reason, the fourth from revelation

Yogācāra Buddhism / Mahāyāna philosophical idealism 2

Viṃśatikā (Mature (post-conversion to Mahāyāna))

Vasubandhu

Vasubandhu's 4th-5th century 'Twenty Verses on Vijñaptimātra' — defending Yogācāra mind-only against realist objections

#1656 · c. 4th-5th century

Triṃśikā (Mature)

Vasubandhu

Vasubandhu's 'Thirty Verses on Vijñaptimātra' — systematic Yogācāra exposition of consciousness, the three natures, and the eight consciousnesses

20th-century English utopian / perennialist literature 1

#361 · 1962

Island (Late)

#359 · 1946 (German original); 1959 (English translation)

Huxley's 1962 final novel — utopian counterpart to Brave New World, integrating Mahayana Buddhism and psychedelic experience

20th-century existential psychology 1

Man's Search for Meaning (Mid-late)

Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor Frankl's founding text of logotherapy — combining concentration-camp memoir with existential psychology

20th-century Japanese literature 1

#333 · 1965-70 (Spring Snow 1965-67, Runaway Horses 1967-68, The Temple of Dawn 1968-70, The Decay of the Angel 1970-71)

The Sea of Fertility (Late (the major late work, completed the day of his 1970 ritual suicide))

#348 · 1969 (the second of the four Sea of Fertility novels)

Mishima's 1965-70 tetralogy — completed the day of his ritual suicide, the major late work covering 20th-century Japan through reincarnation

20th-century Japanese literature / aestheticist nationalism 1

Runaway Horses (Late)

A young right-wing nationalist's plot for assassination and ritual suicide — Mishima's 1969 second Sea of Fertility novel

20th-century Japanese literature / aestheticist nihilism 1

#342 · 1956

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Mid)

#328 · 1989-90 (the "It from Bit" thesis articulated in conference papers and essays)

The fictional account of the 1950 burning of Kinkakuji — Mishima's 1956 novel of beauty, obsession, destruction

20th-century theoretical physics / philosophy of information 1

It from Bit / Information, Physics, Quantum (Late)

It from Bit — Wheeler's late-career thesis that physical reality (the "It") emerges from informational binary distinctions (the "Bit")

20th-century theoretical physics / philosophy of physics 1

#327 · 1973

Gravitation (Mid-late)

"MTW" — the canonical graduate-level textbook of general relativity, by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler

Actor-network theory 1

#589 · 2005

Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Late)

#1633 · c. late 8th century

Latour's 2005 systematic introduction to actor-network theory — "the social" reassembled as networks of human and non-human actants

Advaita Vedanta / classical Hindu commentary 1

Bhagavad Gītā Bhāṣya (Career-defining)

Adi Śaṅkara

Śaṅkara's 8th-century 'Bhagavad Gītā Bhāṣya' — the founding Advaita-Vedantic reading of the Gita

Advaita Vedanta / classical Hindu philosophical didactic 1

#1634 · c. late 8th century

Upadeśasāhasrī (Mature)

Adi Śaṅkara

Śaṅkara's 'Upadeśasāhasrī' (A Thousand Teachings) — independent didactic exposition of Advaita Vedanta

African American literary criticism 1

#332 · 1992 (William E. Massey Lectures at Harvard, 1990)

Playing in the Dark (Mid-late)

Whiteness and the literary imagination — Morrison's 1992 Massey Lectures, the central African American literary-critical analysis of the canonical American literature

African American literary-political essay 1

#1074 · 1955

Notes of a Native Son (Mid-mature)

Baldwin's founding essay collection — title essay on his father, "Stranger in the Village," Paris pieces

African American literature 1

#1073 · 1953

Go Tell It on the Mountain (Early)

Baldwin's semi-autobiographical first novel — Harlem Pentecostal-Christian boyhood

African American literature / mid-twentieth-century LGBT literature 1

#1075 · 1956

Giovanni's Room (Mid-mature)

Baldwin's 1956 Paris novel of male homosexual love — major founding text of post-war LGBT literature

African American literature / modernist fiction 1

#331 · 1987

Beloved (Mid (the Pulitzer-winning major novel))

Sethe and the ghost of her daughter — Morrison's 1987 novel of slavery, memory, and what cannot be forgotten

African American prophetic-Christian tradition / contemporary cultural criticism 1

#968 · 2004 (Penguin)

Democracy Matters (Late-mature (the post-9/11 sequel to the 1993 Race Matters))

#966 · 1993 (Beacon Press; 25th anniversary edition 2017)

American democracy faces three dogmas — free-market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism, and escalating authoritarianism — and democratic renewal requires confronting each

African American prophetic-Christian tradition / late twentieth-century cultural criticism 1

Race Matters (Mature (the book that established West as a major public intellectual))

Race matters in America — and the failure to address race as a structural condition rather than a personal attitude has kept American democracy from its promise

African American social thought 1

#620 · 1903

The Souls of Black Folk (Mid)

W.E.B. Du Bois

Du Bois's 1903 foundational text — double consciousness, the veil, the Talented Tenth

African literary-philosophical criticism 1

#341 · 1976

Myth, Literature and the African World (Mid)

African myth and literature as the proper framework for African writing

African literary-philosophical criticism / Yoruba metaphysics 1

#1115 · 1976

Myth, Literature and the African World (Mid)

Soyinka's 1976 Cambridge lectures — Yoruba metaphysics and the proper critical reading of African literature

African political-philosophical essay / Postcolonial criticism 1

#1150 · 1996

The Open Sore of a Continent (Late)

Soyinka's 1996 political essays from exile — Abacha's Nigeria, Saro-Wiwa's execution, the unfinished work of African democracy

African political-philosophical memoir / Postcolonial autobiography 1

#1151 · 2006

You Must Set Forth at Dawn (Late)

#580 · 1969 (2nd edn 1990)

Soyinka's 2006 political memoir — half a century of Nigerian political-cultural engagement

African religious-philosophical studies 1

African Religions and Philosophy (Mid)

John S. Mbiti

Mbiti's 1969 foundational text — "I am because we are; we are because I am"

African-American essayism / mid-century US political writing 1

#1605 · 1972

No Name in the Street (Late)

Baldwin's 1972 'No Name in the Street' — late-Baldwin reflection on the close of the civil-rights era

African-American intellectual tradition / American liberal-Democratic tradition 1

#1273 · 1995

Dreams from My Father (Early)

#1268 · 1857 (delivered August 3, 1857, Canandaigua, NY)

Obama's 1995 memoir — race, identity, and the absent Kenyan father

African-American intellectual tradition / Black-radical tradition / American abolition 1

West India Emancipation (Mid)

#1267 · 1859-93 (repeatedly delivered)

Douglass's 1857 Rochester speech — proper-political-philosophical analysis of British emancipation as model for American work

African-American intellectual tradition / Black-radical tradition / American liberal tradition 1

Self-Made Men (Mid-Late)

Douglass's 1859-93 lecture — repeatedly delivered analysis of the "self-made man" ideal

African-American literary tradition / 1970s US political fiction 1

#1606 · 1974

If Beale Street Could Talk (Late)

Baldwin's 1974 'If Beale Street Could Talk' — Tish's voice telling Fonny's wrongful imprisonment

African-American literary tradition / mid-century US realism 1

#1604 · 1962

Another Country (Middle)

Baldwin's 1962 'Another Country' — race, sex, and the Greenwich Village–Harlem axis

African-American literature / Magical realism 1

#1104 · 1977

Song of Solomon (Mid)

Morrison's 1977 novel — Milkman Dead, the flying African ancestor Solomon, the search for the inherited name

African-American literature / Modernist novel 1

#1105 · 1992

Jazz (Late)

Morrison's 1992 Harlem-1926 novel — jazz as form, Joe Trace and Violet, the murdered Dorcas

African-American mysticism / philosophy of community 1

#1416 · 1971

The Search for Common Ground (Late)

Thurman's 1971 inquiry into ground of human community

African-American mysticism / spiritual autobiography 1

#1417 · 1979

With Head and Heart (Late)

Thurman's 1979 autobiography

African-Christian / Anglican ecumenical-interfaith theology 1

#1421 · 2011

God Is Not a Christian (Late)

#1278 · 1994 (May 10, 1994)

Tutu's 2011 ecumenical-interfaith sermons

African-radical political tradition / South African post-apartheid democracy 1

Inaugural Address (Late)

#1061 · 1950s-1993; collected 2005

Mandela's 1994 presidential inaugural — "Never, never and never again"

Afrofuturism 1

The Immeasurable Equation (Posthumous)

Collected poetic-philosophical writings — foundational text of Afrofuturism

AI safety / existential risk analysis 1

#687 · 2014

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Late)

St. Athanasius of Alexandria

Bostrom's 2014 foundational text on the prospect of artificial superintelligence

Alexandrian Christian theology 1

#517 · c. 230

On First Principles (Peri Archōn / De Principiis) (Early)

Origen of Alexandria

Origen's c. 230 foundational systematic theological work — the first Christian systematic

Alexandrian patristic theology 1

#518 · c. 318

On the Incarnation (De Incarnatione Verbi Dei) (Early)

Athanasius's c. 318 foundational treatise on the incarnation — "God became man so that man might become god"

American "New Democrat" political tradition 1

#314 · January 20, 1993

First Inaugural Address (Mid (the inauguration after twelve years of Republican presidency))

William J. Clinton

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America" — Clinton's 1993 inaugural address, the New Democrat synthesis

American abolitionism / African American oratory 1

#296 · July 5, 1852 (delivered at Corinthian Hall, Rochester, NY, to the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society)

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (Mid (Douglass at the height of his oratorical powers))

#622 · 1899-1901 (Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen)

"What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" — Douglass's 1852 oration, the canonical American statement of the contradiction between American liberty and American slavery

American absolute idealism (Harvard) 1

The World and the Individual (Mid)

Josiah Royce

Royce's 1899-1901 Gifford Lectures — foundational American absolute idealism

American analytic constructive empiricism / irrealist pluralism 1

#600 · 1978

Ways of Worldmaking (Late)

Nelson Goodman

Goodman's 1978 foundational text of irrealist pluralism — multiple worlds-of-our-making

American analytic metaphysics 1

#562 · 1983

An Essay on Free Will (Mid)

Peter van Inwagen

Van Inwagen's 1983 foundational analytic libertarian theory of free will — the Consequence Argument

American analytic naturalism / cognitive science 1

#557 · 1991

Consciousness Explained (Mid)

Daniel C. Dennett

Dennett's 1991 naturalist-functionalist theory of consciousness — the "multiple drafts" model

American analytic philosophy / cognitive science 1

#737 · 1975

The Language of Thought (Mid)

Jerry Fodor

Fodor's 1975 founding treatise of the language-of-thought (LOT) hypothesis — Mentalese

American analytic philosophy / Kantian constructivism 1

#738 · 1996 (Tanner Lectures 1992)

The Sources of Normativity (Mid)

Christine Korsgaard

Korsgaard's 1996 Tanner Lectures on the constitutivist foundations of moral normativity

American analytic Reformed epistemology 1

#561 · 2000

Warranted Christian Belief (Late)

Alvin Plantinga

Plantinga's 2000 Reformed epistemology — Christian belief as warranted basic belief, not requiring evidentialist support

American Black Muslim / Pan-African liberation 1

#709 · 1965

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Late)

Malcolm X with Alex Haley

Malcolm X with Alex Haley's 1965 foundational autobiography of African-American radical Islam and liberation

American business / political celebrity 1

#352 · 1987

Trump: The Art of the Deal (Early)

Donald J. Trump

Trump's 1987 business memoir that established his celebrity-business persona

American business-celebrity tradition 1

#1376 · 1997

Trump: The Art of the Comeback (Mid)

Donald J. Trump

Trump's 1997 business-comeback book

American Catholic / Trappist monastic spirituality 1

#223 · 1948

The Seven Storey Mountain (Early (Merton's breakthrough book; the spiritual autobiography of his conversion))

A modern Augustine's Confessions — Merton's 1948 narrative of his conversion to Catholicism and entry into the Trappist monastery at Gethsemani

American Catholic contemplative spirituality / social criticism 1

#363 · 1966

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Late)

Merton's 1966 mature work — integrating Trappist contemplative depth with social-political engagement

American Catholic Worker movement 1

#626 · 1952

The Long Loneliness (Late)

Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day's 1952 foundational autobiography — the Catholic Worker, voluntary poverty, hospitality, pacifism

American Christian realism / political theology 1

#246 · 1952

The Irony of American History (Late (Niebuhr's major Cold War political-theological book))

#1620 · c. 1943 (earlier versions debated)

The "ironic" structure of American national self-understanding — Niebuhr's 1952 Christian-realist analysis of Cold War American politics

American Christian realism / Protestant devotional / twelve-step tradition 1

The Serenity Prayer (Middle)

Niebuhr's c. 1943 Serenity Prayer — 'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change'

American Christian realism / Protestant social ethics 1

#245 · 1932

Moral Man and Immoral Society (Early-mid (Niebuhr's breakthrough book that established Christian realism))

#218 · 1963 (collected sermons; some preached at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Montgomery in the 1950s)

Individual moral capacity vs collective moral failure — Niebuhr's 1932 book that established Christian realism against liberal Protestant optimism

American Civil Rights / black-church preaching 1

Strength to Love (Mid (the major collection of sermons))

#1623 · April 16, 1963 (written in jail in response to a published statement by eight Alabama clergymen criticising King's direct-action methods)

King's major book of theological-pastoral preaching — Christian love as the principle of non-violent social transformation

American Civil Rights / black-church theology / non-violent direct-action 1

Letter from Birmingham Jail (Mid (the canonical theological-political document))

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" — King's 7,000-word jail-cell letter defending non-violent direct action and the Christian-prophetic foundations of civil rights

American cognitive linguistics / embodied cognition 1

#685 · 1980

Metaphors We Live By (Late)

Lakoff & Johnson's 1980 foundational text — metaphor as constitutive of thought, not mere linguistic decoration

American cognitive science / artificial intelligence 1

#598 · 1979

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Mid)

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Hofstadter's 1979 foundational text — strange loops, self-reference, and the emergence of consciousness

American Cold War political rhetoric 1

#308 · June 12, 1987 (delivered at the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin)

Tear Down This Wall (Late (Reagan presidency at its rhetorical peak))

#315 · 1962 (after Nixon's 1960 presidential defeat to Kennedy)

"Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" — Reagan's June 1987 Berlin Wall speech, the canonical American Cold War demand for the end of Soviet division of Europe

American Cold War political tradition 1

Six Crises (Mid (pre-presidential, post-1960 defeat))

#462 · 1982 (2nd edn 1998)

Nixon's six major political crises — Alger Hiss, the Fund Crisis, Eisenhower's heart attack, the Caracas mob, the Khrushchev "Kitchen Debate," the 1960 election

American communitarianism 1

Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Early)

Michael J. Sandel

Sandel's 1982 communitarian critique of Rawlsian liberalism — the "unencumbered self"

American communitarianism / pluralist liberalism 1

#463 · 1983

Spheres of Justice (Mid)

Michael Walzer

Walzer's 1983 pluralist theory of justice — "complex equality" across distinct social spheres

American conservatism / Cold War political rhetoric 1

#307 · October 27, 1964 (broadcast nationally on behalf of Goldwater)

A Time for Choosing (Early (launched Reagan's political career))

"The Speech" — Reagan's 1964 nationally televised address on behalf of Goldwater, the founding document of modern American conservatism's movement politics

American conservatism / Cold War political tradition 1

#1367 · 1978

RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (Late)

Nixon's 1978 post-presidential memoir

American conservative political tradition 1

#349 · 1990

An American Life (Late)

#460 · 1787-88 (Independent Journal, New York Packet, Daily Advertiser)

Reagan's 1990 presidential memoir — the major retrospective account of his political career

American constitutional liberalism 1

The Federalist Papers (Mid)

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay

The 85 papers (1787-88) by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay in defense of the proposed US Constitution

American critical feminism / postmodern social theory 1

#500 · 1990

Justice and the Politics of Difference (Mid)

Iris Marion Young

Young's 1990 foundational work on group-based oppression and justice — the "five faces of oppression"

American critical race theory 1

#506 · 1991 (Stanford Law Review)

Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color (Mid)

Kimberlé Crenshaw

Crenshaw's 1991 foundational essay on intersectionality — Black women at the intersection of race and gender

American critical social theory 1

#696 · 1977

The Fall of Public Man (Mid)

Richard Sennett

Sennett's 1977 foundational historical-social analysis — the decline of public life and the tyranny of intimacy

American critical sociology 1

#689 · 1959

The Sociological Imagination (Mid)

C. Wright Mills

Mills's 1959 foundational text — the sociological imagination connects private troubles to public issues

American Democratic Party politics 1

#351 · 2007

Promises to Keep (Mid)

Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Biden's 2007 political memoir before the 2008 presidential campaign

American ecological theology / cosmological-Christian 1

#593 · 1988

The Dream of the Earth (Late)

Thomas Berry

Berry's 1988 foundational text of ecological theology — the "Great Work" of transition to Ecozoic Era

American Enlightenment 1

#617 · 1781-82 (composed); 1785 (Paris edn); 1787 (London edn)

Notes on the State of Virginia (Mid)

Jefferson's 1785 Notes — foundational text of American Enlightenment political thought

American Enlightenment / Eclectic deism 1

#1135 · 1728

Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion (Early)

#1134 · 1747-1750 (letters), 1751 (first edition)

Young Franklin's 1728 private religious credo — eclectic-deist articles for his own devotional practice

American Enlightenment / Experimental natural philosophy 1

Experiments and Observations on Electricity (Mid)

Franklin's 1751 collected electrical letters — founding work of American natural science

American evangelical Protestantism / Popular eschatology 1

#1173 · 1983

Approaching Hoofbeats (Mid)

Graham's 1983 apocalyptic-prophetic study — the four horsemen of Revelation as warning to the contemporary world

American evangelicalism 1

#345 · 1953

Peace with God (Early-mid)

Graham's 1953 evangelical bestseller — the major popular statement of mid-20th-century American evangelical theology

American feminist science studies 1

#594 · 2003

The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Late)

Donna J. Haraway

Haraway's 2003 foundational text on multi-species companionship — dogs and humans as significant others

American generative linguistics 1

#684 · 1957

Syntactic Structures (Early)

#623 · 1907 (private printing); 1918 (public)

Chomsky's 1957 foundational generative linguistics — "colorless green ideas sleep furiously"

American Hegelian political theory 1

#596 · 1992

The End of History and the Last Man (Mid)

Francis Fukuyama

Fukuyama's 1992 controversial post-Cold-War political philosophy — the "end of history" in liberal democracy

American historical-philosophical literature 1

The Education of Henry Adams (Late)

Henry Adams

Henry Adams's 1907/1918 — third-person autobiographical reflection on American education and historical acceleration

American idealism / Harvard pragmatism 1

#405 · 1908

The Philosophy of Loyalty (Late)

Josiah Royce

Royce's 1908 idealist-pragmatist treatise on loyalty as the central ethical category

American left-libertarian socialism / anti-imperialism / political philosophy of US foreign policy 1

#1520 · 1969

American Power and the New Mandarins (Early (political work))

Chomsky's 1969 political debut — the New Mandarins and US conduct in Vietnam

American liberal-Aristotelian capabilities approach 1

#499 · 2006

Frontiers of Justice (Late)

Martha C. Nussbaum

Nussbaum's 2006 application of the capabilities approach to disability, nationality, and species membership

American liberal-progressive memoir tradition 1

#1125 · 1937

This Is My Story (Mid)

#1127 · 1962 (written, unfinished at her death), 1963 (published posthumously)

Roosevelt's 1937 autobiography — childhood and marriage through 1924

American liberal-progressive political tradition 1

Tomorrow Is Now (Late)

Roosevelt's posthumous 1963 testament — the unfinished work of American liberal democracy

American liberal-progressive practical-ethical tradition 1

#1126 · 1960

You Learn by Living (Late)

#186 · 1941 (vol. I, Human Nature); 1943 (vol. II, Human Destiny) — based on the Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, 1939

Roosevelt's 1960 practical-philosophical reflections — eleven keys to a more fulfilling life

American libertarianism 1

#461 · 1974

Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Mid)

Robert Nozick

Nozick's 1974 libertarian response to Rawls — the minimal state, entitlement theory of justice

American mainline Protestant Christian realism 1

The Nature and Destiny of Man (Mid-late (Niebuhr's major systematic work))

Christian anthropology and eschatology against modern optimism — human nature as the paradoxical synthesis of nature and spirit, sin and grace

American moderate-conservatism / Realist international relations 1

#1372 · 1998

A World Transformed (Late)

#675 · 1954 (collection of poems 1923-54)

Bush and Scowcroft's 1998 foreign-policy presidential memoir

American modernist poetry 1

Collected Poems (Late)

Wallace Stevens

Stevens's 1954 Collected Poems — foundational text of American modernist poetry

American neo-pragmatism 1

#322 · 1989

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Mid)

The "liberal ironist" — Rorty's framework combining private self-creation with public solidarity

American neo-pragmatism / postanalytic philosophy 1

#182 · 1979

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Mid (the breakthrough book))

#164 · March 4, 1865 (six weeks before his assassination)

The mind as the mirror of nature — the founding image of modern epistemology — historically deconstructed. After foundationalism, edifying philosophical conversation

American New Democrat political tradition 1

#350 · 2004

My Life (Late)

William J. Clinton

Clinton's 2004 presidential autobiography — the major retrospective account of his career through the presidency

American political liberalism 1

#565 · 2001

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Late)

John Rawls

Rawls's 2001 final statement — restatement of justice as fairness in light of decades of criticism

American political science / civic engagement studies 1

#695 · 2000

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Late)

Robert D. Putnam

Putnam's 2000 foundational text — the decline of social capital and civic engagement in America

American political theology / Christian republicanism 1

Second Inaugural Address (Late (six weeks before assassination))

Abraham Lincoln

"With malice toward none, with charity for all" — Lincoln's most theologically searching speech: the war as divine judgment on both North and South for the offence of slavery

American political theology / republican civic religion 1

#163 · November 19, 1863 (delivered 4½ months after the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863)

Gettysburg Address (Mature (Civil War))

Abraham Lincoln

"Of the people, by the people, for the people" — the founding text of an American civic religion in which the Civil War becomes a re-founding of the nation on the ground of equality

American populist-conservative tradition 1

#1377 · 2015

Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (Late)

Donald J. Trump

Trump's 2015 pre-presidential campaign book

American pragmatism (founding text) 1

How to Make Our Ideas Clear

Charles Sanders Peirce

Consider what effects might conceivably have practical bearings — your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object

American pragmatism / Jamesean popular philosophy 1

#146 · 1907 (from 1906 Lowell Lectures, Boston)

Pragmatism (Late)

#106 · 1925 (Carus Lectures, Chicago; revised 1929)

Truth happens to an idea — and pragmatism is the philosophical method of evaluating beliefs by their practical consequences

American pragmatism / naturalism 1

Experience and Nature (Late)

#185 · 1897 (title essay, addressed to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown, 1896)

Experience and nature are not opposed — experience is how we know nature, and nature is what experience is of

American pragmatism / philosophy of religion 1

The Will to Believe (Mid (between Principles of Psychology and Varieties of Religious Experience))

In genuine options that cannot be settled on intellectual grounds, our passional and volitional nature must decide — and may legitimately decide for religious belief

American pragmatism / progressive education 1

#401 · 1916

Democracy and Education (Mid)

Dewey's 1916 systematic philosophy of education and democracy

American pragmatism / progressive politics 1

#323 · 1998

Achieving Our Country (Late)

#60 · 1901–02 (Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh); 1902 (book form)

A critique of the cultural Left, a call for the reformist Left — Rorty's 1998 book, prophetic of subsequent American political developments

American pragmatism / psychology of religion 1

The Varieties of Religious Experience

#201 · 1890 (after twelve years of writing; James later said he should not have spent so much time on it)

Religion is real because its effects are real — judged not by origins but by fruits, the "more" disclosed in religious experience deserves respect

American pragmatism / scientific psychology / philosophy of mind 1

The Principles of Psychology (Mid (the major early work; foundational for both psychology and pragmatist philosophy))

#621 · 1934 (posthumous; lectures 1928-30)

The stream of thought, the will, habit, emotion, attention — James's 1890 founding synthesis of scientific psychology with philosophical anthropology

American pragmatism / symbolic interactionism 1

Mind, Self, and Society (Late)

George Herbert Mead

Mead's 1934 foundational text of symbolic interactionism — mind, self, and society arising from social action

American presidential memoir / post-9/11 political reflection 1

#1684 · 2010

Decision Points (Late (post-presidency))

George W. Bush

G. W. Bush's 2010 'Decision Points' — presidential memoir structured around 14 major decisions

American Progressive social-ethical tradition 1

#624 · 1910

Twenty Years at Hull-House (Late)

Jane Addams

Jane Addams's 1910 foundational text — the Settlement Movement and the social-ethical tradition

American radical feminism 1

#498 · 1989

Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Mid)

Catharine A. MacKinnon

MacKinnon's 1989 foundational radical-feminist legal-political theory — sex as a political category

American Reformed Calvinist philosophical theology 1

#612 · 1754

Freedom of the Will (Late)

Edwards's 1754 foundational text of American Reformed philosophical theology — compatibilist freedom

American Reformed-Calvinist evangelical theology 1

#174 · 1746

A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (Mid (Northampton pastorate; the major work of evangelical reflection))

True religion consists chiefly in holy affections — Edwards's twelve signs distinguishing genuine spiritual experience from its counterfeits

American Revolutionary thought 1

#618 · 1776 (January)

Common Sense (Mid)

Thomas Paine

Paine's 1776 foundational pamphlet of the American Revolution — case for independence

American second-wave liberal feminism 1

#497 · 1963

The Feminine Mystique (Late)

Betty Friedan

Friedan's 1963 catalyst of second-wave American feminism — "the problem that has no name"

American slave narrative / African American autobiographical tradition 1

#295 · 1845

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Early (the first of Douglass's three autobiographies))

#309 · 1975 (campaign biography for the 1976 presidential campaign)

The founding text of the African American autobiographical tradition — Douglass's 1845 first-person testimony of his enslavement and escape

American Social Gospel movement 1

#625 · 1917

A Theology for the Social Gospel (Late)

Walter Rauschenbusch

Rauschenbusch's 1917 foundational Social Gospel theology — Christianizing the social order

American social-psychological criticism 1

#693 · 1979

The Culture of Narcissism (Late)

Christopher Lasch

Lasch's 1979 foundational text — late capitalism produces narcissistic personality structure

American Southern evangelical political tradition 1

Why Not the Best? (Mid (pre-presidential))

Shunryu Suzuki (Suzuki-rōshi)

The campaign autobiography that introduced Jimmy Carter to America — Georgia governor, Naval officer, peanut farmer, born-again Southern Baptist

American Sōtō Zen Buddhism 1

#631 · 1970

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Late)

Shunryu Suzuki's 1970 foundational text — "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities..."

American Tibetan Buddhism (Kagyu/Shambhala) 1

#680 · 1997

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Late)

Pema Chödrön (Deirdre Blomfield-Brown)

Pema Chödrön's 1997 foundational contemporary American Tibetan Buddhist teaching on suffering and openness

American Transcendentalism / democratic poetics 1

#555 · 1855 (1st edn); 1881 (definitive); 1892 (deathbed)

Leaves of Grass (Late)

Walt Whitman

Whitman's 1855-92 foundational American democratic-poetic vision — "I contain multitudes"

American transcendentalism / liberal religion 1

#1025 · 1838 (delivered July 15, 1838, at Harvard Divinity School; published as An Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, 1838)

Divinity School Address (Mature)

#180 · 1854 (drawing on Thoreau's 1845-47 residence at Walden Pond)

The miracle is not Christ's but the ongoing miracle of moral-religious sensibility in every soul — Emerson's founding manifesto of transcendentalist religion

American transcendentalism / nature writing 1

Walden (Mid (Thoreau's major prose statement))

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately" — Thoreau's two-year experiment in simple living and his philosophical-naturalistic reflection on its meaning

American Transcendentalism / nature-writing / philosophical journal 1

#1677 · 1837-1861

Journal (Career-spanning)

#1019 · 1849 (first published as "Resistance to Civil Government" in Aesthetic Papers; reprinted posthumously as "Civil Disobedience" in 1866)

Thoreau's 1837-1861 'Journal' — 14 manuscript volumes, his career-spanning magnum opus and the matrix from which Walden was distilled

American transcendentalism / political-philosophical individualism 1

Resistance to Civil Government (Mature)

#1021 · 1846-57 (three Maine expedition narratives composed across a decade); compiled posthumously 1864

"That government is best which governs least" — and when government becomes unjust, refusal to obey is not only a right but a duty

American transcendentalism / wilderness literature 1

The Maine Woods (Mature-late)

#619 · 1794 (Part I); 1795 (Part II); 1807 (Part III)

Three Maine expeditions — Ktaadn, Chesuncook, the Allegash and East Branch — and the foundational American confrontation with the unmodified wilderness

American Wittgensteinian-Emersonian philosophy 1

#601 · 1979

The Claim of Reason (Mid)

Stanley Cavell

Cavell's 1979 foundational text — Wittgenstein, scepticism, morality, tragedy

American/British Deist thought 1

The Age of Reason (Late)

Thomas Paine

Paine's 1794-95 deist critique of Christianity — "I believe in one God, and no more"

Anabaptist pacifist Christian ethics 1

#428 · 1972 (2nd edn 1994)

The Politics of Jesus (Mid)

John Howard Yoder

Yoder's 1972 foundational Anabaptist work — the political-ethical witness of Jesus is normative for the Church

Analytic metaphysics / mereology / philosophy of mathematics 1

#1557 · 1991

Parts of Classes (Late-middle)

Lewis's 1991 mereological reformulation of set theory — classes have proper parts, not membership

Analytic metaphysics / modal metaphysics / possible-worlds semantics 1

#1475 · 2003

Ways a World Might Be (Late-middle)

Stalnaker's 2003 essays on modal metaphysics — moderate modal actualism against Lewisian modal realism

Analytic metaphysics / modal realism 1

#413 · 1986

On the Plurality of Worlds (Late (Lewis's mature systematic statement of the modal-realist programme))

Every way the world could have been is a way some concrete world is — modal realism in its strongest form

Analytic metaphysics / modal realism / Humean supervenience 1

#1558 · 1999

Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology (Late)

Lewis's 1999 collection — Humean supervenience, knowledge by acquaintance, properties as universals

Analytic metaphysics / philosophical logic / philosophy of language 1

#1559 · 1998

Papers in Philosophical Logic (Late)

Lewis's 1998 collection — counterfactuals, modal logic, conditional probability, two-dimensional semantics

Analytic metaphysics / philosophy of language / philosophy of mind 1

#1474 · 1999

Context and Content (Mid-to-late)

Stalnaker's 1999 essays on intentionality, context, and the structure of belief and assertion

Analytic metaphysics / philosophy of mind / epistemology of self-knowledge 1

#1476 · 2008

Our Knowledge of the Internal World (Late)

Stalnaker's 2008 Locke Lectures — self-knowledge through the same possible-worlds machinery as knowledge of the external world

Analytic metaphysics / philosophy of mind and language / possible-worlds semantics 1

#1473 · 1984

Inquiry (Mid-career)

Stalnaker's 1984 monograph — propositions as sets of possible worlds, assertion as adding to common ground

Analytic metaphysics / possible-worlds semantics / philosophy of language 1

#1472 · 1968

A Theory of Conditionals (Early)

#1487 · 1953 (essays 1939-1952)

Stalnaker's 1968 founding paper of the possible-worlds semantics for conditionals — the 'Stalnaker conditional'

Analytic philosophy / American pragmatism / philosophical logic / Quinean naturalism 1

From a Logical Point of View (Mid-career)

Quine's 1953 essay collection — home of 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' and 'On What There Is'

Analytic philosophy / British empiricism 1

#104 · 1912

The Problems of Philosophy (Early)

#1258 · 1933 (vol. 1), 1938 (vol. 2)

A short introduction to philosophical questions about knowledge, perception, induction, and the value of philosophy itself

Analytic philosophy / Cambridge analytic-philosophy 1

Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (Mature)

#1257 · 1923 (lectures), 1925 (book)

Broad's 1933-38 two-volume systematic examination of McTaggart's philosophy

Analytic philosophy / Cambridge analytic-philosophy / Emergent materialism 1

The Mind and its Place in Nature (Mid)

Broad's 1925 Tarner Lectures — major philosophy-of-mind work; emergent materialism and the seventeen possible theories

Analytic philosophy / Cambridge analytic-philosophy / Ethical theory 1

#1259 · 1930

Five Types of Ethical Theory (Mid)

#1260 · 1959-60 (lectures), 1962 (book)

Broad's 1930 systematic survey — Spinoza, Butler, Hume, Kant, Sidgwick

Analytic philosophy / Cambridge analytic-philosophy / Psychical research 1

Lectures on Psychical Research (Late)

#1567 · 1981 (papers c. 1950-1980)

Broad's 1962 Perrott Lectures — analytic-philosophical engagement with psychical-research claims

Analytic philosophy / Catholic-Aristotelian ethics / philosophy of mind / Wittgenstein scholarship 1

Collected Philosophical Papers (Late)

G. E. M. Anscombe (Elizabeth Anscombe)

Anscombe's 1981 three-volume Collected Philosophical Papers — From Parmenides to Wittgenstein; Metaphysics; Ethics, Religion and Politics

Analytic philosophy / Empirical semantics / Norwegian philosophy 1

#1345 · 1953

Interpretation and Preciseness (Mid)

Næss's 1953 work on philosophical method

Analytic philosophy / Existential-risk studies / Effective altruism 1

#1339 · 2008

Global Catastrophic Risks (Mid)

#114 · Written 1949–51 (in Wittgenstein's final eighteen months); published posthumously 1969

Bostrom and Ćirković's 2008 edited volume on existential risks

Analytic philosophy / late-late Wittgenstein 1

On Certainty (Latest)

#25 · 1918 (drafted in the trenches); 1921 (German pub.); 1922 (Ogden English ed.)

The foundations of empirical knowledge lie in our forms of life — and our framework certainties cannot themselves be doubted within the system that depends on them

Analytic philosophy / logical atomism 1

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Early)

The world is the totality of facts, not of things — and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent

Analytic philosophy / Logicism / Mathematical logic 1

#1310 · 1903

The Principles of Mathematics (Early)

Russell's 1903 foundational logicist treatise

Analytic philosophy / logicism / philosophy of mathematics 1

#105 · 1884

The Foundations of Arithmetic

#1179 · 1955 (1st ed.), 1962 (2nd ed.)

Arithmetic is reducible to logic — numbers are not subjective ideas but objective abstract entities accessible to reason

Analytic philosophy / Mathematical-philosophical logic 1

Formal Logic (Early)

Prior's 1955 textbook — comprehensive presentation of modern formal logic with historical and philosophical context

Analytic philosophy / Natural realism 1

#1087 · 1999

The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (Late)

#148 · 1951 (Philosophical Review)

Putnam's 1999 Dewey Lectures — "natural realism" undoes the modern dichotomy between mind and world

Analytic philosophy / naturalized epistemology 1

Two Dogmas of Empiricism

#30 · c. 1929–49 (drafted across two decades); 1953 (posthumous publication, ed. Anscombe & Rhees)

Two dogmas of empiricism — the analytic/synthetic distinction and reductionism — are untenable; all our beliefs face the tribunal of experience as a corporate body

Analytic philosophy / ordinary-language philosophy 1

Philosophical Investigations (Late)

#1562 · 2011 (essays 1962-2008)

Meaning is use — language is a family of games — philosophy leaves everything as it is, and the picture of the inner that held us captive is dismantled

Analytic philosophy / philosophy of language / metaphysics / philosophy of logic 1

Philosophical Troubles (Late)

#159 · 1910 (vol. 1), 1912 (vol. 2), 1913 (vol. 3); 2nd edition 1925-27

Kripke's 2011 'Philosophical Troubles' — Vol. 1 of Collected Papers, including 'A Puzzle about Belief' and 'Outline of a Theory of Truth'

Analytic philosophy / philosophy of mathematics / mathematical logic 1

Principia Mathematica (Early (both authors))

Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell

The logicist programme in its most ambitious form — three volumes deriving arithmetic, set theory, and analysis from a small set of logical primitives

Analytic philosophy / Philosophy of mind / Philosophy of language 1

#1182 · 1970-71 (drafted), 1971 (posthumous publication)

Objects of Thought (Late)

Prior's 1971 posthumous work — propositions, intentionality, and the philosophy of mind

Analytic philosophy / Philosophy of science 1

#1338 · 2002

Anthropic Bias (Early)

Bostrom's 2002 work on observation selection effects

Analytic philosophy / pragmatism 1

#294 · 1981

Reason, Truth and History (Mid (the major mid-career book, the systematic statement of internal realism))

"Internal realism" — Putnam's 1981 major book, the systematic statement of his middle-period position between metaphysical realism and relativism

Analytic philosophy / Pragmatism 1

#1086 · 1994

Words and Life (Late)

#1491 · 1990 (revised 1992)

Putnam's 1994 essays marking his pragmatist turn — words, meaning, and the life-world that gives them sense

Analytic philosophy / Quinean naturalism 1

Pursuit of Truth (Late)

Quine's 1990 short late synthesis — his philosophy in 100 compressed pages

Analytic philosophy / Quinean naturalism / philosophy of language / philosophy of mind 1

#1490 · 1974

The Roots of Reference (Late)

Quine's 1974 Carus Lectures — how the child comes to refer, naturalised through behavioural-stimulus theory

Analytic philosophy / Quinean naturalism / pragmatism 1

#1489 · 1969

Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (Mid-to-late)

#1443 · 2012 (2010 Locke Lectures, Oxford)

Quine's 1969 lecture-essay volume — 'Epistemology Naturalized' and the indeterminacy of reference

Analytic philosophy / scrutability theory 1

Constructing the World (Mid)

Chalmers's 2012 Locke Lectures — neo-Carnapian scrutability project

Analytic philosophy / Secular humanism 1

#1313 · 1930

The Conquest of Happiness (Mid)

#1566 · 1959 (2nd ed. 1971)

Russell's 1930 popular work on happiness

Analytic philosophy / Wittgenstein scholarship / Catholic philosophical thought 1

An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Mid-career)

G. E. M. Anscombe (Elizabeth Anscombe)

Anscombe's 1959 'Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus' — the standard postwar English commentary

Analytic philosophy of language / formal pragmatics 1

#931 · 1969 (Harvard UP; based on his 1967 Harvard PhD dissertation under W. V. O. Quine)

Convention: A Philosophical Study (Early (Lewis's first book, published at 28, the year he began at UCLA))

A convention is a stable solution to a coordination problem — and the conventions of language are not arbitrary but rationally selected for mutual benefit

Analytic philosophy of language / pragmatics / philosophy of mind 1

#1477 · 2014

Context (Late)

Stalnaker's 2014 monograph — the common-ground model of conversation, refined and applied

Analytic philosophy of language / speech-act theory 1

#1554 · 1979

Expression and Meaning (Mid-career)

Searle's 1979 essays extending speech-act theory to indirect speech, metaphor, fiction, and literal meaning

Analytic philosophy of mind 1

#324 · 1988

Representation and Reality (Mid)

Putnam's rejection of his own earlier functionalism — the 1988 critique of computational-functionalist philosophy of mind

Analytic philosophy of mind / biological naturalism 1

#1556 · 2004

Mind: A Brief Introduction (Late)

Searle's 2004 late synthesis — biological-naturalist philosophy of mind in ~330 pages

Analytic philosophy of mind / consciousness studies 1

#1442 · 2010

The Character of Consciousness (Mid)

Chalmers's 2010 collected consciousness-philosophy essays

Analytic philosophy of mind / late-twentieth-century consciousness studies 1

#411 · 1996

The Conscious Mind (Early (Chalmers's breakthrough book, derived from his 1993 Indiana PhD))

The "hard problem" of consciousness — why physical processes give rise to subjective experience at all

Analytic philosophy of mind / virtual realism 1

#647 · 2022

Reality+ (Late (Chalmers's major popular-and-technical synthesis on virtual reality and the simulation hypothesis))

#927 · 1957 (Schweizer Monatshefte; book edition Rascher, Zurich; English trans. R.F.C. Hull, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1958)

Virtual reality is genuine reality — the systematic philosophical defense of virtual realism

Analytic philosophy of time / formal logic 1

#414 · 1957

Time and Modality (Early (Prior's first major synthesis of tense logic, derived from his 1955-56 Oxford Locke Lectures))

Arthur N. Prior

The future is open, the present is uniquely real — tense logic as the formal vindication of presentism

Analytical psychology / Cold War cultural criticism 1

The Undiscovered Self (Late (one of Jung's last short works, written at 82))

#408 · 1912 (revised 1952)

The mass society and the totalitarian state are the external symptoms of an inner condition — the undiscovered Self

Analytical psychology / depth psychology 1

Symbols of Transformation (Early (the 1912 break-from-Freud book; revised in 1952 as the mature statement of analytical psychology's mythopoeic register))

The libido as not solely sexual but generally psychic energy — the archetypal substrate of myth, religion, and the collective unconscious

Analytical psychology / depth-psychological theology 1

#344 · 1952

Answer to Job (Late)

#925 · 1951 (Aion: Untersuchungen zur Symbolgeschichte, Rascher, Zurich; English trans. R.F.C. Hull, Collected Works vol. 9, pt II, 1959)

God as undergoing development through human encounter — Jung's 1952 engagement with Job

Analytical psychology / Jungian depth psychology 1

Aion (Late (one of Jung's last and most ambitious works, written in his mid-seventies))

#926 · 1914-30 (composed in calligraphic script with painted illuminations; published 2009 by W. W. Norton, ed. Sonu Shamdasani)

The Christ-symbol is the symbol of the Self — and the historical "age of Aion" demands the integration of the shadow that the Christ-image has projected outward

Analytical psychology / visionary literature 1

The Red Book (Middle (the personal experimental record from which all of Jung's later theoretical work emerged))

The seed-text of Jungian depth psychology — Jung's personal record of the active-imagination experiments that produced the archetypal framework

Anglican apologetic / philosophical theology 1

#167 · 1940

The Problem of Pain (Mid (post-conversion, pre-Narnia))

#29 · 1941–44 (BBC talks); 1952 (single-volume book form)

A theodicy in ten chapters — the goodness and omnipotence of God reconciled with suffering through human fallenness, the necessity of moral freedom, and divine love as deeper than divine kindness

Anglican Christianity / classical Christian apologetics 1

Mere Christianity

#131 · 1943 (Riddell Memorial Lectures, Durham, 1942)

The "trilemma" of Lord, liar, or lunatic; the moral law as evidence of a moral Lawgiver; the common Christianity beneath denominational difference

Anglican Christianity / natural law tradition 1

The Abolition of Man

#1120 · 1776 (June drafted, July 4 adopted)

Without the natural law, "man's power over nature" becomes some men's power over other men — and the conditioners abolish the very humanity they claim to perfect

Anglo-American classical liberalism / Lockean natural rights 1

Declaration of Independence (Early)

#1121 · 1777 (drafted), 1786 (enacted)

Jefferson's 1776 statement of American independence — the foundational text of the American polity

Anglo-American classical liberalism / Religious-disestablishment tradition 1

Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (Early)

Jefferson's 1786 statute disestablishing religion in Virginia — foundational text of religious-liberty law

Anglo-American classical liberalism / Whig-revolutionary tradition 1

#1122 · 1774

A Summary View of the Rights of British America (Early)

Jefferson's 1774 pamphlet on the rights of British America — the polemical foundation of his constitutional thought

Anglo-American logical-empiricist philosophy of science 1

#434 · 1965

Aspects of Scientific Explanation (Mid)

Carl G. Hempel

Hempel's 1965 essay collection — the deductive-nomological (covering-law) account of scientific explanation

Anglo-American modernism / Anglo-Catholic religious drama 1

#1169 · 1935

Murder in the Cathedral (Mid)

Eliot's 1935 verse drama — the 1170 martyrdom of Thomas Becket; church-state confrontation as religious-political tragedy

Anglo-American modernism / Anglo-Catholic religious poetry 1

#1168 · 1927-1930

Ash-Wednesday (Mid)

#1167 · 1910-11 (drafted), 1915 (published)

Eliot's 1930 long poem — first major work after his 1927 conversion to Anglo-Catholicism

Anglo-American modernism / Modern poetry 1

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (Early)

#676 · 1944-46 (composed); 1947 (published)

Eliot's 1915 dramatic monologue — early modernist breakthrough; the inhibited consciousness of J. Alfred Prufrock

Anglo-American modernist poetry 1

The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Mid)

W.H. Auden

Auden's 1947 foundational long poem — "the age of anxiety" defining post-WWII spiritual condition

Anglo-American post-Wittgensteinian philosophy 1

#436 · 1958

The Uses of Argument (Early)

Stephen Toulmin

Toulmin's 1958 foundational work on the structure of practical argument

Anglo-American post-Wittgensteinian philosophy of science 1

#437 · 1958

Patterns of Discovery (Early)

Norwood Russell Hanson

Hanson's 1958 foundational work on the theory-ladenness of observation in science

Anglo-American utilitarian ethics 1

#686 · 1975

Animal Liberation (Mid)

#432 · 1975 (1st edn); 1988 (2nd); 1993 (3rd)

Singer's 1975 foundational animal-rights text — speciesism is unjustifiable discrimination

Anglo-Austrian post-positivist philosophy of science 1

Against Method (Mid)

Paul Feyerabend

Feyerabend's 1975 anarchist philosophy of science — "anything goes"

Anglo-Canadian critical political economy 1

#716 · 2007

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Late)

Naomi Klein

Klein's 2007 foundational text — "disaster capitalism" exploits crises to impose unpopular neoliberal reforms

Anglo-Catholic / Religious-cultural conservatism 1

#1170 · 1939

The Idea of a Christian Society (Mid)

#431 · 1978 (posthumous; key essays from 1968-71)

Eliot's 1939 prose lectures — proposal for a properly-Christian organisation of British political-cultural life

Anglo-Hungarian post-Popperian philosophy of science 1

The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Late)

Imre Lakatos

Lakatos's 1978 posthumous philosophy of scientific research programmes

Anglo-Irish conservative political thought 1

#459 · 1790

Reflections on the Revolution in France (Late)

Edmund Burke

Burke's 1790 foundational conservative critique of the French Revolution

Anglo-Irish idealism / philosophy of mathematics / Anglican polemic 1

#1594 · 1734

The Analyst (Late)

Berkeley's 1734 'The Analyst' — 'ghosts of departed quantities' — the philosophical critique of Newton's infinitesimal calculus

Anti-colonial / decolonisation theory / French Caribbean intellectual tradition 1

#1586 · 1959

A Dying Colonialism (Middle (during Algerian war))

Fanon's 1959 'A Dying Colonialism' — the Algerian revolution as social-cultural transformation

Antiochene Christianity / Literal-historical exegesis 1

#1706 · c. 390 CE

Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew

John Chrysostom

The Golden Mouth on the First Gospel — every passage a moral demand, every parable a call to share wealth and serve the poor

Aristotelian natural philosophy / biology / methodology of science 1

#1553 · c. 350-340 BC

Parts of Animals (Middle)

#958 · c. 1856 (Seven Valleys) and c. 1858 (Four Valleys), both Baghdad period

Aristotle's 'Parts of Animals' — comparative anatomy and the methodology of biology

Australian/British analytic philosophy / moral skepticism 1

#739 · 1977

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Late)

J. L. Mackie

Mackie's 1977 founding work of moral error theory — "there are no objective values"

Austrian school / Brentanian intentionality tradition 1

#550 · 1874

Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt) (Early)

Franz Brentano

Brentano's 1874 foundational text — introducing intentionality as the mark of the mental

Bahá'í Faith / Sufi mystical tradition 1

Seven Valleys and Four Valleys (Early (composed before the 1863 proclamation))

The mystical seeker passes through seven valleys to attain the presence of the Beloved

Beguine mysticism / Free Spirit 1

#532 · c. 1295

The Mirror of Simple Souls (Le Mirouer des Simples Âmes) (Late)

Marguerite Porete

Marguerite Porete's c. 1295 mystical work — for which she was burned for heresy in 1310

Behavioral economics / heuristics-and-biases 1

#704 · 2011

Thinking, Fast and Slow (Late)

Kahneman's 2011 foundational behavioral-economic text — System 1 (fast, intuitive) and System 2 (slow, deliberate) thinking

Behavioural decision science 1

#1085 · 2021

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (Late)

Kahneman et al.'s 2021 study of noise — random variability — as the underappreciated partner of bias in judgment

Behavioural economics 1

#1089 · 2000

Choices, Values, and Frames (Mid)

#706 · 2003-11 (French in 7 vols; English in 2 vols)

Kahneman and Tversky's 2000 collection — prospect theory and its extensions across two decades

Belgian-French ecological-Whiteheadian philosophy 1

Cosmopolitics (Late)

Isabelle Stengers

Stengers's 2003-11 Cosmopolitics — seven-book philosophical-scientific-ecological project

Bengali Hindu devotional / Brahmo Samaj philosophical poetry 1

#234 · 1910 (Bengali original); 1912 (Tagore's own English prose translation)

Gitanjali (Mid (the Nobel-winning collection))

#235 · 1913 (the Hibbert Lectures, Harvard; published 1913)

"Where the mind is without fear" — Tagore's Nobel-winning 1910 collection of devotional poems addressed to the divine Beloved, the central source of his international fame

Bengali Hindu philosophical-religious thought / Brahmo Samaj 1

Sadhana: The Realisation of Life (Mid (the major philosophical prose statement))

#1570 · 1930 lectures; 1931 publication

Sadhana — the realisation of life. Tagore's 1913 Harvard lectures presenting Vedantic-philosophical religious thought for Western audiences

Bengali Renaissance / Brahmo-Samaj universalism / philosophical humanism / Indian spirituality 1

The Religion of Man (Late)

#1572 · 1892 (Bengali); 1913 English version (Macmillan)

Tagore's 1931 Hibbert Lectures — the religion of man as humanist-mystical encounter with the supreme person

Bengali Renaissance literature / Indian mythopoeic-philosophical drama 1

Chitra (Early-to-middle)

#1571 · 1907-09 serialised; 1910 publication

Tagore's 1892 verse-play 'Chitra' — the Mahabharata princess Chitrangada's transformation into beauty, and back

Bengali Renaissance literature / Indian nationalism debate / Brahmo-Samaj 1

Gora (Middle)

#1663 · 1900s-1913 essays; collected 1919

Tagore's 1910 novel 'Gora' — Hindu orthodoxy, Brahmo reform, and the discovery of universal humanity

Bergsonian process-philosophy / French spiritualist tradition / philosophical psychology 1

Mind-Energy (Middle)

#1162 · 2020 (vol. 1), 2021 (vol. 2), 2024 (vol. 3); — series ongoing

Bergson's 1919 'L'Énergie spirituelle' — essays on consciousness, dreams, telepathy, and the soul-body relation

Berlin Society for Empirical Philosophy / logical empiricism 1

#665 · 1928

The Philosophy of Space and Time (Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre) (Mid)

Hans Reichenbach

Reichenbach's 1928 foundational philosophy of space and time — relativistic philosophy of space-time

Big-history / Graphic-novel popularisation 1

Sapiens: A Graphic History (Late)

Harari's 2020-24 graphic adaptation of Sapiens with David Vandermeulen and Daniel Casanave

Big-history / Information-political-history 1

#1161 · 2024

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks (Late)

#1159 · 2011 (Hebrew), 2014 (English)

Harari's 2024 macro-history of information — from stone-age stories to artificial intelligence

Big-history / Macro-historical synthesis 1

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Mid)

Harari's 2011 popular-history synthesis — Homo sapiens from cognitive revolution to scientific-capitalist present

Big-history / Popular political-technological essay 1

#1160 · 2018

21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Mid)

#646 · 1990 (2nd edn 2000)

Harari's 2018 essays — 21 contemporary challenges from artificial intelligence to nationalism to terrorism

Black feminism / Black feminist epistemology 1

Black Feminist Thought (Mid)

Patricia Hill Collins

Hill Collins's 1990 foundational text — Black feminist epistemology and the "matrix of domination"

Black feminism / intersectional feminism 1

#400 · 1984

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Early)

hooks's 1984 foundational Black feminist statement — from margin to center

Black feminist / Marxist theory 1

#645 · 1981

Women, Race & Class (Mid)

Angela Y. Davis

Davis's 1981 foundational Black-feminist Marxist analysis of women, race, and class

Black feminist autobiographical-political writing 1

#370 · 1980

The Cancer Journals (Mid)

#230 · 1984 (collecting essays and speeches from the 1970s and early 1980s)

Lorde's 1980 prose memoir on breast cancer diagnosis and mastectomy — the major early feminist-political analysis of women's health

Black feminist thought / intersectional theory 1

Sister Outsider (Mid (the major prose collection of Lorde's career))

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" — Lorde's 1984 collection of essays on race, gender, sexuality, age, and class as inseparable dimensions of identity and struggle

Black liberation theology / African-American intellectual history / Christian-Islamic comparative ethics 1

#1681 · 1991

Martin & Malcolm & America (Mid-to-late)

James Cone

Cone's 1991 'Martin & Malcolm & America' — comparative theological-political study of King and Malcolm X

Black liberation theology / African-American intellectual history / prophetic Christianity 1

#1597 · 2014

Black Prophetic Fire (Late)

West's 2014 'Black Prophetic Fire' — dialogues with Christa Buschendorf on six Black prophetic figures

Black liberation theology / Christian socialism / African-American philosophical thought 1

#1596 · 1982

Prophesy Deliverance! (Early)

West's 1982 'Prophesy Deliverance!' — Afro-American revolutionary Christianity as synthesis of prophetic Christianity and progressive Marxism

Black-feminist / Lesbian autobiography 1

#1100 · 1982

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Late)

#1099 · 1976 (drawing on poems from 1968 onward)

Lorde's 1982 "biomythography" — the prose-poetic memoir of her Harlem-Caribbean childhood, the women who shaped her, the becoming of "Zami"

Black-feminist / Lesbian poetry / American free verse 1

Coal (Mid)

Lorde's 1976 major-press debut — poetry of being "Black like the inside of the world"

Black-feminist / Lesbian poetry / Yoruba-influenced mythopoeia 1

#1098 · 1978

The Black Unicorn (Mid)

Lorde's 1978 poetry collection — Yoruba mythology in service of a Black-feminist mythopoeia

Black-feminist poetics / African-American literary tradition / lesbian-feminist literature 1

#1595 · 1968

The First Cities (Early)

Lorde's 1968 debut poetry collection — 'The First Cities'

Black-feminist prose / Cancer-illness writing 1

#1101 · 1988

A Burst of Light (Late)

Lorde's 1988 prose collection — "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare"

Black-feminist theory / Critical masculinity studies 1

#1239 · 2004

The Will to Change (Late)

hooks's 2004 work on men, masculinity, and love — proper-feminist engagement with men

Black-feminist theory / Critical pedagogy 1

#1237 · 1994

Teaching to Transgress (Mid)

hooks's 1994 work on radical-pedagogy — engaged classroom-practice as transgression and freedom

Black-feminist theory / Intersectional feminism 1

#1236 · 1981

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Early)

bell hooks's 1981 foundational Black-feminist work — Black women's historical-political condition under white-supremacist patriarchy

Black-feminist theory / Practical philosophy of love 1

#1238 · 2000

All About Love (Late)

#1645 · Lectures 1980s-90s; book 1996 (posthumous, ed. Lee Nichol)

hooks's 2000 reflective work on the politics of love — love as proper-philosophical-political practice

Bohmian process-physics / philosophy of dialogue / contemplative inquiry 1

On Dialogue (Late (posthumous))

#166 · 1927 (lecture); 1957 (collected essays as a book)

Bohm's late lectures on dialogue as a mode of collective thought and inquiry

British analytic neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics 1

#602 · 2001

Natural Goodness (Late)

Philippa Foot

Foot's 2001 foundational analytic neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics — natural goodness

British analytic philosophy (Cambridge) 1

#722 · 1903

Principia Ethica (Early)

G.E. Moore

Moore's 1903 foundational analytic ethics — the naturalistic fallacy and the open question

British analytic philosophy / Catholic Wittgensteinian 1

#457 · 1957

Intention (Mid)

G.E.M. Anscombe

Anscombe's 1957 foundational analytic-Aristotelian philosophy of action

British analytic philosophy / freethought tradition 1

Why I Am Not a Christian (Mid-late)

#726 · 1933-35 (dictations); 1958 (published posthumously)

Russell's atheism in its most popular form — the classical arguments for God dismantled, traditional Christian morality criticised, the religion of free inquiry defended

British analytic philosophy / ordinary-language philosophy 1

The Blue and Brown Books (Mid)

Wittgenstein's 1933-35 transitional dictations bridging Tractatus (1921) and Philosophical Investigations (1953)

British analytic philosophy / philosophical anthropology 1

#603 · 1978

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (Mid)

Mary Midgley

Midgley's 1978 foundational text — humans as natural-evolutionary beings, against both behaviourism and dualism

British analytic philosophy / theoretical computer science 1

#745 · 1950 (Mind)

Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Late)

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)

Turing's 1950 founding essay of artificial intelligence — the Turing test

British anti-totalitarian political fiction 1

#677 · 1949

1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four) (Late)

Orwell's 1949 foundational dystopian novel — Big Brother, Newspeak, doublethink, the totalitarian state

British classical utilitarianism 1

#721 · 1874 (1st edn); 1907 (7th, definitive)

The Methods of Ethics (Late)

Henry Sidgwick

Sidgwick's 1874 foundational text — the three methods of ethics (egoism, intuitionism, utilitarianism)

British dissenting Enlightenment / women's educational reform 1

#924 · 1787 (J. Johnson, London)

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (Early (Wollstonecraft's first published book, written from her experience as a governess and a school proprietress))

A rational education makes a rational woman — and the first task of the educator is to free the female mind from the constant pressure to please

British empiricism / Enlightenment educational philosophy 1

#325 · 1693

Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Late)

#37 · 1689 (first ed.); fourth ed. with significant revisions 1700

The "blank slate" applied to education — Locke's 1693 treatise on forming the rational, virtuous gentleman

British empiricism / Enlightenment epistemology 1

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

The mind at birth is a tabula rasa; all ideas come from sensation and reflection; certainty is bounded, but knowledge is real

British empiricism / Enlightenment liberal Christianity 1

#336 · 1695

The Reasonableness of Christianity (Late)

#94 · Drafted 1751–61; revised continuously; published posthumously 1779

Christianity as reasonable belief — Locke's 1695 theological work, the major Enlightenment-rationalist Christian apologetic

British empiricism / Enlightenment philosophy of religion 1

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Late)

The design argument refuted, dogmatic theism shaken, but the question of God's existence left genuinely open

British empiricism / immaterialism 1

#321 · 1713

Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Early)

#65 · 1710 (Dublin, age 25)

The dialogue-form defence of Berkeleyan immaterialism — the more accessible companion to the 1710 Principles

British empiricism / philosophical idealism 1

A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Early)

#260 · 1843 (Mill's first major book); revised through 1872 (8th edition)

Esse est percipi — to be is to be perceived; there is no inert mindless matter; only minds and ideas exist

British empiricism / philosophy of science 1

A System of Logic (Early (Mill's first major book, the foundation of his philosophical reputation))

The major nineteenth-century English logic — Mill's 1843 systematic treatise including the famous Methods of experimental inquiry

British Enlightenment feminism 1

#496 · 1792

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Late)

#780 · 1776 (vol. I); 1781 (vols. II-III); 1788-89 (vols. IV-VI)

Wollstonecraft's 1792 foundational feminist political philosophy — equality of rational education

British Enlightenment historiography 1

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Late)

Edward Gibbon

Gibbon's 1776-89 monumental Enlightenment narrative of Roman decline — from the Antonines to the fall of Constantinople

British idealism (Cambridge) / Hegel-scholarly philosophy 1

#1583 · 1896

Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic (Early)

#1585 · 1921 (vol. 1); 1927 (vol. 2, posthumous, ed. C. D. Broad)

McTaggart's 1896 'Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic' — a critical-sympathetic study of Hegel's dialectical method

British idealism / personal idealism / Cambridge metaphysics 1

The Nature of Existence (Late)

McTaggart's 1921-27 magnum opus — systematic idealist metaphysics including the Unreality of Time argument

British idealism / philosophy of religion / atheistic personal idealism 1

#1584 · 1906

Some Dogmas of Religion (Middle)

#154 · Written 1860–61 with Harriet Taylor Mill's collaboration; published 1869

McTaggart's 1906 'Some Dogmas of Religion' — atheistic-idealist critique of standard theistic dogma

British liberalism / classical feminist liberalism 1

The Subjection of Women (Late)

The legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong in itself, and one of the chief hindrances to human improvement

British liberalism / utilitarianism 1

#40 · 1859

On Liberty

The sole end for which mankind are warranted in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection

British mathematical physics / consciousness studies 1

#597 · 1989

The Emperor's New Mind (Late)

Roger Penrose

Penrose's 1989 foundational text — consciousness is non-computable and quantum-mechanical

British modernism 1

#282 · 1927

To the Lighthouse (Mid (Woolf at the height of her powers))

The Window, Time Passes, The Lighthouse — Woolf's 1927 novel structured by the death and absence at its tripartite centre

British modernism / stream-of-consciousness fiction 1

#281 · 1925

Mrs Dalloway (Mid (the first major modernist novel of Woolf's maturity))

A single day in post-war London — Woolf's 1925 modernist masterpiece, the stream of consciousness shaping the form

British modernist feminism 1

#670 · 1929

A Room of One's Own (Late)

Woolf's 1929 foundational feminist literary essay — "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction"

British political-literary tradition / Conservative liberalism 1

#1094 · 1930

My Early Life (Mid)

#1097 · 1956-1958 (written largely 1937-39)

Churchill's 1930 autobiography of his first twenty-six years — Harrow, Sandhurst, India, the Sudan, South Africa, Parliament

British political-literary tradition / Whig-Conservative historiography 1

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (Late)

#310 · 1790 (the first major published response to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France)

Churchill's 1956-58 four-volume narrative history of the English-speaking peoples from Caesar to 1901

British radical Enlightenment / early feminist political philosophy 1

A Vindication of the Rights of Men (Early (preceding the more famous 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Woman))

#923 · 1794 (Vol. I only — the projected continuation was never written)

The first published response to Burke's Reflections — Wollstonecraft's 1790 defence of the French Revolution's rationalist political principles

British radical Enlightenment / republicanism 1

An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (Late (Wollstonecraft's last completed major non-fiction work, three years before her death))

#44 · 1861 (Fraser's Magazine); 1863 (book form)

The principles of 1789 are sound — the Terror is their corruption, not their fulfilment

British Roman Catholic theology 1

#613 · 1845 (rev. 1878)

An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Mid)

John Henry Newman

Newman's 1845 foundational text on doctrinal development — composed during his conversion to Catholicism

British utilitarianism / classical liberalism 1

Utilitarianism

#727 · 1780 (privately printed); 1789 (published)

Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness — and pleasures differ in kind, not only in quantity

British utilitarianism / philosophical radicalism 1

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Late)

Jeremy Bentham

Bentham's 1789 founding treatise of classical utilitarianism — "the greatest happiness of the greatest number"

Byzantine hesychast-mystical theology 1

#523 · c. 1020

Hymns of Divine Love (Hymnoi tōn Theiōn Erōtōn) (Late)

St. Symeon the New Theologian

Symeon's c. 1020 mystical hymns — foundational Byzantine mystical-experiential theology

Calvinist-Reformed / Puritan-American 1

#1222 · 1757 (completed), 1758 (posthumous publication)

Original Sin (Late)

#1221 · 1741 (preached July 8, Enfield, Connecticut)

Edwards's 1758 posthumous systematic defence of the Calvinist doctrine of original sin against eighteenth-century critics

Calvinist-Reformed / Puritan-American / Great Awakening 1

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Mid)

#1224 · c. 1755 (composed); 1765 (posthumous publication)

Edwards's 1741 Enfield sermon — central document of the Great Awakening; the angry-God-and-sinners imagery as proper-evangelistic vehicle

Calvinist-Reformed / Puritan-American / Religious ethics 1

The Nature of True Virtue (Late)

#1223 · c. 1755 (composed); 1765 (posthumous publication)

Edwards's 1765 posthumous ethical treatise — true virtue as love to being-in-general, against natural-virtue traditions

Calvinist-Reformed / Puritan-American / Theological aesthetics 1

The End for Which God Created the World (Late)

Edwards's 1765 posthumous treatise — God's glory as the proper final cause of creation

Cambridge-Victorian philosophy of science 1

#1471 · 1860

On the Philosophy of Discovery (Late-career capstone)

Whewell's 1860 capstone — chapters on the philosophy of discovery and the history of method

Cambridge-Victorian philosophy of science / inductivism 1

#1470 · 1858

Novum Organon Renovatum (Late)

Whewell's 1858 'Novum Organon Renovatum' — methodology of discovery in the spirit of Bacon, renewed

Cambridge-Victorian philosophy of science / inductivism debate 1

#1469 · 1849

Of Induction (Mid-career polemic)

#465 · 2007 (Gifford Lectures 1998-99 at Edinburgh, extensively expanded)

Whewell's 1849 reply to Mill — defending consilience against the methods of agreement and difference

Canadian analytic philosophy of science 1

#606 · 1999

The Social Construction of What? (Late)

Ian Hacking

Hacking's 1999 foundational analysis — what social-construction claims really mean and which are warranted

Canadian Catholic communitarian philosophy 1

A Secular Age (Late)

Charles Taylor

Taylor's 2007 magnum opus on the historical transformation to a secular age

Canadian communitarian-hermeneutic philosophy 1

#464 · 1989

Sources of the Self (Mid)

Charles Taylor

Taylor's 1989 major intellectual-historical work on the making of modern identity

Canadian media studies / Toronto School 1

#616 · 1964

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Mid)

Marshall McLuhan

McLuhan's 1964 foundational text — "the medium is the message", hot vs. cool media, the global village

Capabilities approach (with Amartya Sen) / philosophical feminism / development ethics 1

#1581 · 2000

Women and Human Development (Middle-to-late)

Nussbaum's 2000 'Women and Human Development' — the capabilities approach as feminist development ethic

Capabilities approach / liberal-democratic political philosophy / philosophy of education 1

#1582 · 2010

Not for Profit (Late)

#1432 · 1942 (incomplete at her arrest and martyrdom)

Nussbaum's 2010 'Not for Profit' — democracy requires the humanities, not just STEM-instrumental education

Capability approach / welfare economics 1

#732 · 1999

Development as Freedom (Late)

Amartya Sen

Sen's 1999 reformulation of development as the expansion of substantive freedoms

Cappadocian Christianity / Christian mysticism 1

#1705 · c. 390 CE

Life of Moses (Late)

Gregory of Nyssa

Moses climbed from light into cloud into darkness — and in that darkness found God most present

Cappadocian Christianity / Patristic natural theology 1

#1704 · c. 370 CE

Hexaemeron (Late)

Basil of Caesarea

The least plant brings to mind the Creator — Genesis 1 as a textbook of divine wisdom written in creation

Carmelite mysticism / Catholic phenomenology 1

The Science of the Cross (Late)

Stein's 1942 incomplete Carmelite study of John of the Cross

Carolingian Christian Neoplatonism 1

#495 · c. 867

Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature) (Mid)

John Scotus Eriugena

Eriugena's c. 867 foundational Carolingian Neoplatonist cosmology — fourfold division of nature

Cartesian-Augustinian / rationalist ethics 1

#1425 · 1684

Treatise on Morality (Mid)

Malebranche's 1684 rationalist-Augustinian ethical treatise

Cartesian-Augustinian / theodicy 1

#1423 · 1680

Treatise on Nature and Grace (Mid)

#531 · 1305-08 (final form; developed from 1271)

Malebranche's 1680 general-will theodicy treatise

Catalan medieval philosophy / Christian apologetics 1

Ars Magna (Ars Generalis Ultima) (Late)

Ramon Llull (Raimundus Lullus)

Ramon Llull's 1305-08 Ars Magna — combinatorial Christian apologetic system, precursor to symbolic logic

Catholic comparative mysticism / Zen-Christian dialogue 1

#364 · 1967

Mystics and Zen Masters (Late)

Merton's 1967 collection of essays on Christian-Buddhist comparative mysticism

Catholic feminism / second-wave radical feminism / post-Vatican-II theology 1

#1642 · 1968 (rev. 1975)

The Church and the Second Sex (Early)

#17 · c. 1657–62 (Pascal d. 1662); first published 1670

Daly's 1968 'Church and the Second Sex' — Catholic-feminist critique of patriarchy in the Roman Church (later renounced)

Catholic Jansenism / Christian apologetics 1

Pensées

#1441 · 1968 journal; published 1973 posthumously

Man is a thinking reed in an infinite cosmos — wagering on God is rational, the heart has reasons reason does not know

Catholic monasticism / interreligious dialogue / Buddhist-Christian 1

The Asian Journal (Late (final))

Merton's 1968 final Asian-pilgrimage journal — posthumous

Catholic monasticism / interreligious dialogue / Zen-Christian 1

#1440 · 1968

Zen and the Birds of Appetite (Late)

#1439 · 1953 (journal 1946-1952)

Merton's 1968 Catholic-Zen interreligious essays

Catholic monasticism / Trappist contemplation 1

The Sign of Jonas (Mid)

#1003 · 1979-84 (129 Wednesday General Audience addresses; published collectively as Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body)

Merton's 1953 Trappist monastic journal 1946-1952

Catholic moral theology / Christian personalism / theology of marriage 1

Theology of the Body (Mature (the major catechetical project of John Paul II's early pontificate))

#1433 · 1928-1932 (lectures and essays)

The body is the original sacrament — the visible sign of the invisible love that makes marriage, celibacy, and human sexuality the proper expressions of the human person

Catholic phenomenology / philosophy of woman 1

Essays on Woman (Mid)

Stein's 1928-1932 phenomenological-Catholic essays on women

Catholic Social Teaching 1

#637 · 1891 (15 May)

Rerum Novarum (Late)

Pope Leo XIII

Leo XIII's 1891 Rerum Novarum — foundational encyclical of modern Catholic Social Teaching

Catholic Social Teaching / integral ecology 1

#639 · 2015 (24 May)

Laudato Si' (Late)

Pope Francis

Pope Francis's 2015 Laudato Si' — foundational Catholic encyclical on environmental crisis and integral ecology

Catholic Worker / Christian anarchism / Catholic social teaching / Christian pacifism 1

#1680 · 1963

Loaves and Fishes (Middle-to-late)

Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day's 1963 'Loaves and Fishes' — history of the Catholic Worker movement on its 30th anniversary

Catholic-Thomistic / Catholic environmental social teaching 1

#1200 · 2015 (May 24)

Laudato Si' (Late)

Pope Francis's 2015 environmental encyclical — the first papal encyclical on ecological-climate questions

Catholic-Thomistic / Catholic social teaching 1

#1202 · 2020 (October 3)

Fratelli Tutti (Late)

#1199 · 2013 (November 24)

Pope Francis's 2020 social encyclical — fraternity and social friendship in the post-pandemic world

Catholic-Thomistic / Latin American liberation-influenced Catholic teaching 1

Evangelii Gaudium (Late)

Pope Francis's 2013 apostolic exhortation — the programmatic statement of his pontificate

Catholic-Thomistic / Pastoral-marriage tradition 1

#1201 · 2016 (March 19)

Amoris Laetitia (Late)

#77 · c. 780 AD (Dunhuang manuscript); refined recensions through 13th century

Pope Francis's 2016 apostolic exhortation on love in the family — synthesis of the 2014-15 Synods

Chan / Zen Buddhism 1

The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch

Hui-neng (638–713), as transmitted by Fa-hai

Sudden enlightenment — original nature is already buddha — and Hui-neng's "no-mind" instructions to the Southern School

Chicana feminism / borderland epistemology 1

#584 · 1987

Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Mid)

Gloria Anzaldúa

Anzaldúa's 1987 foundational Chicana feminist-philosophical work — the new mestiza consciousness

Chinese Confucian revival 1

#629 · 1921

Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue) (Early)

Liang Shuming

Liang Shuming's 1921 foundational text — three cultural orientations: Western, Indian (Buddhist), Chinese (Confucian)

Chinese cosmology / classical Confucian and Daoist canon 1

#80 · c. 9th–8th c. BC (core hexagrams); c. 4th c. BC (Ten Wings); standard form c. 200 BC

I Ching

Anonymous / composite (traditional attribution to King Wen and Confucius; the Ten Wings to the Confucian school)

The patterns of change in the cosmos read through sixty-four hexagrams — the oldest extant systematic Chinese cosmology

Chinese Legalism (Fajia) 1

#1697 · c. 240–233 BCE

Han Feizi

Government by law, technique, and authority — the ruler who needs no virtue because the system has it built in

Chinese popular philosophy / cross-cultural 1

#630 · 1937

The Importance of Living (Mid)

Lin Yutang

Lin Yutang's 1937 foundational popular philosophy — Chinese leisure-philosophy presented to the modern West

Chomskyan-Darwinian evolutionary linguistics 1

#683 · 1994

The Language Instinct (Late)

Steven Pinker

Pinker's 1994 foundational text — language as an evolved biological instinct

Christian existentialism / Kierkegaardian polemical theology 1

#1665 · 1854-55 (nine pamphlets)

The Moment (Final (year of death))

#83 · c. 1295–1327 (preached in Strasbourg, Cologne, and elsewhere)

Kierkegaard's 1854-55 'Øieblikket' — final polemical attack on Christendom and the established Danish Church

Christian mysticism / German Dominican spirituality 1

The German Sermons (Late)

The ground of the soul is the ground of God — and the divine birth happens in the still point of the soul

Christian realism / American mid-century political theology 1

#1619 · 1944

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (Middle)

#1667 · November 1942; published posthumously 1951

Niebuhr's 1944 'Children of Light and Children of Darkness' — vindication and critique of democracy in Christian-realist terms

Christian-mystical / heterodox-Catholic / late-Weilian theology 1

Letter to a Priest (Final)

#1666 · 1934-1935; published posthumously 1951

Weil's 1942 'Letter to a Priest' — final theological statement before her 1943 death; her detailed reservations about Catholic dogma

Christian-mystical labour philosophy / French left-Catholic / philosophy of work 1

Factory Journal (Middle)

#32 · c. 50–110 AD; canon stabilised by late 4th century

Weil's 1934-35 'Journal d'usine' — diary of her voluntary year of factory labour

Christianity (all branches) 1

The New Testament

Anonymous and pseudonymous; the named Pauline letters (Romans, 1–2 Cor, Gal, Phil, Phlm, 1 Thess) are widely accepted as authentically Paul's

The Word became flesh — the cross and resurrection of Jesus reorder time, matter, observer, and information at once

Classical Chinese Daoism 1

#757 · 4th c. BCE (composite text; trad. attrib. Laozi 6th c.)

Daodejing (Early)

Laozi (trad. attrib.)

The 4th-c. BCE founding scripture of Daoism — Way and Power, wuwei, and the dao that cannot be named

Classical Chinese military and political thought 1

#758 · 5th c. BCE (Warring States era)

The Art of War (Early)

Sun Tzu (Sunzi)

Sun Tzu's 5th-c. BCE classic of strategy — "supreme excellence is to subdue the enemy without fighting"

Classical Chinese Mohism 1

#759 · 5th-4th c. BCE (Warring States era)

Mozi (Early)

Mozi (and Mohist school)

Mozi's 5th-c. BCE Mohist classic — impartial concern (jian'ai) and the will of Heaven

Classical Confucianism / Neo-Confucianism 1

#206 · 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 Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean

Confucius (Kongzi)

The eight steps of self-cultivation (Da Xue) and the metaphysics of sincerity and the mean (Zhong Yong) — two short Confucian classics that became foundational for neo-Confucian thought

Classical Daoism 1

#205 · c. 4th-3rd c. BC (Inner Chapters by Zhuang Zhou; Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters by later hands)

Zhuangzi

Zhuangzi (Zhuang Zhou)

The butterfly dream, the cook cutting the ox, the useless tree — Zhuangzi's playful-philosophical parables on the Dao, perspective, and the freedom of wu wei

Classical Greek philosophy / ancient biology 1

#987 · c. 343-340 BC (composed during Aristotle's Lesbos period and continued at the Lyceum)

Historia Animalium (Mature)

#988 · c. 350 BC (during Aristotle's mature Lyceum period)

The founding work of systematic biology — comparative anatomy, behaviour, reproduction, and ecology across the animal kingdom

Classical Greek philosophy / ancient natural philosophy 1

On Generation and Corruption (Mature)

The philosophy of substantial change — how does one thing become another? Through the four elements, their transformations, and the underlying matter that persists through them

Classical Greek philosophy / Aristotelian cosmology 1

#270 · c. 350 BC

On the Heavens

#133 · c. 350 BC (second Athenian period)

The geocentric cosmos — Aristotle's major cosmological treatise, the foundation of pre-Copernican Western cosmology

Classical Greek philosophy / Aristotelian natural philosophy 1

Physics

#986 · c. 350-340 BC (one of Aristotle's earlier mature logical works)

The four causes, place and void, time as the number of motion — the founding text of Western natural philosophy for two millennia

Classical Greek philosophy / dialectical logic 1

Topics (Mid-mature)

#985 · c. 335 BC (composed during Aristotle's Lyceum period; only the book on tragedy and epic survives; the book on comedy is lost)

Dialectical reasoning from probable premises — distinct from demonstrative syllogism — has its own proper structure and uses, foundational for philosophical and rhetorical argument

Classical Greek philosophy / literary theory 1

Poetics (Mature)

#139 · c. 399–395 BC (composed shortly after Socrates's death)

Tragedy is the imitation of a serious action — its proper effect is catharsis of pity and fear, achieved through the structure of plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle

Classical Greek philosophy / political philosophy 1

Crito (Early)

#984 · c. 350-330 BC (composed during Aristotle's mature Lyceum period)

The Laws of Athens speak: by remaining and accepting their benefits, the citizen has tacitly agreed to be bound by them — even unto death

Classical Greek philosophy / rhetorical theory 1

Rhetoric (Mature)

#68 · c. 399–395 BC (shortly after Socrates's death)

Persuasion has three modes — through character (ethos), through emotion (pathos), and through reasoning (logos) — and the Rhetoric analyses each in systematic detail

Classical Greek philosophy / Socratic tradition 1

Apology (Early)

#70 · c. 335 BC (lecture course, Lyceum)

The unexamined life is not worth living — and the philosopher chooses death over the surrender of philosophy

Classical Greek political philosophy 1

Politics

#140 · Composed late in life (final years before 347 BC); unrevised at his death

Man is by nature a political animal — the polis exists for the sake of the good life, not merely life

Classical Greek political philosophy / Platonism 1

Laws (Latest)

Plato's late political philosophy — no longer the philosopher-king but the rule of law, with extensive religious legislation and a Nocturnal Council

Classical Platonism / mythic-historical philosophy 1

#1534 · c. 360-347 BC

Critias (Late)

Plato's unfinished 'Critias' — the war between ancient Athens and Atlantis

Classical Platonism / political philosophy 1

#1533 · c. 360-347 BC

Statesman (Late)

Plato's late 'Statesman' — political knowledge as the kingly art of weaving virtues

Classical Platonism / Socratic ethics / philosophy of religion 1

#1532 · c. 399-395 BC

Euthyphro (Early)

#256 · 1848 (1st edition); revised through 1871 (7th edition)

Plato's early Socratic dialogue on piety — the Euthyphro Dilemma

Classical political economy / utilitarianism 1

Principles of Political Economy (Mid (Mill's major economic work))

#779 · c. 116-120 CE (later years of Trajan, reign of Hadrian)

The major nineteenth-century English political economy — Mill's 1848 synthesis of classical economic theory with progressive social-political philosophy

Classical Roman historiography / Silver-Latin prose 1

The Annals (Late)

Tacitus (Publius Cornelius Tacitus)

Tacitus's c. 116-120 CE history of imperial Rome — Tiberius to Nero, the corruption of power

Climate-political philosophy / STS 1

#1113 · 2017 (French), 2018 (English)

Down to Earth (Late)

Latour's 2017 political essay — climate, Trump, Brexit, and the geopolitics of the new terrestrial

Cognitive psychology / Behavioural economics 1

#1084 · 1982

Judgment Under Uncertainty (Mid)

Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky's 1982 volume gathering the founding papers of the heuristics-and-biases programme

Comparative mysticism / Zen Buddhism 1

#334 · 1957

Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (Late)

Eckhart and Zen — Suzuki's 1957 sustained comparative study, the major engagement between Christian mystical and Buddhist traditions

Computer science / philosophy of mind / artificial intelligence 1

#1548 · 1948

Intelligent Machinery (Mid)

#56 · 1943–45 (Tegel and Flossenbürg prisons); 1951 (first German edition by Eberhard Bethge)

Turing's 1948 'Intelligent Machinery' — the earliest detailed AI research programme, including neural-network-like 'unorganised machines'

Confessing Church / twentieth-century Christian dissent 1

Letters and Papers from Prison (Late)

Religionless Christianity, costly grace, and the etsi deus non daretur — to live before God as if there were no God

Confessing Church / twentieth-century Lutheran discipleship theology 1

#145 · 1937

The Cost of Discipleship (Early)

#1193 · Hexagrams: legendary, pre-1000 BCE; line-statements: c. 1000-750 BCE; Ten Wings commentaries: c. 500-100 BCE

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die — and the distinction between cheap grace and costly grace

Confucianism / "realist" Confucian tradition 1

#79 · c. 280–230 BC

Xunzi

Xun Kuang (Xunzi)

Human nature is bad — ritual, learning, and authority make us good — and Heaven follows constant patterns indifferent to human prayers

Confucianism / Chinese classical canon / Chinese divination 1

The Book of Changes (Yi Jing) (Early)

Anonymous (traditionally Fu Xi for hexagrams; King Wen and Duke of Zhou for line-statements; Confucius for the Ten Wings commentaries)

Confucian classic — divinatory-philosophical text of 64 hexagrams; fifth of the Five Classics

Contemporary Native American thought 1

#644 · 1973 (2nd edn 1992; 3rd edn 2003)

God Is Red: A Native View of Religion (Late)

Vine Deloria's 1973 foundational text — Native American religion against the Western Christian framework

Contemporary New Confucianism 1

#635 · 1985

Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation (Late)

Tu Weiming

Tu Weiming's 1985 foundational text — Confucian selfhood as creative transformation through self-cultivation

Contemporary virtue ethics / philosophical anthropology 1

#190 · 1999

Dependent Rational Animals (Late (the explicit Thomist completion of the After Virtue trilogy))

#217 · 1990 (the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1988)

Humans as rational dependent animals — vulnerability and disability not as exceptions but as central to ethical-political reflection. The virtues of acknowledged dependence

Contemporary virtue ethics / tradition-constituted enquiry 1

Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Late (third volume of the After Virtue trilogy))

Three rival modes of contemporary moral enquiry — Encyclopaedic, Genealogical, Traditioned — with the case for the Thomist-Aristotelian Traditioned version

Contemporary virtue ethics / tradition-constituted rationality 1

#165 · 1988

Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Mid-late (the second of the After Virtue trilogy))

#172 · 1882 (first edition, four books); 1887 (second edition, with added fifth book and preface)

There are no traditionless standards of rationality — only tradition-constituted enquiries. Four traditions of practical rationality, with the Aristotelian-Thomistic the most adequate

Continental philosophy / existentialism / Nietzschean genealogy 1

The Gay Science (Middle (between Daybreak and Zarathustra))

#59 · 1946 (drafted as a letter to Jean Beaufret); 1947 (published)

The "death of God" announced; eternal recurrence first formulated; the experimental "gay science" between Daybreak and Zarathustra

Continental philosophy / late Heidegger 1

Letter on Humanism (Late)

After the Kehre — language is the house of being, the human is the shepherd of being, and humanism is the metaphysical forgetfulness to be overcome

Continental philosophy / mature Nietzsche 1

#150 · 1886

Beyond Good and Evil (Late)

#122 · 1887 (composed in 20 days)

Will to power as the basic drive of life — and the philosophers' "free spirits" who have moved beyond the moral dichotomies their tradition imposed

Continental philosophy / Nietzsche's mature critique of morality 1

On the Genealogy of Morality (Late)

#24 · 1883 (parts I, II); 1884 (III); 1885 (IV, private printing)

Good/evil as slave-revolt in morality; bad conscience as turned-in cruelty; the ascetic ideal as the human will's defence against its own meaninglessness

Continental philosophy / Nietzsche's post-Christian project 1

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

#108 · 1929 (Freiburg inaugural lecture, 24 July)

God is dead — the Übermensch is the meaning of the earth — life affirms its own eternal recurrence

Continental philosophy / phenomenology 1

What Is Metaphysics? (Early)

#26 · 1927 (Jahrbuch für Philosophie publication; only Divisions I and II of the planned three completed)

Why is there something rather than nothing? — the question of being approached through the experience of dread (Angst)

Continental philosophy / phenomenology / fundamental ontology 1

Being and Time (Early)

#151 · 1872 (with "Attempt at a Self-Criticism" preface added 1886)

Being is the question; Dasein is the being whose being is in question for it; time is the horizon of meaning

Continental philosophy / philosophy of art 1

The Birth of Tragedy (Early)

#168 · 1637 (published anonymously as the preface to three scientific essays — Optics, Meteorology, Geometry)

Apollonian individuation and Dionysian dissolution — and the death of tragedy at the hands of Socratic rationalism

Continental rationalism / early modern philosophy 1

Discourse on the Method (Mid (1637, in mature middle age; preceding the Meditations of 1641))

#169 · 1710 (the only philosophical book Leibniz published in his lifetime)

"I think, therefore I am" — Descartes's first public statement of the cogito and of the method of doubt that founds modern philosophy

Continental rationalism / Enlightenment philosophical theology 1

Theodicy (Late)

This is the best of all possible worlds — Leibniz's rationalist theodicy, written for Princess Sophie Charlotte, that gave the genre its name

Continental rationalism / Mechanistic natural philosophy 1

#1304 · 1644

Principles of Philosophy (Mature)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke

Descartes's 1644 systematic exposition of philosophy and physics

Continental rationalism vs. British natural theology 1

#546 · 1715-16

Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Late)

Leibniz-Clarke 1715-16 correspondence — landmark debate on space, time, and Newtonian-Leibnizian metaphysics

Copenhagen interpretation / Bohrian complementarity / philosophy of quantum mechanics 1

#1483 · 1934

Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (Mid-career)

Bohr's 1934 essay collection — the philosophical statement of complementarity for general audiences

Copenhagen interpretation / Bohrian complementarity / philosophy of science 1

#1485 · 1958

Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (Late)

#1486 · 1958–1962 (collection published posthumously, 1963)

Bohr's 1958 essay collection — late-Bohrian complementarity extended to biology, anthropology, and culture

Copenhagen interpretation / late-Bohrian philosophy of science 1

Essays 1958–1962 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (Final)

Bohr's posthumous 1963 essay collection — the last essays on complementarity, life, and the unity of the sciences

Copenhagen interpretation / philosophy of quantum mechanics 1

#1484 · 1935

Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? (Mid-career, post-EPR)

Bohr's 1935 reply to EPR — complementarity and the inseparability of system from measuring apparatus

Counter-Reformation Catholic spirituality / Jesuit devotional literature 1

#1531 · 1616

De Aeterna Felicitate Sanctorum (Late (devotional))

Bellarmine's 1616 devotional treatise on the eternal happiness of the saints — late-career spiritual writing

Counter-Reformation political theology / Jesuit thought 1

#1529 · 1610

De Potestate Summi Pontificis in Rebus Temporalibus (Late)

Bellarmine's 1610 'indirect-power' doctrine — papal authority over temporal affairs in spiritualibus

Counter-Reformation Roman Catholic theology / Jesuit scholasticism 1

#1528 · 1586-1593

Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei (Career-defining)

Bellarmine's 1586-93 Disputations — the definitive Counter-Reformation theological response to the Reformers

Counter-Reformation theology / Galileo affair / Scripture-and-science debate 1

#1530 · 1615 (12 April)

Letter to Foscarini (Late)

#1539 · 1795 (expanded 1796)

Bellarmine's 1615 letter to Foscarini — Copernicanism may be held as hypothesis but not as fact unless Scripture is shown to allow it

Critical political philosophy / Enlightenment cosmopolitanism / philosophy of international law 1

Perpetual Peace (Late)

#1493 · 1972 (essays 1960-72)

Kant's 1795 'Toward Perpetual Peace' — republican constitutions, a federation of free states, cosmopolitan right

Critical rationalism / evolutionary epistemology / philosophy of mind 1

Objective Knowledge (Late)

#1492 · 1944-45 (Economica articles); book 1957

Popper's 1972 essays — evolutionary epistemology and the World 3 of objective knowledge

Critical rationalism / philosophy of social science / anti-totalitarianism 1

The Poverty of Historicism (Mid-career)

Popper's 1944/1957 attack on 'historicist' prophecy — the impossibility of predicting the course of history

Critical realism / Comparative philosophy 1

#1350 · 2000

From East to West (Late)

Bhaskar's 2000 controversial spiritual turn

Critical realism / Dialectical philosophy 1

#1349 · 1993

Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (Late)

Bhaskar's 1993 major work on dialectical critical realism

Critical realism / Philosophy of science 1

#1348 · 1989

Reclaiming Reality (Mid)

Bhaskar's 1989 introduction to critical realism

Critical technology / philosophy of digital life / dissident Silicon Valley philosophy 1

#1670 · 2010

You Are Not a Gadget (Early (public-philosophical career))

Lanier's 2010 'You Are Not a Gadget' — first manifesto against Web 2.0's reduction of personhood to algorithmic profile

Critical technology / philosophy of virtual reality / Silicon Valley intellectual history 1

#1672 · 2017

Dawn of the New Everything (Middle-to-late)

Lanier's 2017 'Dawn of the New Everything' — memoir-philosophical history of virtual reality, by its principal inventor

Critical technology / political economy of data / dissident Silicon Valley 1

#1671 · 2013

Who Owns the Future? (Middle (public-philosophical career))

#1675 · 1927-1940 (unfinished at Benjamin's 1940 death; published posthumously 1982)

Lanier's 2013 'Who Owns the Future?' — economic-political critique of the data economy and proposal for universal micropayments

Critical theory / Frankfurt School (peripheral) / Marxist cultural-historical analysis 1

The Arcades Project (Career-spanning (unfinished))

#1676 · 1932-1938 composition; posthumously published 1950

Benjamin's unfinished 1927-1940 'Das Passagen-Werk' — montage-historical materialist study of nineteenth-century Paris

Critical theory / Jewish-Marxist autobiographical reflection / philosophical childhood memoir 1

Berlin Childhood Around 1900 (Middle (composed during exile))

#1522 · 1988 (with Edward S. Herman)

Benjamin's 1932-38 'Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert' — autobiographical-philosophical childhood memoir composed in exile

Critical-media studies / American left-libertarian politics / political economy 1

Manufacturing Consent (Mid-late (political work))

Chomsky and Herman's 1988 propaganda model — how 'free' US media manufacture elite consent

Critical-philosophical ethics / Kantian moral and legal philosophy 1

#1540 · 1797

The Metaphysics of Morals (Late)

#1538 · 1793 (2nd ed. 1794)

Kant's 1797 'Metaphysics of Morals' — systematic doctrine of right and doctrine of virtue

Critical-philosophical religion / Enlightenment rationalism 1

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Late)

#329 · 1985 (first published in Socialist Review)

Kant's 1793 'Religion within Mere Reason' — radical evil and moral religion within Critical bounds

Cyberfeminism / post-humanist theory 1

A Cyborg Manifesto (Mid)

"I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess" — Haraway's 1985 essay, the founding text of cyberfeminism and post-humanist theory

Czech absurdist theatre / political dissident drama 1

#1444 · 1965

The Memorandum (Early)

#313 · 1978 (circulated in samizdat in Czechoslovakia)

Havel's 1965 absurdist Ptydepe-language play

Czech dissident philosophy / late-communist political analysis 1

The Power of the Powerless (Mid (Havel as principal Charter 77 dissident))

#369 · 1979-83 (letters from prison)

The greengrocer's sign — Havel's 1978 essay on late-communist totalitarianism and the politics of "living in truth"

Czech dissident philosophy / phenomenology 1

Letters to Olga (Mid (composed during Havel's 1979-83 imprisonment))

#1445 · 1986 (collected essays from 1970s-80s)

Havel's 1979-83 prison letters to his wife Olga — the major philosophical work composed in prison

Czech dissident philosophy / political ethics 1

Living in Truth (Mid)

Havel's 1986 dissident essays — "living in truth"

Czech dissident-presidential memoir 1

#1446 · 2006

To the Castle and Back (Late)

#443 · 1975 (Czech samizdat; revised; English 1996)

Havel's 2006 presidential memoir

Czech phenomenology / Husserlian heritage 1

Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Late)

Jan Patočka

Patočka's 1975 samizdat philosophy of history — Europe, polis, and the "solidarity of the shaken"

Czech philosophical fiction 1

#712 · 1984

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) (Late)

Milan Kundera

Kundera's 1984 foundational philosophical novel — the unbearable lightness of being against Nietzschean eternal return

Darwinian evolutionary biology / ecology / soil science 1

#1550 · 1881

The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms (Final)

Darwin's 1881 last book — the unsung geological-ecological role of earthworms

Deconstruction / late post-Marxism / political philosophy 1

#1504 · 1993

Specters of Marx (Late)

Derrida's 1993 'Specters of Marx' — hauntology, the New International, and 'one must read Marx' after the fall of the Wall

Deconstruction / post-structuralism 1

#1502 · 1972

Margins of Philosophy (Middle (one of three 1972 volumes))

Derrida's 1972 essays — Différance, White Mythology, Signature Event Context

Deconstruction / post-structuralism / phenomenology critique 1

#1501 · 1967

Speech and Phenomena (Early)

#1503 · 1977 (with later 'Afterword', 1988)

Derrida's 1967 deconstructive reading of Husserl — voice, expression, and the metaphysics of presence

Deconstruction / post-structuralism / philosophy of language 1

Limited Inc (Middle-late)

Derrida's 1977 'Limited Inc' — the exchange with Searle on Austin, speech acts, and the structure of writing

Deep ecology / Ecological philosophy 1

#1344 · 1989

Ecology, Community and Lifestyle (Late)

Næss's 1989 systematic statement of deep ecology

Deep ecology / History of philosophy / Spinoza studies 1

#1347 · 1977

Spinoza and Ecology (Mid)

#908 · 1998 (Norwegian original Livsfilosofi: Et personlig bidrag om følelser og fornuft, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget); English 2002

Næss's 1977 paper — Spinoza as deep-ecology foundation

Deep ecology / Norwegian philosophical naturalism 1

Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World (Late (Næss's closing popular statement, written at 86))

A flourishing life expands the self until it identifies with the larger living world

Deep ecology / Practical philosophy 1

#1346 · 2002

Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World (Late)

#410 · 1976 (Norwegian); 1989 (English)

Næss's 2002 late work on philosophical-personal life

Deep ecology / Scandinavian environmental philosophy 1

Ecology, Community and Lifestyle (Late (Næss's mature statement; the systematic expansion of his 1973 "shallow vs deep ecology" essay))

#86 · c. 1418–1427 (Mount St Agnes monastery, Zwolle, Netherlands)

The expanded Self: ecological well-being as the extension of self-identification to the wider community of life

Deutschian rationalism / philosophy of progress 1

#1452 · 2011

The Beginning of Infinity (Late)

David Deutsch

Deutsch's 2011 "Explanations That Transform the World"

Devotio Moderna / Late medieval Christian spirituality 1

The Imitation of Christ

Thomas à Kempis (traditional attribution; sometimes attributed to Geert Groote or composite)

Christ's way is the cross — and the imitation of Christ is the way of the soul to God, in concrete daily practice

Dialectical materialism / Marxism 1

#103 · 1845 (notebook fragments, published posthumously by Engels in 1888 with slight editorial changes)

Theses on Feuerbach (Early)

#39 · 1867 (German first ed.); Volume II 1885, Volume III 1894 (posthumous, ed. Engels)

Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it

Dialectical materialism / Marxism / classical socialist political economy 1

Capital, Volume I (Late)

#951 · c. 213 (in Tertullian's Montanist period)

The commodity form is the cell of capitalist society — value, labour, surplus, accumulation, and crisis follow from its dialectical analysis

Early Advaita Vedanta / post-Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā Vedanta 1

#1652 · c. 8th century

Brahma-siddhi (Mature)

Maṇḍana Miśra

Maṇḍana's c. 8th-century 'Brahma-siddhi' — early Advaita-Vedantic systematic treatise alongside (and partly against) Śaṅkara

Early Latin Christian theology / North African Trinitarianism 1

Against Praxeas (Late (composed in Tertullian's Montanist period but with orthodox Trinitarian content))

#119 · 1620 (London; intended as Part II of the never-completed Instauratio Magna)

There are three Persons in one Substance — the formula "tres personae, una substantia" enters Christian theology

Early modern empiricism / scientific method 1

Novum Organum

Francis Bacon

Knowledge is power — and the road to it is patient inductive observation, freed from the four Idols of the mind

Early modern epistemology and ethics 1

#973 · c. 1661-62 (unfinished; published posthumously in the Opera Posthuma 1677)

Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Early (Spinoza's first major philosophical project, left incomplete as the Ethics took shape))

#962 · 1623 (Rome: Accademia dei Lincei)

The proper method of knowing — and the proper end of human life — both arise from the careful emendation of the intellect away from the distracting goods of fortune toward the love of an unchanging good

Early modern natural philosophy 1

The Assayer (Mature (composed during the brief honeymoon between Galileo and the new Pope Urban VIII))

#963 · 1615 (composed; circulated in manuscript; first published 1636 in Strasbourg)

The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics — without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth

Early modern natural philosophy / Catholic biblical hermeneutics 1

Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (Mature (composed at the height of the developing controversy with Rome))

#38 · 1687 (first ed.); 1713, 1726 (second and third revised eds)

Scripture teaches how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go — natural philosophy must be free to follow its own evidence

Early modern natural philosophy / classical physics 1

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Isaac Newton

Absolute space and time; universal gravitation; the system of the world deduced from three laws — the founding text of mathematical physics

Early modern natural philosophy / experimental method 1

#137 · 1704 (English first edition); 1706 (Latin)

Opticks (Late)

Isaac Newton

The corpuscular theory of light, Newton's rings, the spectrum — and the famous Queries that speculatively probe gravity, ether, life, and the nature of God

Early modern natural philosophy / mathematical astronomy 1

#741 · 1609

Astronomia Nova (Mid)

Johannes Kepler

Kepler's 1609 founding treatise of modern astronomy — elliptical orbits and the first two laws

Early modern natural philosophy / observational astronomy 1

#961 · March 1610 (Venice: Tommaso Baglioni)

Sidereus Nuncius (Early-mid (the breakthrough that established Galileo's international reputation))

#118 · 1632 (Florence; placed on the Index of Prohibited Books later that year)

The telescope has shown what no eye had seen: mountains on the moon, satellites of Jupiter, the resolution of the Milky Way into uncountable stars

Early modern natural philosophy / scientific revolution 1

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

#974 · c. 1660-62 (Dutch manuscript circulated only among Spinoza's closest correspondents during his lifetime; rediscovered 1862)

A vernacular defence of heliocentrism — the book that brought Galileo before the Inquisition

Early modern philosophy 1

Short Treatise on God (Early (Spinoza's first systematic presentation of his metaphysics, predating the Ethics))

#975 · 1663 (Renati Des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I et II, Amsterdam: Rieuwertsz)

The early draft of the Ethics — Spinoza's first systematic presentation of his metaphysics, written before the more-Latin geometric form was fully developed

Early modern philosophy / Cartesian rationalism 1

Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (Early (Spinoza's first published work))

#1069 · 1686 (composed February 1686; first published 1846)

A geometric reconstruction of Descartes — Spinoza's only work published under his own name during his lifetime, and the methodological forerunner of the Ethics

Early modern philosophy / German rationalism 1

Discourse on Metaphysics (Mature)

#1070 · 1715-16 (5 letters from Leibniz, 5 replies from Clarke); published 1717

Leibniz's 1686 systematic statement of his mature metaphysics — initiating the famous Arnauld correspondence

Early modern philosophy of physics 1

The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Last)

#972 · 1675-77 (unfinished at Spinoza's 1677 death; published posthumously as part of the Opera Posthuma)

Leibniz's 1715-16 last philosophical work — the founding debate over space, time, and divine action between relationalist and absolutist physics

Early modern political philosophy 1

Political Treatise (Late (Spinoza's last work, left incomplete at his death))

#134 · 1670 (anonymously, with false imprint)

The application of the Ethics's natural-rights framework to political institutions — and the most sustained early-modern defense of democratic constitutional government

Early modern rationalism / biblical criticism / political philosophy 1

Theological-Political Treatise (Early)

Baruch Spinoza

Scripture's meaning is to be sought by historical-critical reading; freedom of philosophising is necessary for the state — anonymous and immediately banned

Early modern rationalism / continental philosophy 1

#16 · 1641 (Latin); French translation by Duc de Luynes 1647

Meditations on First Philosophy

#66 · 1714 (written in French for Prince Eugene of Savoy); published 1720 in German

Cogito ergo sum — radical doubt as method, the thinking thing as foundation, the world re-erected on the certainty of consciousness

Early modern rationalism / pluralist idealism 1

Monadology (Late)

#18 · completed c. 1675; published posthumously 1677

The world is composed of simple substances — monads — windowless and active, each mirroring the whole; pre-established harmony coordinates them all

Early modern rationalism / Spinozism 1

Ethics

Baruch Spinoza

Deus sive natura — God or nature, one infinite substance, expressed in infinite attributes, of which we know two — extension and thought

Early Rhineland mysticism / German Dominican spiritual instruction 1

#945 · c. 1294-98 (Eckhart's early period as Prior of Erfurt and Vicar of Thuringia, before the first Paris regency)

Reden der Unterweisung (Early (Eckhart's first major vernacular work, written before the trials of his last decade))

Detachment, "innerness," and the abandonment of self-will — the foundations of the contemplative life

Early scholasticism 1

#527 · c. 1121

Sic et Non (Yes and No) (Early)

Peter Abelard

Abelard's c. 1121 Sic et Non — collection of patristic contradictions catalyzing the scholastic method

Early scholasticism / Anselmian theology / Latin patristic-medieval Augustinianism 1

#1587 · c. 1099-1100

On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin (Late)

#1709 · c. 3rd century BCE

Anselm's 'De Conceptu Virginali' — original sin as inherited privation of original justice, transmitted through generation

Early Stoic philosophy 1

#1689 · c. 300 BCE

Republic (fragments) (Early)

Zeno of Citium

The founding Stoic political vision: a cosmopolitan community of the wise beyond cities, courts, and currencies

Early Stoicism 1

Hymn to Zeus

Cleanthes

Zeus as Logos, fire as fate, willing obedience as the only freedom — Stoic theology in verse

Early-modern mathematics / Probability theory 1

#1297 · 1654

Pascal-Fermat Correspondence on Probability (Mid)

Pascal's 1654 correspondence with Fermat — founding probability theory

Early-modern mathematics / Projective geometry 1

#1296 · 1640

Essay on Conic Sections (Early)

Pascal's 1640 mathematical essay at age 16 — Pascal's theorem

Early-modern philosophy / Anglican apologetics / Immaterialism 1

#1219 · 1732

Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (Mid)

Berkeley's 1732 seven dialogues — defence of Christianity against free-thinker challenges

Early-modern philosophy / Immaterialism / Late-Berkeley Platonic synthesis 1

#1220 · 1744

Siris (Late)

Berkeley's 1744 late synthesis — tar-water remedy, immaterialist metaphysics, the Platonic chain of being

Early-modern philosophy / Mathematical methodology / French philosophy 1

#1298 · c. 1655

De l'Esprit Géométrique (Mid)

Pascal's c.1655 essay on geometric reasoning and method

Early-modern philosophy / Philosophy of physics / Immaterialism 1

#1218 · 1721

De Motu (Mid)

#1385 · c. 1668; 1681 (posthumous)

Berkeley's 1721 Latin treatise — instrumentalist philosophy of physics; against Newtonian absolute space

Early-modern philosophy / Political history 1

Behemoth (Late)

Hobbes's history of the English Civil War

Early-modern philosophy / Social contract theory 1

#1382 · 1640

Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (Early)

#795 · 1911 (1st ed.); 1938 (rev. 2nd ed.)

Hobbes's 1640 first political-philosophical treatise

Early-twentieth-century American cultural anthropology 1

The Mind of Primitive Man (Late)

Franz Boas

Boas's 1911 founding work of American cultural anthropology — critique of scientific racism

Early-twentieth-century American modernism 1

#822 · 1924-25

The Great Gatsby (Mid)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald's 1925 Jazz-Age novel — Jay Gatsby and the American Dream

Early-twentieth-century anglophone modernism 1

#826 · 1903-15 (composed); 1914-15 (serialized in The Egoist); 1916 (book)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Mid)

James Joyce

Joyce's 1916 modernist Künstlerroman — Stephen Dedalus's emergence as artist

Early-twentieth-century Bengali literature 1

#802 · 1915-16 (Bengali); 1919 (English by Surendranath Tagore)

The Home and the World (Late)

#843 · 1939 (British Academy lecture)

Tagore's 1916 Bengali political novel — Swadeshi nationalism and the costs of revolution

Early-twentieth-century British analytic philosophy / common-sense realism 1

Proof of an External World (Late)

G. E. Moore

Moore's 1939 lecture defending common-sense realism — "Here is one hand"

Early-twentieth-century British analytic philosophy of science 1

#849 · 1923

Scientific Thought (Mid)

Broad's 1923 critical-realist treatise — founding the growing-block theory of time

Early-twentieth-century British idealism / philosophy of time 1

#845 · 1908

The Unreality of Time (Late)

McTaggart's 1908 paper — the modern A-series / B-series debate and the argument that time is unreal

Early-twentieth-century British neutral monism 1

#846 · 1921

The Analysis of Mind (Mid)

Russell's 1921 lectures on neutral monism — mind as logical construction from neutral particulars

Early-twentieth-century British neutral monism / philosophy of physics 1

#847 · 1927

The Analysis of Matter (Mid)

#888 · 2011 (1st ed.); 2014 (paperback)

Russell's 1927 companion to Analysis of Mind — structural realism in philosophy of physics

Early-twenty-first-century Afrofuturism 1

#894 · 2015

Black Quantum Futurism: Theory and Practice (Late)

Rasheedah Phillips (ed.)

Phillips's 2015 founding text of Black Quantum Futurism

Early-twenty-first-century analytic metaphysics 1

Writing the Book of the World (Mid)

Theodore Sider

Sider's 2011/2014 systematic metaphysics — structural realism about fundamental reality

Early-twenty-first-century analytic neo-Aristotelian metaphysics 1

#886 · 2008

The Structure of Objects (Mid)

Kathrin Koslicki

Koslicki's 2008 neo-Aristotelian hylomorphic theory of material composition

Early-twenty-first-century analytic philosophy 1

#880 · 2003 (Philosophical Quarterly)

Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? (Mid)

#877 · 1991-2002 (composed over 11 years); 2002 (published)

Bostrom's 2003 paper formulating the simulation argument

Early-twenty-first-century computational science 1

A New Kind of Science (Mid)

Stephen Wolfram

Wolfram's 2002 1200-page treatise — cellular automata, computational equivalence, computational universe

Early-twenty-first-century Latin American postmodernism 1

#840 · 2001-03 (composed during fatal illness); 2004 (posthumous)

2666 (Late)

Roberto Bolaño

Bolaño's 2004 posthumous five-part novel — Santa Teresa femicides and twentieth-century evil

Early-twenty-first-century object-oriented ontology 1

#885 · 2011

The Quadruple Object (Late)

#84 · c. 500 AD (probably Syria)

Harman's 2011 mature articulation of object-oriented ontology — the fourfold structure of every object

Early-twenty-first-century object-oriented ontology / dark ecology 1

#884 · 2013

Hyperobjects (Late)

Timothy Morton

Morton's 2013 founding work of dark ecology — hyperobjects massively distributed in time and space

Early-twenty-first-century ontic structural realism 1

#893 · 2014

The Structure of the World (Late)

Steven French

French's 2014 development of ontic structural realism — structures are all there is

Early-twenty-first-century religious studies / new animism 1

#889 · 2005

Animism: Respecting the Living World (Late)

Graham Harvey

Harvey's 2005 founding work of the new animism — relational ontology and indigenous religions

Earth-systems science / Gaia theory 1

#592 · 1979

Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Late)

James Lovelock

Lovelock's 1979 foundational text of the Gaia hypothesis — Earth as a self-regulating organism

Eastern Christianity / Christian apophatic mysticism 1

The Mystical Theology

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (probably a Syrian Christian theologian, c. 500 AD)

God is beyond every name and every concept — the soul ascends by unknowing into the divine darkness

Effective altruism / longtermism / philosophical futurism 1

#1673 · 2024

Deep Utopia (Late)

Bostrom's 2024 'Deep Utopia' — speculative-philosophical treatment of life and meaning in a 'solved' world

Eighteenth-century American Reformed / First Great Awakening 1

#853 · 1737

A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (Early)

Edwards's 1737 account of the Northampton revival — founding work of evangelical revivalism

Empiricism / Early-modern philosophy / Immaterialism 1

#1217 · 1709

An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (Early)

Berkeley's 1709 first major work — the immaterialist theory of vision; touch and sight as heterogeneous

Empiricist philosophy of physics / Austrian school 1

#662 · 1883

The Science of Mechanics (Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung) (Mid)

#615 · 1952 (based on BBC radio talks 1941-44)

Mach's 1883 foundational empiricist philosophy of physics — critique of Newtonian absolute space and time

English Anglican apologetics 1

Mere Christianity (Mid)

C.S. Lewis

Lewis's 1952 foundational popular Christian apologetics — "mere" Christianity as the common ground

English Augustan / Enlightenment poetry 1

#652 · 1733-34

An Essay on Man (Late)

Alexander Pope

Pope's 1733-34 foundational English Enlightenment philosophical poem — "Whatever IS, is RIGHT"

English Catholic apologetics 1

#614 · 1908

Orthodoxy (Mid)

G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton's 1908 foundational apologetic for traditional Christianity — paradox and joy at the heart of the cosmos

English Enlightenment / Proto-feminist fiction 1

#1192 · 1796-97 (composed, unfinished), 1798 (posthumous publication)

Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman (Late)

#1191 · 1795-96 (composed), 1796 (published)

Wollstonecraft's unfinished 1798 posthumous novel — fictional exposition of the legal and social wrongs done to women

English Enlightenment / Proto-Romanticism / Early feminism 1

Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (Late)

Wollstonecraft's 1796 travel-letters — proto-Romantic reflection from her Scandinavian business journey

English Enlightenment / Rational-educational tradition 1

#1194 · 1788

Original Stories from Real Life (Early)

#177 · 1766 (with revisions through 1777; published as a unified text in 1777)

Wollstonecraft's 1788 children's book — moral-educational stories illustrating practical virtues

English Enlightenment satire 1

#651 · 1726

Gulliver's Travels (Late)

Jonathan Swift

Swift's 1726 foundational satire — Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the Houyhnhnms

English Methodist / Wesleyan-Arminian evangelical 1

A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (Late)

#85 · May 1373 (the showings); short text c. 1380; long text c. 1395 (revised over twenty years)

Wesley's defining doctrine — the Christian's call to entire sanctification or "perfect love" in this present life

English mystical tradition / fourteenth-century vernacular theology 1

Revelations of Divine Love

Julian of Norwich

All shall be well — Jesus as mother, sin as nothing of being, and the universe held in the divine love that is the hazelnut

English Puritan poetry 1

#650 · 1667 (1st edn, 10 books); 1674 (2nd edn, 12 books)

Paradise Lost (Late)

John Milton

Milton's 1667 foundational English Puritan epic — "to justify the ways of God to men"

English Renaissance / Elizabethan-Jacobean poetry 1

#1628 · c. 1590s–1604; printed 1609

Sonnets (Career-spanning)

#553 · 1800 (1st version); 1802 (expanded)

Shakespeare's 1609 'Sonnets' — 154 lyric meditations on love, time, beauty, and the Fair Youth / Dark Lady

English Romanticism 1

Preface to Lyrical Ballads (Early)

William Wordsworth

Wordsworth's 1800/1802 foundational manifesto of English Romantic poetics

English Romanticism / German idealism transmission 1

#552 · 1817

Biographia Literaria (Mid)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge's 1817 foundational text of English Romantic-philosophical criticism

English Royal Society experimental philosophy 1

#538 · 1661

The Sceptical Chymist (Mid)

Robert Boyle

Boyle's 1661 foundational chemistry text — questioning the four elements and three principles

English Victorian realism 1

#673 · 1871-72

Middlemarch (Late)

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

George Eliot's 1871-72 foundational Victorian novel — "the home epic" of provincial English life

English Whig liberal political theory 1

#717 · 1689

Second Treatise of Government (Late)

#300 · 1921 (during Eliot's nervous breakdown and convalescence in Switzerland); 1922 published (edited substantially by Ezra Pound)

Locke's 1689 foundational text of liberal political philosophy — natural rights, consent of the governed, right of revolution

English-language modernism 1

The Waste Land (Mid (the canonical modernist poem))

#301 · 1936 (Burnt Norton); 1940 (East Coker); 1941 (The Dry Salvages); 1942 (Little Gidding); 1943 (collected publication)

"April is the cruellest month" — Eliot's 1922 long poem, the canonical work of English-language high modernist poetry

English-language modernism / Anglo-Catholic mystical poetry 1

Four Quartets (Late (Eliot's mature Anglo-Catholic period))

#302 · 1919 (first published in The Egoist, September-December 1919)

Time and the timeless — Eliot's 1936-43 four-part meditative poem, the major work of his mature Anglo-Catholic period

English-language modernism / literary criticism 1

Tradition and the Individual Talent (Early (Eliot's major early critical statement))

#1123 · c. 1820 (compiled), published 1904

Tradition obtained by great labour, the impersonality of poetry — Eliot's 1919 essay, the canonical modernist statement of tradition's relation to the individual artist

Enlightenment deism / Rational religion 1

The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (Late)

#199 · 1762 (published the same year as the Social Contract; both condemned and burned by authorities)

Jefferson's c.1820 cut-and-paste Gospel — Jesus's moral teaching stripped of miracles and divinity claims

Enlightenment educational and moral philosophy 1

Émile (Late)

#876 · 1814 (Essai philosophique sur les probabilités)

"Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man" — Rousseau's landmark treatise on education according to nature

Enlightenment mathematical science 1

A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Late)

Laplace's 1814 essay — classical determinism and the founding of probability theory

Enlightenment natural philosophy / chemistry 1

#754 · 1789

Traité élémentaire de chimie (Late)

Antoine Lavoisier

Lavoisier's 1789 founding treatise of modern chemistry — the chemical revolution

Enlightenment political philosophy / republican theory 1

#198 · 1762

The Social Contract (Late (after the two Discourses; the political conclusion of Rousseau's mature thought))

#200 · 1755 (submitted to the 1754 essay competition of the Académie de Dijon, on the question of the origin and justification of inequality)

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" — Rousseau's account of legitimate authority as grounded in the general will of the people

Enlightenment political-philosophical anthropology 1

Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Mid (between the First Discourse and the Social Contract))

#101 · 1792 (London, six weeks)

"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, said 'this is mine'..." — Rousseau's philosophical anthropology of the conjectural state of nature and the historical genesis of social inequality

Enlightenment radicalism / proto-feminist political philosophy 1

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Women are not naturally inferior — only made so by inadequate education; reason is the same in both sexes

Epicurean atomism / Hellenistic philosophy 1

#1575 · c. 306-270 BC

Letter to Pythocles (Mature)

#1576 · c. 306-270 BC (compiled later)

Epicurus's 'Letter to Pythocles' — Epicurean meteorology and the multiple-explanations principle

Epicurean ethics / Hellenistic philosophy 1

Vatican Sayings (Mature)

The 'Vatican Sayings' — eighty-one Epicurean maxims discovered 1888 in a Vatican manuscript

European critical sociology 1

#694 · 2000

Liquid Modernity (Late)

Zygmunt Bauman

Bauman's 2000 foundational text — contemporary modernity as "liquid" — fluid, mobile, individualized

Evolutionary moral psychology 1

#705 · 2012

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Late)

Jonathan Haidt

Haidt's 2012 foundational moral foundations theory — political-religious moral psychology

Existential psychology / Viennese logotherapy 1

#714 · 1946

The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy (Mid)

Viktor Frankl

Frankl's 1946 foundational logotherapy text — meaning-centered existential psychotherapy

Feminist science studies / Multispecies studies 1

#1109 · 2008

When Species Meet (Late)

Haraway's 2008 study of multi-species "becoming-with" — humans and dogs and the ethics of companionship

Foundations of mathematics 1

#659 · 1931

On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems (Early)

Gödel's 1931 foundational paper — the incompleteness theorems

Foundations of mathematics / analytic philosophy 1

#658 · 1879

Begriffsschrift (Early)

Frege's 1879 foundational Begriffsschrift — modern formal logic, quantifiers, and a new logical notation

Foundations of mathematics / set theory 1

#661 · 1883

Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds (Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre) (Mid)

Georg Cantor

Cantor's 1883 foundational text of set theory and transfinite numbers

Foundations of physics / Information physics 1

#1093 · 1989

Quantum: The Search for Links (Late)

Wheeler's 1989 introduction of "it from bit" — the participatory-universe doctrine

Foundations of physics / Popular science 1

#1092 · 1990

A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime (Late)

#1206 · 1993 (posthumous; Bohm died October 1992)

Wheeler's 1990 popular exposition — gravity as geometry, mass as curvature in the geometric universe

Foundations of quantum mechanics / Bohmian mechanics 1

The Undivided Universe (Late)

Bohm and Hiley's 1993 systematic statement — the ontological interpretation of quantum theory

Foundations of quantum mechanics / Holism 1

#1203 · 1980

Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Late)

Bohm's 1980 holistic philosophy of physics — the implicate order as alternative to fragmentary mechanism

Foundations of quantum mechanics / Philosophy of physics 1

#1205 · 1957

Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (Mid)

#660 · 1933 (Polish); 1935 (German); 1956 (English)

Bohm's 1957 philosophical-physical synthesis — causality, determinism, and chance after quantum mechanics

Foundations of semantics / analytic philosophy 1

The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages (Mid)

Alfred Tarski

Tarski's 1933/35 foundational paper on the semantic theory of truth — "snow is white" is true iff snow is white

Franciscan nominalist scholasticism 1

#491 · c. 1323

Summa Logicae (Late)

#393 · 1985 (German; English 1987)

Ockham's c. 1323 foundational nominalist Summa of Logic — Ockham's razor and the elimination of universals

Frankfurt School / communicative action 1

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Mid)

#392 · 1992 (German; English 1996)

Habermas's 1985 critical engagement with poststructuralism and the philosophical discourse of modernity

Frankfurt School / discourse ethics 1

Between Facts and Norms (Late)

#129 · 1981 (German, 2 vols)

Habermas's 1992 systematic statement on law, democracy, and discourse theory of politics

Frankfurt School / discourse theory / critical theory 1

Theory of Communicative Action

#387 · 1940 (German; English 1968)

Rationality is built into the structure of communication itself — and the lifeworld of democratic discourse is being colonised by instrumental system imperatives

Frankfurt School / humanistic psychoanalysis 1

#688 · 1941

Escape from Freedom (Mid)

Erich Fromm

Fromm's 1941 foundational psychological-political analysis of authoritarianism and the escape from freedom

Frankfurt School / Jewish-messianic Marxism 1

Theses on the Philosophy of History (Late)

#740 · 1992 (German); 1995 (English)

Benjamin's 1940 final essay on history, messianic time, and revolution — the Angel of History

Frankfurt School critical theory / Hegelian social philosophy 1

The Struggle for Recognition (Mid)

Axel Honneth

Honneth's 1992 Hegelian reconstruction of critical theory through the struggle for recognition

Frankfurt-school critical theory / musicology / philosophy of music 1

#1568 · 1940-48 composition; 1949 publication

Philosophy of New Music (Middle)

Theodor Adorno

Adorno's 1949 'Philosophy of New Music' — Schoenberg vs Stravinsky as the two poles of twentieth-century musical modernity

Frankfurt-school critical theory / philosophy of aesthetics / Western Marxism 1

#1569 · 1961-1969 (left unfinished at death); 1970 posthumous publication

Aesthetic Theory (Final)

Theodor Adorno

Adorno's posthumous 1970 'Aesthetic Theory' — the systematic Frankfurt-school philosophy of art, left unfinished at his 1969 death

French absurdism / mid-century existentialist literature 1

#208 · 1942 (alongside The Myth of Sisyphus; published in occupied Paris)

The Stranger (Early (the breakthrough novel))

"Maman died today. Or maybe yesterday" — Meursault's flat-affect narration through accidental murder to execution, the literary embodiment of Camus's philosophy of the absurd

French absurdism / post-war existentialist literature 1

#209 · 1947

The Plague (Mid (between The Stranger and The Rebel))

#446 · 1949-50 (Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen)

A plague outbreak in the Algerian city of Oran — allegory of Nazi occupation, meditation on solidarity under absurdity. "There are more things to admire in men than to despise"

French Catholic philosophy of physics 1

#663 · 1906

The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (La Théorie physique: son objet, sa structure) (Late)

Pierre Duhem

Duhem's 1906 foundational philosophy of physics — Duhem-Quine underdetermination thesis

French Christian existentialism 1

The Mystery of Being (Late)

Gabriel Marcel

Marcel's 1949-50 Gifford Lectures on his Christian-existentialist metaphysics — being as mystery, not problem

French conventionalist philosophy of science 1

#664 · 1902

Science and Hypothesis (La Science et l'hypothèse) (Late)

Henri Poincaré

Poincaré's 1902 foundational text — conventionalism in geometry, intuitionism in arithmetic

French cultural sociology 1

#692 · 1979

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (La Distinction) (Mid)

Pierre Bourdieu

Bourdieu's 1979 foundational cultural sociology — taste as marker of class distinction

French empirical political economy 1

#715 · 2013 (French); 2014 (English)

Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Le Capital au XXIe siècle) (Late)

Thomas Piketty

Piketty's 2013/14 foundational text — when r > g, capital concentrations grow without limit

French Enlightenment / counter-Enlightenment 1

#976 · 1750 (Discours sur les sciences et les arts, Geneva)

Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (Early (the work that launched Rousseau's career))

#971 · 1738 (Éléments de la philosophie de Newton, Amsterdam; revised 1741)

The progress of the sciences and arts has not improved morals — it has corrupted them, and the simplicity of pre-civilised humanity is the measure against which our progress fails

French Enlightenment / Newtonian natural philosophy 1

Éléments de la philosophie de Newton (Mid (the work that established Voltaire as a public intellectual of European reach))

#978 · 1776-78 (unfinished at Rousseau's death; published posthumously 1782)

Newton's natural philosophy — gravitation, optics, the calculus, the empirical method — explained for the educated French-reading public, against the entrenched Cartesianism of the Sorbonne

French Enlightenment / pre-Romantic introspection 1

Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Last (composed in Rousseau's final two years, after he had retreated from public life))

#977 · 1761 (Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse: Lettres de deux amants, habitants d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes, Amsterdam)

Ten meditations from solitary walks — the last and most introspective of Rousseau's autobiographical works, written when he had given up hope of public reconciliation

French Enlightenment literature / pre-Romantic sensibility 1

Julie (Mature (the literary high-point of Rousseau's career, between Social Contract and Émile))

Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

Natural feeling against social artifice — the love of Julie and Saint-Preux, frustrated by the order of society, retains its truth at the level of the heart

French Enlightenment political theory 1

#541 · 1748

The Spirit of the Laws (De l'esprit des lois) (Late)

Montesquieu's 1748 foundational comparative political-legal theory — separation of powers and types of government

French Enlightenment satire 1

#542 · 1759

Candide (Candide, ou l'Optimisme) (Late)

#136 · 29 October 1945 (Paris lecture); 1946 (published)

Voltaire's 1759 foundational philosophical novel — biting satire of Leibnizian optimism

French existentialism 1

Existentialism Is a Humanism

Existence precedes essence — we are nothing until we make ourselves; man is condemned to be free

French existentialism / absurdism / abolitionism 1

#1588 · 1957

Reflections on the Guillotine (Late)

#1589 · c. 1958-1960 (incomplete); 1994 posthumous publication

Camus's 1957 'Réflexions sur la guillotine' — the most-cited literary argument against capital punishment

French existentialism / absurdism / autobiographical fiction 1

The First Man (Final (unfinished))

#1608 · 1963-64 (published 1964)

Camus's posthumous 1994 'The First Man' — unfinished autobiographical novel found in the wreckage of his fatal 1960 car crash

French existentialism / autobiography / mid-century European memoir 1

The Words (Late)

#1607 · 1945-1949 (three published volumes)

Sartre's 1964 'Les Mots' — autobiographical reckoning with bookishness and bourgeois childhood

French existentialism / committed-literature / mid-century European novel 1

The Roads to Freedom (Middle)

Sartre's 1945-49 trilogy 'Les Chemins de la liberté' — Mathieu Delarue from the late 1930s to the 1940 fall of France

French existentialism / existentialist ethics 1

#153 · 1947

The Ethics of Ambiguity (Early)

#28 · 1943 (Paris, under German occupation)

The ambiguity of the human condition — radically free yet always situated, oriented to its own freedom yet realised only through commitment to the freedom of others

French existentialism / phenomenological ontology 1

Being and Nothingness

Being-for-itself is the freedom that always precedes essence — we are condemned to be free, and bad faith is the flight from this freedom

French existentialism / phenomenological-literary 1

#237 · 1938

Nausea (Early (Sartre's first novel, before Being and Nothingness))

Antoine Roquentin's diary in Bouville — the contingency of existence revealed through the famous chestnut-tree scene, the literary embodiment of early Sartrean existentialism

French existentialism / philosophical ethics / phenomenology 1

#1669 · 1944

Pyrrhus and Cineas (Early)

#41 · 1949 (French two-vol. ed.)

Beauvoir's 1944 'Pyrrhus et Cinéas' — first major philosophical essay on the ethics of existential freedom and project

French existentialism / philosophical feminism 1

The Second Sex

#1668 · 1937-41 composition; 1943 publication

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman — the founding text of philosophical feminism, applying existentialist freedom to the situation of women

French existentialism / philosophical fiction / phenomenology 1

She Came to Stay (Early)

Beauvoir's 1943 first novel 'L'Invitée' — phenomenological-existentialist treatment of the ménage à trois

French existentialist literature 1

#244 · 1956

The Fall (Late (Camus's last completed novel; the Nobel followed in 1957))

#238 · 1944 (first performed at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in May 1944)

Jean-Baptiste Clamence's confession-monologue in an Amsterdam bar — Camus's 1956 dissection of bourgeois moral self-deception

French existentialist theatre 1

No Exit (Mid (alongside Being and Nothingness))

#239 · 1960 (vol. I); vol. II unfinished, published posthumously 1985

"Hell is other people" — Sartre's most famous play, three characters in a hotel-room hell, the dramatic embodiment of his analysis of being-for-others

French existentialist-Marxism 1

Critique of Dialectical Reason (Late (Sartre's major late philosophical work))

#539 · 1697 (2nd expanded edn 1702)

Existentialism integrated with Marxism — Sartre's major late philosophical attempt to ground historical-materialist analysis in existentialist phenomenology

French feminist poststructuralism 1

#574 · 1974

Speculum of the Other Woman (Speculum, de l'autre femme) (Mid)

Luce Irigaray

Irigaray's 1974 foundational feminist critique — Western philosophy as phallocentric specularization

French Huguenot Enlightenment scepticism 1

Historical and Critical Dictionary (Dictionnaire Historique et Critique) (Late)

Pierre Bayle

Bayle's 1697 foundational sceptical-critical reference work — major proto-Enlightenment text

French Jansenist theology 1

#319 · 1656-57

Provincial Letters (Late)

#102 · Volume I 1835; Volume II 1840 (based on Tocqueville's 1831–32 American journey)

Pascal's 1656-57 defence of Jansenist theology against Jesuit casuistry — the founding text of modern French prose

French liberal political thought / sociology before sociology 1

Democracy in America

Alexis de Tocqueville

Equality of conditions is the providential fact of the modern age — and democracy's greatest danger is the tyranny of the majority

French modernist literature 1

#671 · 1913

Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann) (Mid)

Marcel Proust

Proust's 1913 Swann's Way — first volume of In Search of Lost Time — involuntary memory and the madeleine

French phenomenology / embodied cognition 1

#109 · 1945

Phenomenology of Perception

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

The body is the medium of perception — neither pure consciousness nor pure object, but the lived body engaged with the world

French phenomenology / philosophy of mind 1

#265 · 1940

The Imaginary (Early (preceding Being and Nothingness))

#441 · 1997 (French; English 2002)

The phenomenological psychology of imagination — Sartre's 1940 analysis of imaginative consciousness as the unique mode of consciousness

French phenomenology / theological turn 1

Being Given (Late)

Jean-Luc Marion

Marion's 1997 major phenomenology of givenness — the "saturated phenomenon"

French phenomenology of life 1

#442 · 1963 (French; English 1973)

The Essence of Manifestation (Early)

Michel Henry

Henry's 1963 foundational phenomenology of immanent life — auto-affection

French post-structuralism / archaeology of knowledge 1

#110 · 1966

The Order of Things

Man is an invention of recent date — and one perhaps nearing its end

French post-structuralism / deconstruction 1

#111 · 1967

Of Grammatology

There is no outside-text — and the metaphysics of presence that privileges speech over writing is undone by writing's own structure

French post-structuralism / genealogical method 1

#130 · 1975

Discipline and Punish (Late)

#175 · 1976 (vol. 1); 1984 (vols. 2-3, shortly before Foucault's death); vol. 4 (Confessions of the Flesh) published posthumously 2018

The body of the condemned moves from spectacular torture to disciplinary surveillance — and the panopticon's gaze becomes the modern soul

French postmodernism 1

#572 · 1979

The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (La condition postmoderne) (Late)

Jean-François Lyotard

Lyotard's 1979 foundational text — postmodernism as incredulity toward metanarratives

French postmodernism / Foucauldian genealogy 1

The History of Sexuality (Late (his last major project))

The "repressive hypothesis" inverted: sexuality is not what power represses but what power produces — and the genealogy of the modern sexual subject through Greek, Roman, and early Christian practices of the self

French postmodernism / philosophy of historical method 1

#252 · 1969

The Archaeology of Knowledge (Mid (methodological transition between archaeological and genealogical phases))

#376 · 1967 (French; English 1978)

The methodological reflection on Foucault's archaeological method — discursive formations, statements, the "positive unconscious" of knowledge

French postmodernist sociology 1

#575 · 1981

Simulacra and Simulation (Simulacres et simulation) (Late)

Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard's 1981 foundational text on hyperreality and the simulacrum — "the desert of the real itself"

French poststructuralism / deconstruction 1

Writing and Difference (Early)

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Derrida's 1967 essay collection — one of the three foundational deconstruction texts

French poststructuralism / philosophy of immanence 1

#567 · 1968

Difference and Repetition (Différence et Répétition) (Mid)

Gilles Deleuze

Deleuze's 1968 foundational philosophy of difference and immanence — overturn of Platonism

French poststructuralism / rhizomatic thought 1

#569 · 1980

A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. 2 (Late)

Deleuze-Guattari 1980 monumental rhizomatic philosophy — the second Capitalism and Schizophrenia

French poststructuralism / schizoanalysis 1

#568 · 1972

Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. 1 (Late)

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Deleuze-Guattari 1972 foundational text of post-'68 schizoanalysis — capitalism, desire, and the body without organs

French poststructuralist psychoanalysis 1

#573 · 1980

Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (Pouvoirs de l'horreur) (Mid)

Julia Kristeva

Kristeva's 1980 foundational psychoanalytic-literary theory of abjection

French process philosophy / philosophy of aesthetics 1

#914 · 1900 (Le Rire: Essai sur la signification du comique, Revue de Paris; book edition 1900; revised many times through 1924)

Laughter (Early-mature (between Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution))

#913 · 1922 (Durée et Simultanéité: à propos de la théorie d'Einstein, Paris: Alcan; revised 2nd edn 1923)

We laugh at "the mechanical encrusted upon the living" — laughter is the social corrective for inflexibility

French process philosophy / philosophy of physics 1

Duration and Simultaneity (Mature (the disastrous engagement with Einstein that damaged Bergson's standing among physicists))

#904 · 1932 (Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, Paris: Alcan; English trans. R. Ashley Audra & Cloudesley Brereton 1935)

Special relativity's "time" is a measurement-coordinate, not the durée of lived experience — the two are not commensurable

French process philosophy / philosophy of religion 1

The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Late (Bergson's last major book, written after a long convalescence))

#571 · 1964 (seminar); 1973 (book)

Two moralities — closed and open — and two religions — static and dynamic — are not stages of a single process but two distinct sources, the second always exceptional and always personal

French psychoanalysis 1

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Late)

Jacques Lacan

Lacan's 1964 foundational seminar on the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis

French psychoanalysis / structuralism 1

#570 · 1966 (essays 1936-66)

Écrits (Mid)

Jacques Lacan

Lacan's 1966 foundational Écrits — psychoanalytic theory of the imaginary, symbolic, real

French radical-socialist tradition / Anti-totalitarianism 1

#1117 · 1934

Reflections on the Causes of Liberty and Social Oppression (Early)

#1116 · 1939 (written), 1940-41 (published in Cahiers du Sud)

Weil's 1934 critique of Marxist orthodoxy — oppression as structural, not solely the consequence of capitalism

French religious-philosophical essay / Christian platonism 1

The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (Late)

#718 · 1769 (composed); 1782-89 (posthumous)

Weil's 1939 essay — the Iliad as the supreme document of force's power to reduce human beings to things

French Romantic-Enlightenment autobiography 1

Confessions (Late)

Rousseau's 1782-89 foundational modern autobiography — sincerity as the new ideal

French science studies / actor-network theory 1

#588 · 1991

We Have Never Been Modern (Nous n'avons jamais été modernes) (Mid)

Latour's 1991 foundational text — "we have never been modern" because the modern purification of nature-society never happened

French sociology / structural-functionalism 1

#728 · 1893

The Division of Labor in Society (Early)

Émile Durkheim

Durkheim's 1893 founding treatise of classical sociology — mechanical to organic solidarity

French speculative realism 1

#587 · 2006

After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (Après la finitude) (Late)

Quentin Meillassoux

Meillassoux's 2006 foundational text of speculative realism — critique of correlationism, principle of factuality

French structuralism / mid-20th-century anthropology 1

#409 · 1949

The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Early (Lévi-Strauss's breakthrough work; the foundation of structural anthropology))

#1658 · c. 1397-1400 (early-mature)

Kinship as a system of exchange — the incest prohibition as the threshold between nature and culture

Galenic medicine / eclectic philosophy 1

#1711 · c. 175 CE

On the Natural Faculties

Galen

Nature does nothing in vain — the four natural faculties as the teleological foundation of physiology

Gelug Tibetan Buddhism / Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka 1

In Praise of Dependent Origination (Early-mature)

Tsongkhapa's 'In Praise of Dependent Origination' — the philosophical-devotional summary of his Madhyamaka realisation

Gelug Tibetan Buddhism / Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka philosophy 1

#1657 · 1407-1408

Essence of Eloquence on the Interpretable and Definitive Meanings (Late-mature)

Tsongkhapa's 1407-08 'Essence of Eloquence' — definitive Gelug treatise distinguishing definitive from interpretable Buddhist teachings

General relativity / Mathematical cosmology 1

#1390 · 1973

The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (Early)

#906 · 1949 (Reviews of Modern Physics 21, in the Einstein 70th-birthday Festschrift)

Hawking and Ellis 1973 — foundational technical work on general-relativistic cosmology

General relativity / philosophy of time 1

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))

A mathematically consistent rotating universe in which closed timelike curves exist — time-travel into the past is permitted by Einstein's equations

Generative grammar / Minimalist Program / philosophical linguistics 1

#1523 · 1995

The Minimalist Program (Late (linguistic work))

Chomsky's 1995 'Minimalist Program' — stripping generative grammar to the optimal interface conditions

Generative grammar / philosophical-rationalist linguistics / philosophy of mind 1

#1521 · 1975

Reflections on Language (Mid-career (linguistic work))

Chomsky's 1975 Whidden Lectures — universal grammar, innate knowledge, and the autonomy of linguistics

German analytic philosophy / logicism 1

#735 · 1892

On Sense and Reference (Mid)

Nicholas of Cusa (Nikolaus von Kues)

Frege's 1892 classic essay distinguishing Sinn (sense) from Bedeutung (reference)

German Christian mystical Neoplatonism 1

#492 · 1440

De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (Late)

Cusa's 1440 foundational Renaissance work on the coincidence of opposites and learned ignorance

German classical / Weimar classicism 1

#762 · 1795-96

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (Mid)

#763 · 1795 (in Die Horen)

Goethe's 1795-96 founding Bildungsroman — the formation of the modern self through experience

German classical / Weimar classicism / Kantian aesthetics 1

On the Aesthetic Education of Man (Mid)

Friedrich Schiller

Schiller's 1795 letters on aesthetic education as the path from sensuous to political freedom

German classical philology / nineteenth-century Platonic scholarship 1

#1031 · 1804-28 (multi-volume translation with extensive prefaces and notes)

Translation of Plato's dialogues (Mature)

#1068 · 1816 (parts I-II) and 1829 (part III); recounting 1786-88 journey

The founding modern German translation of Plato — Schleiermacher's philological achievement that reshaped nineteenth-century Plato studies

German classical-Romantic literature 1

Italian Journey (Late-mature retrospective)

#468 · 1932 (revised from 1927 essay; English 1976)

Goethe's account of his 1786-88 Italian journey — the formative classical experience that reshaped his aesthetic-philosophical vision

German conservative political theory 1

The Concept of the Political (Mid)

Carl Schmitt

Schmitt's 1932 controversial definition of the political as the friend-enemy distinction

German contemporary cultural philosophy 1

#595 · 1983

Critique of Cynical Reason (Kritik der zynischen Vernunft) (Mid)

Peter Sloterdijk

Sloterdijk's 1983 foundational text on cynicism as the dominant mode of modern consciousness

German critical theory / philosophy of history 1

#197 · 1925 (submitted as habilitation thesis, rejected by the University of Frankfurt); 1928 (published commercially)

The Origin of German Tragic Drama (Early (the most ambitious early work, before the Arcades Project))

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

The German Baroque Trauerspiel and the philosophical theory of allegory — Benjamin's rejected habilitation thesis, now recognised as a masterpiece of critical theory

German Idealism 1

#100 · 1800

System of Transcendental Idealism (Early)

The history of self-consciousness — from nature's production of mind to mind's recognition of itself in art

German idealism 1

#503 · 1794-95

Foundations of the Science of Knowledge (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre) (Early)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Fichte's 1794-95 foundational German idealist work — the self-positing I (Ich)

German idealism / Hegelianism 1

#21 · 1806–07 (finished as Napoleon entered Jena)

Phenomenology of Spirit (Early)

#247 · 1822-31 (delivered as lectures); 1837 (compiled and published posthumously by Eduard Gans)

Consciousness ascends through self-correcting stages of error toward Spirit's self-recognition in history

German idealism / philosophy of history 1

Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Late (Berlin lectures of the 1820s, his mature mature))

#266 · 1821-31 (delivered as lectures); 1832 (compiled and published posthumously)

World history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom — Hegel's posthumous lectures organising the historical-cultural process under the dialectical-idealist framework

German idealism / philosophy of religion 1

Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Late (Berlin lectures))

#181 · 1820 (published 1821 with the famous controversial Preface)

World religions arranged in the dialectical-developmental framework — Hegel's posthumous lectures on the philosophy of religion, culminating in "the consummate religion" of Christianity

German idealism / political philosophy 1

Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Late (the mature systematic philosophy))

#248 · 1820s (delivered as lectures); 1835-38 (compiled and published posthumously by H. G. Hotho)

The dialectical unfolding of freedom in abstract right, morality, and ethical life — culminating in the rational state. "The rational is actual and the actual is rational"

German idealist philosophy of art 1

Lectures on Aesthetics (Late (Berlin lectures))

#551 · 1821-22 (rev. 1830-31)

Art as the sensible manifestation of the Idea — Hegel's posthumous three-volume systematic philosophy of art

German liberal Protestant theology 1

The Christian Faith (Der christliche Glaube) (Late)

#505 · 1940-43 (unfinished; first German edition 1949)

Schleiermacher's 1821-22 foundational text of modern liberal Protestant theology

German Lutheran Confessing Church ethics 1

Ethics (Ethik) (Late)

#427 · 1988-93 (3 vols; English 1991-98)

Bonhoeffer's unfinished 1940-43 ethical magnum opus — Christian ethics for "responsible action"

German Lutheran historical-revelation theology 1

Systematic Theology (Late)

Wolfhart Pannenberg

Pannenberg's three-volume systematic theology (1988-93) — revelation as universal history

German Lutheran-evangelical / Confessing Church 1

#191 · 1939 (drawn from the Finkenwalde seminary, 1935-37)

Life Together (Mid (between the Cost of Discipleship and the prison theology))

#222 · 1927 (Bonhoeffer's doctoral dissertation, completed at age 21)

Christian community as gift, not ideal — Bonhoeffer's short and influential guide to common life, drawn from the underground Confessing seminary at Finkenwalde

German Lutheran-evangelical theology / theological sociology 1

Sanctorum Communio (Earliest (Bonhoeffer's dissertation at age 21))

The communion of the saints as a theological-sociological reality — Bonhoeffer's 21-year-old dissertation that Karl Barth called "a theological miracle"

German Lutheran-Reformed theology 1

#337 · 1932-33

Creation and Fall (Early-mid)

#672 · 1912-24 (composed); 1924 (published)

Theological exegesis of Genesis 1-3 — Bonhoeffer's 1932-33 Berlin lectures

German modernist literature 1

The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) (Late)

Thomas Mann

Mann's 1924 foundational Bildungsroman — Hans Castorp's seven years at the Berghof sanatorium

German modernist poetry 1

#764 · 1912-22 (composed at Duino and Muzot); 1923 (published)

Duino Elegies (Late)

Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke's 1922 cycle of ten elegies on the angel, the human, and the world

German phenomenology / Carmelite Thomism 1

#444 · 1936 (completed; published posthumously 1950)

Finite and Eternal Being (Late)

Stein's 1936 phenomenological-Thomist ontology — completed before her Auschwitz death

German phenomenology / transcendental phenomenology 1

#171 · 1913

Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology (Mid (the transcendental turn))

#394 · 1960 (German; English 1975, 2nd rev. ed. 1989)

The phenomenological reduction (epoché) and the constitution of the world by transcendental consciousness — Husserl's explicit turn to transcendental idealism

German philosophical hermeneutics 1

Truth and Method (Mid)

#1314 · 1878 (1st part); 1879 (Assorted Opinions and Maxims); 1880 (The Wanderer and His Shadow)

Gadamer's 1960 magnum opus — the major statement of philosophical hermeneutics

German philosophy / Continental philosophy / Free-spirit philosophy 1

Human, All Too Human (Mid)

Nietzsche's 1878 aphoristic work — free-spirit middle period begins

German philosophy / Cultural criticism 1

#1316 · 1873-76

Untimely Meditations (Early)

Nietzsche's 1873-76 four cultural-philosophical essays

German post-Holocaust literature 1

#713 · 2001

Austerlitz (Late)

W.G. Sebald

Sebald's 2001 foundational post-Holocaust memory novel — Jacques Austerlitz's recovery of erased childhood

German post-Kantian philosophical pessimism 1

#318 · 1851

Parerga and Paralipomena (Late)

#317 · 1813 (doctoral dissertation); 1847 (revised 2nd edition)

The book that finally made Schopenhauer famous late in life — two volumes of essays on philosophical, religious, practical themes

German post-Kantian philosophy 1

On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Early)

#55 · 1818 (first ed.); 1844 (expanded with second volume); 1859 (final third edition)

The four kinds of sufficient reason — Schopenhauer's 1813 doctoral dissertation, methodological foundation for World as Will

German post-Kantian philosophy / pessimist metaphysics 1

The World as Will and Representation

#423 · 1958 (Shaffer Lectures at Yale)

The world we perceive is representation; the inner thing-in-itself is blind, ceaseless Will; release comes through aesthetic contemplation and ascetic denial

German Protestant existentialist theology 1

Jesus Christ and Mythology (Late)

Rudolf Bultmann

Bultmann's 1958 statement of the demythologization program — translating the New Testament kerygma into existentialist categories

German Protestant historical-critical-existentialist 1

#424 · 1948-53 (Vol I 1948, Vol II 1953; English 1951-55)

Theology of the New Testament (Late)

Rudolf Bultmann

Bultmann's 1948-53 two-volume systematic theology of the New Testament

German Reformed eschatological theology 1

#426 · 1964 (German; English 1967)

Theology of Hope (Early)

Jürgen Moltmann

Moltmann's 1964 inaugural eschatological theology — God's future as fundamental category

German Romantic-classical literature 1

#311 · 1772-1808 (composed across decades; Part I published 1808; Part II completed 1832, posthumous)

Faust, Part I (Mid (composed across Goethe's career; Part I the major mid-career work))

#1065 · 1772-1806 (composed over 35 years; published 1808)

Faust's pact with Mephistopheles and the seduction of Gretchen — Goethe's 1808 dramatic poem, the central work of German literature

German Romanticism / classical-modern European drama 1

Faust I (Mature)

#1066 · 1825-31 (completed shortly before Goethe's 1832 death; published posthumously 1832)

Faust's pact with Mephistopheles — the founding text of the Faust mythos in modern European literature

German Romanticism / late classical modernism 1

Faust II (Last)

#1029 · 1800 (Monologen, Berlin)

Goethe's 1832 posthumous Faust II — Faust's journey through history, the salvation of his striving soul

German Romanticism / liberal Protestant theology 1

Soliloquies (Early)

#1067 · 1810 (J.G. Cotta, Tübingen)

Five meditations on selfhood, freedom, world, prospect, and youth — Schleiermacher's founding statement of ethical individuality

German Romanticism / phenomenology of perception 1

Theory of Colors (Mature)

#1630 · 1823-1832 conversations; 1836-1848 publication by Eckermann

Goethe's phenomenological treatise on color — long out of favour against Newton, rehabilitated by twentieth-century phenomenology

German Romanticism / philosophical conversation 1

Conversations with Eckermann (Late)

Eckermann's record of his 1823-32 conversations with the late Goethe — the principal source for Goethe's late thought

German Romanticism / Wagnerian aesthetics 1

#1456 · 1849

The Artwork of the Future (Early)

Wagner's 1849 manifesto declaring the Gesamtkunstwerk — drama, music, poetry, dance reunified under the people's revolution

German Romanticism / Wagnerian music-drama theory 1

#1457 · 1851

Opera and Drama (Early-to-Middle)

#556 · 1832 (composed 1825-31; published posthumously)

Wagner's 1851 theoretical magnum opus — music as means, drama as end

German Romanticism / Weimar Classicism 1

Faust, Part Two (Faust: Der Tragödie zweiter Teil) (Late)

Goethe's 1832 Faust Part Two — culminating philosophical drama, completed in his final year

German Romanticism / Weltliteratur / orientalist-philosophical poetry 1

#1629 · 1814-1819

West-östlicher Divan (Late)

#731 · 1900 (2nd ed. 1907)

Goethe's 1819 'West-östlicher Divan' — German-Romantic poetic engagement with the Persian Hafez and Sufi tradition

German sociology / Lebensphilosophie 1

The Philosophy of Money (Mid)

Georg Simmel

Simmel's 1900 phenomenology of money as the form and symbol of modern social life

German Sturm und Drang / pre-Romantic literature 1

#312 · 1774

The Sorrows of Young Werther (Early (the 25-year-old Goethe's breakthrough work))

#360 · 1951-63 (Vol I 1951, Vol II 1957, Vol III 1963)

Werther's romantic despair and suicide — Goethe's 1774 epistolary novel, the breakthrough work of Sturm und Drang and the inaugurating text of German Romanticism

German-American Protestant philosophical theology 1

Systematic Theology (Mid)

Paul Tillich

Tillich's three-volume Systematic Theology — the major mid-20th-century Protestant philosophical-theological synthesis

German-Jewish philosophy / dialogical philosophy 1

#733 · 1918-19 (composed in trenches); 1921 (published)

The Star of Redemption (Mid)

Franz Rosenzweig

Rosenzweig's 1921 systematic Jewish theology of creation, revelation, redemption — the new thinking

German-Jewish-American political philosophy 1

#700 · 1977-78 (Vol I Thinking; Vol II Willing; Vol III Judging unfinished at her death)

The Life of the Mind (Late)

#668 · 1914-15 (composed); 1925 (posthumous)

Arendt's 1977-78 posthumous unfinished masterwork — the three faculties of the active mind: Thinking, Willing, Judging

German-language modernism / Prague Jewish literature 1

The Trial (Der Process) (Late)

Franz Kafka

Kafka's 1925 foundational modernist text — Josef K.'s mysterious trial in an unknowable bureaucratic system

German-language modernist literature 1

#765 · 1922 (composed); 1926 (posthumous)

The Castle (Late)

Franz Kafka

Kafka's 1926 posthumous novel of the land surveyor K. and the inaccessible Castle bureaucracy

Ghanaian / African analytic philosophy 1

#581 · 1996

Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective (Late)

Kwasi Wiredu

Wiredu's 1996 foundational text — African philosophy and the cross-cultural universals/particulars distinction

Greek atomism / Pre-Socratic ethics 1

#1189 · c. 420 BCE

On Cheerfulness (Mature)

Democritus's c. 420 BCE ethical treatise — euthumia (cheerfulness) as the proper end of human life

Greek historiography / political theory 1

#1701 · c. 150s–130s BCE

The Histories

Polybius

How Rome conquered the world — universal history, the mixed constitution, and the cycle of constitutions as political science

Greek rhetoric / paideia 1

#1700 · 354 BCE

Antidosis

Isocrates

The philosopher of logos defends his life's work — rhetoric as civic education, speech as the instrument of civilisation

Harlem Renaissance / African American literature 1

#828 · 1937

Their Eyes Were Watching God (Mid)

Zora Neale Hurston

Hurston's 1937 founding work of African American women's literature — Janie Crawford's search

Heideggerian phenomenology / Kant interpretation / fundamental ontology 1

#1615 · 1929

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Early-to-middle)

#1616 · 1936-38 (published posthumously 1989)

Heidegger's 1929 'Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics' — radical-phenomenological reading of the First Critique as fundamental ontology

Heideggerian phenomenology / late-Heideggerian philosophy of the event / fundamental ontology 1

Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Middle (Kehre))

Plutarch (Mestrius Plutarchus)

Heidegger's 1936-38 'Beiträge zur Philosophie' — the second magnum opus, the philosophy of the event after the Kehre

Hellenistic / Roman-imperial Middle Platonist biography 1

#786 · c. 96-119 CE

Parallel Lives (Late)

Plutarch's c. 100 CE moral biographies — Greeks and Romans paired for ethical comparison

Hellenistic-ethics revival / virtue ethics / philosophical-medical reading of Stoicism, Epicureanism, Scepticism 1

#1580 · 1994

The Therapy of Desire (Middle)

#934 · 1269-72 (Paris, during Aquinas's second regency, contemporaneous with Summa Theologiae I-II)

Nussbaum's 1994 'Therapy of Desire' — Hellenistic ethics as philosophical-medical therapy of the passions

High medieval scholasticism / Thomistic moral metaphysics 1

On Evil (Late (Aquinas's mature treatment of evil and the passions, parallel to the Summa))

Evil is the privation of a due good — not a positive reality, and the ground of every defect from physical pain to original sin

High-Church Anglicanism / Caroline divinity / Restoration ecclesiology 1

#1512 · 1654

A Just Vindication of the Church of England (Late (Civil-War exile))

Bramhall's 1654 'Just Vindication' — defending Anglican orders and ecclesiology in exile

High-Church Anglicanism / scholastic-Aristotelian free-will theology / anti-Hobbist controversy 1

#1513 · 1655

A Defence of True Liberty from Antecedent and Extrinsecal Necessity (Late)

#1716 · c. 5th century BCE–3rd century CE (composite)

Bramhall's 1655 reply to Hobbes — defending libertarian free will against Hobbist necessitarianism

Hindu epic literature / itihasa 1

Ramayana

Valmiki (traditional)

Dharma as destiny, devotion as liberation — the adi kavya (first poem) and the moral imagination of a civilisation

Hindu philosophy / Advaita Vedānta 1

#73 · c. 700–750 AD

Brahma Sutra Bhāṣya

Ādi Śaṅkara (Śaṅkarācārya)

Brahman alone is real; the world is appearance; the Self is Brahman — and liberation comes through knowledge alone

Hindu philosophy / one of the six classical darshanas 1

#52 · c. 2nd century BC – 4th century AD (composite redaction likely)

Yoga Sutras

Patañjali (the historical author or compiler; possibly composite)

Yoga is the cessation of the modifications of the mind (yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ) — the eightfold path leads to liberating samādhi

Hindu Vedanta / Integral non-dualism 1

#1209 · 1916-20 (serial in Arya); revised book form 1922 (First Series), 1928 (Second Series)

Essays on the Gita (Mature)

#1207 · 1914-21 (serial), revisions through 1940s

Aurobindo's 1916-20 commentary on the Bhagavad Gita — integral-Vedantic reading

Hindu Vedanta / Integral yoga 1

The Synthesis of Yoga (Mature)

#1208 · c. 1916-1950 (composed across decades; final revisions until weeks before Aurobindo's 1950 death)

Aurobindo's integral-yoga manual — synthesis of major yogic traditions for the evolution of consciousness

Hindu Vedanta / Integral yoga / English-language epic poetry 1

Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol (Late)

Hippocrates (or a Hippocratic author)

Aurobindo's c.1916-1950 epic poem — 24,000-line mantra-poetry on Savitri's recovery of Satyavan from death

Hippocratic medicine 1

#1698 · c. 410–390 BCE

On the Sacred Disease

Epilepsy is no more sacred than any other disease — the founding declaration of naturalistic medicine

History and philosophy of science 1

#192 · 1957

The Copernican Revolution (Early (Kuhn's first book))

Thomas Kuhn

Astronomy from antiquity to Newton, traced as a developmental whole — the historical study that gave Kuhn the questions answered five years later in Structure

Holocaust survivor literature 1

#711 · 1947 (rev. 1958)

If This Is a Man (Se questo è un uomo) (Mid)

Primo Levi

Primo Levi's 1947 foundational Holocaust survivor memoir — Auschwitz testimony

Hong Kong / Taiwan New Confucianism 1

#628 · 1971

Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue) (Late)

Mou Zongsan

Mou Zongsan's 1971 foundational New Confucian text — Chinese intellectual intuition vs. Kantian limit

Hungarian-British post-critical philosophy / tacit-dimension 1

#435 · 1958 (Gifford Lectures 1951-52 at Aberdeen)

Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Late)

Michael Polanyi

Polanyi's 1958 foundational post-critical philosophy of tacit knowledge — "we know more than we can tell"

Indian Dvaita Vedānta 1

#471 · c. 1250

Anuvyākhyāna (Mid)

#478 · 1914-19 (Arya magazine); 1939-40 (book)

Madhva's 13th-c. foundational Dvaita Vedānta verse-commentary on the Brahma Sūtras

Indian Integral Yoga / Neo-Vedānta 1

The Life Divine (Late)

Sri Aurobindo (Aurobindo Ghose)

Aurobindo's 1939-40 magnum opus of Integral Yoga — descent of the Supermind into matter

Indian political philosophy / anti-colonial thought 1

#227 · 1909 (written aboard the Kildonan Castle in ten days during the voyage from London to South Africa)

Hind Swaraj (Early (the founding text of Gandhi's mature political-philosophical vision))

Mohandas K. Gandhi

Indian home rule as the rejection of British civilisation itself — Gandhi's 1909 dialogue establishing the philosophical foundation of his subsequent satyagraha

Indian political philosophy / arthashastra tradition 1

#1714 · c. 3rd century BCE (core); redacted c. 2nd century CE

Arthashastra

Kautilya (Chanakya)

The science of punishment and prosperity — a manual for total statecraft from taxation to assassination

Indian political philosophy / spiritual autobiography 1

#228 · 1925-29 (originally serialised in the weekly Navajivan; the chapters cover Gandhi's life through the early Indian campaigns up to 1921)

An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Late-mid (looking back over the formative years))

Mohandas K. Gandhi

The "experiments with truth" — Gandhi's spiritual-political journey from childhood through early satyagraha, the major source for his self-understanding

Indian political-religious philosophy 1

#368 · 1929-32 (translations and commentaries; collected as Anasakti Yoga 1930)

Anasakti Yoga: The Gita According to Gandhi (Mid-late)

Mohandas K. Gandhi

Gandhi's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita — anasakti (non-attachment) as the central spiritual-political category

Indian Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta 1

#470 · c. 1100

Śrī Bhāṣya (Mid)

Rāmānuja

Rāmānuja's 12th-c. foundational Viśiṣṭādvaita commentary on the Brahma Sūtras

Indian Yogācāra Buddhism 1

#469 · c. 4th-5th century CE

Mahāyānasaṃgraha (Mid)

Asaṅga

Asaṅga's 4th-c. Compendium of the Mahāyāna — foundational Yogācāra systematic

Integral Yoga / Indian philosophical history / philosophy of social development 1

#1637 · 1916-18 (Arya serial); 1949 book

The Human Cycle (Middle)

#1638 · 1914-16 (Arya serial); 1956 book

Aurobindo's 1949 'Human Cycle' — psychological stages of human collective development (Symbolic, Typal, Conventional, Individualist, Subjective)

Integral Yoga / Vedic hermeneutics / Indian philosophical retranslation 1

The Secret of the Veda (Early-to-middle)

#1124 · 1947-48 (drafted), December 10, 1948 (adopted)

Aurobindo's 1956 'Secret of the Veda' — symbolic-philosophical reinterpretation of the Rig Veda against the Sayana / Max Müller readings

International human-rights tradition / Liberal-internationalism 1

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Late)

#1635 · 1907-08 (Cambridge dissertation; published 1908)

Eleanor Roosevelt-chaired UN drafting committee's 1948 Universal Declaration — founding document of international human-rights law

Iqbalian Islamic philosophy / Persian intellectual history / Sufism 1

The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (Early)

Mullā Ṣadrā (Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī)

Iqbal's 1908 Cambridge dissertation — survey of Persian Islamic philosophy from Zoroaster to the Bahai movement

Iranian School of Isfahan / Transcendent Theosophy (al-ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya) 1

#484 · c. 1628

al-Ḥikma al-Mutaʿāliya fī l-Asfār al-ʿAqliyya al-Arbaʿa (Transcendent Wisdom in the Four Intellectual Journeys) (Late)

Mullā Ṣadrā's 17th-c. magnum opus — the great synthesis of Iranian Islamic philosophy

Irish modernism 1

#669 · 1914-21 (composed); 1922 (published)

Ulysses (Mid)

James Joyce

Joyce's 1922 foundational modernist novel — Leopold Bloom's Odyssean day in Dublin

Irish modernist-occult literature 1

#657 · 1925 (1st edn); 1937 (rev. 2nd edn)

A Vision (Late)

W.B. Yeats

Yeats's 1925/1937 foundational esoteric-philosophical synthesis — the 28 phases of the moon and the gyres of history

Islam (all branches) 1

#33 · c. 610–632 AD (the period of the Prophet's mission); 'Uthmānic codex c. 650

The Quran

Considered by Muslims the direct word of God; transmitted through Muhammad; collected under 'Uthmān (c. 650)

There is no god but God; the recitation is the direct, untranslatable speech of God; submission (islām) is the human posture before the divine

Islamic falsafa / Andalusian-Maliki jurisprudence 1

#1119 · c. 1179

Faṣl al-Maqāl (The Decisive Treatise) (Mature)

Averroes's c.1179 short treatise — the harmony of philosophy and Islamic revealed religion

Islamic falsafa / Aristotelian-Neoplatonist philosophy 1

#1295 · c. 1014-1020

Ilāhiyyāt (Metaphysics of the Shifāʾ) (Mature)

Avicenna's metaphysical section of the Shifāʾ — the proper-philosophical theology

Islamic falsafa / medieval Aristotelian philosophy 1

#305 · c. 1180

Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (Mid-late (Averroes's major systematic philosophical defence))

Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī

"The Incoherence of the Incoherence" — Averroes's major philosophical defence against al-Ghazali's critique of the philosophers

Islamic Illuminationist (Ishrāqī) philosophy 1

#485 · c. 1186

Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq (The Philosophy of Illumination) (Mid)

Suhrawardī's 12th-c. foundational Illuminationist (Ishrāqī) philosophy — light-ontology

Islamic medical tradition / Aristotelian-Galenic medicine 1

#1293 · c. 1025

al-Qānūn fī al-Ṭibb (Canon of Medicine) (Mature)

al-Kindī (Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb)

Avicenna's c.1025 five-volume medical encyclopedia — foundational medieval medical text

Islamic Peripatetic / al-Fārābī school 1

#486 · c. 942

Mabādiʾ Ārāʾ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila (Principles of the Opinions of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City) (Mid)

al-Fārābī (Abū Naṣr)

al-Fārābī's 10th-c. foundational Islamic political philosophy — the virtuous city

Islamic Peripatetic / Eastern philosophy 1

#480 · c. 1030

Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa-l-Tanbīhāt (Remarks and Admonitions) (Late)

Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā)

Avicenna's 11th-c. late mature work — Sufi-affined mystical philosophy

Islamic Peripatetic philosophy 1

#479 · c. 1024-27

Kitāb al-Najāt (Book of Salvation) (Mid)

Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā)

Avicenna's 11th-c. accessible compendium of his philosophical system

Islamic Peripatetic philosophy (Andalusian) 1

#481 · c. 1190

Long Commentary on De Anima (Late)

Averroes (Ibn Rushd)

Averroes's c. 1190 longest commentary on Aristotle's De Anima — foundational for Latin Averroism

Islamic Peripatetic philosophy (early falsafa) 1

#487 · c. 850

Fī l-Falsafa al-Ūlā (On First Philosophy) (Early)

al-Kindī's 9th-c. foundational text of Arabic-Islamic philosophy — the first Arab philosopher

Islamic philosophy / Andalusian falsafa 1

#957 · c. 1180

al-Kashf ʿan Manāhij al-Adilla (Mature)

#955 · composed over Mulla Sadra's mature life, completed c. 1638

The Ash'arite kalām is defective; the proper proof of God is the philosophical-Aristotelian one that the Qur'ān itself endorses

Islamic philosophy / Shi'a falsafa / School of Isfahan 1

Al-Hikmat al-Muta'aliya fi'l-Asfar al-'Aqliyya al-Arba'a (Late (the synthesis of his entire mature philosophy))

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

The primacy of existence over essence — and the doctrine of substantial motion, change at the level of substance, not just accident

Italian post-Heideggerian biopolitical philosophy 1

#576 · 1995

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Late)

Giorgio Agamben

Agamben's 1995 foundational text on biopolitics and sovereign exception — bare life and homo sacer

Italian postmodernism / Latin American magical realism affinity 1

#655 · 1972

Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili) (Mid)

Italo Calvino

Calvino's 1972 Invisible Cities — Marco Polo describes 55 imaginary cities to Kublai Khan

Italian Renaissance humanism 1

#533 · 1486

Oration on the Dignity of Man (Oratio de hominis dignitate) (Mid)

Pico's 1486 Oration on the Dignity of Man — foundational Renaissance humanist text

Italian Renaissance natural philosophy / new science 1

#537 · 1638

Two New Sciences (Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche, intorno à Due Nuove Scienze) (Late)

#534 · 1513 (first printed 1532)

Galileo's 1638 foundational text of mathematical physics — the strength of materials and kinematics

Italian Renaissance Neoplatonist hermeticism 1

#536 · 1584

On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (De l'Infinito Universo e Mondi) (Late)

Giordano Bruno

Bruno's 1584 foundational pluralist cosmology — burned at the stake in Rome in 1600

Italian Renaissance political realism 1

The Prince (Il Principe) (Late)

Niccolò Machiavelli

Machiavelli's 1513 foundational text of modern political realism — the verità effettuale della cosa

Italian Renaissance republican political theory 1

#535 · 1517 (published 1531)

Discourses on Livy (Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio) (Late)

Niccolò Machiavelli

Machiavelli's 1517 major republican political philosophy — the foundational text of modern republicanism

Japanese Buddhist scholarship / comparative philosophy 1

#288 · 1907 (Suzuki's first major book in English, written during his work with Paul Carus at the Open Court Press)

Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (Early (Suzuki's first major book; preceding the Essays in Zen Buddhism by twenty years))

The major early systematic Western introduction to Mahayana Buddhism — Suzuki's 1907 first major English-language book

Japanese Kyoto School 1

#579 · 1946

Philosophy as Metanoetics (Zangedō to shite no tetsugaku) (Late)

Tanabe Hajime

Tanabe's 1946 foundational philosophy as repentance — Buddhist-Christian metanoetics after WWII

Japanese Kyoto School (2nd generation) 1

#632 · 1961

Religion and Nothingness (Shūkyō to wa nani ka) (Mid)

Nishitani Keiji

Nishitani's 1961 foundational Kyoto-School text — religion as "place of nothingness" (śūnyatā)

Japanese Kyoto School / Watsuji ethics 1

#578 · 1935

Climate and Culture (Fūdo: ningengakuteki kōsatsu) (Mid)

Watsuji Tetsurō

Watsuji's 1935 Fūdo — climate as the ground of cultural-philosophical difference

Japanese Kyoto School / Zen-Western philosophy 1

#577 · 1911

An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no Kenkyū) (Early)

#287 · 1927 (First Series), 1933 (Second), 1934 (Third) — published in English by Rider & Co. London

Nishida's 1911 foundational Kyoto School text — "pure experience" as the foundation of philosophy

Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism 1

#473 · 1765-66

Wild Ivy (Itsumadegusa) (Late)

Hakuin Ekaku

Hakuin's 18th-c. autobiographical spiritual masterwork — major Rinzai Zen text

Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism / comparative mysticism 1

Essays in Zen Buddhism (Mid (Suzuki's major early period of Western dissemination))

#472 · 1231-1253 (95 fascicles)

Three series of essays — D. T. Suzuki's major early Western introduction to Zen Buddhism, the source for much twentieth-century Western reception

Japanese Shingon esoteric Buddhism 1

#474 · c. 817

Attaining Enlightenment in This Very Existence (Sokushin Jōbutsu Gi) (Early)

Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi)

Kūkai's 9th-c. foundational Shingon esoteric Buddhist text on attaining enlightenment in this very body

Japanese Sōtō Zen Buddhism 1

Shōbōgenzō (Late)

Dōgen Zenji

Dōgen's 13th-c. monumental Sōtō Zen masterwork — Shōbōgenzō ("Treasury of the True Dharma Eye")

Japanese Zen Buddhism / cultural studies 1

#335 · 1959 (developed from his 1938 Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture)

Zen and Japanese Culture (Late)

#1118 · 1934 (Japanese-published English ed.); 1949 (Rider ed. with Jung foreword)

Zen and the arts — Suzuki's 1959 sustained study of Zen's influence on Japanese cultural traditions (swordsmanship, tea, haiku, painting)

Japanese Zen Buddhism / Modern Zen apologetics 1

An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (Mid)

Suzuki's 1934 popular introduction — with the 1949 Carl Jung foreword that helped shape Western Buddhist reception

Jewish dialogical philosophy / Jewish-Christian comparative religion / philosophy of religion 1

#1632 · 1951

Two Types of Faith (Late)

#1631 · 1929-1938 essays; 1947 publication

Buber's 1951 'Two Types of Faith' — Jewish emunah ('trust') versus Greek-Christian pistis ('belief that') as the two modes of religious faith

Jewish dialogical philosophy / philosophical anthropology / philosophy of education 1

Between Man and Man (Middle-to-late)

#90 · c. 1280 (Castile, Spain); first published in print 1558

Buber's 1947 'Between Man and Man' — major essays on dialogue, education, and 'what is man?'

Jewish mysticism / Kabbalah 1

The Zohar

Traditionally Shimon bar Yochai (2nd c. AD); modern scholarship attributes to Moses de León c. 1280

The Torah read through the ten sefirot — God's ten emanations through which creation, history, and the soul's ascent are structured

Jewish philosophy / Pragmatism 1

#1088 · 2008

Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life (Late)

Putnam's 2008 engagement with modern Jewish philosophy — Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas — and Wittgenstein as religious thinker

Jewish religious philosophy / dialogical philosophy 1

#178 · 1923

I and Thou (Mid (the foundational statement of dialogical philosophy))

#31 · c. 1200 BC (oldest core) – c. 165 BC (Daniel); canon stabilised c. 100 AD

The two basic word-pairs — I-Thou and I-It — and the eternal Thou that meets us through every finite Thou

Judaism (read also as the Old Testament in all branches of Christianity) 1

The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)

Anonymous / composite (many authors, redactors, scribal communities over a millennium)

One God, creator of heaven and earth; a chosen people; a covenant with concrete moral demands; history as the arena of divine action

Jōdo Shinshū (True Pure Land Buddhism) 1

#1624 · c. 1224; revised through c. 1247

Kyōgyōshinshō (Mature)

#1649 · 1764-1798 composition; completed 1798 (44 volumes)

Salvation by Other Power (tariki) — Amida's vow grants birth in the Pure Land to those who entrust themselves to it

Kokugaku (Japanese National Learning) / shintō hermeneutics / Japanese philology 1

Kojiki-den (Late (career-spanning))

Motoori Norinaga

Norinaga's 1798 'Kojiki-den' — 44-volume magnum opus commentary on the Kojiki, completed after 34 years' work

Kokugaku (Japanese National Learning) / shintō-aesthetic philosophy 1

#1647 · 1763

Shibun Yōryō (Early)

Motoori Norinaga

Norinaga's 1763 'Shibun Yōryō' — Kokugaku-aesthetic reading of the Genji as the text of mono no aware

Kokugaku (Japanese National Learning) / shintō-restorationist philosophy 1

#1648 · 1771

Naobi no Mitama (Middle)

Motoori Norinaga

Norinaga's 1771 'Naobi no Mitama' — programmatic statement of the Way of the Kami against the Confucian and Buddhist 'ways'

Kyoto School / Japanese Buddhist dialectical philosophy 1

#1611 · 1939

The Self-Identity of Absolute Contradiction (Late)

Nishida's 1939 essay — the late logic of self-identity through absolute contradiction

Kyoto School / Japanese Buddhist phenomenology 1

#1610 · 1927

From the Acting to the Seeing (Middle-to-late)

Nishida's 1927 'From the Acting to the Seeing' — turn to the logic of place (basho)

Kyoto School / Japanese Buddhist-influenced phenomenology / post-Kantian idealism 1

#1609 · 1917

Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness (Middle)

#907 · 1945 (composed Feb-April 1945; published posthumously)

Nishida's 1917 second major work — Japanese Buddhist phenomenology in dialogue with Fichte and Husserl

Kyoto School / Japanese phenomenology and Mahāyāna philosophy 1

The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (Late (Nishida's final completed essay, written months before his death))

Nicholas Black Elk (Heȟáka Sápa), recorded by John G. Neihardt

Reality is the self-determination of the absolute Nothing — the basho ("place") in which every individual finds and loses itself

Lakota / Native American religious philosophy 1

#643 · 1932

Black Elk Speaks (Late)

Black Elk's 1932 foundational Lakota spiritual autobiography — the Great Vision and the sacred hoop

Lakota traditional religion / North American indigenous religious testimony 1

#1679 · 1931 interviews; 1984 edited publication

The Sixth Grandfather (Posthumous (testamentary materials))

Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk)

DeMallie's 1984 'Sixth Grandfather' — Neihardt's original 1931 stenographic transcripts of his interviews with Black Elk

Lakota traditional religion / Oglala Sioux ceremonial tradition / North American indigenous religion 1

#1678 · 1947-48 interviews; 1953 publication

The Sacred Pipe (Late)

Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk)

Black Elk's 1953 'Sacred Pipe' — account of the seven rites of the Oglala Sioux, recorded by Joseph Epes Brown

Late antique Christian Platonism 1

#46 · c. 524 AD (in prison at Pavia, awaiting execution by Theodoric)

The Consolation of Philosophy

#51 · Composed c. 254–270 AD; edited by Porphyry c. 301

Lady Philosophy consoles a doomed man — fortune is fickle, providence is just, eternity is the simultaneous and complete possession of unending life

Late antique Greek doxography 1

#513 · c. 3rd century CE

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (Late)

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius's 3rd-c. foundational doxographical biography of ancient Greek philosophers

Late antique philosophy / Neo-Platonism 1

The Enneads

Plotinus (edited by Porphyry c. 301)

The One emanates Intellect, which emanates Soul, which emanates Nature — and the philosophical life is the soul's ascent back to its source

Late antique philosophy / Pyrrhonist scepticism 1

#71 · c. 160–210 AD

Outlines of Pyrrhonism

Sextus Empiricus

For every argument there is an equal counter-argument — and from equipollence comes suspension and tranquillity

Late Byzantine hesychast theology 1

#524 · 1338-41

Triads (Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts) (Late)

St. Gregory Palamas

Palamas's 1338-41 Triads — foundational distinction between divine essence and uncreated energies

Late Byzantine patristic theology 1

#521 · c. 628-30

Ambigua to John (Ambigua ad Iohannem) (Late)

St. Maximus the Confessor

Maximus the Confessor's c. 628-30 foundational synthesis — the major patristic theological synthesis

Late Heidegger / continental philosophy of technology 1

#156 · 1953 (Munich lecture); 1954 (published)

The Question Concerning Technology (Late)

#941 · c. 1442-43 (composed shortly after De Docta Ignorantia, dedicated to Cardinal Cesarini)

Modern technology's essence is "enframing" — a mode of revealing that reduces all that is to standing-reserve, including humanity itself

Late medieval / Renaissance Christian Platonism / epistemology 1

On Conjectures (Mature (the systematic epistemological development of the docta-ignorantia framework))

All finite knowledge is conjecture — approximation to a truth never fully attained — and recognising this is itself the condition of progress

Late medieval Italian Catholic poetry 1

#1044 · c. 1314-19

Purgatorio (Mature)

#948 · c. 1377-78 (composed by dictation in ecstatic states; Catherine could read with difficulty and probably could not write)

The ascent of Mount Purgatory through the seven terraces of capital vice — Dante's most theologically careful cantica

Late medieval Italian mysticism / Dominican lay piety 1

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)

The truth of the Mystical Body, the bridge of Christ, and the reform of the Church — Catherine's ecstatic-political mysticism dictated to scribes

Late medieval Italian philosophy of language 1

#1045 · c. 1304-05 (two of four planned books)

De Vulgari Eloquentia (Mid-mature)

#943 · c. 1311-26 (planned during Eckhart's second Paris regency, never completed; only fragments survive)

The founding philosophical treatise on vernacular language — Dante defending the dignity of Italian against Latin while writing in Latin

Late medieval Latin scholasticism / Rhineland mysticism 1

Opus Tripartitum (Late (Eckhart's most ambitious Latin project, undertaken in the years before the 1326 trial))

#1046 · c. 1313-18 (during Dante's exile)

A unified Latin scholastic system organising 1,000 propositions on being, the soul, and God — never completed; only fragments and the biblical commentaries survive

Late medieval political philosophy 1

De Monarchia (Late)

#57 · Written 1890–93; banned in Russia, published 1894 in Berlin

Universal monarchy as the proper political form for humanity — and the imperial-papal independence

Late patristic / early Byzantine theology 1

#522 · c. 743

Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (De Fide Orthodoxa) (Late)

St. John of Damascus

John of Damascus's c. 743 systematic compendium — the major late patristic systematic

Late Pyrrhonist scepticism 1

#516 · c. 180-200 CE

Adversus Mathematicos (Against the Mathematicians / Professors) (Late)

Sextus Empiricus

Sextus's c. 180-200 CE major Pyrrhonist work — sceptical attack on the disciplines

Late Roman Neoplatonism / early medieval Christian philosophy 1

#1712 · 524 CE

The Consolation of Philosophy

Boethius

Fortune's wheel turns, but the highest good stands still — a Neoplatonic consolation for the condemned

Late Tolstoyan Christian anarchism / Christian non-violence 1

The Kingdom of God Is Within You (Late)

#967 · 1989 (Wisconsin UP)

The Sermon on the Mount taken at its word — non-resistance to evil dissolves both state coercion and ecclesiastical hierarchy

Late twentieth-century American philosophy / pragmatist tradition 1

The American Evasion of Philosophy (Mature (West's major work of intellectual history, written before the Race Matters celebrity))

#1460 · 1880 (with appendices through 1881)

American pragmatism is the distinctive philosophical tradition that grew up around the American intellectual evasion of European epistemology — and it has prophetic resources for the present

Late Wagnerian aesthetics / Schopenhauerian metaphysics / Christian-Buddhist syncretism 1

Religion and Art (Late)

#493 · late 5th or early 6th century

Wagner's 1880 declaration: 'When religion becomes artificial, it is for art to rescue its essence'

Late-antique Christian Neoplatonism 1

The Divine Names (De Divinis Nominibus) (Late)

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

Pseudo-Dionysius's late 5th-c. foundational Christian Neoplatonist theology of divine names

Late-antique Neoplatonist Aristotelianism / Latin scholastic logic 1

#910 · c. 510-23 (the translations and commentary cycle, completed in Boethius's last years before his 524 execution)

Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories (Mature (the late translation programme Boethius announced and partly completed before his death))

#817 · 1796-97 (drafted as First Impressions); 1813 (published)

The single channel through which Aristotelian logic — the Organon — reached the Latin West for six centuries

Late-Enlightenment / Regency English fiction 1

Pride and Prejudice (Mid)

Jane Austen

Austen's 1813 comic-romantic novel — the Bennet family, Mr Darcy, and the moral education of Elizabeth

Late-Meiji / early-Taishō Japanese literature 1

#773 · 1914 (serialized Asahi Shimbun)

Kokoro (Late)

Natsume Sōseki

Sōseki's 1914 modern Japanese novel of friendship, guilt, and the Meiji-Taishō transition

Late-nineteenth-century empiriocriticism / Viennese positivism 1

#848 · 1886 (1st ed.); 1903 (rev. 5th ed.)

The Analysis of Sensations (Mid)

#770 · 1879 (first performed Copenhagen)

Mach's 1886 founding work of empiriocriticism — sensations as the fundamental elements

Late-nineteenth-century Marxism 1

#873 · 1877-78

Anti-Duhring (Late)

Friedrich Engels

Engels's 1878 popular exposition of dialectical materialism — Marxist response to Dühring

Late-nineteenth-century Scandinavian theatre / modern realism 1

A Doll's House (Mid)

Henrik Ibsen

Ibsen's 1879 founding work of modern social drama — Nora slams the door

Late-Restoration philosophical theology / Locke controversy 1

#1482 · 1697 (with subsequent rejoinders through 1698)

The Bishop of Worcester's Answer to Mr Locke (Late)

Stillingfleet's 1697–98 replies to Locke — the most extensive philosophical exchange of Locke's life

Late-Roman patristic theology / Latin Trinitarian / Christological theology / scholastic prologue 1

#1546 · c. 510-524

Theological Tractates (Opuscula Sacra) (Mid-to-late)

Boethius's five 'Opuscula Sacra' — applying philosophical method to Christian dogma; the prologue of scholasticism

Late-Roman quadrivium / Pythagorean-Platonic arithmetic 1

#1545 · c. 500-510

De Institutione Arithmetica (On Arithmetic) (Early)

Boethius's 'De Arithmetica' — the Latin transmission of Pythagorean arithmetic to the medieval West

Late-Roman quadrivium / Pythagorean-Platonic music-theory 1

#1544 · c. 500-510

De Institutione Musica (On Music) (Early)

Boethius's 'De Musica' — the standard medieval Latin music-theory textbook

Late-Tolstoyan Christian anarchism / Christian-pacifist aesthetics / Russian religious philosophy 1

#1664 · 1897-98

What Is Art? (Late)

Tolstoy's 1897 'What Is Art?' — late aesthetic-religious treatise: art is the communication of feeling in the service of religious-moral brotherhood

Late-twentieth-century African-American speculative fiction 1

#875 · 1979

Kindred (Mid)

#896 · 1972 (filming); 1973 (album); 1974 (film release)

Octavia Butler's 1979 time-travel novel — Dana pulled from 1976 Los Angeles to antebellum Maryland slavery

Late-twentieth-century Afrofuturism / cosmic jazz 1

Space Is the Place (Mid)

#810 · 1973-77 (essays in New York Review of Books); 1977 (book)

Sun Ra's 1974 Afrofuturist film and album — outer-space as Black liberation

Late-twentieth-century Afrofuturism / sonic theory 1

#895 · 1998

More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction (Mid)

Kodwo Eshun

Eshun's 1998 founding theoretical work of Afrofuturist sonic theory

Late-twentieth-century American cultural criticism 1

On Photography (Late)

Susan Sontag

Sontag's 1977 essays founding modern theory and criticism of photography

Late-twentieth-century American evangelical Protestantism 1

#902 · 1990 (workbook); 1994 (book)

Experiencing God (Late)

Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King

Blackaby's 1990 evangelical-Protestant guide to knowing and doing God's will

Late-twentieth-century American postmodernism 1

#834 · 1968-72

Gravity's Rainbow (Mid)

Thomas Pynchon

Pynchon's 1973 postmodernist novel of the V-2 rocket and the end of World War II

Late-twentieth-century American pragmatic realism 1

#883 · 1990

Realism with a Human Face (Late)

#842 · 1986 (based on 1984 Robb Lectures)

Putnam's 1990 mature articulation of pragmatic realism

Late-twentieth-century American Southern-Western literature 1

#835 · 1985

Blood Meridian (Late)

Cormac McCarthy

McCarthy's 1985 borderlands novel of nineteenth-century scalp-hunters and metaphysical violence

Late-twentieth-century analytic neo-Aristotelian metaphysics 1

#887 · 1999

Things and Their Parts (Mid)

Kit Fine

Fine's 1999 paper — hylomorphic structure distinguished from mereological aggregate

Late-twentieth-century anglophone African literature / postcolonial theory 1

Decolonising the Mind (Late)

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Ngũgĩ's 1986 manifesto — "Decolonising the Mind" — language and the African writer

Late-twentieth-century anglophone cyberpunk 1

#881 · 1992

Snow Crash (Mid)

Neal Stephenson

Stephenson's 1992 cyberpunk novel — the Metaverse and viral linguistic-religious code

Late-twentieth-century anglophone Irish poetry 1

#816 · 1975

North (Mid)

Seamus Heaney

Heaney's 1975 collection on Northern Irish violence, bog bodies, and the poetics of place

Late-twentieth-century anglophone postcolonial fiction 1

#830 · 1979-81

Midnight's Children (Mid)

Salman Rushdie

Rushdie's 1981 magical-realist novel — Saleem Sinai born at the moment of India's independence (Aug 15 1947)

Late-twentieth-century anglophone South African literature 1

#775 · 1999

Disgrace (Late)

J. M. Coetzee

Coetzee's 1999 post-apartheid novel of guilt, violence, and grace — Booker Prize 1999

Late-twentieth-century Black liberation theology 1

#861 · 1975

God of the Oppressed (Mid)

James H. Cone

Cone's 1975 mature articulation of Black liberation theology

Late-twentieth-century British Marxist cultural criticism 1

#811 · 1972 (BBC series and book)

Ways of Seeing (Late)

John Berger

Berger's 1972 BBC series and book transforming popular art criticism — the gaze and oil painting

Late-twentieth-century Christian feminist theology 1

#863 · 1983

Sexism and God-Talk (Mid)

Rosemary Radford Ruether

Ruether's 1983 founding work of systematic feminist theology

Late-twentieth-century contemporary spirituality 1

#901 · 1997 (Canada); 2004 (revised US)

The Power of Now (Late)

Eckhart Tolle

Tolle's 1997 founding work of contemporary popular spirituality — the eternal present moment

Late-twentieth-century deep ecology 1

#890 · 1973 (Inquiry)

The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement (Mid)

Arne Naess

Naess's 1973 founding paper of deep ecology — biospheric egalitarianism

Late-twentieth-century evolutionary biology / philosophy of biology 1

#749 · 1989

Wonderful Life (Late)

Stephen Jay Gould

Gould's 1989 study of the Burgess Shale — replay the tape of life and you get a different result

Late-twentieth-century evolutionary biology / sociobiology 1

#751 · 1975

Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Late)

Edward O. Wilson

E. O. Wilson's 1975 founding treatise of sociobiology — the biology of social behavior

Late-twentieth-century French phenomenology / semiotics 1

#812 · 1979-80 (Barthes died Mar 1980)

Camera Lucida (Late)

Roland Barthes

Barthes's 1980 phenomenology of photography — punctum, studium, and the mother's photograph

Late-twentieth-century French sociology / theory of practice 1

#792 · 1980 (French); 1990 (English)

The Logic of Practice (Late)

Pierre Bourdieu

Bourdieu's 1980 synthesis of his theory of practice — habitus, field, and capital

Late-twentieth-century generative grammar / Cartesian linguistics 1

#796 · 1965

Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Mid)

#836 · 1994-95 (Japanese 3 vols.); 1997 (English single volume)

Chomsky's 1965 articulation of the Standard Theory of generative grammar — competence vs performance

Late-twentieth-century interpretive anthropology 1

#791 · 1973

The Interpretation of Cultures (Late)

Clifford Geertz

Geertz's 1973 founding work of interpretive anthropology — thick description and cultural webs of meaning

Late-twentieth-century Japanese literature 1

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Late)

Haruki Murakami

Murakami's 1994-95 postmodern Japanese novel — Toru Okada, the missing cat, and the Manchurian past

Late-twentieth-century neuroscience / philosophy of mind 1

#756 · 1994

Descartes' Error (Late)

António Damásio

Damasio's 1994 founding work of affective neuroscience — the somatic marker hypothesis

Late-twentieth-century object-relations psychology / attachment theory 1

#799 · 1969 (vol. I); 1973 (vol. II); 1980 (vol. III)

Attachment and Loss (Late)

John Bowlby

Bowlby's 1969-80 trilogy founding the modern theory of attachment — secure base and internal working models

Late-twentieth-century psychedelic philosophy 1

#897 · 1992

Food of the Gods (Late)

Terence McKenna

McKenna's 1992 founding work of psychedelic-evolutionary anthropology — the "stoned ape" hypothesis

Late-twentieth-century Roman Catholic magisterium 1

#866 · 1984 (August 6)

Instruction on Certain Aspects of the "Theology of Liberation" (Late)

Joseph Ratzinger (CDF)

The 1984 CDF Instruction (Libertatis Nuntius) — Vatican critique of Marxist liberation theology

Late-twentieth-century transpersonal psychology / psychedelic therapy 1

#898 · 1975

Realms of the Human Unconscious (Mid)

Stanislav Grof

Grof's 1975 founding work of LSD-assisted psychotherapy — perinatal matrices and transpersonal psychology

Late-twentieth-century Turkish literature 1

#832 · 1998 (Turkish Benim Adım Kırmızı); 2001 (English)

My Name Is Red (Mid)

Orhan Pamuk

Pamuk's 1998 historical novel — late-Ottoman miniaturists, European painting, and a murder mystery

Late-Victorian / proto-modernist English Catholic poetry 1

#807 · 1875-89 (composed); 1918 (posthumous publication ed. Robert Bridges)

Poems (Late)

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hopkins's 1918 posthumous founding work of modernist poetry — sprung rhythm and inscape

Late-Victorian aestheticism / decadence 1

#772 · 1890 (Lippincott's); 1891 (revised book)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Late)

Oscar Wilde

Wilde's 1890-91 fin-de-siècle aesthetic novel of decadence, beauty, and the corrupted soul

Latin American (Peruvian) Marxism 1

#583 · 1928

Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana) (Mid)

José Carlos Mariátegui

Mariátegui's 1928 Seven Essays — foundational text of Latin American Marxism integrating Indigenous question

Latin American (Salvadoran) liberation theology 1

#642 · 1999 (Spanish); 2001 (English)

Christ the Liberator: A View from the Victims (Late)

Jon Sobrino

Sobrino's 1999/2001 foundational liberation Christology — Christ viewed from the victims

Latin American Catholic liberation theology 1

#641 · 1981

Church: Charism and Power (Igreja: carisma e poder) (Mid)

Leonardo Boff

Boff's 1981 foundational liberation-theological ecclesiology — Church of the poor

Latin American decolonial theory 1

#585 · 2005

The Idea of Latin America (Late)

Walter D. Mignolo

Mignolo's 2005 decolonial-theoretical text — "Latin America" as colonial-Eurocentric construction

Latin American liberation philosophy 1

#582 · 1977

Philosophy of Liberation (Filosofía de la Liberación) (Mid)

Enrique Dussel

Dussel's 1977 foundational text of Latin American philosophy of liberation

Latin American liberation theology 1

#640 · 1977-80 (collected pastoral letters)

The Voice of the Voiceless (Late)

Óscar Romero

Romero's pastoral letters from El Salvador — foundational liberation-theology martyr text

Latin American liberation theology / Catholic-Thomistic 1

#1252 · 1979 (Spanish), 1983 (English)

The Power of the Poor in History (Mid)

#1251 · 1983 (Spanish), 1984 (English)

Gutiérrez's 1979 essays — the proper-historical-political role of the Latin American poor

Latin American liberation theology / Christian mysticism 1

We Drink from Our Own Wells (Mid)

#407 · 1971 (Spanish); 1973 (English)

Gutiérrez's 1983 spirituality of liberation — proper-spiritual-religious foundation of liberation-theological work

Latin American liberation theology / post-Vatican II Catholic social thought 1

A Theology of Liberation (Early (Gutiérrez's breakthrough work; the founding text of the school))

Theology done from the underside of Latin American history — the option for the poor as the heart of Christian faith

Latin American magical realism 1

#656 · 1967

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) (Mid)

Gabriel García Márquez

García Márquez's 1967 foundational Latin American magical realism — the Buendía family of Macondo

Latin American Modernist / speculative fiction 1

#653 · 1944

Ficciones (Mid)

Jorge Luis Borges

Borges's 1944 foundational text of modern speculative fiction — labyrinths, libraries, infinities

Latin Averroism / radical Aristotelianism / Neoplatonic-Aristotelian metaphysics 1

#1527 · c. 1272-76

Quaestiones super Librum de Causis (Late)

Siger's questions on the Liber de Causis — the medieval-Neoplatonic emanational hierarchy treated philosophically

Latin Christianity / Augustinianism 1

#12 · c. 397–400 AD

Confessions (Early)

#43 · 413–426 AD (composed in stages over thirteen years)

A restless heart finds rest in God — and along the way invents Western philosophical autobiography, the modern self, and the philosophy of time

Latin Christianity / Biblical scholarship 1

#1708 · c. 382–405 CE

Vulgate (Latin Bible translation) (Mature)

Jerome

The hebraica veritas in Latin — Jerome's translation shaped Western theology, liturgy, and literature for a thousand years

Latin Christianity / Ciceronian-Christian virtue ethics 1

#1707 · c. 391 CE

De Officiis Ministrorum (Late)

Ambrose of Milan

Christian duty as the fulfilment of classical virtue — the bishop's handbook for a post-pagan empire

Latin Christianity / political theology 1

City of God (Late)

#255 · 397 (Books 1-3.25); 426-27 (Books 3.25-4, completed near the end of Augustine's life)

Two cities, the earthly and the heavenly, intermingled through history — the city of God is the people whose love is God's

Latin patristic theology / Christian biblical interpretation 1

On Christian Doctrine (Mid-late (composed across three decades))

The reading and preaching of Scripture — Augustine's comprehensive treatise on Christian biblical interpretation and rhetorical communication

Latitudinarian Anglicanism / Restoration church-controversy 1

#1480 · 1681

The Unreasonableness of Separation (Mid-career)

#1478 · 1662 (revised editions through 1675)

Stillingfleet's 1681 sermon-treatise against Dissenting separation from the Church of England

Latitudinarian Anglicanism / Restoration philosophical theology / Cambridge-Platonist-influenced rational religion 1

Origines Sacrae (Early-career)

Stillingfleet's 1662 'Origines Sacrae' — Restoration-Anglican rational defence of Christian truth against deist and atheist challenge

Latitudinarian Anglicanism / Restoration polemical theology 1

#1479 · 1664

A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion (Early-career)

Stillingfleet's 1664 Protestant-Anglican reply to John Sergeant's Catholic apologetic

Latitudinarian Anglicanism / Trinitarian apologetics 1

#1481 · 1696

A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Late)

#1641 · Sermons 1854-1886; published serially Liverpool / SLC 1854-1886

Stillingfleet's 1696 defence of Trinitarian orthodoxy — the work that drew him into open dispute with Locke

LDS / early-Mormon teaching / Utah-era American religion 1

Journal of Discourses (Career-spanning)

Brigham Young

'Journal of Discourses' — 26-volume collection of Brigham Young and other early-LDS sermons (1854-1886)

Lebanese-American philosophy of randomness 1

#707 · 2007

The Black Swan (Late)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb's 2007 foundational text — "Black Swan" rare-events, the limits of statistical prediction

Liberal Protestant theology 1

#1032 · 1821-22 (first edition); substantially revised 1830-31 (second edition, the standard form)

The Christian Faith (Mature)

#1030 · 1811 (first edition); substantially revised 1830 (second edition)

The founding modern Protestant systematic theology — Schleiermacher's reconstruction of Christian doctrine on the basis of religious self-consciousness

Liberal Protestant theology / nineteenth-century German theology 1

Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study (Mature)

#905 · 1932 (Erkenntnis 2; English trans. Arthur Pap, 1959)

Theology as a positive science — Schleiermacher's methodological treatise organising the field into philosophical, historical, and practical theology

Logical positivism (Vienna Circle) 1

The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language (Early-to-middle (Carnap's most polemical statement of the verificationist programme))

#1618 · 1966 (lectures earlier)

Metaphysical statements are not false — they are cognitively meaningless pseudo-statements

Logical positivism / philosophy of science / philosophy of physics 1

The Philosophical Foundations of Physics (Late)

#204 · 1928 (Carnap's habilitation; the founding text of the Vienna Circle's constructive-philosophical programme)

Carnap's 1966 'Philosophical Foundations of Physics' — accessible late synthesis of his philosophy of physics

Logical positivism / Vienna Circle 1

The Logical Structure of the World (Early (Carnap's breakthrough work))

All empirical concepts constructed from immediate experience using the logical apparatus of Principia Mathematica — Carnap's most ambitious early book

Logical positivism / Vienna Circle / philosophy of language 1

#1617 · 1950

Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology (Late)

#1651 · Luria's teachings 1570-72; redacted by Vital; printed 1875

Carnap's 1950 'Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology' — internal vs external ontological questions

Lurianic Kabbalah / Jewish mystical reincarnation doctrine 1

Sha'ar ha-Gilgulim (Posthumous (transmission))

Isaac ben Solomon Luria (the Ari)

Vital's 'Sha'ar ha-Gilgulim' — Lurianic doctrine of soul-transmigration (gilgul neshamot)

Lurianic Kabbalah / sixteenth-century Safed mystical school 1

#1650 · Luria's teachings 1570-72; redacted by Hayyim Vital c. 1572-1620; printed 1782

Etz Chayim (Posthumous (transmission))

Isaac ben Solomon Luria (the Ari)

Vital's 'Etz Chayim' — the central systematic record of Lurianic Kabbalah: tzimtzum, shevirat ha-kelim, tikkun olam

Maghrebi-Islamic historiography / philosophy of history 1

#488 · 1377

Muqaddimah (Late)

Ibn Khaldūn (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān)

Ibn Khaldūn's 1377 foundational work of historiography and social science — ʿaṣabiyya as the engine of history

Mahāyāna Buddhism / Madhyamaka 1

#58 · c. 150–250 AD (South India)

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

#76 · c. 600 AD (extant form); verses possibly earlier

Everything that arises does so dependently — nothing has intrinsic nature (svabhāva), emptiness (śūnyatā) is the truth of dependent origination

Mahāyāna Buddhism / Prajñāpāramitā literature 1

The Heart Sutra

Anonymous (Mahāyāna tradition; some scholars argue for a Chinese composition c. 7th century)

Form is emptiness; emptiness is form — the compressed essence of the Perfection of Wisdom tradition

Maliki jurisprudence / Islamic comparative law 1

#1154 · 12th century (c. 1167-88)

Bidāyat al-Mujtahid (Mature)

#1128 · mid-3rd century CE (c. 240-260)

Averroes's 12th-c. comparative jurisprudence — the four Sunni law schools compared on substantive legal questions

Manichaeism / Late-antique Iranian religion 1

Shabuhragan (Mature)

#438 · 1923-29 (Vol I 1923, II 1925, III 1929)

Mani's mid-3rd-c. Middle Persian summary of his teaching dedicated to Shapur I — only Manichaean scripture in Persian

Marburg Neo-Kantianism 1

The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Mid)

#734 · 1918 (completed); 1919 (posthumous); 1929 (2nd ed.)

Cassirer's three-volume neo-Kantian philosophy of symbolic forms (1923-29)

Marburg neo-Kantianism / German-Jewish philosophy 1

Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (Late)

Hermann Cohen

Cohen's 1919 posthumous Marburg-neo-Kantian reconstruction of Judaism as the religion of reason

Marxism / Classical political economy / Historical materialism 1

#1326 · 1859

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Mature)

#45 · February 1848 (commissioned by the Communist League, London)

Marx's 1859 precursor to Capital — includes the famous Preface

Marxism / revolutionary socialism 1

The Communist Manifesto (Early)

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles — workers of the world, unite

Marxism-Leninism / revolutionary political theory 1

#785 · 1917 (composed in Finland, on the eve of the October Revolution)

The State and Revolution (Late)

Vladimir Lenin

Lenin's 1917 pamphlet on the Marxist theory of the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat

Mary-Daly radical feminism / linguistic-politics / post-Christian feminism 1

#1643 · 1987 (with Jane Caputi)

Webster's First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (Late-middle)

Daly and Caputi's 1987 'Wickedary' — radical-feminist dictionary, playful neologistic linguistic-politics

Mary-Daly radical feminism / radical-feminist autobiography 1

#1644 · 1992

Outercourse (Late)

Daly's 1992 'Outercourse' — autobiography of 'The Be-Dazzling Voyage'

Mathematical biology / pattern formation / philosophy of biology 1

#1549 · 1952

The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis (Late)

Turing's 1952 'Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis' — founding paper of mathematical biology of pattern formation

Mathematical logic / computability theory / Cambridge analytic-mathematical philosophy 1

#1547 · 1936

On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (Early)

Turing's 1936 founding paper of computer science — the Turing Machine and the undecidability of the Entscheidungsproblem

Mathematical logic / foundations of mathematics / set theory 1

#1563 · 1940

The Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis (Middle)

#1243 · 1893 (vol. 1), 1903 (vol. 2)

Gödel's 1940 monograph — relative consistency of the Axiom of Choice and the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis with ZF set theory

Mathematical logic / Logicism / Analytic philosophy 1

Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Basic Laws of Arithmetic) (Mature)

Frege's 1893-1903 systematic derivation of arithmetic from logic — the formal statement of logicism

Mathematical logic / modal logic 1

#1561 · 1963

Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic (Early)

#1560 · 1959 (Kripke aged 18)

Kripke's 1963 systematic statement — quantified modal logic and the relations among modal systems

Mathematical logic / modal logic / analytic metaphysics 1

A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic (Earliest)

#1564 · 1947 (revised and expanded 1964)

Kripke's 1959 founding paper — the possible-worlds semantics for modal logic

Mathematical logic / philosophy of mathematics / mathematical Platonism 1

What is Cantor's Continuum Problem? (Middle-to-late)

#1449 · 1812 (revised 1814, 1820)

Gödel's 1947/1964 'What Is Cantor's Continuum Problem?' — the Platonist statement of his philosophy of mathematics

Mathematical probability theory / Enlightenment science 1

Théorie analytique des probabilités (Late)

#202 · c. 1076 (composed at the abbey of Bec; the first major work of mature scholastic theology)

Laplace's 1812 Analytical Theory of Probabilities — founding probability mathematics

Mathematical-Platonist multiverse cosmology 1

#697 · 2014

Our Mathematical Universe (Late)

Max Tegmark

Tegmark's 2014 foundational text — the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) and four-level multiverse

Medieval Christian scholastic theology 1

Monologion (Early (Anselm's first major work, before the Proslogion))

#152 · 1094–1098 (Capua and Canterbury)

A meditation on the divine nature reasoned from rational principles alone — the seedbed for the more famous Proslogion

Medieval Christian theology / Anselmian scholasticism 1

Cur Deus Homo (Late)

#47 · 1077–78 (Abbey of Bec)

Sin is an infinite offence against God's honour requiring infinite satisfaction — which only the God-man can offer

Medieval Christian theology / scholasticism 1

Proslogion

#316 · c. 1295-98 (Eckhart's early German-vernacular work, written for the religious community at Erfurt)

God is "that than which nothing greater can be thought" — and from this single thought, the ontological argument for his existence follows

Medieval German Christian mysticism 1

Vom Abgeschiedenheit (On Detachment) / Counsels on Discernment (Early)

#254 · 1163-73 (composed in the last decade of Hildegard's life, after the Scivias and the Liber Vitae Meritorum)

"The detachment of the spirit" (Abgeschiedenheit) as the central category of Christian mysticism — Eckhart's early German-vernacular spiritual treatise

Medieval German Christian mysticism / cosmological-theological synthesis 1

Liber Divinorum Operum (Late (the culmination of her visionary trilogy))

#272 · c. 1300-1326 (the scholastic-Latin works composed across Eckhart's academic career)

The "Cosmic Man" — Hildegard's late cosmological-theological synthesis integrating creation, anthropology, and divine providence

Medieval German Christian mysticism / Dominican scholasticism 1

Parisian Questions (Mid-late)

#253 · 1141-51 (composed in the decade after Hildegard's call to write, ten years after entering the monastic life)

Eckhart's scholastic Latin works — the philosophical-systematic framework underlying his vernacular German sermons

Medieval German Christian mysticism / Rhineland visionary tradition 1

Scivias (Early (the first of her three major visionary works))

Twenty-six visions of the divine — Hildegard's 1141-51 founding work of medieval German visionary theology

Medieval German Christian mysticism / sacred music 1

#326 · c. 1150-79

Symphonia harmoniae caelestium revelationum (Mid-late)

#264 · 1158-63 (the middle work of the visionary trilogy, between Scivias and Liber Divinorum Operum)

"The symphony of the harmony of celestial revelations" — Hildegard's c. 77 liturgical chants and songs

Medieval German Christian mysticism / spiritual psychology 1

Liber Vitae Meritorum (Mid (the middle volume of the visionary trilogy))

#87 · c. 1179 (Córdoba, Andalusia)

Thirty-five vices and thirty-five virtues — Hildegard's middle visionary work, the systematic spiritual-moral treatise

Medieval Islamic philosophy / Andalusian Peripatetic falsafa 1

Faṣl al-Maqāl (The Decisive Treatise) (Late)

#61 · c. 1014–1027 (compiled during Avicenna's years at Hamadan and Isfahan)

Philosophy and scripture are two paths to the same truth — when they appear to conflict, the scriptural text requires allegorical interpretation

Medieval Islamic philosophy / Peripatetic falsafa 1

Metaphysics of The Book of Healing (Late)

#88 · 1095 (Baghdad, immediately before his crisis and withdrawal)

The distinction of essence and existence, the necessary existent, the giver of forms — Avicenna's metaphysics shaped both Aquinas and the entire later Islamic tradition

Medieval Islamic theology / Ash'arite kalam 1

The Incoherence of the Philosophers

Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī

The philosophers contradict themselves on twenty crucial points — and on three of them (the eternity of the world, divine knowledge of particulars, bodily resurrection) they contradict the Quran

Medieval Italian Catholic theology 1

#648 · c. 1316-21

Paradiso (Divine Comedy, Cantica III) (Late)

#176 · c. 1308-1320 (composed during Dante's exile from Florence; completed shortly before his death in 1321)

Dante's c. 1316-21 Paradiso — culminating book of the Divine Comedy, ascent to the Beatific Vision

Medieval Italian Christian literature / Scholastic theological allegory 1

Divine Comedy: Inferno (Late (Dante's exile years))

"In the middle of the journey of our life" — Dante's descent through nine circles of Hell, guided by Virgil, in the first canticle of the Divine Comedy

Medieval Italian poetry / dolce stil novo 1

#303 · c. 1295

Vita Nuova (Early (Dante's first major work))

#304 · 1304-07 (composed during the early years of Dante's exile from Florence; unfinished — four of fifteen planned books completed)

The early life of love for Beatrice — Dante's c. 1295 prosimetric autobiographical work, the prelude to the Divine Comedy

Medieval Italian vernacular philosophy 1

Convivio (Mid (early years of exile, preceding the Comedy))

#49 · c. 1185–1190 (Cairo)

A "banquet" of philosophical knowledge in vernacular Italian — Dante's 1304-07 unfinished prosimetric work, the major early vernacular philosophical text

Medieval Jewish philosophy / Aristotelian falsafa 1

The Guide of the Perplexed

Reason and revelation in concord — God is purely incorporeal, the Torah's anthropomorphisms are figurative, and the perplexed reader can be guided

Medieval Jewish philosophy / rabbinic responsa literature 1

#911 · c. 1172

Iggeret Teiman (Epistle to Yemen, c. 1172) and the responsa (Middle (between the Commentary on the Mishnah, 1168, and the Mishneh Torah, completed 1178))

Stand firm: forced conversion does not nullify Jewish identity, false messiahs are tests, persecution itself is the negative proof of Israel's vocation

Medieval Latin theology / scholasticism 1

#1062 · c. 1094-98

Cur Deus Homo (Late-mature)

#1409 · 1778-1791 (Wesley's editorship; continues as Methodist Magazine)

Why God became man — Anselm's rational argument for the necessity of the Incarnation, founding text of satisfaction theory of atonement

Methodism / Arminian theology 1

The Arminian Magazine (Late)

#753 · 1866 (published in proceedings of Brünn Natural History Society)

Wesley's founding monthly Methodist periodical from 1778

Mid-nineteenth-century biology / mathematical-experimental natural history 1

Experiments on Plant Hybridization (Late)

Gregor Mendel

Mendel's 1866 founding paper of genetics — laws of inheritance from pea-plant experiments

Mid-nineteenth-century historical materialism 1

#805 · 1845-46 (composed in Brussels; published 1932 by Soviet Union)

The German Ideology (Early)

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Marx-Engels's 1845-46 founding work of historical materialism — base, superstructure, ideology

Mid-twentieth-century African American essay 1

#829 · 1962-63

The Fire Next Time (Mid)

#869 · 1948 (Yale Terry Lectures 1947)

Baldwin's 1963 two-essay book on race, religion, and the American crisis

Mid-twentieth-century African American literature 1

#827 · 1945-52

Invisible Man (Mid)

Ralph Ellison

Ellison's 1952 founding work of African American postwar modernism — "I am an invisible man"

Mid-twentieth-century American liberal Protestant theology 1

#858 · 1951

Christ and Culture (Late)

H. Richard Niebuhr

H. Richard Niebuhr's 1951 typology — Christ Against Culture, Of Culture, Above Culture, Paradox, Transforming Culture

Mid-twentieth-century American modernism 1

#776 · 1952

The Old Man and the Sea (Late)

Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway's 1952 short novel of the old fisherman Santiago — Pulitzer 1953, Nobel 1954

Mid-twentieth-century American process theism 1

The Divine Relativity (Mid)

Charles Hartshorne

Hartshorne's 1948 founding work of dipolar process theism — God as social being

Mid-twentieth-century American science fiction 1

#824 · 1942-50 (stories); 1951 (collected as Foundation)

Foundation (Mid)

Isaac Asimov

Asimov's 1951 founding science-fiction novel — psychohistory and the collapse of galactic empire

Mid-twentieth-century anglophone confessional poetry 1

#837 · 1962-63 (composed); 1965 (posthumous publication ed. Ted Hughes)

Ariel (Late)

Sylvia Plath

Plath's 1965 posthumous collection of late poems — confessional intensity and lyric mastery

Mid-twentieth-century anglophone fantasy 1

#823 · 1937-49 (composed); 1954-55 (published)

The Lord of the Rings (Late)

J. R. R. Tolkien

Tolkien's 1954-55 epic fantasy — the One Ring and the journey to Mount Doom — founding modern fantasy

Mid-twentieth-century anglophone fiction 1

#841 · 1957-62

The Golden Notebook (Mid)

Doris Lessing

Lessing's 1962 experimental novel of women's lives — communist disillusion, psychic breakdown, integration

Mid-twentieth-century anglophone modernist poetry 1

#815 · 1927-73 (composed); 1976 (collected)

Collected Poems (Late)

W. H. Auden

Auden's 1976 collected poems — major mid-twentieth-century anglophone poetry

Mid-twentieth-century British object-relations psychoanalysis 1

#800 · 1957

Envy and Gratitude (Late)

Melanie Klein

Klein's 1957 mature statement of object-relations psychoanalysis — envy, gratitude, and the depressive position

Mid-twentieth-century cybernetics / systems theory 1

#747 · 1948 (2nd ed. 1961)

Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Late)

Norbert Wiener

Wiener's 1948 founding work of cybernetics — feedback, control, communication in animal and machine

Mid-twentieth-century ego psychology / psychoanalytic developmental theory 1

#797 · 1950 (1st ed.); 1963 (rev. 2nd ed.)

Childhood and Society (Mid)

Erik Erikson

Erikson's 1950 founding work of the eight-stage psychosocial theory — identity vs role confusion

Mid-twentieth-century foundations of quantum mechanics 1

#891 · 1957 (Reviews of Modern Physics)

Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics (Early)

Hugh Everett III

Everett's 1957 paper founding the many-worlds (relative-state) interpretation of quantum mechanics

Mid-twentieth-century French phenomenology / poetics 1

#806 · 1958 (French); 1964 (English)

The Poetics of Space (Late)

Gaston Bachelard

Bachelard's 1958 phenomenology of intimate space — house, attic, cellar, miniature, immensity

Mid-twentieth-century German Marxist theatre / Epic Theatre 1

#804 · 1939 (composed in Swedish exile); 1941 (Zurich premiere)

Mother Courage and Her Children (Late)

Bertolt Brecht

Brecht's 1939 Epic Theatre play of the Thirty Years' War — Mother Courage and the costs of war

Mid-twentieth-century humanistic psychology 1

#798 · 1954 (1st ed.); 1970 (rev. 2nd ed.)

Motivation and Personality (Mid)

Abraham Maslow

Maslow's 1954 founding work of humanistic psychology — hierarchy of needs and self-actualization

Mid-twentieth-century information theory / electrical engineering 1

#746 · 1948 (Bell System Technical Journal)

A Mathematical Theory of Communication (Mid)

Claude Shannon

Shannon's 1948 founding paper of information theory — entropy, channel capacity, the bit

Mid-twentieth-century Latin American Boom literature 1

#839 · 1963 (Spanish Rayuela); 1966 (English)

Hopscotch (Mid)

Julio Cortázar

Cortázar's 1963 experimental novel — read straight or "jump" by the author's table of instructions

Mid-twentieth-century Latin American poetry 1

#838 · 1938-49 (composed in exile and underground); 1950 (Mexico City and Santiago)

Canto General (Mid)

Pablo Neruda

Neruda's 1950 epic poem of the Americas — geography, history, politics, and resistance

Mid-twentieth-century molecular biology 1

#750 · 1968

The Double Helix (Mid)

James D. Watson

Watson's 1968 personal account of the 1953 discovery of the DNA double helix at Cambridge

Mid-twentieth-century Oxford ordinary-language philosophy 1

#844 · 1947-58 (lectures); 1962 (posthumous, reconstructed by G. J. Warnock)

Sense and Sensibilia (Late)

J. L. Austin

Austin's 1962 posthumous Oxford lectures dismantling the sense-data theory of perception

Mid-twentieth-century philosophical logic / philosophy of time 1

#850 · 1967

Past, Present and Future (Late)

Arthur N. Prior

Prior's 1967 founding work of modern tense logic — formal logic of time-indexed propositions

Mid-Victorian English realism 1

#818 · 1852-53 (serialized); 1853 (book)

Bleak House (Mid)

Charles Dickens

Dickens's 1853 Victorian critique of Chancery and the social condition of England

Mid-Victorian English Romantic-gothic fiction 1

#819 · 1846-47 (composed); 1847 (published under pseudonym Ellis Bell)

Wuthering Heights (Mid)

Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë's 1847 only novel — passion, revenge, and the Yorkshire moors

Middle Platonism 1

#514 · c. 100 CE

Moralia (Ēthika) (Late)

Plutarch of Chaeronea

Plutarch's 1st-2nd c. CE essays on moral, religious, philosophical topics — major Middle Platonist text

Middle Stoicism 1

#1710 · c. 1st century BCE (original works); testimonia from 1st c. BCE–2nd c. CE

Fragments (Reconstructed)

Posidonius (reconstructed)

The most learned Stoic, reconstructed from the citations of those he influenced — science, psychology, and cosmic sympathy

Ming Neo-Confucianism (Xinxue / School of Mind) 1

#476 · 1527

Inquiry on the Great Learning (Daxue Wen) (Late)

Wang Yangming

Wang Yangming's 1527 foundational Neo-Confucian work — the unity of knowledge and action

Modal logic / Leibnizian ontological argument / philosophy of religion 1

#1565 · c. 1941-1970 (manuscript); shown to D. Scott 1970; published posthumously 1995

Gödel's Ontological Argument (Late (private manuscript))

Gödel's late manuscript ontological argument — modal-logical reconstruction of the Leibnizian argument

Modern African autobiography 1

#340 · 1981

Aké: The Years of Childhood (Mid)

Growing up in the Yoruba town of Aké in late-colonial Nigeria

Modern African theatre 1

#339 · 1959

The Lion and the Jewel (Early)

The contest between schoolteacher Lakunle and chief Baroka for Sidi — Soyinka's 1959 comedy

Modern African theatre / Yoruba ritual drama 1

#291 · 1975

Death and the King's Horseman (Mid (the major play of Soyinka's career))

#23 · 1859 (first edition); five subsequent revised editions in Darwin's lifetime

A Yoruba ritual suicide interrupted by British colonial intervention — Soyinka's 1975 major tragedy, the central work of modern African theatre

Modern biology / scientific naturalism 1

On the Origin of Species

Descent with modification by natural selection — the most consequential single book in the natural sciences

Modern Chinese literature / May Fourth Movement 1

#1398 · 1923

Call to Arms (Nahan) (Mid)

Fung Yu-lan (Feng Youlan)

Lu Xun's 1923 first major short-story collection

Modern Chinese philosophy 1

#627 · 1948

A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (Mid)

Fung Yu-lan's 1948 foundational text — Chinese philosophy presented to the modern world

Modern evolutionary biology / philosophical naturalism 1

#117 · 1976 (revised editions 1989, 2006)

The Selfish Gene

Tenzin Gyatso (14th Dalai Lama)

Genes are the units of selection — and bodies are vehicles by which genes propagate themselves

Modern Gelug Tibetan Buddhism 1

#678 · 2005

The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (Late)

Dalai Lama's 2005 foundational dialogue between Buddhist philosophy and modern physics, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience

Modern German philosophy / Kantian aesthetics and philosophy of biology 1

#97 · 1790

Critique of Judgment (Late)

Aesthetic judgement and teleological judgement bridge the gap between theoretical reason and practical reason

Modern German philosophy / Kantian ethics 1

#96 · 1785

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law

Modern German philosophy / Kantian transcendental idealism 1

#95 · 1788

Critique of Practical Reason (Late)

#20 · 1781 (A edition); 1787 (B edition, substantially revised)

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration — the starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me

Modern German philosophy / transcendental idealism 1

Critique of Pure Reason

The "Copernican revolution" — the conditions of any possible experience are supplied by the mind, not by things in themselves

Modern Indian post-traditional spiritual philosophy 1

#634 · 1954

The First and Last Freedom (Mid)

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti's 1954 foundational text — "Truth is a pathless land"

Modern Islamic-Sufi philosophy 1

#611 · 1930-34

The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Late)

#116 · 1958 (Gifford Lectures, St Andrews, 1955–56)

Iqbal's 1930-34 foundational text — reconstruction of Islamic religious thought in light of modern science and philosophy

Modern Jewish Conservative-Hasidic theology 1

#698 · 1955

God in Search of Man (Late)

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Heschel's 1955 foundational Jewish theology — "God in search of man", radical amazement, the prophets

Modern Kriya Yoga / Self-Realization Fellowship 1

#682 · 1946

Autobiography of a Yogi (Late)

Paramahansa Yogananda

Yogananda's 1946 foundational text of Western popular yoga and Hindu spirituality

Modern Orthodox Jewish theology 1

#699 · 1944

Halakhic Man (Ish ha-Halakhah) (Mid)

Joseph B. Soloveitchik

Soloveitchik's 1944 foundational text — the "Halakhic Man" as the typology of authentic Jewish religious life

Modern physics / Copenhagen interpretation 1

Physics and Philosophy

Werner Heisenberg

The atom is not a thing — and the observer's knowledge is part of the physical situation; the Copenhagen interpretation defended

Modern physics / philosophical-scientific worldview 1

#115 · 1916 (German); first English 1920

Relativity: The Special and General Theory

#666 · 1916 (German); 1920 (English)

Space and time are observer-relative; gravity is curvature of spacetime — Newtonian absolute space dissolved

Modern physics / relativity theory 1

Relativity: The Special and General Theory (Mid)

Einstein's 1916 popular foundational exposition of special (1905) and general (1915) relativity

Modern theoretical cosmology 1

#702 · 1988

A Brief History of Time (Late)

#679 · 1973 (compiled from 1970-71 lectures)

Hawking's 1988 foundational popular cosmology — Big Bang, black holes, the arrow of time, the search for unification

Modern Tibetan Vajrayāna Buddhism (Kagyu) 1

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (Mid)

Chögyam Trungpa

Trungpa's 1973 foundational Tibetan Buddhist text — the trap of "spiritual materialism" in modern practice

Modern Urdu poetry / Iqbalian Islamic political-philosophical poetry / South Asian Muslim renaissance 1

#1636 · 1924 (poems 1900s-1920s)

Bāng-i-Darā (Early-to-middle)

#633 · 1926 (Upton Lectures at Oxford, 1926)

Iqbal's 1924 'Bāng-i-Darā' (Call of the Caravan Bell) — first major Urdu poetry collection, the rise of his political-philosophical voice

Modern Vedanta / Indian philosophy 1

The Hindu View of Life (Mid)

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Radhakrishnan's 1926 foundational text — modern Vedantic Hindu philosophy presented to the West

Modern Vedanta / Ramakrishna order 1

#681 · 1896

Raja Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature (Late)

Swami Vivekananda

Vivekananda's 1896 foundational text — modern presentation of Raja Yoga in the West

Multispecies feminism / posthuman ecology 1

#330 · 2016

Staying with the Trouble (Late)

#1408 · 1763 (expanded 1770, 1777)

Making kin in the Chthulucene — Haraway's 2016 book on multispecies-political philosophy for the climate crisis

Natural theology / Methodism 1

A Compendium of Natural Philosophy (Late)

#540 · 1725 (1st edn); 1730 (2nd); 1744 (3rd, definitive)

Wesley's 1763 natural-theology survey of creation

Neapolitan Italian Enlightenment 1

New Science (Late)

Giambattista Vico

Vico's 1725 foundational philosophy of history — verum-factum, the cycle of corsi e ricorsi

Neo-Kantianism (Marburg school) / philosophy of science / philosophy of mathematics 1

#1494 · 1910

Substance and Function (Early)

#1496 · 1946 (posthumous)

Cassirer's 1910 treatise — the shift from substance-concepts to function-concepts as the structure of modern scientific knowledge

Neo-Kantianism / philosophy of symbolic forms / political philosophy 1

The Myth of the State (Final)

Cassirer's 1946 posthumous study — the politics of myth from Plato to Nazi totalitarianism

Neo-Kantianism / Renaissance intellectual history / Warburg-Library philosophy of culture 1

#1495 · 1927

The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (Middle)

Cassirer's 1927 Renaissance study — Cusanus to Galileo as the formation of the modern conception of nature

Neo-pragmatism 1

#1083 · 1991

Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Mid)

Rorty's 1991 collected essays — solidarity displaces objectivity as the proper epistemic norm

Neo-pragmatism / Analytic philosophy 1

#1082 · 1982

Consequences of Pragmatism (Mid)

Rorty's 1982 essays developing the consequences of dropping representationalist epistemology

Neo-Scholastic Thomism / comparative philosophy / philosophy of culture 1

#1466 · 1980

Philosophies and Cultures (Late)

Copleston's 1980 essays — comparative philosophy, Indian and Chinese alongside Western

Neo-Scholastic Thomism / English Catholic philosophy 1

#1463 · 1955

Aquinas (Mid-career)

Copleston's 1955 Penguin introduction — Aquinas as living philosopher, not historical curiosity

Neo-Scholastic Thomism / English Catholic philosophy / dialogue with analytic and Continental schools 1

#1464 · 1956

Contemporary Philosophy: Studies of Logical Positivism and Existentialism (Mid-career)

#1462 · 1946–1974 (9 volumes)

Copleston's 1956 Thomist engagement with logical positivism and existentialism — the two great threats from analytic and Continental sides

Neo-Scholastic Thomism / English Catholic philosophy of religion / analytic-friendly Catholic scholarship 1

A History of Philosophy (Career-spanning)

Copleston's 1946–74 nine-volume history — the standard English-language Catholic survey of Western philosophy

Neo-Scholastic Thomism / philosophy of religion 1

#1465 · 1974

Religion and Philosophy (Late)

#1447 · 1796 (revised through 1824)

Copleston's 1974 monograph — philosophy of religion after Ayer and after Vatican II

Neoplatonism / Aristotelian commentary 1

#515 · c. 270

Isagoge (Introduction to Aristotle's Categories) (Late)

Porphyry of Tyre

Porphyry's c. 270 introduction to Aristotelian logic — foundational late-antique and medieval philosophical text

Neoplatonism / ethics of animals 1

#1696 · c. 270–280 CE

On Abstinence from Animal Food

Porphyry

If animals reason and feel, justice extends to them — a Neoplatonist argument for the meatless life

Newtonian celestial mechanics / French Enlightenment science 1

Exposition du système du monde (Mid)

#1448 · 1799-1825 (5 vols)

Laplace's 1796 popular cosmology — nebular hypothesis

Newtonian celestial mechanics / mathematical astronomy 1

Traité de mécanique céleste (Mid-to-late)

#1535 · 1713 (added to 2nd edition of the Principia)

Laplace's 1799-1825 five-volume Treatise on Celestial Mechanics

Newtonian natural philosophy / alchemy / heterodox Anglicanism / biblical chronology 1

#1537 · c. 1660s-1720s

Alchemical and Theological Manuscripts (Career-spanning private work)

Sir Isaac Newton

Newton's vast unpublished alchemical and theological manuscripts — millions of words, edited and studied from the 1930s onward

Newtonian natural philosophy / natural theology 1

General Scholium (Late)

Sir Isaac Newton

Newton's 1713 General Scholium — 'Hypotheses non fingo' and the natural-theological framing of the Principia

Newtonian natural theology / English biblical chronology / Subordinationist Christology 1

#1536 · c. 1680s-90s composition; 1733 publication (posthumous)

Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (Posthumous)

Sir Isaac Newton

Newton's 1733 posthumous prophetic-biblical commentary — Daniel and Revelation read as predictive of church-history

Newtonian natural theology / English rationalism / Arian-Subordinationist anti-Trinitarianism 1

#1511 · 1712

The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (Mid-career)

Samuel Clarke

Clarke's 1712 'Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity' — a quasi-Arian-Subordinationist reading that nearly cost him his preferment

Newtonian natural theology / English rationalism / Latitudinarian Anglicanism 1

#1509 · 1704 (Boyle Lectures); published 1705

A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (Early-career)

Samuel Clarke

Clarke's 1704 Boyle Lectures — quasi-geometric demonstration of God's existence and attributes, more eorum mathematicorum

Newtonian natural theology / English rationalism / natural-law ethics 1

#1510 · 1705 (Boyle Lectures); published 1706

A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion (Early-career)

Samuel Clarke

Clarke's 1705 Boyle Lectures — the eternal and necessary fitness of things as the rational ground of moral obligation

Nineteenth-century American abolitionist literature 1

#1626 · 1855 (Miller, Orton & Mulligan, New York)

My Bondage and My Freedom (Mature (Douglass's second autobiography, written after his break with Garrison and the founding of his own newspaper))

#1627 · 1881 (Park Publishing, Hartford); expanded edition 1892 (De Wolfe, Fiske, Boston)

A more philosophical autobiography than the 1845 Narrative — Douglass after the Garrisonian break, reflecting on natural rights, the meaning of citizenship, and the universal aspiration to freedom

Nineteenth-century American political memoir 1

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Late (Douglass's third autobiography, covering his post-1855 political career))

#821 · 1876-83 (composed); 1884 (UK); 1885 (US)

The Civil War, Reconstruction, and post-Reconstruction America — Douglass's political-philosophical reckoning with the unfinished work of emancipation

Nineteenth-century American realism 1

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mid)

Mark Twain

Twain's 1884 American picaresque on the Mississippi — slavery, friendship, moral conscience

Nineteenth-century American Renaissance 1

#820 · 1850-51

Moby-Dick (Mid)

Herman Melville

Melville's 1851 American epic — Captain Ahab, the white whale, and metaphysical pursuit

Nineteenth-century American transcendentalism / political dissent 1

#872 · 1849 (as Resistance to Civil Government in Aesthetic Papers); retitled Civil Disobedience 1866 (posthumous)

Civil Disobedience (Mid)

#143 · 1864 (in seven weekly instalments)

Thoreau's 1849 founding essay on principled non-violent resistance to unjust government

Nineteenth-century Catholic intellectual revival 1

#62 · 1870

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Late)

John Henry Newman

The illative sense — how reasonable persons reach certitude on questions where formal demonstration is impossible, especially religious belief

Nineteenth-century English Catholic intellectual revival 1

Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Late)

John Henry Newman

Newman's account of his journey from Evangelical Anglican to Catholic — written in seven weeks under attack, becoming one of the great Victorian autobiographies

Nineteenth-century evolutionary biology / psychology 1

#1048 · 1872 (John Murray, London)

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Late)

#892 · 1867 (vol. I); 1885 (vol. II posthumous); 1894 (vol. III posthumous, edited by Engels)

Comparative emotional expression — Darwin's foundational study of facial expression across humans and animals, with photographs of emotional states

Nineteenth-century historical materialism 1

Capital (Late)

#144 · 1799 (anonymous first ed.); 1806, 1821, 1831 (revised eds with explanations)

Marx's 1867-94 magnum opus on the critique of political economy — the three-volume Capital project

Nineteenth-century liberal Protestant theology / Romantic theology 1

On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (Early)

#1049 · 1839 (first edition); 1845 (substantially revised second edition)

Religion is neither metaphysics nor morality but the feeling and intuition of the infinite — a defence to Romantic intellectuals who had outgrown orthodox doctrine

Nineteenth-century natural history / scientific autobiography 1

Journal of Researches (Early)

#1050 · 1881 (John Murray, London) — Darwin's last book, published months before his April 1882 death

Darwin's account of his 1831-36 Beagle voyage — the formative experience of his evolutionary thinking, popularly known as "The Voyage of the Beagle"

Nineteenth-century natural history / soil biology 1

The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (Last)

Earthworms as geological agents — Darwin's last book, the founding text of soil biology and ecological-functional ecology

Nineteenth-century Swiss-German cultural history 1

#781 · 1860

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Mid)

Jacob Burckhardt

Burckhardt's 1860 founding work of cultural history — the Italian Renaissance and the modern individual

North African Latin patristics / proto-orthodox Christology / anti-Gnostic polemic 1

#1552 · c. 206

On the Flesh of Christ (Mid-to-late (Montanist period))

Tertullian's c. 206 'De Carne Christi' — anti-Docetic, anti-Gnostic affirmation of Christ's real flesh; 'credo quia absurdum'

North African Latin patristics / proto-orthodox heresiology 1

#1551 · c. 203

On the Prescription of Heretics (Pre-Montanist)

Tertullian's c. 203 'De Praescriptione' — apostolic-rule polemic against heresy, refusing to debate Scripture with heretics

North African Latin patristics / proto-orthodox-Christian psychology 1

#1683 · c. 208-212

On the Soul (Mid-to-late (Montanist period))

#937 · 1524 (De Libero Arbitrio ΔΙΑΤΡΙΒΗ sive Collatio, Froben, Basel)

Tertullian's c. 208-12 'De Anima' — first Latin Christian treatise on the soul, against the Gnostic Hermogenes

Northern Renaissance Christian humanism 1

#544 · 1516

Utopia (De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia) (Mid)

St. Thomas More

More's 1516 Utopia — foundational text of utopian political philosophy

Northern Renaissance humanism / Catholic moderate reform 1

De Libero Arbitrio (Late (the treatise that publicly broke the Erasmus-Luther alliance, written after seven years of pressure for Erasmus to declare his position))

#936 · 1518 (first edition Familiarium Colloquiorum Formulae); enlarged 1519, 1522, 1524, 1526, 1529, 1533

The Bible itself does not univocally settle the question of free will — therefore we should hold the moderate position the Fathers and the Church have always held

Northern Renaissance humanism / Latin Christian satire 1

Colloquia (Mature (the work that grew through Erasmus's most productive decades and was repeatedly enlarged))

#938 · 1516 (Novum Instrumentum omne, Froben, Basel — first edition); revised 1519, 1522, 1527, 1535

Latin conversation exercises that became a vehicle for satirical-philosophical Christianity — and a perennial Protestant-Catholic battlefield

Northern Renaissance philology / Christian humanism 1

Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum) (Mature (the work that established Erasmus's international reputation and reshaped biblical scholarship))

Return to the sources — the Greek New Testament made available, with new Latin translation, against the inherited Vulgate

Object-oriented ontology / speculative realism 1

#412 · 2002

Tool-Being (Early (Harman's breakthrough work, derived from his 1999 DePaul PhD))

Objects withdraw — the founding manifesto of object-oriented ontology, against the anti-realism of the linguistic turn

Object-Oriented Ontology / speculative realism 1

#1603 · 2018

Object-Oriented Ontology (Late-middle)

Harman's 2018 Pelican 'Object-Oriented Ontology' — accessible introduction to OOO for general readers

Object-Oriented Ontology / speculative realism / post-Heideggerian phenomenology 1

#1602 · 2005

Guerrilla Metaphysics (Early)

#942 · 412-30 (the long anti-Pelagian controversy); peak works 426-29

Harman's 2005 'Guerrilla Metaphysics' — extending Heideggerian tool-analysis from human-world relations to objects in general

Patristic Latin theology / North African Catholic Christianity 1

Anti-Pelagian writings (Late (Augustine's last great theological controversy, occupying the final two decades of his life))

Augustine of Hippo (Aurelius Augustinus)

Grace alone — without prevenient grace the human will, after the Fall, can do nothing salvific

Persian Sufism / philosophical mysticism 1

#89 · c. 1258–1273 (Konya, dictated in Persian over fifteen years)

Mathnawi (Late)

#1713 · c. 1st century BCE–1st century CE (oral); codified in Mishnah c. 200 CE and Talmud c. 500 CE

The reed cut from the reed-bed cries out — and the longing for return is itself the way back

Pharisaic / early rabbinic Judaism 1

Sayings and Legal Rulings

Hillel the Elder

The Golden Rule, the seven hermeneutical rules, and the primacy of study — the foundations of rabbinic Judaism in a handful of sayings

Phenomenological sociology of knowledge 1

#691 · 1966

The Social Construction of Reality (Mid)

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann

Berger & Luckmann's 1966 foundational text — knowledge as socially constructed through everyday interaction

Phenomenological-hermeneutical Platonism / Heideggerian Marburg-school philosophy 1

#1497 · 1931

Plato's Dialectical Ethics (Early)

#1498 · 1976 (essays 1957-1975)

Gadamer's 1931 Habilitation — Plato's Philebus read through Heideggerian phenomenology

Philosophical hermeneutics 1

Philosophical Hermeneutics (Late-middle)

Gadamer's 1976 English-language essays — the hermeneutical programme applied to language, art, and practice

Philosophical hermeneutics / Platonic-Aristotelian classical studies 1

#1499 · 1978

The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy (Late)

Gadamer's 1978 study — the Idea of the Good across Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Philosophical hermeneutics / practical philosophy / philosophy of science and technology 1

#1500 · 1981

Reason in the Age of Science (Late)

#1488 · 1963 (revised 1969)

Gadamer's 1981 essays — practical philosophy and hermeneutical reflection in the technological age

Philosophical logic / Quinean naturalism / foundations of mathematics 1

Set Theory and Its Logic (Mid-career)

Quine's 1963 textbook-treatise on set theory — including his own NF / ML systems alongside ZF

Philosophy of mind / philosophy of artificial intelligence 1

#1555 · 1980

Minds, Brains, and Programs (Mid-career)

#225 · 1960 (the first major theological-philosophical book of the future John Paul II; based on his pastoral and academic teaching)

Searle's 1980 Chinese Room argument — strong AI does not produce understanding

Polish personalism / Catholic moral theology / Lublin School 1

Love and Responsibility (Early (his major pre-papal work; drawn from pastoral and academic teaching))

#226 · 1969 (the philosophical magnum opus of his pre-papal academic career)

The personalist norm and the ethics of sexual love — Wojtyła's 1960 treatise developing the philosophical foundation of his later theology of the body

Polish phenomenological personalism / Lublin School 1

The Acting Person (Mid (his major academic-philosophical work, before his 1978 papal election))

Person and act — Wojtyła's phenomenological-Thomistic analysis of human action as the constitution and self-revelation of the person

Political realism / Cold War political tradition 1

#1369 · 1982

Leaders (Late)

Nixon's 1982 character studies of major world leaders

Political realism / Cold War strategy 1

#1368 · 1980

The Real War (Late)

Nixon's 1980 Cold War strategy book

Post-Kantian ethics / Schopenhauerian metaphysics / philosophy of free will 1

#1543 · 1841

The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (Late)

Schopenhauer's 1841 'Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics' — the freedom of the will and the basis of morality

Post-Kantian idealism / Goethean colour-theory / philosophy of perception 1

#1541 · 1816

On Vision and Colors (Early)

#1542 · 1836 (2nd ed. 1854)

Schopenhauer's 1816 colour-theory treatise — defending Goethe against Newton

Post-Kantian metaphysics / Schopenhauerian Wille-philosophy / philosophy of biology 1

On the Will in Nature (Middle)

#399 · 1988 (essay in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture; rev. 1999 in Critique of Postcolonial Reason)

Schopenhauer's 1836 'On the Will in Nature' — empirical-scientific corroborations of the World as Will

Post-positivist history and philosophy of science 1

#667 · 1977

The Essential Tension (Late)

Thomas S. Kuhn

Kuhn's 1977 collection — essential tension between tradition-bound normal science and revolutionary innovation

Post-WWII European modernist poetry 1

#808 · 1959

Sprachgitter (Mid)

Paul Celan

Celan's 1959 collection — Sprachgitter (language-grille) and the post-Shoah condition of German poetry

Postcolonial studies / deconstructive Marxism 1

Can the Subaltern Speak? (Mid)

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Spivak's 1988 foundational essay — "Can the subaltern speak?"

Postcolonial theory / Africana philosophy 1

#1210 · 2000 (French), 2001 (English)

On the Postcolony (Mid)

#1211 · 2013 (French), 2017 (English)

Mbembe's 2000 study of postcolonial African political life — power, sovereignty, and the obscene in the African postcolony

Postcolonial theory / Africana philosophy / Critical race theory 1

Critique of Black Reason (Late)

#406 · 1938 (Wellesley & University of Chicago lectures, 1937-38)

Mbembe's 2013 critique of the racial-philosophical foundations of modernity — Blackness as political-philosophical category

Postliberal Christian ethics / Anabaptist 1

#425 · 1981

A Community of Character (Mid)

Stanley Hauerwas

Hauerwas's 1981 essays toward a constructive Christian social ethic — the church as a community of character

Pre-Nicene Christianity / Apostolic tradition 1

#1703 · c. 180 CE

Against Heresies

Irenaeus of Lyon

The most detailed early account of gnostic systems and the first systematic Christian theology of salvation history

Pre-Socratic Eleatic philosophy 1

#507 · c. 475 BCE

On Nature (Peri Physeos) (Early)

Parmenides of Elea

Parmenides's c. 475 BCE foundational philosophical poem — the Way of Truth and Way of Opinion

Pre-Socratic philosophy / Eleatic school 1

#1688 · c. 460 BCE

Paradoxes (fragments)

Zeno of Elea

The paradoxes of motion and plurality that have challenged mathematics and physics for 2,500 years

Process philosophy / English-American metaphysics 1

Modes of Thought (Late)

Whitehead's 1938 late lectures on the modes of philosophical thinking — the most accessible introduction to his thought

Process philosophy / philosophy of culture 1

#187 · 1933

Adventures of Ideas (Late (Whitehead's last major book))

#216 · 1920 (the Tarner Lectures, Trinity College Cambridge)

The civilising adventure of ideas — humanity, freedom, persuasion replacing coercion, beauty and truth and peace as the highest civilisational goods

Process philosophy / philosophy of nature 1

The Concept of Nature (Early-mid (preceding Science and the Modern World, 1925))

#54 · 1929 (delivered as Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, 1927–28)

Against the "bifurcation of nature" into primary and secondary qualities — Whitehead's 1920 philosophy of nature as a single integrated event-process

Process philosophy / philosophy of organism 1

Process and Reality (Late)

#215 · 1925 (the Lowell Lectures, Harvard; the proximate prelude to Process and Reality, 1929)

Reality consists of actual occasions of experience — drops of process — concrescent with their relations; God is the principle of concretion

Process philosophy / philosophy of science 1

Science and the Modern World (Mid (the major statement of philosophical-cultural critique, preceding the technical metaphysics of Process and Reality))

The "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" — Whitehead's critique of scientific materialism and the proximate prelude to process philosophy

Psychoanalysis / Late-nineteenth-century psychiatry 1

#1318 · 1895

Studies on Hysteria (Early)

Freud and Breuer's 1895 founding text of psychoanalysis

Pyrrhonist scepticism 1

#1695 · c. 200 CE

Outlines of Pyrrhonism

Sextus Empiricus

Opposing every argument with one of equal force — the method of equipollence and the tranquillity that follows suspension

Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā (Kumārila school) / Sanskrit philosophy of language and action 1

#1653 · c. 8th century

Vidhi-viveka (Mature)

Maṇḍana Miśra

Maṇḍana's 'Vidhi-viveka' — defining Mīmāṃsā analysis of Vedic injunction (vidhi)

Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā / Sanskrit philosophy of language 1

#1654 · c. 8th century

Bhāvanā-viveka (Mature)

Maṇḍana Miśra

Maṇḍana's 'Bhāvanā-viveka' — Mīmāṃsā theory of bhāvanā (the action-producing meaning of the verb)

Quantum computation / philosophy of physics 1

#1450 · 1985

Quantum theory, the Church-Turing principle and the universal quantum computer (Early)

David Deutsch

Deutsch's 1985 founding paper of quantum computation

Quantum many-worlds / philosophy of science / Deutschian rationalism 1

#1451 · 1997

The Fabric of Reality (Mid)

David Deutsch

Deutsch's 1997 four-strand many-worlds philosophy of reality

Radical Reformation / anti-Trinitarianism 1

#1506 · 1532

Dialogorum de Trinitate (Early)

Servetus's 1532 dialogues on the Trinity — clarifying and partially retracting De Trinitatis Erroribus

Radical Reformation / anti-Trinitarianism / proto-Unitarian / vitalism / early medical science 1

#1508 · 1553

Christianismi Restitutio (Late (final))

Servetus's 1553 'Restoration of Christianity' — anti-Trinitarianism, anti-paedobaptism, the pulmonary circulation, and the stake at Geneva

Radical Reformation / anti-Trinitarianism / proto-Unitarianism 1

#1505 · 1531

De Trinitatis Erroribus (Early)

Servetus's 1531 founding anti-Trinitarian treatise — written aged 20 in Hagenau

Reformation theology / Lutheranism 1

#14 · 1525

On the Bondage of the Will

#1579 · 1934 (29-31 May, Barmen Synod)

The human will is bound under sin; salvation is by grace alone, without contribution from the creature

Reformed dialectical theology / Confessing Church / anti-Nazi German Christianity 1

The Barmen Declaration (Middle)

Barth's 1934 Barmen Declaration — the founding charter of the Confessing Church against Nazi Reichskirche

Reformed dialectical theology / late Barth 1

#1578 · 1962

Evangelical Theology (Late)

#1662 · 1929-30 (habilitation); published 1931

Barth's 1962 American lectures — late-career introduction to evangelical theology delivered at Princeton and Chicago

Reformed dialectical theology / Lutheran phenomenology / philosophical theology 1

Act and Being (Early)

#1577 · 1946 lectures; 1947 publication

Bonhoeffer's 1930 habilitation — transcendental philosophy and ontology in the theology of revelation

Reformed dialectical theology / neo-orthodoxy 1

Dogmatics in Outline (Late-middle)

#15 · 1536 (first ed.); 1559 (final, expanded ed.)

Barth's 1946 Bonn lectures — Apostles' Creed walked through as the structure of Christian dogma

Reformed Protestantism / Calvinism 1

Institutes of the Christian Religion (Late)

John Calvin

Knowledge of God and of ourselves are inseparable — and both are the gift of the Word, by the Spirit, to fallen creatures

Reformed-Calvinist theology / sixteenth-century Genevan Protestantism / Christian biblical preaching 1

#1685 · c. 1540-1564 (Geneva)

Sermons (Career-spanning (Geneva preaching))

#420 · 1932-67 (14 volumes, unfinished)

Calvin's vast Geneva preaching corpus c. 1540-64 — over 2,000 sermons recorded by stenographers

Reformed-Protestant dialectical theology 1

Church Dogmatics (Mid)

#276 · 1500 (1st edition, c. 800 adages); 1536 (final edition, c. 4,151 adages)

Barth's unfinished 14-volume systematic theology — the major 20th-century Protestant dogmatics

Renaissance Christian humanism 1

Adagia (Long (composed across Erasmus's entire mature career))

The classical-proverbial wisdom of the ancient world, collected and commented — Erasmus's 1500-1536 Adagia, the major Renaissance source for ancient wisdom

Renaissance Christian humanism / biblical scholarship 1

#346 · 1516

Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum) (Mid)

#766 · 1580 (Books I-II); 1588 (Book III); 1595 (posthumous augmented)

The first published critical Greek text of the New Testament — Erasmus's 1516 Novum Instrumentum

Renaissance humanism / late-sixteenth-century French moralism 1

The Essays (Late)

Michel de Montaigne

Montaigne's 1580-92 founding essays of the modern essay form — "Que sais-je?"

Renaissance humanist scholarship / scientific publishing 1

#1507 · 1535 (revised 1541)

Edition of Ptolemy's Geography (Middle)

#742 · 1543 (published; composed 1510-30s)

Servetus's 1535 Lyon edition of Ptolemy's Geography — a major Renaissance humanist scientific edition

Renaissance natural philosophy / mathematical astronomy 1

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Late)

Nicolaus Copernicus

Copernicus's 1543 founding work of heliocentric astronomy — the "Copernican Revolution"

Restorationist Christianity / Latter-day Saint movement 1

#417 · 1827–1830 (translated/dictated); 1830 (first published, Palmyra, New York)

The Book of Mormon

Joseph Smith (translated, on his own account, from golden plates inscribed by ancient American prophets and revealed by the angel Moroni; on the academic-historical account, composed by Smith between 1828 and 1830)

The restored scripture of the ancient American peoples — proof of continuing revelation and the Restoration of the original Church

Rhineland mysticism / German Dominican spiritual writing 1

#947 · c. 1308-13 (Strasbourg or Paris period)

Vom Edlen Menschen (Mature (probably from the Strasbourg years before the trial))

#67 · 14 September 1998 (encyclical letter)

The noble man is the soul that has known itself in its divine ground — and that ground is one with God's own ground

Roman Catholic magisterial theology / Lublin Thomism 1

Fides et Ratio (Late)

Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła)

Faith and reason are the two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth — neither can fly alone

Roman Catholic ressourcement / patristic theology 1

#422 · 1961-69 (Vol I-VII; English 1982-91)

The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (Late)

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Balthasar's seven-volume aesthetic theology (1961-69) — the central work of his trilogy

Roman Catholic teaching / Jesuit social thought / post-pandemic political theology 1

#1622 · 2020

Let Us Dream (Late-middle)

Pope Francis's 2020 'Let Us Dream' — pandemic-era reflection on a better post-pandemic future

Roman Catholic teaching / Jesuit spirituality / post-Vatican II 1

#1621 · 2018 (19 March)

Gaudete et Exsultate (Late-middle (papacy))

#1640 · 2005 (book-length reflections)

Pope Francis's 2018 'Gaudete et Exsultate' — apostolic exhortation on holiness in the modern world

Roman Catholic teaching / personalist-Thomist Catholic philosophy 1

Memory and Identity (Final)

John Paul II's 2005 'Memoria e identità' — late reflections on totalitarianism, freedom, Christian Europe

Roman Catholic teaching / personalist-Thomist Catholic theology 1

#1639 · 1979 (4 March)

Redemptor Hominis (Early (papacy))

#421 · 1976 (German; English 1978)

John Paul II's 1979 first encyclical 'Redemptor Hominis' — Christ the Redeemer as the centre of Christian anthropology

Roman Catholic transcendental Thomism 1

Foundations of Christian Faith (Late)

Rahner's 1976 systematic introduction to his transcendental-Thomist theology

Roman Epicurean philosophy 1

#512 · c. 55 BCE

De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) (Mid)

Titus Lucretius Carus

Lucretius's 1st-c. BCE foundational Latin poem expounding Epicurean atomist philosophy

Roman philosophy / Academic scepticism 1

#72 · 45 BC

On the Nature of the Gods (Late)

A philosophical conversation between Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic representatives — the founding modern reference for natural theology

Roman philosophy / Academic skepticism / Stoicism 1

#1290 · 45 BCE

Academica (Academic Skepticism) (Mature)

Cicero's 45 BCE dialogues on Academic skepticism — proper-philosophical epistemology

Roman philosophy / Comparative ethical philosophy 1

#1291 · 45 BCE

De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (Mature)

Cicero's 45 BCE dialogue — Epicurean, Stoic, Academic positions on the proper end

Roman philosophy / Stoicism / Natural-law tradition 1

#1289 · c. 52-44 BCE

De Legibus (On the Laws) (Mature)

#929 · 54-51 BC (composed during a period of political withdrawal from active life)

Cicero's natural-law dialogue — proper-philosophical foundations of Roman law

Roman political philosophy / republicanism 1

De Re Publica (Mid-mature (Cicero's political philosophical synthesis, composed during the breakdown of the late Republic))

#981 · c. 62-64 CE (composed during Seneca's retirement)

The best constitution is mixed — combining the strengths of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy — and the just statesman serves a cosmic order that outlasts his political career

Roman Stoicism / ancient natural philosophy 1

Naturales Quaestiones (Late)

#930 · 45 BC (Tusculanae Disputationes; composed at Tusculum after the death of his daughter Tullia)

Stoic natural philosophy as a path to wisdom — the study of meteorology, geography, and cosmology trains the mind to apprehend the rational order of the cosmos

Roman Stoicism / Latin philosophical consolation literature 1

Tusculan Disputations (Late (composed in the year of Cicero's daughter's death, in his most intense period of philosophical writing))

#928 · 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)

Virtue alone suffices for the happy life — death is not an evil, pain is bearable, the passions can be governed

Roman Stoicism / Latin philosophical literature 1

De Officiis (Late (Cicero's last completed philosophical work, written in the months before his proscription and execution))

Where the honourable and the useful seem to conflict, the conflict is illusory — the honourable is always also the truly useful

Royal-Society experimental philosophy / early modern microscopy / mechanical philosophy 1

#1516 · 1665

Micrographia (Early-career (career-defining))

#1519 · 1705 (posthumous, ed. R. Waller; written c. 1670s-1700)

Hooke's 1665 Micrographia — first major illustrated microscopic survey and the coining of 'cell'

Royal-Society experimental philosophy / late-seventeenth-century scientific method 1

The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke (Posthumous)

Hooke's 1705 'Posthumous Works' — Cutlerian Lectures, the General Scheme of Natural Philosophy, and other late papers

Royal-Society experimental philosophy / mechanical philosophy / elasticity 1

#1518 · 1678

Lectures de Potentia Restitutiva (Mid-career)

Hooke's 1678 'ut tensio sic vis' — the announcement of Hooke's Law of elastic deformation

Royal-Society experimental philosophy / Newtonian-prehistory celestial mechanics 1

#1517 · 1674

An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations (Mid-career)

#710 · 1958-68 (composed); 1973-75 (published in Russian abroad)

Hooke's 1674 lecture — earliest published statement of the inverse-square hypothesis for celestial motion

Russian anti-totalitarian dissident literature 1

The Gulag Archipelago (Late)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn's 1973-75 foundational text — the Soviet Gulag system documented across three volumes

Russian Christian existentialism 1

#608 · 1931

The Destiny of Man (O naznachenii cheloveka) (Mid)

Berdyaev's 1931 foundational Russian Christian existentialism — freedom and creativity

Russian existentialist-philosophical fiction 1

#241 · 1864

Notes from Underground (Mid (the transition into the great late period))

#526 · composed 1939-42; published 1945 posthumously

"I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man" — Dostoevsky's 1864 narrative of the Underground Man, often called the first existentialist novel

Russian Jewish existential philosophy 1

#609 · 1938

Athens and Jerusalem (Athènes et Jérusalem) (Late)

Lev Shestov

Shestov's 1938 foundational text — Athens (Greek reason) vs. Jerusalem (Biblical faith)

Russian Orthodox religious philosophy (Silver Age) 1

#525 · 1914

The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (Mid)

Pavel Florensky

Florensky's 1914 foundational Russian Orthodox religious philosophy — twelve letters on Trinity, sophia, and antinomy

Russian Orthodox religious philosophy (Silver Age) / Russian Paris school 1

The Bride of the Lamb (Late)

Sergei Bulgakov

Bulgakov's 1939-42 third volume of his great Trilogy — sophiological ecclesiology and eschatology

Russian Orthodox theology in Western exile 1

#610 · 1944

The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Essai sur la théologie mystique de l'Église d'Orient) (Mid)

Vladimir Lossky

Lossky's 1944 foundational text — Eastern Orthodox mystical theology for the West

Russian Orthodox-anarchist religious philosophy 1

#554 · 1882

A Confession (Ispoved') (Late)

#243 · 1871-72 (based partly on the 1869 Nechayev affair)

Tolstoy's 1882 spiritual autobiography — his religious crisis and turn to radical Christian anarchism

Russian political-philosophical fiction 1

Demons (Mid-late (the third of the four great novels))

Stavrogin, Verkhovensky, Kirillov — Dostoevsky's 1872 prophetic critique of nineteenth-century Russian revolutionary nihilism

Russian realism / Orthodox-Christian existential novel 1

#1573 · 1874-1875

The Adolescent (Late)

#135 · 1879–1880 (serialised in The Russian Messenger)

Dostoevsky's 1875 novel 'The Adolescent' — fatherhood, money, and the search for an 'idea'

Russian realism / philosophical fiction / Orthodox Christianity 1

The Brothers Karamazov (Late)

Fyodor Dostoevsky

If God does not exist, everything is permitted — and the great theological-philosophical novel that takes the question with full seriousness

Russian realism / Russian-Orthodox slavophile journalism / nineteenth-century periodical literature 1

#1574 · 1873-1881

A Writer's Diary (Late)

#240 · 1866 (serialised in The Russian Messenger)

Dostoevsky's 1873-1881 'A Writer's Diary' — journalism, polemic, and short fiction across nearly a decade

Russian realist novel / philosophical-psychological fiction 1

Crime and Punishment (Mid (the first of Dostoevsky's great late novels))

#242 · 1868-69 (serialised in The Russian Messenger)

Raskolnikov's axe-murder and his slow psychological-spiritual reckoning — Dostoevsky's 1866 novel that opens the great late period

Russian realist novel / philosophical-religious fiction 1

The Idiot (Mid (after Crime and Punishment, before Demons and Karamazov))

#771 · 1903 (composed); 1904 (premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre)

Prince Myshkin, the "positively good man" — Dostoevsky's attempt to portray Christian goodness in fallen Russian society

Russian realist-modernist drama 1

The Cherry Orchard (Late)

Anton Chekhov

Chekhov's 1904 final play — the passing of the Russian gentry and the felling of the cherry orchard

Russian religious philosophy 1

#1081 · 1916 (Smysl tvorchestva)

The Meaning of the Creative Act (Early-mature)

Humanity's creative response to God — Berdyaev's founding statement of his philosophy of creativity

Russian religious philosophy (Silver Age precursor) 1

#607 · 1897

The Justification of the Good (Opravdanie dobra) (Late)

#1080 · 1939 (in Russian; English 1944)

Solovyov's 1897 foundational Russian moral-religious philosophy — Godmanhood and the good

Russian religious philosophy / Christian existentialism 1

Slavery and Freedom (Late-mature)

Berdyaev's 1939 systematic philosophical statement on the many forms of human slavery and authentic spiritual freedom

Russian religious philosophy / Orthodox apocalyptic / late-Solovyov 1

#1674 · 1900

Three Conversations (Final (year of death))

#1613 · 1947 (Russian original 1941, Paris)

Solovyov's 1900 final 'Tri razgovora' — three dialogues on war, progress, and the end of history, with the 'Tale of the Antichrist'

Russian religious philosophy / personalist existentialism / eschatological metaphysics 1

The Beginning and the End (Late)

#1614 · 1949 (posthumous; written through the 1940s)

Berdyaev's 1947 'Beginning and the End' — eschatological metaphysics of creative freedom

Russian religious philosophy / personalist existentialism / philosophical autobiography 1

Self-Knowledge (Posthumous)

#1612 · 1937 (in English; Russian 'Istoki i smysl russkogo kommunizma' 1955)

Berdyaev's 1949 posthumous 'Self-Knowledge' — philosophical autobiography of one of the major twentieth-century Russian religious thinkers

Russian religious philosophy / personalist existentialism / philosophy of history 1

The Origin of Russian Communism (Late)

Berdyaev's 1937 'Origin of Russian Communism' — Russian communism as continuation of Russian religious-messianic tradition

Russian religious philosophy / Philosophy of love 1

#1242 · 1892-94

The Meaning of Love (Late)

Solovyov's 1892-94 essays on love — erotic love as proper-philosophical-spiritual path

Russian religious philosophy / Slavophile-influenced tradition 1

#1240 · 1874

The Crisis of Western Philosophy (Early)

#1241 · 1878-81 (lectures), 1881-84 (published)

Solovyov's 1874 master's thesis — critique of Western abstract-rationalist philosophy from Russian religious-philosophical standpoint

Russian religious philosophy / Sophiology 1

Lectures on Divine Humanity (Mid)

Solovyov's 1878-81 St. Petersburg lectures — divine humanity (Bogochelovechestvo) as integrating philosophical-religious framework

Saganian science popularisation / philosophical science fiction / SETI-naturalist humanism 1

#1646 · 1985

Contact (Late)

#74 · c. 4th–5th century AD

Sagan's 1985 'Contact' — first scientifically rigorous SETI-contact novel; the science-religion dialogue dramatised

Sarvāstivāda Buddhism / Abhidharma 1

Abhidharmakośa

Vasubandhu

The systematic catalogue of dharmas — moments of experience as the irreducible elements of reality

Scholasticism / Catholic-Thomistic / Medieval-Benedictine / East-West theological controversy 1

#1227 · 1102

De Processione Spiritus Sancti (On the Procession of the Holy Spirit) (Late)

Anselm's 1102 treatise — Latin-Western defence of the filioque against the Greek Orthodox position

Scholasticism / Late-medieval political philosophy / Franciscan tradition 1

#1177 · c. 1334-1346

Dialogue on the Power of the Pope and the Emperor (Late)

#1261 · c. 1300 (German treatise)

Ockham's c.1334-46 massive political dialogue — late-medieval church-state and Franciscan-poverty controversies

Scholasticism / Rhenish-Christian mysticism / Dominican spiritual tradition 1

Vom Abgeschiedenheit (On Detachment) (Mature)

Eckhart's c.1300 treatise — detachment (Abgeschiedenheit) as the highest virtue

Science and technology studies / Actor-network theory 1

#1111 · 1987

Science in Action (Mid)

Latour's 1987 methodological textbook — "follow the actors" through science and technology in the making

Science and technology studies / Actor-network theory (proto-) 1

#1110 · 1979

Laboratory Life (Early)

Latour and Woolgar's 1979 ethnography of the Salk laboratory — scientific facts as the trace-residue of social-material practice

Science and technology studies / Feminist science studies 1

#1106 · 1989

Primate Visions (Mid)

Haraway's 1989 study of twentieth-century primatology as racial-gendered narrative production

Science and technology studies / Feminist science studies / Cyborg feminism 1

#1107 · 1991

Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (Mid)

Haraway's 1991 essay collection gathering the canonical "A Cyborg Manifesto" and "Situated Knowledges"

Science and technology studies / Feminist technoscience studies 1

#1108 · 1997

#1112 · 2013 (French), 2013 (English)

Haraway's 1997 study of late-twentieth-century technoscience — FemaleMan and OncoMouse as figures of corporate-cultural production

Science and technology studies / Modes-of-existence pluralism 1

An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (Late)

Latour's 2013 anthropological-philosophical synthesis — the multiple modes of existence of the moderns

Scientific naturalism / New Atheism 1

#1234 · 2006

The God Delusion (Late)

#1598 · 1741-1742 (revised and expanded through 1777)

Dawkins's 2006 anti-theistic-religious treatise — major New-Atheist text

Scottish common-sense philosophy 1

#504 · 1785

Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Late)

Thomas Reid

Reid's 1785 foundational Scottish "common sense" philosophy — direct realist response to Hume

Scottish Enlightenment / British empiricism / political economy / philosophy of politics 1

Essays, Moral and Political (Middle)

#53 · 1776 (first ed.); five revised editions in Smith's lifetime

Hume's 1741-42 'Essays, Moral and Political' — his first major essay-form intervention in public-philosophical writing

Scottish Enlightenment / classical political economy 1

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Late)

#158 · 1759 (1st edition); 1790 (6th and definitive edition with substantial additions)

The division of labour, the invisible hand, and the wealth of nations grounded in productive labour rather than gold

Scottish Enlightenment / moral sentimentalism 1

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Early-to-late (he revised it throughout his life))

#1590 · 1762-1764 (student-note reconstructions)

How sympathy and the impartial spectator construct moral judgment — the moral-philosophical foundation underneath the economics of The Wealth of Nations

Scottish Enlightenment / natural jurisprudence / political economy 1

Lectures on Jurisprudence (Middle)

#1599 · 1754-1761 (6 volumes, composed reverse-chronologically)

Smith's 1762-64 Glasgow lectures on jurisprudence — the missing systematic-philosophical link between Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations

Scottish Enlightenment / philosophical history / British political-historical writing 1

The History of England (Late)

#142 · 1757 (Four Dissertations)

Hume's 1754-61 'History of England' — the bestselling history of the eighteenth century

Scottish Enlightenment / philosophy of religion 1

The Natural History of Religion (Late)

#1591 · c. 1750s-1770s composition; 1795 posthumous publication

Religion arose not from rational argument but from fear of natural events — and polytheism, not monotheism, is the natural human starting-point

Scottish Enlightenment / philosophy of science / history of philosophy 1

Essays on Philosophical Subjects (Posthumous)

#703 · 1990 (revised 2013)

Smith's 1795 posthumous essays — including the early History of Astronomy, a major philosophy-of-science work

Secular mindfulness / Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction 1

Full Catastrophe Living (Late)

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Kabat-Zinn's 1990 foundational text — Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and secular mindfulness

Seventeenth-century English Reformed theology 1

#855 · 1646 (Confession); 1648 (Larger and Shorter Catechisms)

Westminster Confession of Faith (Mid)

Westminster Assembly

The 1646 Westminster Confession — Reformed confessional standard of English-speaking Presbyterianism

Sikhism / Sant tradition / hagiography 1

#1455 · c. sixteenth-eighteenth-century (Bhai Bala, Puratan, Miharban, Mani Singh recensions)

Janamsakhi traditions (Post-Nānak transmission)

#415 · 1604 (Adi Granth, compiled by Guru Arjan); 1706 (Damdama Sahib recension, completed by Guru Gobind Singh)

Sikh hagiographical traditions on Guru Nānak's life

Sikhism / Sant tradition / North Indian bhakti-Sufi synthesis 1

Guru Granth Sahib

Compiled by Guru Arjan (1604); declared eternal Guru by Guru Gobind Singh (1708); composite authorship across the ten Gurus and contributing bhakti / Sufi saints (Kabir, Namdev, Ravidas, Sheikh Farid, etc.)

Ek Onkar — One God beyond all images; devotion to the Name (Naam) as the path of liberation

Sixteenth-century Lutheran confessional theology 1

#854 · 1580 (June 25, fiftieth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession)

Book of Concord (Late)

Lutheran theologians (Andreae, Chemnitz, Selnecker, et al.)

The 1580 collection of Lutheran confessions — the doctrinal standard of orthodox Lutheranism

Slovenian Lacanian-Marxist cultural theory 1

#701 · 1989

The Sublime Object of Ideology (Mid)

Slavoj Žižek

Žižek's 1989 foundational Lacanian-Marxist cultural theory — ideology, the Real, the sublime object

Socratic literature 1

#1699 · c. 370–360 BCE

Memorabilia

Xenophon

The other Socrates — practical, pious, and useful, a teacher of self-mastery and the examined life as daily practice

Song Neo-Confucianism (Lixue / School of Principle) 1

#477 · Conversations 1170-1200; compiled 1270

Zhuzi Yulei (Conversations of Master Zhu, Arranged Topically) (Late)

Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi); compiled by Li Jingde

Zhu Xi's conversations — foundational Song Neo-Confucianism (Lixue / School of Principle)

South African anti-apartheid struggle / African liberation 1

#708 · 1994

Long Walk to Freedom (Late)

Nelson Mandela

Mandela's 1994 foundational autobiography — the anti-apartheid struggle and South African transformation

South African ubuntu theology / Anglican liberation theology 1

#236 · 1999 (the personal-theological reflection on the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1995-98)

No Future Without Forgiveness (Late (the major reflective work after the TRC))

#649 · 1605 (Part I); 1615 (Part II)

Ubuntu and forgiveness — Archbishop Tutu's 1999 personal-theological account of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Southern American modernism 1

#674 · 1929

The Sound and the Fury (Mid)

William Faulkner

Faulkner's 1929 foundational text of Southern American modernism — the Compson family's tragedy

Spanish Renaissance / Baroque literature 1

Don Quixote (El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha) (Late)

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Cervantes's 1605/15 foundational novel — widely considered the first modern novel

Stoic logic / Hellenistic philosophy 1

#1690 · c. 250 BCE

Logical Investigations (fragments) (Mature)

Chrysippus of Soli

The five indemonstrable argument forms and the foundations of propositional logic

Stoic physics and theology / Hellenistic philosophy 1

#1691 · c. 250 BCE

On Providence (fragments) (Mature)

Chrysippus of Soli

Stoic compatibilism — the cylinder analogy, co-causation, and the rational defence of cosmic fate against the problem of evil

Sufi mysticism / Mevlevi order / Hanafi-Sunni preaching tradition 1

#1139 · mid-13th century

Majālis-i Sabʿa (Seven Sermons) (Mature)

#1136 · c. 1244-1273 (post-1244 encounter with Shams; finished by Rumi's 1273 death)

Rumi's 13th-c. seven Friday sermons — formal religious-pastoral instruction transcribed by disciples

Sufi mysticism / Persian classical poetry / Mevlevi order 1

Dīvān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī (Mature)

#161 · c. 1108 (late in al-Ghazali's life, after returning to teaching)

Rumi's 13th-c. lyric collection — c. 40,000 verses of mystical love-poetry in the voice of Shams of Tabriz

Sufi-Sunni Islam / Islamic philosophical theology 1

Deliverance from Error (Late)

#160 · c. 1097-1106 (composed during al-Ghazali's years of withdrawal after the 1095 spiritual crisis)

A short philosophical autobiography — doubt undermines kalam, philosophy, and Ismailism in turn, until Sufi experience grants the certainty doctrinal reasoning could not

Sufi-Sunni Islam / Islamic theology and ethics 1

The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Late (post-crisis))

Forty books reviving Islamic worship and ethics from the inside out — orthodox law transfigured by Sufi inwardness

Sunni Islamic theology / falsafa critique / Ash'arite kalām 1

#1592 · c. 1094

The Aims of the Philosophers (Middle)

Al-Ghazālī's 'Aims of the Philosophers' — exposition of Aristotelian-Avicennan thought as prelude to the Tahāfut

Sunni Islamic theology / Sufism / Neoplatonic-Islamic mysticism 1

#1593 · c. 1106-1111

The Niche of Lights (Late)

#1715 · c. 2nd century BCE–5th century CE (debated)

Al-Ghazālī's late 'Niche of Lights' — Sufi-Neoplatonic exposition of the Qur'ānic Light Verse

Symbolic interactionism / Chicago School sociology 1

#690 · 1959

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Mid)

Erving Goffman

Goffman's 1959 foundational dramaturgical social theory — life as performance, front stage and back stage

Tamil Sangam literature / Indian ethical philosophy 1

Thirukkural

Thiruvalluvar

Virtue, wealth, and love in the compass of a couplet — the universal ethic of the Tamil Veda

Theater of the Absurd 1

#654 · 1948-49 (composed); 1952 (French publication); 1953 (premiere)

Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot) (Mid)

Samuel Beckett

Beckett's 1952 foundational text of the Theater of the Absurd — "Nothing to be done"

Theoretical physics / Foundations of physics 1

#1090 · 1998

Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam (Late)

#1332 · c. 3rd c. BCE-1st c. BCE (compiled later than other baskets)

Wheeler's 1998 autobiography — a life with Bohr, Einstein, Feynman, and at the foundations of quantum gravity

Theravada Buddhism / Abhidhamma philosophy 1

Pali Canon: Abhidhamma Pitaka (Early-Mid)

#1331 · c. 5th-1st c. BCE

Philosophical-systematic basket of the Pali Canon

Theravada Buddhism / Buddhist monastic tradition 1

Pali Canon: Vinaya Pitaka (Early)

#1330 · c. 5th-1st c. BCE (compiled c. 1st c. BCE)

Monastic-rule basket of the Pali Canon

Theravada Buddhism / Buddhist philosophy 1

Pali Canon: Sutta Pitaka (Early)

#1333 · c. 3rd c. BCE (compiled)

The Buddha's sayings and discourses — major scriptural basket of Theravada Buddhism

Theravada Buddhism / Pan-Buddhist scriptural tradition 1

Dhammapada (Early)

#75 · c. 430 AD (composed at the Mahāvihāra monastery, Anurādhapura, Sri Lanka)

Verse collection of Buddha's sayings — most-widely-read Buddhist scriptural text

Theravāda Buddhism 1

Visuddhimagga

Buddhaghosa

Virtue, meditation, wisdom — the threefold path of purification leading to liberation, systematically expounded

Theravāda Buddhism (received across all Buddhist traditions) 1

#4 · c. 3rd century BC (Pali recension; verses likely older)

The Dhammapada

Anonymous (attributed to the Buddha, compiled by the early sangha)

No self, no enduring substance, no creator — liberation is the cessation of craving in this very life

Tibetan Buddhism / Modern secular ethics 1

#1164 · 1999

Ethics for the New Millennium (Late)

Tenzin Gyatso's 1999 secular-ethical proposal — universal ethics independent of religious tradition

Tibetan Buddhism / Practical-philosophical-psychological tradition 1

#1165 · 1998

The Art of Happiness (Late)

Tenzin Gyatso and Howard C. Cutler's 1998 dialogue — practical happiness from a secular-Buddhist perspective

Tibetan Vajrayāna Buddhism / Gelug Madhyamaka 1

#954 · c. 1407

Ocean of Reasoning (Mature (Tsongkhapa's major philosophical-Madhyamaka work))

#1661 · c. 17th century (late career)

A verse-by-verse defense of Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka — Nāgārjuna through Candrakīrti, against alternative Tibetan readings

Transcendent Theosophy / Twelver Shiʿi Islamic philosophy / Islamic mystical hermeneutics 1

Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb (Late)

#801 · 1899 (1st ed.); 1903-1971 (multiple subsequent eds)

Mulla Sadra's 'Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb' — late mystical-philosophical work on the keys to interpreting the Qur'an

Turn-of-the-century mathematical formalism 1

Foundations of Geometry (Mid)

David Hilbert

Hilbert's 1899 formal axiomatization of Euclidean geometry — the foundation of modern formalism

Twelfth-century Benedictine monasticism / Rhenish mysticism / medieval Christian prophecy 1

#1682 · c. 1146-1179

Letters (Career-spanning)

#949 · c. 1150-58 (Rupertsberg, between Scivias and Liber Vitae Meritorum)

Hildegard's 12th-century 'Epistolae' — c. 390 surviving letters to popes, emperors, abbots, nuns, and laity

Twelfth-century monastic natural philosophy / medieval medicine 1

Physica and Causae et Curae (Mid-mature (Hildegard's middle period, between her three major visionary works))

The plants, animals, stones, and elements have powers given by God for human healing — a complete medieval natural-medical encyclopedia

Twentieth-century African American contemplative Christianity 1

#1072 · 1961

The Inward Journey (Late-mature)

The inward journey — Thurman's mature spiritual-contemplative teaching synthesising Black prophetic Christianity, Quaker contemplation, Indian-Buddhist practice

Twentieth-century African American liberal-prophetic Christianity 1

#1071 · 1949

Jesus and the Disinherited (Mature)

#912 · 1958 (Philosophy 33, no. 124)

Jesus as a disinherited Palestinian Jew — Thurman's short book that shaped Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement

Twentieth-century analytic ethics / virtue-ethics revival 1

Modern Moral Philosophy (Mature (the journal paper that reshaped Anglophone moral philosophy))

G. E. M. Anscombe (Elizabeth Anscombe)

Modern moral philosophy should be set aside until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology — and a "moral ought" without divine law is incoherent

Twentieth-century analytic philosophy / popular philosophical history 1

#126 · 1945

A History of Western Philosophy (Late)

#921 · 1982 (Harvard UP; based on 1976 Wolfson College lecture, 1977 Princeton seminars)

Two millennia of Western philosophy narrated by a Nobel-laureate philosopher with strong opinions and clear English

Twentieth-century analytic philosophy of language / Wittgenstein scholarship 1

Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Mature (Kripke's second major book after Naming and Necessity, 1980))

#1041 · 1929 (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 9)

There is no fact of the matter about what a rule "requires" — the meaning skeptic's challenge is the real heart of Wittgenstein's later philosophy

Twentieth-century analytic philosophy of logic 1

Some Remarks on Logical Form (Transitional)

#1033 · 1955 (Geoffrey Bles, London)

Wittgenstein's only short published paper — on color-exclusion and the limits of the Tractarian system

Twentieth-century Anglican apologetics 1

Surprised by Joy (Late-mature)

#932 · 1947 (Bles, London; revised 1960 chapter 3 after Anscombe's 1948 Socratic Club critique)

Lewis's autobiographical account of his conversion — the role of imagination, longing (Joy), and reason in the path from atheism to Christianity

Twentieth-century Anglican apologetics / Christian philosophy 1

Miracles: A Preliminary Study (Mature (after Mere Christianity and Screwtape; the most philosophical of Lewis's apologetic works))

#193 · 1970 (collecting essays from 1956-67)

Naturalism is self-refuting — and if naturalism fails, the antecedent improbability of miracles disappears

Twentieth-century anglophone African literature 1

#774 · 1958

Things Fall Apart (Mid)

Chinua Achebe

Achebe's 1958 founding work of modern African literature — Okonkwo and Igbo society on the eve of British colonization

Twentieth-century Austrian economics / classical liberalism 1

#789 · 1944

The Road to Serfdom (Mid)

Friedrich Hayek

Hayek's 1944 classical-liberal warning — central planning leads to serfdom

Twentieth-century Austrian economics / sociology of economic life 1

#790 · 1942

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Late)

Joseph Schumpeter

Schumpeter's 1942 classic — creative destruction and the prediction of capitalism's demise

Twentieth-century British moral philosophy / Platonic-Christian moral realism 1

The Sovereignty of Good (Mid (her major philosophical statement, alongside Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals 1992))

#915 · 1992 (Chatto & Windus, based on the 1982 Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh)

Moral life as attention to the real — Murdoch's recovery of moral realism against existentialist and analytic reductions of ethics to choice

Twentieth-century British moral philosophy / Platonist moral realism 1

Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (Late (Murdoch's longest and most ambitious philosophical book, published nine years after the Gifford Lectures))

#1036 · 1953 (Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge)

The Good is the metaphysical reality that moral attention discloses — and structuralism is a fashionable nihilism

Twentieth-century British philosophy / engagement with French existentialism 1

Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (Early)

#1006 · 1991 (Letní přemítání, composed during Havel's first eighteen months as Czechoslovak president after the November 1989 Velvet Revolution)

Iris Murdoch's 1953 short study of Sartre — her first published book and the founding statement of her philosophical-literary engagement with French existentialism

Twentieth-century Czech philosophical dissidence / post-Communist political philosophy 1

Summer Meditations (Late (the first major post-1989 reflection on the transition from dissidence to governance))

#196 · 1919 (first edition); 1922 (second edition — the famous and influential one, almost completely rewritten)

Reflections from a dissident now in the presidential office — on the moral-political transition from "living in truth" to actual democratic governance

Twentieth-century dialectical theology / Reformed neo-orthodoxy 1

The Epistle to the Romans (Early (the breakthrough work))

#831 · 1956-57 (Bayn al-Qasrayn, Qasr al-Shawq, al-Sukkariyya)

The infinite qualitative distinction between God and humanity — Barth's break with liberal Protestantism and the founding of dialectical theology

Twentieth-century Egyptian / Arabic literature 1

The Cairo Trilogy (Mid)

Naguib Mahfouz

Mahfouz's 1956-57 trilogy — three generations of a Cairo family across colonial Egypt

Twentieth-century English dystopian literature / philosophy of technology 1

#210 · 1932

Brave New World (Mid (Huxley's breakthrough novel))

#995 · 1938 (Hogarth Press)

The World State of pleasant conditioning, soma, and engineered happiness — Huxley's 1932 dystopia of total social engineering, against which the Savage rebels

Twentieth-century English feminist political philosophy 1

Three Guineas (Late)

How can we prevent war? An anti-fascist feminist argues the patriarchal-educational establishment and the war system are continuous

Twentieth-century English novel / spiritual-pacifist literature 1

#1042 · 1936

Eyeless in Gaza (Mid-mature)

#782 · 1949 (1st edn); 1966 (2nd edn revised)

Huxley's formally experimental 1936 novel — path from cynical bohemianism to mystical-pacifist commitment

Twentieth-century evolutionary biology / history of biology 1

#748 · 1982

The Growth of Biological Thought (Late)

Ernst Mayr

Mayr's 1982 monumental history of biological thought — diversity, evolution, inheritance

Twentieth-century French Annales school 1

The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Late)

Fernand Braudel

Braudel's 1949 monumental Annales-school history — three layers of historical time

Twentieth-century French existentialism / sociology of ageing 1

#991 · 1970 (Gallimard)

Old Age (Late-mature)

Old age as a social condition systematically denied and degraded — what The Second Sex did for womanhood, La Vieillesse does for ageing

Twentieth-century French existentialist autobiography 1

#990 · 1958 (Gallimard)

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Mature)

#989 · 1954 (Gallimard; Prix Goncourt 1954)

A young Parisian woman's break with Catholic-bourgeois upbringing and discovery of philosophical-existential vocation

Twentieth-century French existentialist literature 1

The Mandarins (Mature)

The post-Liberation Parisian intellectual scene confronts the cold war — through three central characters modeled on Camus, Sartre, and Beauvoir herself

Twentieth-century French existentialist memoir 1

#992 · 1964 (Gallimard)

A Very Easy Death (Late)

A daughter's unsparing account of her mother's six-week dying — and an indictment of the medicalised lies that surrounded it

Twentieth-century French Jewish philosophy / ethical phenomenology 1

#112 · 1961

Totality and Infinity (Early)

#219 · 1947 (posthumous; assembled from Weil's notebooks by Gustave Thibon)

The face of the Other places an infinite ethical demand on the self — ethics is first philosophy

Twentieth-century French mystical philosophy / Christian-Platonist 1

Gravity and Grace (Posthumous (Weil died in 1943 at age 34))

#221 · 1942 letters to Father Perrin; published posthumously 1950

Gravity (pesanteur) and grace — Simone Weil's posthumous mystical-philosophical aphorisms on attention, affliction, and the void

Twentieth-century French mystical theology / Christian-Platonist 1

Waiting for God (Posthumous)

#220 · 1943 (written for Free France in London in the months before Weil's death; published posthumously 1949)

Letters and essays to Father Perrin — Weil's most extended account of her religious experience, her relation to the Church, and her refusal of baptism

Twentieth-century French political philosophy / Christian-Platonist 1

The Need for Roots (Posthumous)

A declaration of duties before rights — Weil's posthumous political-philosophical prelude for post-war reconstruction, focused on the deep human need for rootedness

Twentieth-century French structural anthropology 1

#286 · 1955

Tristes Tropiques (Mid (Lévi-Strauss's most widely read book))

#793 · 1937 (French); 1954 (English)

"I hate travelling and explorers" — Lévi-Strauss's opening to his 1955 part-memoir, part-anthropological reflection, the most widely read work of twentieth-century anthropology

Twentieth-century genetic epistemology / developmental psychology 1

The Construction of Reality in the Child (Mid)

Jean Piaget

Piaget's 1937 founding work on the child's construction of object, space, time, causality

Twentieth-century German liberal-existentialist Protestant theology 1

#859 · 1941

New Testament and Mythology (Late)

Rudolf Bultmann

Bultmann's 1941 essay launching the demythologization program in NT studies

Twentieth-century Japanese literature / aestheticist nihilism 1

#285 · 1949 (Mishima's breakthrough novel, written at age 24)

Confessions of a Mask (Early (the breakthrough novel that established Mishima's literary reputation))

#263 · 1963 (collecting essays from the 1950s-60s)

A young man's sexual self-discovery in wartime Japan — Mishima's 1949 semi-autobiographical breakthrough novel

Twentieth-century Jewish religious philosophy 1

Difficult Freedom (Mid (alongside Totality and Infinity))

#231 · 1947 (The Early Masters); 1948 (The Later Masters); compiled over decades of Buber's engagement with Hasidism

Essays on Judaism — Levinas's 1963 collection that develops the explicitly Jewish-religious dimension of his philosophical-ethical project

Twentieth-century Jewish renewal / Hasidic spirituality 1

Tales of the Hasidim (Late (Buber's mature engagement with the Hasidic tradition))

#787 · 1906-11 (lectures at Geneva); 1916 (posthumous from students' notes)

The major Western anthology of Hasidic stories — Buber's lifelong work of recovering Hasidic spirituality for modern Jewish and broader religious life

Twentieth-century linguistics / structuralism 1

Course in General Linguistics (Late)

Ferdinand de Saussure

Saussure's 1916 posthumous lectures founding modern linguistics and structuralism

Twentieth-century macroeconomics / Keynesianism 1

#788 · 1936

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Late)

John Maynard Keynes

Keynes's 1936 founding treatise of modern macroeconomics — aggregate demand and the role of the state

Twentieth-century moral philosophy / virtue ethics revival 1

#128 · 1981 (1st ed.); 1984 (2nd ed.); 2007 (3rd ed., with new prologue)

After Virtue

#965 · 1979 (Harper & Row)

Modern moral disagreement is interminable because we have inherited fragments of a tradition we no longer understand — recovery requires returning to Aristotle

Twentieth-century Native American philosophy / Lakota intellectual tradition 1

The Metaphysics of Modern Existence (Mature (Deloria's most ambitious philosophical work))

The Native metaphysics of relation, place, and event offers a corrective to Western philosophy's preoccupation with substance, time, and the isolated subject

Twentieth-century Native American political philosophy / Lakota intellectual tradition 1

#964 · 1969 (Macmillan)

Custer Died for Your Sins (Mature (Deloria's breakthrough book, written at 36))

#918 · 2001 (Cambridge UP; based on the Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, 1993)

Native Americans are not vanishing — they are nations within a nation, with distinct legal, philosophical, and spiritual standing that demands recognition

Twentieth-century neo-Aristotelian / neo-Stoic philosophy of emotion 1

Upheavals of Thought (Late-mature (Nussbaum's magnum opus, eight years in the writing after the Gifford Lectures))

#917 · 1986 (Cambridge UP; revised 2001 with substantial new preface)

Emotions are not blind tremors but cognitive judgements of value — they have intelligence and require it

Twentieth-century neo-Aristotelian ethics / philosophy and literature 1

The Fragility of Goodness (Mature (the book that established Nussbaum as a major figure))

A human life worth living is constitutively vulnerable to luck — what tragedy shows, philosophy must accept

Twentieth-century perennialism / comparative mysticism 1

#211 · 1945

The Perennial Philosophy (Late (Huxley's mature spiritual-philosophical synthesis))

#127 · 1952 (Terry Lectures, Yale, 1950)

The common metaphysical-experiential core of the world's mystical traditions — Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, Taoist — as a single perennial philosophy

Twentieth-century philosophical theology / existentialist theology 1

The Courage to Be

Paul Tillich

Anxiety of fate, guilt, and meaninglessness is overcome by the courage to be — grounded in the God who appears when the God of theism has disappeared

Twentieth-century philosophy and history of science 1

#120 · 1962 (1st ed.); 1970 (2nd ed. with postscript); 1996 (3rd ed.)

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas S. Kuhn

Normal science under paradigms is punctuated by revolutionary changes that are not strictly cumulative — and competing paradigms are incommensurable

Twentieth-century philosophy of science / public-philosophical reflection 1

#214 · 1954 (collected from earlier essays and addresses)

Ideas and Opinions (Late (the most comprehensive single-volume collection))

#744 · 1943 (lectures); 1944 (book)

Einstein on science, religion, ethics, politics — the major collection of his philosophical and public reflections

Twentieth-century physics / philosophy of biology 1

What Is Life? (Late)

Erwin Schrödinger

Schrödinger's 1944 Dublin lectures founding the conceptual framework of molecular biology

Twentieth-century physics / philosophy of physics 1

#1052 · 1916 (Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie); English translation 1920

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (Mid-mature)

#121 · Composed 1938–1943 in New Zealand exile; published 1945 (2 vols)

Einstein's own popular exposition of special and general relativity — the principal accessible source for the lay reader

Twentieth-century political liberalism / philosophy of science applied to politics 1

The Open Society and Its Enemies

Karl R. Popper

The closed society of tribal traditions vs the open society of critical inquiry — and the historicist enemies that produce totalitarianism

Twentieth-century political philosophy / Arendt's post-totalitarian thought 1

#113 · 1958

The Human Condition

#179 · 1963 (New Yorker articles 1962-63, then book)

Labour, work, action — three distinct activities of the vita activa, and the modern reduction of action to making

Twentieth-century political philosophy / Jewish thought 1

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Mid-late (after The Human Condition, before The Life of the Mind))

#920 · 1968 (Harcourt Brace; essays composed 1955-67, several in New Yorker, Merkur, etc.)

The "banality of evil" — Eichmann not as a monster but as a bureaucratically thoughtless functionary, raising the most disturbing question of twentieth-century ethics

Twentieth-century political philosophy / philosophical biography 1

Men in Dark Times (Late (collected from essays spanning more than a decade))

In dark times, the moral lucidity of particular individuals lights what general theory cannot illuminate

Twentieth-century political-cultural criticism 1

#1043 · 1958

Brave New World Revisited (Late)

Twenty-six years later — Huxley's sober reassessment argues the dystopia is arriving faster than he had imagined

Twentieth-century post-Christian radical feminist theology 1

#860 · 1973

Beyond God the Father (Mid)

#212 · 1954 (essay-length; often published together with the 1956 Heaven and Hell)

Daly's 1973 founding work of radical feminist theology — beyond God the Father

Twentieth-century psychedelic-philosophical writing 1

The Doors of Perception (Late)

#998 · 1984 (Beacon Press)

"If the doors of perception were cleansed" — Huxley's 1954 essay on his first mescaline experience, the founding text of modern psychedelic-philosophical writing

Twentieth-century radical feminism 1

Pure Lust (Late-mature)

#997 · 1978 (Beacon Press)

"Pure Lust" — elemental passion of women's desire for life, freedom, creative communion, against the "phallic lust" of patriarchal possession

Twentieth-century radical feminism / post-Christian feminist philosophy 1

Gyn/Ecology (Mature)

#132 · 1919 (1st ed.); 1922 (2nd ed., radically revised)

Patriarchy is a global religion of dismemberment — sati, foot-binding, genital mutilation are its rituals; gyn/ecology is the women-centred ecology that resists

Twentieth-century Reformed / dialectical theology 1

Commentary on Romans (Early)

#809 · 1935-61 (composed and memorized); 1963 (first published abroad); 1987 (in USSR)

God is in heaven, and you are on the earth — the infinite qualitative difference between God and humanity, recovered against liberal Protestantism

Twentieth-century Russian-Soviet poetry / Acmeism 1

Requiem (Late)

Anna Akhmatova

Akhmatova's 1935-61 cycle on Soviet terror — Requiem — the prison line and the witness

Twentieth-century scientific humanism / philosophy of religion 1

#1054 · 1930 (published New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930)

Religion and Science (Mid-mature)

#1053 · 1934 (German: Mein Weltbild, Querido Verlag, Amsterdam; English: Covici Friede, New York)

Three stages of religion — fear, moral, cosmic — and mature science as continuous with cosmic religious feeling

Twentieth-century scientific humanism / philosophy of science 1

The World as I See It (Mid-mature)

#1055 · 1950 (Philosophical Library, New York)

Einstein's 1934 collection of essays and addresses — philosophical, political, personal — the most accessible non-technical statement of his worldview

Twentieth-century scientific humanism / philosophy of science / philosophy of religion 1

Out of My Later Years (Late)

#794 · 1934 (posthumous, Vygotsky died June 1934)

Einstein's 1950 late-career essay collection — Princeton years on science, politics, religion, and Zionism

Twentieth-century Soviet psychology / cultural-historical school 1

Thought and Language (Mid)

Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky's 1934 posthumous founding work of socio-cultural psychology — language as mediating tool

Twentieth-century Warburg-school art history 1

#814 · 1950 (1st ed.); 1995 (16th ed.)

The Story of Art (Mid)

Ernst Gombrich

Gombrich's 1950 popular history of art — from the caves to the twentieth century

Twentieth-century Warburg-school iconology 1

#813 · 1939

Studies in Iconology (Late)

Erwin Panofsky

Panofsky's 1939 founding work of modern iconology — three levels of art interpretation

Twenty-first-century analytic ethics / moral realism 1

#922 · 2011 (Vols I & II, Oxford UP); 2017 (Vol III, Oxford UP — published months after Parfit's death)

On What Matters (Late (Parfit's final, three-decade-in-the-making work — his second after Reasons and Persons, 1984))

Derek Parfit

Kantian ethics, contractualism, and rule-consequentialism climb the same mountain from different sides — and what we ought to do is independently real

Twenty-first-century Italian literature 1

#833 · 2011 (Italian L'amica geniale); 2012 (English)

My Brilliant Friend (Late)

Elena Ferrante

Ferrante's 2011 first Neapolitan novel — childhood friendship in postwar Naples

Twenty-first-century speculative history 1

#878 · 2015 (Hebrew); 2016 (English)

Homo Deus (Late)

Harari's 2016 speculative history of humanity's near future — dataism and the upgrade of Homo sapiens

Twenty-first-century tech humanism 1

#909 · 2018

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Mature (Lanier's short polemical follow-up to Who Owns the Future?, 2013, and Dawn of the New Everything, 2017))

#755 · 2017 (Italian); 2018 (English)

Social media platforms are behaviour-modification engines — leaving them is the precondition of being a free agent in the digital era

Twenty-first-century theoretical physics / philosophy of time 1

The Order of Time (Late)

Carlo Rovelli

Rovelli's 2017 popular essay on the dissolution of time in fundamental physics

Twenty-first-century transhumanism 1

#879 · 2005

The Singularity Is Near (Late)

Ray Kurzweil

Kurzweil's 2005 popular transhumanist treatise — the coming Singularity

Urdu poetry / Islamic philosophy / South Asian Muslim political philosophy 1

#1215 · 1935

Bal-i Jibril (Gabriel's Wing) (Late)

#1302 · 2009 (1st ed.), 2019 (10th anniversary ed.)

Iqbal's 1935 Urdu poetry collection — mature philosophical-political poetry

Utilitarianism / Effective altruism 1

The Life You Can Save (Late)

#1301 · 1981 (1st ed.), 2011 (2nd ed.)

Singer's 2009 popular work on global poverty and effective giving

Utilitarianism / Evolutionary ethics 1

The Expanding Circle (Mid)

Singer's 1981 work — proper-rational extension of moral concern

Utilitarianism / Preference utilitarianism 1

#1300 · 1993

How Are We to Live? (Mid)

#1299 · 1979 (1st ed.), 1993 (2nd ed.), 2011 (3rd ed.)

Singer's 1993 popular work on ethics in an age of self-interest

Utilitarianism / Preference utilitarianism / Analytic ethics 1

Practical Ethics (Mid)

Anonymous / composite (multiple ṛṣis over four centuries)

Singer's 1979 systematic textbook of preference-utilitarian applied ethics

Vatican II Catholic theology 1

#638 · 1965 (7 December)

Gaudium et Spes (Late)

Second Vatican Council

Vatican II's 1965 Gaudium et Spes — Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World

Vedic / proto-Vedānta 1

#1 · c. 800–200 BC

The Upanishads

The reduction of all multiplicity to a single, knowable, immaterial reality — Brahman / Ātman are one

Vedānta / classical Hinduism 1

#3 · c. 200 BC – 200 AD

The Bhagavad Gita

Anonymous; traditionally Vyasa, redacted into the Mahabharata

Three yogas — knowledge, action, devotion — converge on a personal Lord who is also the impersonal absolute

Victorian mathematical physics / classical field theory 1

#743 · 1873 (2 vols.; 2nd ed. 1881; 3rd ed. 1891)

A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Late)

James Clerk Maxwell

Maxwell's 1873 founding treatise unifying electricity, magnetism, and light — the four Maxwell equations

Victorine mystical-scholastic theology 1

#528 · c. 1127

Didascalicon (On the Study of Reading) (Early)

Hugh of St Victor

Hugh of St Victor's c. 1127 foundational treatise on the seven liberal arts and theological reading

Vienna Circle / British logical positivism 1

#723 · 1936

Language, Truth, and Logic (Early)

A.J. Ayer

Ayer's 1936 foundational manifesto of British logical positivism — the verification principle and the elimination of metaphysics

Vienna Circle logical positivism 1

#433 · 1934 (German; English 1937)

The Logical Syntax of Language (Mid)

#1461 · 1877–1882 (premiered Bayreuth, 26 July 1882)

Carnap's 1934 major statement of the logical-syntactic phase of logical positivism

Vietnamese Engaged Buddhism 1

#636 · 1987

Being Peace (Late)

Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh's 1987 foundational text of Engaged Buddhism — interbeing and mindful peace-making

Wagnerian music-drama / Christian-Schopenhauerian syncretism / Grail legend 1

Parsifal (Late (final completed work))

#1458 · 1857–1859 (premiered Munich, 1865)

Wagner's 1882 farewell music-drama — the holy fool, the wound, the spear, the Grail

Wagnerian music-drama / German Romanticism / Schopenhauerian metaphysics 1

Tristan und Isolde (Middle (post-Schopenhauer))

#1459 · 1848–1874 (poem 1848–52; music 1853–74; complete premiere Bayreuth 1876)

Wagner's 1857–59 music-drama of erotic-mystical Sehnsucht — Schopenhauerian World-as-Will set to chromatic harmony

Wagnerian music-drama / Germanic-Norse mythology / Schopenhauerian metaphysics 1

Der Ring des Nibelungen (Middle-to-late (career-spanning))

#783 · 1929-35 (composed in fascist prison); 1948-51 (posthumous Italian publication)

Wagner's 26-year, four-evening cycle — the curse of the gold and the twilight of the gods

Western Marxism / Hegelian Marxism 1

#784 · 1923

History and Class Consciousness (Mid)

György Lukács

Lukács's 1923 founding work of Western Marxism — reification and the standpoint of the proletariat

Western Marxism / Italian critical theory 1

Prison Notebooks (Late)

Antonio Gramsci

Gramsci's 1929-35 prison masterwork — hegemony, civil society, organic intellectuals, the historical bloc

Yoruba religion / Ifá divination 1

#419 · Pre-literate origins (possibly Old Oyo era, c. 12th-16th century CE); ongoing oral tradition; partial transcription from the 19th century onward

The Odu Ifá Corpus

Anonymous / composite — the babaláwo (Ifá priest) tradition across centuries; the corpus is principally oral but partially transcribed and translated since the 19th century

The 256 odu of Ifá — the divinatory-religious corpus that organizes Yoruba and Yoruba-diaspora religious life

Young Marx / philosophical-humanist Marxism 1

#149 · Paris, summer 1844 (notebook manuscripts; unfinished and unpublished in Marx's lifetime); first published 1932

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Early)