Works

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)

#1750 · c. 6th century BCE (Golden Verses probably 5th–3rd century BCE; testimonia various)

Shinran's late letters compiled by disciples

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

Pythagorean cosmology / pre-Socratic philosophy 1

#1838 · c. 440–400 BCE

On Nature (fragments)

Philolaus of Croton

Nature was fitted together from unlimiteds and limiters — the first mathematical cosmology, with the Earth in motion

Pythagorean philosophy / early Greek mathematics-mysticism 1

Golden Verses and Testimonia

Pythagoras of Samos (attributed and reported)

Number is the principle of all things — the unity of mathematics, music, cosmology, and the purification of the soul

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 foundations / philosophy of physics 1

#1752 · 1957

"Relative State" Formulation of Quantum Mechanics

Hugh Everett III

No wave function collapse — the universal wave function branches, and every outcome is realised in a relative state

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

Rabbinic Judaism (Tannaitic period) 1

#1730 · Akiva active c. 70–135 CE; compiled in Mishnah c. 200 CE and Talmuds c. 200–500 CE

Sayings and Legal Traditions (Mishna, Talmud)

Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph (transmitted and compiled by students and later redactors)

Every letter of Torah carries meaning: the oral law as the living voice of Sinai, transmitted through the greatest sage

Rabbinic Judaism / Kabbalistic exegesis 1

#1765 · c. 1260–1270 CE

Commentary on the Torah

Nachmanides (Ramban)

The Torah is composed of divine Names — beneath the literal surface lies an infinite mystical depth

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)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Servetus's 1531 founding anti-Trinitarian treatise — written aged 20 in Hagenau

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)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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

Reformation theology / Lutheranism 1

#14 · 1525

On the Bondage of the Will

Martin Luther

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

#1579 · 1934 (29-31 May, Barmen Synod)

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)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer's 1930 habilitation — transcendental philosophy and ontology in the theology of revelation

Reformed dialectical theology / neo-orthodoxy 1

#1577 · 1946 lectures; 1947 publication

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))

John Calvin (Jean Cauvin)

Calvin's vast Geneva preaching corpus c. 1540-64 — over 2,000 sermons recorded by stenographers

Reformed-Protestant dialectical theology 1

#420 · 1932-67 (14 volumes, unfinished)

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)

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

The first published critical Greek text of the New Testament — Erasmus's 1516 Novum Instrumentum

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))

#1825 · 1469–1474 (completed 1474; published 1482)

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

Renaissance Christian Platonism / Neoplatonism / prisca theologia 1

Platonic Theology (Mature (Ficino's philosophical magnum opus, composed during the height of his work at the Florentine Academy))

Marsilio Ficino

The soul is the copula mundi — the knot binding divine and corporeal, immortal by its own nature as the Platonic tradition demonstrates and Christian faith confirms

Renaissance humanism / Christian Platonism / prisca theologia / syncretism 1

#1826 · 1486 (composed as the opening address for the planned Roman disputation of the 900 Theses; the disputation never took place)

Oration on the Dignity of Man (Early (Pico was 23 years old; this was his first major philosophical statement))

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

God gave man no fixed nature — placed at the centre of creation, he can freely fashion himself as beast or angel

Renaissance humanism / late-sixteenth-century French moralism 1

#766 · 1580 (Books I-II); 1588 (Book III); 1595 (posthumous augmented)

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)

#1827 · c. 1478–1519 (across Leonardo's entire career, from Florence through Milan, Rome, and Amboise)

Servetus's 1535 Lyon edition of Ptolemy's Geography — a major Renaissance humanist scientific edition

Renaissance natural philosophy / empirical investigation / art-science synthesis 1

Notebooks (Codex Atlanticus and others) (Lifelong (the notebooks span Leonardo's entire adult career))

Leonardo da Vinci

Experience is the mother of all certainty — the greatest Renaissance mind's direct encounter with anatomy, mechanics, optics, and the natural world

Renaissance natural philosophy / mathematical astronomy 1

#742 · 1543 (published; composed 1510-30s)

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Late)

Nicolaus Copernicus

Copernicus's 1543 founding work of heliocentric astronomy — the "Copernican Revolution"

Renaissance political thought / political realism / mirror of princes (inverted) 1

#1828 · 1513 (composed in exile at Sant'Andrea in Percussina; published posthumously, 1532)

The Prince (Mature (Machiavelli was 44 and writing from the bitter experience of political defeat and exile))

Niccolo Machiavelli

The effective truth of the thing — how states are actually maintained, not how one might wish they were

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))

Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim)

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 annalistic historiography 1

#1728 · c. 27 BCE – 9 BCE

Ab Urbe Condita

Livy (Titus Livius)

The history of Rome as the history of virtue: exempla of civic duty from Romulus to Augustus

Roman architectural and engineering tradition 1

#1844 · c. 30–15 BCE

De Architectura

Vitruvius

Firmitas, utilitas, venustas — the only surviving ancient treatise on architecture and the origin of the Vitruvian Man

Roman Catholic magisterial theology / Lublin Thomism 1

#67 · 14 September 1998 (encyclical letter)

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 (Jorge Mario Bergoglio)

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))

Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio)

Pope Francis's 2018 'Gaudete et Exsultate' — apostolic exhortation on holiness in the modern world

Roman Catholic teaching / personalist-Thomist Catholic philosophy 1

#1640 · 2005 (book-length reflections)

Memory and Identity (Final)

Karol Józef Wojtyła / Pope John Paul II

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))

Karol Józef Wojtyła / Pope John Paul II

John Paul II's 1979 first encyclical 'Redemptor Hominis' — Christ the Redeemer as the centre of Christian anthropology

Roman Catholic transcendental Thomism 1

#421 · 1976 (German; English 1978)

Foundations of Christian Faith (Late)

Karl Rahner

Rahner's 1976 systematic introduction to his transcendental-Thomist theology

Roman encyclopedic naturalism 1

#1840 · 77 CE

Natural History

Pliny the Elder

Nature is to be found in her entirety nowhere more than in her smallest creations — the ancient world catalogued

Roman epic poetry 1

#1725 · c. 29–19 BCE (unfinished at Virgil's death)

Aeneid

Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)

Fate, piety, and the cost of empire — the founding myth of Rome as a tragedy of civilisation

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 mythological epic 1

#1726 · c. 8 CE

Metamorphoses

Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)

Nothing keeps its form: 250 myths of transformation as the anti-epic of ceaseless change

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))

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

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 rhetorical tradition 1

#1841 · c. 95 CE

Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

The good man speaking well — a complete programme of education from the nursery to the forum

Roman satire and the ancient novel 1

#1843 · c. 60s CE

Satyricon

Petronius

Trimalchio's feast as the mirror of empire — a picaresque masterpiece of social comedy and moral nihilism

Roman Stoicism 10

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)

#1817 · c. 60–100 CE (lectures delivered); excerpts preserved 5th c. CE

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

Lectures and Sayings

Gaius Musonius Rufus

The Roman Socrates on practical ethics — women deserve philosophy, food should be simple, exile is no evil, and virtue is practised, not theorised

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

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)

#981 · c. 62-64 CE (composed during Seneca's retirement)

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

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)