Works

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

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))

Anonymous (Sumerian scribal tradition)

Forty books reviving Islamic worship and ethics from the inside out — orthodox law transfigured by Sufi inwardness

Sumerian literary tradition 1

#1891 · c. 2100–2000 BCE

Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta

The messenger's mouth was too heavy — so the king invented the clay tablet: the origin myth of writing as the technology that overcomes the limits of memory and distance

Sumerian religious / literary tradition 1

#1882 · c. 2144–2124 BCE

Gudea Cylinders

Gudea of Lagash (attributed; court scribes)

The house planted by the side of a river — the most elaborate surviving account of divine vision, sacred architecture, and temple dedication in Sumerian literature

Sumerian royal literary tradition 1

#1880 · c. 2094–2047 BCE

Self-Praise Hymns of Shulgi

Shulgi of Ur (attributed; court scribes)

I am a king, the weapon of the gods — the first celebration of royal excellence in athletics, learning, and the scribal arts

Sumerian temple hymn literature 1

#1865 · c. 2285–2250 BCE

The Exaltation of Inanna (Nin-me-šara)

Enheduanna

"Lady of all the me" — the first named author's cosmic hymn, personal lament, and theological revolution in a single voice

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

Technological-cultural artifact / Vulgate biblical tradition / European print revolution 1

#1830 · c. 1452–1455 (printed in Mainz; approximately 180 copies produced)

Gutenberg Bible (Mature (the culmination of approximately 15 years of experimentation with movable type))

Johannes Gutenberg (Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden)

The technology that broke the manuscript monopoly — 180 identical Bibles produced in the time it would have taken a scribe to copy one

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)

John Archibald Wheeler

Wheeler's 1998 autobiography — a life with Bohr, Einstein, Feynman, and at the foundations of quantum gravity

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)

#1332 · c. 3rd c. BCE-1st c. BCE (compiled later than other baskets)

Blavatsky's 1889 devotional work on the spiritual path

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

Tiantai Buddhism 1

#1779 · 594 CE (lectures recorded by Guanding)

Great Calming and Contemplation

Zhiyi

Three thousand realms in a single moment of thought — calming and contemplation as the path to realising the threefold truth

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 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)

#1659 · c. 17th century (mid-career)

Tenzin Gyatso and Howard C. Cutler's 1998 dialogue — practical happiness from a secular-Buddhist perspective

Tibetan Gelug Buddhism 2

#475 · 1402

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

Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa

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)

Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa

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

Tibetan Vajrayāna Buddhism / Gelug Madhyamaka 1

#954 · c. 1407

Ocean of Reasoning (Mature (Tsongkhapa's major philosophical-Madhyamaka work))

Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa

A verse-by-verse defense of Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka — Nāgārjuna through Candrakīrti, against alternative Tibetan readings

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

Kitāb al-Mashāʿir (Mature)

Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi)

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

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

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

Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi)

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

Transcendent Theosophy / Twelver Shiʿi Islamic philosophy / Islamic mystical hermeneutics 1

#1661 · c. 17th century (late career)

Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb (Late)

Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi)

Mulla Sadra's 'Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb' — late mystical-philosophical work on the keys to interpreting the Qur'an

Transcendental phenomenology 2

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

Cartesian Meditations (Late)

Edmund Husserl

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

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

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

Edmund Husserl

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

Transcendental Thomism / Catholic theology 4

#1410 · 1939 (Geist in Welt)

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)

#801 · 1899 (1st ed.); 1903-1971 (multiple subsequent eds)

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

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)

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard's 12th-century 'Epistolae' — c. 390 surviving letters to popes, emperors, abbots, nuns, and laity

Twelfth-century monastic natural philosophy / medieval medicine 1

#949 · c. 1150-58 (Rupertsberg, between Scivias and Liber Vitae Meritorum)

Physica and Causae et Curae (Mid-mature (Hildegard's middle period, between her three major visionary works))

Hildegard of Bingen

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)

Howard Thurman

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)

Howard Thurman

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

#912 · 1958 (Philosophy 33, no. 124)

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)

Bertrand Russell

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

#921 · 1982 (Harvard UP; based on 1976 Wolfson College lecture, 1977 Princeton seminars)

Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Mature (Kripke's second major book after Naming and Necessity, 1980))

Saul Kripke

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

#1041 · 1929 (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 9)

Some Remarks on Logical Form (Transitional)

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein's only short published paper — on color-exclusion and the limits of the Tractarian system

Twentieth-century Anglican apologetics 1

#1033 · 1955 (Geoffrey Bles, London)

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))

#916 · 1958 (Chatto & Windus)

The Good is the metaphysical reality that moral attention discloses — and structuralism is a fashionable nihilism

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)

#1036 · 1953 (Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge)

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

Twentieth-century British philosophy / engagement with French existentialism 1

Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (Early)

#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)

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 2

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

Václav Havel

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

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

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

Václav Havel

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 Czech philosophical dissidence / post-Communist political philosophy 1

#1006 · 1991 (Letní přemítání, composed during Havel's first eighteen months as Czechoslovak president after the November 1989 Velvet Revolution)

Summer Meditations (Late (the first major post-1989 reflection on the transition from dissidence to governance))

Václav Havel

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

#196 · 1919 (first edition); 1922 (second edition — the famous and influential one, almost completely rewritten)

The Epistle to the Romans (Early (the breakthrough work))

Karl Barth

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

#831 · 1956-57 (Bayn al-Qasrayn, Qasr al-Shawq, al-Sukkariyya)

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))

Aldous Huxley

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

#995 · 1938 (Hogarth Press)

Three Guineas (Late)

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

How can we prevent war? An anti-fascist feminist argues the patriarchal-educational establishment and the war system are continuous

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)

#993 · 1928 (Hogarth Press)

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

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)

#782 · 1949 (1st edn); 1966 (2nd edn revised)

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

Twentieth-century English novel / spiritual-pacifist literature 1

#1042 · 1936

Eyeless in Gaza (Mid-mature)

Aldous Huxley

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)