Works

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))

David Bohm

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 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 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

#166 · 1927 (lecture); 1957 (collected essays as a book)

Why I Am Not a Christian (Mid-late)

Bertrand Russell

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

#726 · 1933-35 (dictations); 1958 (published posthumously)

The Blue and Brown Books (Mid)

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein's 1933-35 transitional dictations bridging Tractatus (1921) and Philosophical Investigations (1953)

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

#458 · 1978 (essays 1954-77)

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 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)

Alan Turing

Turing's 1950 founding essay of artificial intelligence — the Turing test

British anti-totalitarian political fiction 1

#677 · 1949

1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four) (Late)

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)

Orwell's 1949 foundational dystopian novel — Big Brother, Newspeak, doublethink, the totalitarian state

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 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))

#37 · 1689 (first ed.); fourth ed. with significant revisions 1700

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)

John Locke

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

John Locke

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)

John Locke

Christianity as reasonable belief — Locke's 1695 theological work, the major Enlightenment-rationalist Christian apologetic

British empiricism / Enlightenment philosophy of religion 1

#94 · Drafted 1751–61; revised continuously; published posthumously 1779

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Late)

#65 · 1710 (Dublin, age 25)

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)

George Berkeley

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)

George Berkeley

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

#260 · 1843 (Mill's first major book); revised through 1872 (8th edition)

A System of Logic (Early (Mill's first major book, the foundation of his philosophical reputation))

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

The major nineteenth-century English logic — Mill's 1843 systematic treatise including the famous Methods of experimental inquiry

British empiricism / Scottish Enlightenment 3

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)

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

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)

J. M. E. McTaggart

McTaggart's 1896 'Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic' — a critical-sympathetic study of Hegel's dialectical method

British idealism / personal idealism / Cambridge metaphysics 1

#1585 · 1921 (vol. 1); 1927 (vol. 2, posthumous, ed. C. D. Broad)

The Nature of Existence (Late)

J. M. E. McTaggart

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)

J. M. E. McTaggart

McTaggart's 1906 'Some Dogmas of Religion' — atheistic-idealist critique of standard theistic dogma

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 liberalism / classical feminist liberalism 1

#154 · Written 1860–61 with Harriet Taylor Mill's collaboration; published 1869

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

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

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))

Virginia Woolf

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))

Virginia Woolf

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)

Virginia Woolf

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 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

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)

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

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"

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

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

Mind and World (Late)

John McDowell

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

Buddhist epistemology (pramana); Yogacara-Sautrantika synthesis 1

#1798 · c. 7th century

Pramanavarttika (Commentary on Valid Cognition) (Early)

Dharmakirti

The most rigorous Buddhist treatise on logic and epistemology — perception and inference as the only valid means of knowledge, deployed against Brahmanical authority and the permanent self

Buddhist ethical governance (dhamma) 1

#1735 · c. 257–240 BCE

Rock Edicts

Ashoka (Devānampiya Piyadassi)

Dhamma carved in stone — the Mauryan emperor's public declaration of nonviolence, tolerance, and compassion as the basis of governance

Byzantine Christian theology, patristic synthesis 1

#1774 · c. 628–634 CE (Ambigua ad Iohannem) and c. 614–625 CE (Ambigua ad Thomam)

Ambigua

Maximus the Confessor

Cosmic liturgy in seventy-one difficulties — every created thing moves from God, through Christ, back to God in theosis

Byzantine classical scholarship and literary criticism 1

#1804 · c. 845–855 (before Photius became patriarch)

Bibliotheca (Myriobiblon)

Photius I of Constantinople

The library of a lost world — 280 book reviews that preserve the memory of classical Greek literature otherwise vanished

Byzantine court historiography 1

#1776 · c. 1063–1078 (composed in stages)

Chronographia

Michael Psellos

The philosopher at court — psychological portraiture, political intrigue, and the Platonic mind behind the throne of Byzantium

Byzantine Hesychast theology 1

#1775 · c. 1338–1341

Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts

Gregory Palamas

The uncreated light of Tabor is not a metaphor — God's energies are truly God, truly participated, and truly seen by the saints in prayer

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

Byzantine liturgical hymnography 1

#1803 · c. 520–555 (during the reign of Justinian I)

Kontakia (Selected Hymns)

Romanos the Melodist

The Virgin weeps, Judas speaks, the cave receives the Infinite — theology as dramatic song in the liturgical assembly

Byzantine Orthodox mystical theology 1

#1858 · c. 1000–1022 CE

Hymns of Divine Love

Symeon the New Theologian

I have seen the Light — the uncreated fire breaks into the monk's cell and transforms the body itself

Byzantine Platonism / Renaissance Plato-Aristotle controversy 1

#1829 · c. 1439 (composed in connection with Pletho's attendance at the Council of Florence)

On the Differences between Plato and Aristotle (Late (Pletho was approximately 84; the work is the product of a lifetime of Platonist conviction))

Georgius Gemistus Pletho

Plato is superior to Aristotle in theology, ethics, and metaphysics — and the Latin West has been led astray by preferring the student to the master

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

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)

Calvin's 1545 catechism — foundational Reformed-pedagogical text

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)

Whewell's 1849 reply to Mill — defending consilience against the methods of agreement and difference

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))