Works

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)

#1801 · c. 780 (earliest Dunhuang manuscript; text attributed to Huineng, d. 713)

Pope Francis's 2016 apostolic exhortation on love in the family — synthesis of the 2014-15 Synods

Chan (Zen) Buddhism 1

Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu Tanjing) (Early)

Huineng (attributed; compiled by disciples)

"From the beginning not a thing is" — the Sixth Patriarch's teaching of sudden awakening, no-mind, and the Buddha-nature present in all beings

Chan / Zen Buddhism 1

#77 · c. 780 AD (Dunhuang manuscript); refined recensions through 13th century

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 classical / Confucian canonical 1

#1874 · c. 1042 BCE (events); written form c. 10th–5th century BCE

Speeches in the Book of Documents (Shangshu)

Duke of Zhou (attributed)

Heaven's mandate is not constant — the founding speeches of Chinese political philosophy

Chinese classical canon (one of the Five Classics) 1

#1869 · c. 1050–800 BCE (core hexagram and judgment layers; commentaries later)

I Ching (Book of Changes, attributed arrangement)

King Wen of Zhou (traditional attribution)

"One yin and one yang — this is the Tao" — the oldest Chinese classic, encoding cosmic process in sixty-four binary figures

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 Alexandrian Aristotelianism 1

#1773 · c. 529 CE

Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World

John Philoponus

The world cannot be eternal — an actually infinite past is impossible, therefore the cosmos had a beginning in time

Christian existentialism / Danish Lutheranism 4

#22 · 1843

Fear and Trembling (Early)

Søren Kierkegaard (under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio)

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 existentialism / Kierkegaardian polemical theology 1

#1665 · 1854-55 (nine pamphlets)

The Moment (Final (year of death))

Søren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard's 1854-55 'Øieblikket' — final polemical attack on Christendom and the established Danish Church

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)

#83 · c. 1295–1327 (preached in Strasbourg, Cologne, and elsewhere)

Erasmus's posthumous 1536 edition of Origen

Christian mysticism / German Dominican spirituality 1

The German Sermons (Late)

Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim)

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)

Reinhold Niebuhr

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

#1667 · November 1942; published posthumously 1951

Letter to a Priest (Final)

Simone Weil

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

#1666 · 1934-1935; published posthumously 1951

Factory Journal (Middle)

Simone Weil

Weil's 1934-35 'Journal d'usine' — diary of her voluntary year of factory labour

Christianity (all branches) 1

#32 · c. 50–110 AD; canon stabilised by late 4th century

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

Cistercian mystical theology 1

#1767 · c. 1126–1141

On Loving God (De Diligendo Deo)

Bernard of Clairvaux

The measure of loving God is to love without measure — the soul's ascent through four degrees of love

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 historiography 2

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

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

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

#987 · c. 343-340 BC (composed during Aristotle's Lesbos period and continued at the Lyceum)

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

Classical Greek philosophy / ancient biology 1

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

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

The geocentric cosmos — Aristotle's major cosmological treatise, the foundation of pre-Copernican Western cosmology

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

#133 · c. 350 BC (second Athenian 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 / Aristotelian natural philosophy 1

Physics

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

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 / 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

#986 · c. 350-340 BC (one of Aristotle's earlier mature logical works)

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

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)

#8 · c. 360 BC (late dialogue)

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 / Platonism 3

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)