Works

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)

#139 · c. 399–395 BC (composed shortly after Socrates's death)

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

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)

Aristotle

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

#68 · c. 399–395 BC (shortly after Socrates's death)

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

Aristotle

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

#140 · Composed late in life (final years before 347 BC); unrevised at his death

Laws (Latest)

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

Plato's late political philosophy — no longer the philosopher-king but the rule of law, with extensive religious legislation and a Nocturnal Council

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

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))

John Stuart Mill

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

#779 · c. 116-120 CE (later years of Trajan, reign of Hadrian)

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)

Bruno Latour

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)

Daniel Kahneman

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)

Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki

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)

Alan Turing

Turing's 1948 'Intelligent Machinery' — the earliest detailed AI research programme, including neural-network-like 'unorganised machines'

Confessing Church / twentieth-century Christian dissent 1

#56 · 1943–45 (Tegel and Flossenbürg prisons); 1951 (first German edition by Eberhard Bethge)

Letters and Papers from Prison (Late)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die — and the distinction between cheap grace and costly grace

Confucian philosophy / Warring States period 1

#1758 · c. 3rd century BCE

Xunzi

Xunzi (Xun Kuang)

Human nature is evil — but ritual, education, and the accumulated wisdom of the sage-kings can transform it into goodness

Confucian political remonstrance 1

#1806 · 819 CE

Memorial on the Bone of the Buddha

Han Yu

Since Buddhism entered China the dynasties have been short-lived — the fearless memorial that told the emperor to burn the bone and restore the ancient Way

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 4

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

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

Confucianism / Chinese classical canon / Chinese divination 1

#1193 · Hexagrams: legendary, pre-1000 BCE; line-statements: c. 1000-750 BCE; Ten Wings commentaries: c. 500-100 BCE

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

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

Contemporary Native American thought 1

#644 · 1973 (2nd edn 1992; 3rd edn 2003)

God Is Red: A Native View of Religion (Late)

Vine Deloria Jr.

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))

Alasdair MacIntyre

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

#217 · 1990 (the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1988)

Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Late (third volume of the After Virtue trilogy))

Alasdair MacIntyre

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))

Alasdair MacIntyre

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

#172 · 1882 (first edition, four books); 1887 (second edition, with added fifth book and preface)

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)

Martin Heidegger

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)

Martin Heidegger

Why is there something rather than nothing? — the question of being approached through the experience of dread (Angst)

Continental philosophy / phenomenology / fundamental ontology 1

#26 · 1927 (Jahrbuch für Philosophie publication; only Divisions I and II of the planned three completed)

Being and Time (Early)

Martin Heidegger

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

#151 · 1872 (with "Attempt at a Self-Criticism" preface added 1886)

The Birth of Tragedy (Early)

Apollonian individuation and Dionysian dissolution — and the death of tragedy at the hands of Socratic rationalism

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)

#168 · 1637 (published anonymously as the preface to three scientific essays — Optics, Meteorology, Geometry)

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

Continental rationalism / early modern philosophy 1

Discourse on the Method (Mid (1637, in mature middle age; preceding the Meditations of 1641))

"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 / 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)

#169 · 1710 (the only philosophical book Leibniz published in his lifetime)

Descartes's c.1628 unfinished early methodological treatise

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)

Immanuel Kant

Kant's 1795 'Toward Perpetual Peace' — republican constitutions, a federation of free states, cosmopolitan right

Critical rationalism 2

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

The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Early)

Popper's 1934 foundational falsificationist philosophy of science

#430 · 1963

Conjectures and Refutations (Mid)

#1493 · 1972 (essays 1960-72)

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

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)

#1675 · 1927-1940 (unfinished at Benjamin's 1940 death; published posthumously 1982)

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)

Roy Bhaskar

Bhaskar's 2000 controversial spiritual turn

Critical realism / Dialectical philosophy 1

#1349 · 1993

Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (Late)

Roy Bhaskar

Bhaskar's 1993 major work on dialectical critical realism

Critical realism / Philosophy of science 1

#1348 · 1989

Reclaiming Reality (Mid)

Roy Bhaskar

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))

Jaron Lanier

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)

Jaron Lanier

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))

Jaron Lanier

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))

Walter Benjamin

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

#1676 · 1932-1938 composition; posthumously published 1950

Berlin Childhood Around 1900 (Middle (composed during exile))

Walter Benjamin

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

#1522 · 1988 (with Edward S. Herman)

Manufacturing Consent (Mid-late (political work))

Noam Chomsky

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)

Immanuel Kant

Kant's 1797 'Metaphysics of Morals' — systematic doctrine of right and doctrine of virtue

Critical-philosophical religion / Enlightenment rationalism 1

#1538 · 1793 (2nd ed. 1794)

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Late)

Immanuel Kant

Kant's 1793 'Religion within Mere Reason' — radical evil and moral religion within Critical bounds

Cyberfeminism / post-humanist theory 1

#329 · 1985 (first published in Socialist Review)

A Cyborg Manifesto (Mid)

Donna Haraway

"I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess" — Haraway's 1985 essay, the founding text of cyberfeminism and post-humanist theory

Cynic philosophy 1

#1749 · c. 4th century BCE (reported c. 3rd century CE by Diogenes Laertius)

Fragments and Anecdotes

Diogenes of Sinope

The dog-philosopher of Athens — poverty, shamelessness, and freedom as the natural condition of the human animal

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)