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Early-twenty-first-century analytic philosophy 1

#880 · 2003 (Philosophical Quarterly)

Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? (Mid)

Nick Bostrom

Bostrom's 2003 paper formulating the simulation argument

Early-twenty-first-century computational science 1

#877 · 1991-2002 (composed over 11 years); 2002 (published)

A New Kind of Science (Mid)

Stephen Wolfram

Wolfram's 2002 1200-page treatise — cellular automata, computational equivalence, computational universe

Early-twenty-first-century Latin American postmodernism 1

#840 · 2001-03 (composed during fatal illness); 2004 (posthumous)

2666 (Late)

Roberto Bolaño

Bolaño's 2004 posthumous five-part novel — Santa Teresa femicides and twentieth-century evil

Early-twenty-first-century object-oriented ontology 1

#885 · 2011

The Quadruple Object (Late)

Graham Harman

Harman's 2011 mature articulation of object-oriented ontology — the fourfold structure of every object

Early-twenty-first-century object-oriented ontology / dark ecology 1

#884 · 2013

Hyperobjects (Late)

Timothy Morton

Morton's 2013 founding work of dark ecology — hyperobjects massively distributed in time and space

Early-twenty-first-century ontic structural realism 1

#893 · 2014

The Structure of the World (Late)

Steven French

French's 2014 development of ontic structural realism — structures are all there is

Early-twenty-first-century religious studies / new animism 1

#889 · 2005

Animism: Respecting the Living World (Late)

Graham Harvey

Harvey's 2005 founding work of the new animism — relational ontology and indigenous religions

Earth-systems science / Gaia theory 1

#592 · 1979

Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Late)

James Lovelock

Lovelock's 1979 foundational text of the Gaia hypothesis — Earth as a self-regulating organism

East-Syrian (Church of the East) mystical-ascetical theology 1

#1793 · c. 660–700 CE (7th century)

Ascetical Homilies (First Part)

Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian)

God is not one who requites evil but who sets evil right — the most radical theology of divine mercy in the Christian tradition

Eastern Christian monasticism (Desert Fathers, Evagrius Ponticus) 1

#1791 · c. 600–649 CE

The Ladder of Divine Ascent

John Climacus (John of the Ladder)

Thirty rungs from the renunciation of the world to the ineffable summit — the foundational Eastern monastic manual of spiritual combat and contemplation

Eastern Christianity / Christian apophatic mysticism 1

#84 · c. 500 AD (probably Syria)

The Mystical Theology

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (probably a Syrian Christian theologian, c. 500 AD)

God is beyond every name and every concept — the soul ascends by unknowing into the divine darkness

Eastern Orthodox / Chalcedonian 1

#1849 · c. 527–536 CE

Against the Nestorians and Eutychians

Leontius of Byzantium

Enhypostasia — a nature subsists within a hypostasis, solving the riddle of Christ's two-natured unity

Eastern Orthodox patristic theology 1

#1740 · c. 730s–740s CE

An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith

John of Damascus

The compendium of Chalcedonian orthodoxy — every doctrine of the seven councils in one Aristotelian-patristic synthesis

Effective altruism / longtermism / philosophical futurism 1

#1673 · 2024

Deep Utopia (Late)

Nick Bostrom

Bostrom's 2024 'Deep Utopia' — speculative-philosophical treatment of life and meaning in a 'solved' world

Egyptian funerary / religious 1

#1878 · c. 1250 BCE

Papyrus of Ani (Book of the Dead)

Scribal tradition (prepared for the scribe Ani)

My heart, do not stand against me — the most beautiful surviving guide to the Egyptian afterlife

Egyptian religious literature / Amarna theology 1

#1867 · c. 1340 BCE

Great Hymn to the Aten

Akhenaten

"O sole god, like whom there is no other" — the first monotheistic hymn, celebrating the Aten as universal creator and source of all life

Egyptian wisdom literature 1

#1883 · c. 2300 BCE (original composition); surviving copy c. 1850 BCE (Papyrus Prisse)

Instructions of Kagemni

Anonymous (attributed to a sage addressing Kagemni)

The quiet man prospers — one of the oldest surviving moral teachings, counselling restraint, modesty, and self-control

Egyptian wisdom literature (sebayt) 3

#1870 · c. 1100 BCE

Instructions of Amenemope

Amenemope

"Better is bread when the heart is happy" — the quiet man as moral ideal, ma'at as cosmic order, and the oldest cross-cultural wisdom tradition

#1734 · c. 2400 BCE

Maxims of Ptahhotep

Ptahhotep

Ma'at endures — the cosmic order of truth and justice as the foundation of moral life, inscribed for the instruction of a vizier's son

#1864 · c. 2650–2600 BCE (original period; surviving references from later periods)

Attributed Sayings and Wisdom Traditions

Imhotep

The lost voice of the first sage — wisdom, healing, and sacred architecture at the dawn of civilisation

Egyptian wisdom tradition 1

#1875 · c. 2050 BCE

Instructions for King Merikare

Anonymous (attributed to a Heracleopolitan pharaoh)

Do justice that you may endure upon earth — the oldest political philosophy, grounded in ma'at

Eighteenth-century American Reformed / First Great Awakening 1

#853 · 1737

A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (Early)

Jonathan Edwards

Edwards's 1737 account of the Northampton revival — founding work of evangelical revivalism

Elizabethan-Jacobean English Renaissance drama 5

#1018 · c. 1603-04

Measure for Measure (Mature)

William Shakespeare

"Measure for measure" — a deeply ambiguous drama of sexual ethics, judicial power, and the relation between mercy and justice

#1014 · c. 1603-04 (first performed Whitehall, 1 November 1604)

Othello (Mature)

William Shakespeare

Jealousy, race, and the destruction of a good man — Iago's motiveless malignity working through Othello's capacity to be deceived

#1015 · c. 1606

Macbeth (Mature)

William Shakespeare

Ambition, regicide, and the destruction of conscience — Shakespeare's most concentrated tragic structure

#1016 · c. 1606-07

Antony and Cleopatra (Mature)

William Shakespeare

Love and empire — the fall of Antony and Cleopatra and the end of the Roman Republic

#1017 · c. 1610-11 (first performed Whitehall, 1 November 1611)

The Tempest (Last (probably Shakespeare's last sole-authored play))

William Shakespeare

Prospero on his enchanted island — magic of theatrical art, civilisation and colonisation, Shakespeare's farewell to the stage

Empiricism / Early-modern philosophy / Immaterialism 1

#1217 · 1709

An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (Early)

George Berkeley

Berkeley's 1709 first major work — the immaterialist theory of vision; touch and sight as heterogeneous

Empiricist philosophy of physics / Austrian school 1

#662 · 1883

The Science of Mechanics (Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung) (Mid)

Ernst Mach

Mach's 1883 foundational empiricist philosophy of physics — critique of Newtonian absolute space and time

Empirio-criticism / philosophy of science / Vienna positivism (predecessor) 2

#1600 · 1895

Popular Scientific Lectures (Middle)

Ernst Mach

Mach's 1895 'Popular Scientific Lectures' — accessible philosophy-of-science statement of empirio-critical doctrine

#1601 · 1905

Knowledge and Error (Late)

Ernst Mach

Mach's 1905 'Erkenntnis und Irrtum' — systematic empirio-critical philosophy of science

English Anglican apologetics 1

#615 · 1952 (based on BBC radio talks 1941-44)

Mere Christianity (Mid)

C.S. Lewis

Lewis's 1952 foundational popular Christian apologetics — "mere" Christianity as the common ground

English Augustan / Enlightenment poetry 1

#652 · 1733-34

An Essay on Man (Late)

Alexander Pope

Pope's 1733-34 foundational English Enlightenment philosophical poem — "Whatever IS, is RIGHT"

English Catholic apologetics 1

#614 · 1908

Orthodoxy (Mid)

G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton's 1908 foundational apologetic for traditional Christianity — paradox and joy at the heart of the cosmos

English Enlightenment / Proto-feminist fiction 1

#1192 · 1796-97 (composed, unfinished), 1798 (posthumous publication)

Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman (Late)

Mary Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft's unfinished 1798 posthumous novel — fictional exposition of the legal and social wrongs done to women

English Enlightenment / Proto-Romanticism / Early feminism 1

#1191 · 1795-96 (composed), 1796 (published)

Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (Late)

Mary Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft's 1796 travel-letters — proto-Romantic reflection from her Scandinavian business journey

English Enlightenment / Rational-educational tradition 1

#1194 · 1788

Original Stories from Real Life (Early)

Mary Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft's 1788 children's book — moral-educational stories illustrating practical virtues

English Enlightenment satire 1

#651 · 1726

Gulliver's Travels (Late)

Jonathan Swift

Swift's 1726 foundational satire — Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the Houyhnhnms

English Methodist / Wesleyan-Arminian evangelical 1

#177 · 1766 (with revisions through 1777; published as a unified text in 1777)

A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (Late)

John Wesley

Wesley's defining doctrine — the Christian's call to entire sanctification or "perfect love" in this present life

English mystical tradition / fourteenth-century vernacular theology 1

#85 · May 1373 (the showings); short text c. 1380; long text c. 1395 (revised over twenty years)

Revelations of Divine Love

Julian of Norwich

All shall be well — Jesus as mother, sin as nothing of being, and the universe held in the divine love that is the hazelnut

English Puritan poetry 1

#650 · 1667 (1st edn, 10 books); 1674 (2nd edn, 12 books)

Paradise Lost (Late)

John Milton

Milton's 1667 foundational English Puritan epic — "to justify the ways of God to men"

English Renaissance / Elizabethan-Jacobean poetry 1

#1628 · c. 1590s–1604; printed 1609

Sonnets (Career-spanning)

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's 1609 'Sonnets' — 154 lyric meditations on love, time, beauty, and the Fair Youth / Dark Lady

English Renaissance drama 2

#283 · c. 1600-01

Hamlet (Mid (mature middle period))

William Shakespeare

"To be or not to be" — Shakespeare's c. 1600 tragedy, the longest and most-cited of his plays, the central work of English Renaissance drama

#284 · c. 1605-06

King Lear (Mid-late (the major tragedies))

William Shakespeare

Lear's descent into madness on the heath — Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, the most extreme exploration of suffering, ingratitude, and the bare human

English Romanticism 1

#553 · 1800 (1st version); 1802 (expanded)

Preface to Lyrical Ballads (Early)

William Wordsworth

Wordsworth's 1800/1802 foundational manifesto of English Romantic poetics

English Romanticism / German idealism transmission 1

#552 · 1817

Biographia Literaria (Mid)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge's 1817 foundational text of English Romantic-philosophical criticism

English Royal Society experimental philosophy 1

#538 · 1661

The Sceptical Chymist (Mid)

Robert Boyle

Boyle's 1661 foundational chemistry text — questioning the four elements and three principles

English Victorian realism 1

#673 · 1871-72

Middlemarch (Late)

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

George Eliot's 1871-72 foundational Victorian novel — "the home epic" of provincial English life

English Whig liberal political theory 1

#717 · 1689

Second Treatise of Government (Late)

John Locke

Locke's 1689 foundational text of liberal political philosophy — natural rights, consent of the governed, right of revolution

English-language modernism 1

#300 · 1921 (during Eliot's nervous breakdown and convalescence in Switzerland); 1922 published (edited substantially by Ezra Pound)

The Waste Land (Mid (the canonical modernist poem))

Thomas Stearns Eliot

"April is the cruellest month" — Eliot's 1922 long poem, the canonical work of English-language high modernist poetry

English-language modernism / Anglo-Catholic mystical poetry 1

#301 · 1936 (Burnt Norton); 1940 (East Coker); 1941 (The Dry Salvages); 1942 (Little Gidding); 1943 (collected publication)

Four Quartets (Late (Eliot's mature Anglo-Catholic period))

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Time and the timeless — Eliot's 1936-43 four-part meditative poem, the major work of his mature Anglo-Catholic period

English-language modernism / literary criticism 1

#302 · 1919 (first published in The Egoist, September-December 1919)

Tradition and the Individual Talent (Early (Eliot's major early critical statement))

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Tradition obtained by great labour, the impersonality of poetry — Eliot's 1919 essay, the canonical modernist statement of tradition's relation to the individual artist

Enlightenment deism / Rational religion 1

#1123 · c. 1820 (compiled), published 1904

The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (Late)

Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson's c.1820 cut-and-paste Gospel — Jesus's moral teaching stripped of miracles and divinity claims

Enlightenment educational and moral philosophy 1

#199 · 1762 (published the same year as the Social Contract; both condemned and burned by authorities)

Émile (Late)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man" — Rousseau's landmark treatise on education according to nature

Enlightenment mathematical science 1

#876 · 1814 (Essai philosophique sur les probabilités)

A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Late)

Pierre-Simon Laplace

Laplace's 1814 essay — classical determinism and the founding of probability theory

Enlightenment natural philosophy / chemistry 1

#754 · 1789

Traité élémentaire de chimie (Late)

Antoine Lavoisier

Lavoisier's 1789 founding treatise of modern chemistry — the chemical revolution

Enlightenment political philosophy / republican theory 1

#198 · 1762

The Social Contract (Late (after the two Discourses; the political conclusion of Rousseau's mature thought))

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" — Rousseau's account of legitimate authority as grounded in the general will of the people

Enlightenment political-philosophical anthropology 1

#200 · 1755 (submitted to the 1754 essay competition of the Académie de Dijon, on the question of the origin and justification of inequality)

Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Mid (between the First Discourse and the Social Contract))

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, said 'this is mine'..." — Rousseau's philosophical anthropology of the conjectural state of nature and the historical genesis of social inequality

Enlightenment radicalism / proto-feminist political philosophy 1

#101 · 1792 (London, six weeks)

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Mary Wollstonecraft

Women are not naturally inferior — only made so by inadequate education; reason is the same in both sexes

Epicurean atomism / Hellenistic philosophy 1

#1575 · c. 306-270 BC

Letter to Pythocles (Mature)

Epicurus

Epicurus's 'Letter to Pythocles' — Epicurean meteorology and the multiple-explanations principle

Epicurean ethics / Hellenistic philosophy 1

#1576 · c. 306-270 BC (compiled later)

Vatican Sayings (Mature)

Epicurus

The 'Vatican Sayings' — eighty-one Epicurean maxims discovered 1888 in a Vatican manuscript

European critical sociology 1

#694 · 2000

Liquid Modernity (Late)

Zygmunt Bauman

Bauman's 2000 foundational text — contemporary modernity as "liquid" — fluid, mobile, individualized

Evolutionary moral psychology 1

#705 · 2012

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Late)

Jonathan Haidt

Haidt's 2012 foundational moral foundations theory — political-religious moral psychology

Existential psychology / Viennese logotherapy 1

#714 · 1946

The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy (Mid)

Viktor Frankl

Frankl's 1946 foundational logotherapy text — meaning-centered existential psychotherapy

Feminist science studies / Multispecies studies 1

#1109 · 2008

When Species Meet (Late)

Donna Haraway

Haraway's 2008 study of multi-species "becoming-with" — humans and dogs and the ethics of companionship

Foundations of mathematics 1

#659 · 1931

On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems (Early)

Kurt Gödel

Gödel's 1931 foundational paper — the incompleteness theorems

Foundations of mathematics / analytic philosophy 1

#658 · 1879

Begriffsschrift (Early)

Gottlob Frege

Frege's 1879 foundational Begriffsschrift — modern formal logic, quantifiers, and a new logical notation

Foundations of mathematics / set theory 1

#661 · 1883

Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds (Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre) (Mid)

Georg Cantor

Cantor's 1883 foundational text of set theory and transfinite numbers

Foundations of physics / Information physics 1

#1093 · 1989

Quantum: The Search for Links (Late)

John Archibald Wheeler

Wheeler's 1989 introduction of "it from bit" — the participatory-universe doctrine

Foundations of physics / Popular science 1

#1092 · 1990

A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime (Late)

John Archibald Wheeler

Wheeler's 1990 popular exposition — gravity as geometry, mass as curvature in the geometric universe

Foundations of quantum mechanics 3

#1204 · 1951

Quantum Theory (Early)

David Bohm

Bohm's 1951 graduate-level quantum-mechanics textbook — celebrated for philosophical-conceptual clarity

#1091 · 1983

Quantum Theory and Measurement (Mid)

John Archibald Wheeler

Wheeler and Zurek's 1983 anthology — the canonical collection of foundational papers on quantum measurement

#604 · 1987 (papers 1964-86)

Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Late)

John S. Bell

Bell's 1987 collected papers — including the 1964 Bell's theorem on quantum non-locality

Foundations of quantum mechanics / Bohmian mechanics 1

#1206 · 1993 (posthumous; Bohm died October 1992)

The Undivided Universe (Late)

David Bohm

Bohm and Hiley's 1993 systematic statement — the ontological interpretation of quantum theory

Foundations of quantum mechanics / Holism 1

#1203 · 1980

Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Late)

David Bohm

Bohm's 1980 holistic philosophy of physics — the implicate order as alternative to fragmentary mechanism

Foundations of quantum mechanics / Philosophy of physics 1

#1205 · 1957

Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (Mid)

David Bohm

Bohm's 1957 philosophical-physical synthesis — causality, determinism, and chance after quantum mechanics

Foundations of semantics / analytic philosophy 1

#660 · 1933 (Polish); 1935 (German); 1956 (English)

The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages (Mid)

Alfred Tarski

Tarski's 1933/35 foundational paper on the semantic theory of truth — "snow is white" is true iff snow is white

Franciscan natural philosophy / medieval Latin science 1

#1742 · c. 1267

Opus Majus

Roger Bacon

Mathematics is the gate and key of the sciences — and nothing can be known without experience

Franciscan nominalist scholasticism 1

#491 · c. 1323

Summa Logicae (Late)

William of Ockham

Ockham's c. 1323 foundational nominalist Summa of Logic — Ockham's razor and the elimination of universals

Franciscan scholasticism 2

#489 · 1259

Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (The Mind's Road to God) (Mid)

St. Bonaventure (Giovanni di Fidanza)

Bonaventure's 1259 foundational Franciscan mystical-philosophical synthesis — six-stage ascent of the soul to God

#490 · c. 1300

Ordinatio (Late)

John Duns Scotus (the Subtle Doctor)

Duns Scotus's c. 1300 major Sentences commentary — univocity of being, formal distinction, haecceity

Franciscan theology / Augustinian-Dionysian mysticism 1

#1770 · 1259

Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (The Journey of the Mind into God)

Bonaventure (Giovanni di Fidanza)

Ask grace, not doctrine — the soul's six-winged ascent from creatures to the ecstatic transitus beyond all knowing

Frankfurt School / communicative action 1

#393 · 1985 (German; English 1987)

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Mid)

Jürgen Habermas

Habermas's 1985 critical engagement with poststructuralism and the philosophical discourse of modernity

Frankfurt School / critical theory 2

#195 · 1962 (habilitation thesis; English translation 1989)

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Early (the breakthrough work))

Jürgen Habermas

The historical emergence and modern decline of the bourgeois public sphere — the locus of rational-critical discussion that grounded liberal democracy

#391 · 1968 (German; English 1971)

Knowledge and Human Interests (Early)

Jürgen Habermas

Habermas's 1968 work on the cognitive interests (technical, practical, emancipatory) grounding knowledge

Frankfurt School / discourse ethics 1

#392 · 1992 (German; English 1996)

Between Facts and Norms (Late)

Jürgen Habermas

Habermas's 1992 systematic statement on law, democracy, and discourse theory of politics

Frankfurt School / discourse theory / critical theory 1

#129 · 1981 (German, 2 vols)

Theory of Communicative Action

Jürgen Habermas

Rationality is built into the structure of communication itself — and the lifeworld of democratic discourse is being colonised by instrumental system imperatives

Frankfurt School / humanistic psychoanalysis 1

#688 · 1941

Escape from Freedom (Mid)

Erich Fromm

Fromm's 1941 foundational psychological-political analysis of authoritarianism and the escape from freedom

Frankfurt School / Jewish-messianic Marxism 1

#387 · 1940 (German; English 1968)

Theses on the Philosophy of History (Late)

Walter Benjamin

Benjamin's 1940 final essay on history, messianic time, and revolution — the Angel of History

Frankfurt School critical theory 1

#388 · 1935-36 (multiple versions); first published 1936 in French

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Late)

Walter Benjamin

Benjamin's 1935-36 foundational essay on art, aura, and mechanical reproduction