A stunning survey of the "king of disciplines," 50 Philosophy Classics seeks to enlighten and explain, rather than merely instruct. Tom Butler-Bowdon has compiled a remarkable group of thinkers and their seminal works to serve as a lively entry point to the field of philosophy. Analyses of ancient and modern philosophers show how philosophy helped shape the events human history.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1 Hannah Arendt The Human Condition (1958)
• 2 Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics (4th century BC)
• 3 A.J. Ayer Language, Truth and Logic (1936)
• 4 Julian Baggini The Ego Trick (2011)
• 5 Jean Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
• 6 Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex (1949)
• 7 Jeremy Bentham Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
• 8 Henri Bergson Creative Evolution (1907)
• 9 David Bohm Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
• 10 Noam Chomsky Understanding Power (2002)
• 11 Cicero On Duties (44 BC)
• 12 Confucius Analects (5th century BC)
• 13 René Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)
• 14 Ralph Waldo Emerson Fate (1860)
• 15 Epicurus Letters (3rd century BC)
• 16 Michel Foucault The Order of Things (1966)
• 17 Harry Frankfurt On Bullshit (2005)
• 18 Sam Harris Free Will (2012)
• 19 G.W.F. Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)
• 20 Martin Heidegger Being and Time (1927)
• 21 Heraclitus Fragments (6th century AD)
• 22 David Hume An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
• 23 William James Pragmatism (1907)
• 24 Daniel Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
• 25 Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
• 26 Søren Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling (1843)
• 27 Saul Kripke Naming and Necessity (1972)
• 28 Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
• 29 Gottfried Leibniz Theodicy (1710)
• 30 John Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
• 31 Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince (1513)
• 32 Marshall McLuhan The Medium Is the Massage (1967)
• 33 John Stuart Mill On Liberty (1859)
• 34 Michel de Montaigne Essays (1580)
• 35 Iris Murdoch The Sovereignty of Good (1970)
• 36 Friedrich Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
• 37 Blaise Pascal Pensées (1660)
• 38 Plato The Republic (4th century BC)
• 39 Karl Popper The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934)
• 40 John Rawls A Theory of Justice (1971)
• 41 Jean-Jacques Rousseau The Social Contract (1762)
• 42 Bertrand Russell The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
• 43 Michael Sandel Justice (2009)
• 44 Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness (1943)
• 45 Arthur Schopenhauer The World as Will and Representation (1818)
• 46 Peter Singer The Life You Can Save (2009)
• 47 Baruch Spinoza Ethics (1677)
• 48 Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Black Swan (2007)
• 49 Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations (1953)
• 50 Slavoj Žižek Living in the End Times (2010)
• 50 More Philosophy Classics
• Glossary
• Credits
• Acknowledgments