Philosophy Books: Classic & Modern

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution.   They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comfor…

In Thomas More's hugely influential Utopia, a traveller recounts his discovery of an island nation in which the inhabitants enjoy unprecedented social cohesion and justice. The book imagines a community in which laws, personal rel…

Think Like a Philosopher is a fun introduction to the main concepts of philosophy, showing how the subject has a clear, practical, and vital purpose to our daily lives and thinking. Using a Q&A format and written in an amusing…

Human, All Too Human (1878) marks the point where Nietzsche abandons German romanticism for the French Enlightenment. At a moment of crisis in his life (no longer a friend of Richard Wagner, forced to leave academic life through i…

Frantz Fanon's urgent, dynamic critique of the effects of racism on the psyche is a landmark study of the black experience in a white world. Drawing on his own life and his work as a psychoanalyst to explore how colonialism's subj…

In very recent times humanity has learnt a vast amount about the universe, the past, and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to learn: the science we have, for e…

A bold reconsideration of women in art - from the 'Old Masters' to the posts of Instagram influencers A perfect pin-up, a damsel in distress, a saintly mother, a femme fatale ...Women's identity has long been stifled by a limited …

A three-thousand year history of the world that examines the causes of war and the search for peaceIn three thousand years of history, China has spent at least eleven centuries at war. The Roman Empire was in conflict during at le…

An engrossing history of ancient Chinese philosophy and culture from an eminent Cambridge expert. We are often told that the twenty-first century is bound to become China's century. Never before has Chinese culture been so physica…

Is anything ever not an interpretation? Does interpretation go all the way down? Is there such a thing as a pure fact that is interpretation-free? If not, how are we supposed to know what to think and do? These tantalizing questi…

Where do our ideas about politics come from? What can we learn from the Greeks and Romans?How should we exercise power? Melissa Lane teaches politics at Princeton University, and previously taught political thought at the Universi…

A magisterial study of the history and theory of one of the most controversial political movementsAnarchism routinely gets a bad press. It's usually seen as meaning chaos and disorder -- or even nothing at all.And yet, from Occupy…

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER   For millennia, Stoicism has been the ancient philosophy that attracts those who seek greatness, from athletes to politicians and everyone in between. And no wonder: its embrace of self-maste…

'It is possible for man to snatch the world from the darkness of absurdity'How should we think and act in the world? These writings on the human condition by one of the twentieth century's great philosophers explore the absurdity …

Hiking with Nietzsche is a tale of two philosophical journeys in the Swiss Alps: one made by John Kaag as an introspective teenager, the other seventeen years later in radically different circumstances - as a husband and father wi…

Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an (also known as The Koran) is the sacred book of Islam. It is the word of God whose truth was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel over a period of 23 years. A…

Aristotle (384-322BC) is the philosopher who has most influence on the development of western culture, writing on a wide variety of subjects including the natural sciences as well as the more strictly philosophical topics of logic…

'It is impossible to live the pleasant life without also living sensibly, nobly and justly' The ancient Greek philosopher and teacher Epicurus argued that pleasure - not sensual hedonism, but the absence of pain or fear - is the h…

'Don't hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen' How can we cope when life's events seem beyond our control? These words of consolation and inspiration from the three great Stoic…

'I am a woman's rights. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I am as strong as any man that is now' A former slave and one of the most powerful orators of her time, Sojourne…

'Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor' Fuelled by anger at injustice and optimism about humankind's ability to make a better, truly communal society, the anarchist writings o…

'What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of the nation, but its root as well.' Inazo Nitobe's book, the most influential ever written on Bushido, or the samurai Way of the Warrior, argues that the phi…

'When silence or tricks of language contribute to maintaining an abuse that must be reformed or a suffering that can be relieved, then there is no other solution but to speak out' Written when execution by guillotine was still leg…

'Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to love one's enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival' Advocating love as strength and non-violence as the most powerful weapon there is, these sermons…

Translated by Antony M. Ludovici. With an Introduction by Ray Furness. The three works in this collection, all dating from Nietzsche's last lucid months, show him at his most stimulating and controversial: the portentous utterance…

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER From one of our greatest voices in modern philosophy, author of The Course of Love, The Consolations of Philosophy, Religion for Atheists and The School of Life - Alain de Botton sets out to und…

With an Introduction by Derek Matravers. In The Social Contract Rousseau (1712-1778) argues for the preservation of individual freedom in political society. An individual can only be free under the law, he says, by voluntarily emb…

Over 16 million copies sold worldwide 'Every human being should read this book' Simon Sinek One of the outstanding classics to emerge from the Holocaust, Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's story of his struggle for surviv…

Translated by A.A. Brill With an Introduction by Stephen Wilson. Sigmund Freud's audacious masterpiece, The Interpretation of Dreams, has never ceased to stimulate controversy since its publication in 1900.Freud is acknowledged as…

In Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard's infamous and controversial work made a lasting impression on both modern Protestant theology and existentialist philosophers such as Sartre and Camus. This Penguin Classics edition is tra…