Philosophy and Literature Reading List
This is my reading list for philosophy and literature, moving from Greek thought through ethics, knowledge, mind, language, and science. Fiction runs alongside the philosophy.
1. Socratic Questions and Greek Tragedy
Knowledge, justice, argument, and the good life.
Philosophy
- Plato: Euthyphro
- Plato: Apology
- Plato: Crito
- Plato: Meno
- Plato: Republic (selected books, especially I, II, VII)
- Thomas Nagel: What Does It All Mean?
Literature
- Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
- Sophocles: Antigone
- Homer: The Odyssey
- Shakespeare: Hamlet
2. Ethics and Virtue
Happiness, character, habit, and responsibility.
- Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics
- Plato: Symposium
- Epictetus: Discourses / Enchiridion
- Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
- Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
- Epicurus: Letter to Menoeceus
Literature
- Homer: Iliad
- Virgil: Aeneid
- Shakespeare: Macbeth
- Shakespeare: King Lear
3. Knowledge and Reality
Perception, causation, truth, and mathematical reality.
- Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy
- Plato: Theaetetus
- Locke: Essay Concerning Human Understanding (selections)
- Berkeley: Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous
- Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
- Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Literature
- Cervantes: Don Quixote
- Borges: Ficciones
- Kafka: The Metamorphosis
- Kafka: The Trial
4. Faith, Values, and Self-Deception
Faith, morality, authenticity, and self-deception.
Philosophy
- Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling
- Kierkegaard: The Sickness Unto Death
- Nietzsche: The Gay Science
- Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality
- Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
Literature
- Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground
- Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment
- Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
- Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilyich
- Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
5. Existentialism and Absurdity
Freedom, meaning, choice, and mortality.
- Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus
- Sartre: Existentialism Is a Humanism
- Sartre: selections from Being and Nothingness
- Simone de Beauvoir: The Ethics of Ambiguity
- Viktor Frankl: Man's Search for Meaning
Literature
- Camus: The Stranger
- Kafka: The Castle
- Hermann Hesse: Steppenwolf
- Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot
- Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse
6. Political Philosophy and Power
Liberty, authority, equality, property, collective action, institutions, power, and human nature.
Philosophy / Political Thought
- Plato: revisit Republic
- Hobbes: Leviathan (selections)
- Locke: Second Treatise of Government
- Rousseau: Discourse on Inequality
- John Stuart Mill: On Liberty
- Tocqueville: Democracy in America (selections)
- Marx & Engels: selected writings
- Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition
Literature
- Orwell: 1984
- Orwell: Animal Farm
- Huxley: Brave New World
- Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed
- Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
7. Mind and Personal Identity
Consciousness, subjective experience, and personal identity.
- Daniel Dennett: Consciousness Explained
- Thomas Nagel: "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"
- John Searle: "Minds, Brains, and Programs"
- David Chalmers: The Conscious Mind (selections)
- Derek Parfit: Reasons and Persons (personal identity sections)
- William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience (selections)
Literature
- Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
- Stanisław Lem: Solaris
- Ted Chiang: Stories of Your Life and Others
8. Language, Logic, and Meaning
Reference, concepts, logic, and mathematical meaning.
- Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy
- Frege: selected essays
- Russell: "On Denoting"
- Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
- Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations
- Quine: "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"
9. Philosophy of Science
Explanation, evidence, scientific models, and physical laws.
- Karl Popper: Conjectures and Refutations
- Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- David Deutsch: The Beginning of Infinity
- Carl Hempel: selections on scientific explanation
- Imre Lakatos (selections)
- Richard Feynman: The Character of Physical Law
10. Ethical Theory
Duty, consequences, virtue, and moral justification.
- Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
- Mill: Utilitarianism
- Nietzsche: revisit On the Genealogy of Morality
- Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
- Derek Parfit: Reasons and Persons
- Peter Singer: selected essays
11. Mortality, Time, and Love
Mortality, memory, attention, and love.
Philosophy
- Montaigne: Essays
- Pascal: Pensées
- Schopenhauer: selected essays
- Heidegger: selections from Being and Time
- Iris Murdoch: The Sovereignty of Good
Literature
- Proust: Swann's Way
- Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway
- García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Nabokov: Lolita
- Toni Morrison: Beloved
- Cormac McCarthy: The Road
12. Speculative Fiction and Conceptual Shocks
Identity, reality, and unfamiliar ways of thinking.
- Borges: Labyrinths
- Calvino: Invisible Cities
- Lem: The Cyberiad
- Ted Chiang: Exhalation
- Le Guin: The Lathe of Heaven
- Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun
- Douglas Hofstadter: Gödel, Escher, Bach
- Douglas Hofstadter: I Am a Strange Loop
- Jorge Luis Borges: "The Library of Babel"
- Greg Egan: Permutation City
Shorter Path
Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Borges, Kafka, Camus, Parfit, Hofstadter, and Chiang.