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Anthony’s NotesA personal field guide
From the notebook

master_philosophy_curriculum

Ancient – Pre-Socratic & Classical (600–323 BCE)

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Robin Waterfield (ed.) — The First Philosophers
  • Plato — Five Dialogues
  • Plato — Symposium
  • Plato — Phaedo
  • Peter Adamson — Classical Philosophy (HoP No Gaps, Vol. 1)
  • Jonathan Barnes — Aristotle: A VSI
  • Aristotle — Nicomachean Ethics
  • Confucius — The Analects (from Complete Confucius)
  • Laozi — Dao De Jing (Ken Liu)
  • Augustine — Confessions

Reference / Dip Into

  • Plato — Complete Works, Dialogues, Socratic Dialogues
  • Aristotle — Complete Works (Vols. I & II)
  • Xenophon — Cyropaedia

Hellenistic & Roman (323 BCE–200 CE)

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Peter Adamson — Hellenistic & Roman Philosophy (Vol. 2)
  • Seneca — Letters from a Stoic
  • Epictetus — Discourses / Handbook / Fragments
  • Musonius Rufus — That One Should Disdain Hardships
  • Cicero — De Oratore (Books I–II)
  • James Stockdale — Courage Under Fire

Reference / Dip Into

  • Marcus Aurelius — Meditations (revisit reflectively)
  • Donald Robertson — Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor

Classical Chinese (6th–3rd c. BCE)

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Victoria Harrison — Eastern Philosophy: The Basics
  • Joel Kupperman — Classic Asian Philosophy
  • David Hinton — The Four Chinese Classics
  • Ken Liu — Dao De Jing (interpretive re-read)

Late Antique & Neoplatonism (200–600)

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Plotinus — The Enneads (Loeb, Armstrong)
  • Radek Chlup — Proclus: An Introduction
  • Proclus — The Elements of Theology (Dodds)

Reference / Dip Into

  • Plutarch — Moralia (selections)
  • Armstrong — Nature, Contemplation, and the One
  • Gerson — Plotinus Commentary & Plotinus the Platonist
  • Dillon & Gerson — Neoplatonism
  • Remes & Slaveva-Griffin — Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism

Medieval (500–1500)

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Augustine — Confessions (if not earlier)
  • Boethius — Consolation of Philosophy
  • Peter Adamson — Philosophy in the Islamic World (Vol. 3)
  • Ibn Rushd — Incoherence of the Incoherence
  • Maimonides — A Reader (Twersky)
  • Peter Adamson — Medieval Philosophy (Vol. 4)
  • Fergus Kerr — Aquinas: VSI
  • Peter Kreeft — A Shorter Summa
  • Brian Davies — Intro to Philosophy of Religion
  • Bernard McGinn — Foundations of Mysticism

Reference / Dip Into

  • Klima — Medieval Philosophy: Essential Readings
  • Bosley & Tweedale — Basic Issues in Medieval Philosophy
  • Pseudo-Dionysius — Complete Works (select)
  • Eric Perl — Theophany
  • John Scotus Eriugena — Periphyseon (abridged selections)
  • Meister Eckhart — Mystical Works

Renaissance & Early Modern (1500–1700)

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Montaigne — Essays (selected)
  • Sarah Bakewell — How to Live
  • Machiavelli — Discourses
  • Descartes — Discourse on the Method
  • Descartes — Meditations
  • Tom Sorell — Descartes: VSI
  • Pascal — Pensées
  • Spinoza — Ethics (+ Scruton VSI)
  • Leibniz — New Essays on Human Understanding
  • Hobbes — Leviathan (+ Tuck VSI)
  • Locke — Second Treatise (+ Dunn VSI)
  • Locke — Essay Concerning Human Understanding (selections)
  • Rousseau — Basic Political Writings
  • Rousseau — Emile
  • Montesquieu — The Spirit of the Laws
  • Voltaire — Candide
  • Bentham — Principles of Morals and Legislation
  • Mill — On Liberty; Utilitarianism
  • Paine — Rights of Man / Common Sense
  • Tocqueville — Democracy in America

Reference / Dip Into

  • Descartes — Collected Works (Principles, etc.)
  • Zweig — Montaigne
  • Pocock — Machiavellian Moment (chapters)
  • Montesquieu — Persian Letters
  • De Maistre — Considerations on France

Enlightenment (1680–1800)

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Ayer — Hume: VSI
  • Hume — Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • Hume — Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
  • Hume — Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
  • Hume — Standard of Taste
  • Adam Smith — Theory of Moral Sentiments
  • Rousseau — Discourse on Inequality; Social Contract
  • Scruton — Kant: VSI
  • Kant — Prolegomena
  • Kant — Groundwork
  • Kant — Critique of Pure Reason (core parts)
  • Kant — Critique of the Power of Judgment

Reference / Dip Into

  • Hume — Treatise of Human Nature (selections)
  • Kant — Paton Groundwork commentary
  • Kirk — Conservative Mind (later context)
  • Grayling — Russell: VSI (20th c.)
  • Voltaire — Candide (already in Early Modern)

German Idealism (1760–1860)

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Beiser — German Idealism
  • Pinkard — German Philosophy 1760–1860
  • Hegel — Phenomenology of Spirit
  • Hegel — Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Reference / Dip Into

  • Deleuze — Kant’s Critical Philosophy
  • Gardner — A Kant Dictionary

19th Century (1800–1900)

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Schopenhauer — On the Suffering of the World
  • Kierkegaard — Fear and Trembling; Sickness Unto Death
  • Feuerbach — Essence of Christianity
  • Stirner — Ego and Its Own
  • Marx & Engels — Communist Manifesto
  • Marx — Capital, Vol. I (core sections)
  • Mill — On Liberty; Utilitarianism; Principles of Political Economy (selections)
  • Bentham/Mill — Utilitarianism and Other Essays

Reference / Dip Into

  • Mill — System of Logic (Book III)
  • Lukács — History and Class Consciousness
  • Lenin — Left-Wing Communism
  • James Lindsay — Marxification of Education

20th Century

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Russell — Problems of Philosophy
  • Moore — Principia Ethica
  • Frege — Foundations of Arithmetic
  • Ayer — Language, Truth and Logic
  • Quine — Two Dogmas of Empiricism
  • Popper — Conjectures and Refutations
  • Misak — Cambridge Pragmatism
  • Grice — Studies in the Way of Words
  • Anscombe — Modern Moral Philosophy
  • Foot — Natural Goodness
  • Appiah — Thinking It Through
  • Chalmers — Reality+
  • Husserl — Logical Investigations, Vol. 1
  • Heidegger — Being and Time
  • Sartre — Existentialism is a Humanism
  • Beauvoir — What Is Existentialism?
  • Camus — Myth of Sisyphus
  • Gramsci — Prison Notebooks
  • Althusser — Lenin and Philosophy
  • Derrida — Of Grammatology
  • Baudrillard — Simulacra and Simulation

Reference / Dip Into

  • Frege — Begriffsschrift
  • Potter — Rise of Analytic Philosophy
  • Appiah — Thinking It Through (if as reference instead)
  • Žižek — Sublime Object of Ideology (optional)

Political & Social Theory

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Kymlicka — Contemporary Political Philosophy
  • MacIntyre — After Virtue
  • Arendt — Human Condition; Origins of Totalitarianism; Eichmann in Jerusalem
  • Rawls — Justice as Fairness; Lectures on Political Philosophy

Reference / Dip Into

  • Arendt — Life of the Mind
  • Popper — Logic of Scientific Discovery
  • Trotsky — Permanent Revolution
  • Lenin — State and Revolution
  • Mao — On Practice
  • Luxemburg — Reform or Revolution

Leftist Ideology

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Rousseau — Discourse on Inequality (revisit)
  • Marx — Capital I
  • Lenin — What Is to Be Done?
  • Adorno & Horkheimer — Dialectic of Enlightenment
  • Benjamin — Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
  • Marcuse — One-Dimensional Man
  • Foucault — Discipline and Punish; History of Sexuality Vol. 1
  • Beauvoir — Second Sex
  • Butler — Gender Trouble
  • Fanon — Wretched of the Earth
  • Said — Orientalism
  • Freire — Pedagogy of the Oppressed
  • Boal — Theatre of the Oppressed

Reference / Dip Into

  • Mao — Cultural Revolution speeches
  • Dutschke — Long March
  • Marcuse — Repressive Tolerance
  • Althusser — Ideology & ISAs
  • Lacan — Mirror Stage
  • Deleuze & Guattari — Anti-Oedipus; A Thousand Plateaus
  • Butler — Bodies That Matter
  • Sedgwick — Epistemology of the Closet
  • hooks — Teaching to Transgress; Feminism Is for Everybody
  • Firestone — Dialectic of Sex
  • Crenshaw — Intersectionality essays
  • Bell — Faces at the Bottom of the Well
  • Spivak — Can the Subaltern Speak?
  • Bhabha — Location of Culture
  • Giroux — Teachers as Intellectuals; On Critical Pedagogy
  • Jay (ed.) — Critical Theory: A Reader

Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Rachels — Elements of Moral Philosophy
  • Driver — Ethics: The Fundamentals
  • Shafer-Landau — Fundamentals of Ethics; Moral Realism
  • Mackie — Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong
  • Joyce — Myth of Morality
  • Kalderon — Moral Fictionalism
  • Huemer — Ethical Intuitionism
  • Gibbard — Wise Choices, Apt Feelings
  • Korsgaard — Sources of Normativity
  • Scanlon — What We Owe to Each Other
  • Nagel — View from Nowhere
  • Singer — Practical Ethics; Ethics in the Real World
  • Cohen — Finding Oneself in the Other
  • Benatar — Better Never to Have Been
  • MacAskill — What We Owe the Future
  • Harris — Moral Landscape

Metaphysics / Religion / Free Will

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Schellenberg — Divine Hiddenness
  • Frede — A Free Will
  • Sapolsky — Determined
  • Goff — Why? The Purpose of the Universe

Reference / Dip Into

  • Meyer — Return of the God Hypothesis
  • Metzinger — Elephant and the Blind

Epistemology / Language / Logic

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Martinich — Philosophy of Language
  • Austin — How to Do Things with Words
  • Wittgenstein — Philosophical Investigations; On Certainty
  • Sainsbury — Paradoxes
  • Arnauld — Logic (Port-Royal)

Reference / Dip Into

  • Pressly — Right to Oblivion

Philosophy of Science

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Godfrey-Smith — Theory and Reality
  • Chalmers — What Is This Thing Called Science?
  • Van Fraassen — The Scientific Image
  • Pigliucci — Philosophy of Pseudoscience

Reference / Dip Into

  • Wray — Resisting Scientific Realism
  • Barker & Kitcher — Philosophy of Science: A New Introduction
  • Rosenberg — Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction

History / Anthologies

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Martinich — Early Modern Philosophy (Readings)
  • McGinnis — Classical Arabic Philosophy
  • Pasnau — Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671

Reference / Dip Into

  • Tierney — Idea of Natural Rights
  • Ross — Portable Renaissance Reader
  • Cahn — Classics of Western Philosophy

Literature with Philosophical Themes

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Dostoevsky — Notes from the Underground
  • Borges — Ficciones
  • Pieper — Leisure: The Basis of Culture
  • Stendhal — On Love
  • Lewis — Abolition of Man
  • Stevenson — Apology for Idlers
  • Vonnegut — Harrison Bergeron; Welcome to the Monkey House

Ancient / Classical Sources

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Hamilton — Mythology
  • Erasmus — Praise of Folly
  • Tacitus — Agricola & Germania; Annals (selections)
  • Polybius — Histories (selections)
  • Quintilian — Institutio Oratoria

Contemporary Cultural / Social Critique

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Han — Vita Contemplativa
  • Blattman — Why We Fight
  • Pearse — Gods of War
  • MacGregor — Living with the Gods
  • Hazard — Crisis of the European Mind
  • Crawford — Shop Class as Soulcraft
  • Singer (Michael A.) — Surrender Experiment
  • Holiday — Obstacle Is the Way

Reference / Dip Into

  • Conrad — Culture Hacks

Practical Philosophy / Self-Help

Read Cover-to-Cover

  • Holiday — Obstacle Is the Way
  • Pigliucci — Quest for Character
  • Harris — Lying
  • Harris — Making Sense