A listing of philosophically provocative books
Charles Foster. Being a Beast: Foster recounts a unique investigation that forcefully challenges orthodox thinking about human nature. In five first-person experiments he first studies an animal’s physiology and then adopts its way of living within its own natural space. These experiments go far beyond most people’s comfort zones, effectively bridging the gap between human and […]
The Zhuangzi (also sometimes written Chuang-tzu) is an eponymous book attributed to a Daoist philosophy of the 4th century BCE. The “Inner Chapters” (the first seven sections) are the core of the book, and they fascinate and perplex readers by defending a variety of seemingly inconsistent positions, including relativism, skepticism, and pluralism. Zhuangzi also writes in a variety
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Reitter, Paul & Chad Wellmon, Permanent Crisis: This work argues that the narrative that the humanities are in crisis is not new. This complaint has its origins in the debates that surrounded their introduction into the German university as an administratively unified body of disciplines. The book offers an impressively researched history of the role
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism: Plato defined philosophy as the love of wisdom. Philosophers ever since have quested for the Truth. Sextus Empiricus suggests that maybe this pursuit is bound to fail. Things look one way when we are healthy, one way when we are sick, another way when we touch our eye, and other
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Plato, Symposium: This is one of Plato’s literary masterpieces, along with the Republic. It contains several speeches on the nature of love given by guests at a dinner held to commemorate the poet Agathon’s victory in a competition of tragedies. The speeches culminate in a speech given by Socrates, allegedly containing the words of a
Bhagavad Gita: The Bhagavad Gita begins with a moral dilemma: should Arjuna the great warrior, fight a fratricidal war and kill members of his extended family and friend circle, or should he step away from the fray and thereby undermine his duty as a warrior? His partner in conversation, the divine incarnate Krishna, urges Arjuna to
David Haig, From Darwin to Derrida: From Darwin to Derrida (2020) is a roller-coaster ride for intrepid thinkers. Dawkins (1976) introduced the endlessly productive metaphor of selfish genes, but even if we grant, for the sake of argument, or as a crutch for our imaginations, that we can interpret such mindless things as agents for
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Epicurus, Letters and Maxims: The ancient world’s self-proclaimed autodidact, Epicurus was revered by his followers and reviled by his critics. He founded a community which lived and talked philosophy in a garden. They valued friendship and the simple life. His letters and maxims promise freedom from the troubles of life and explanations for its mysteries:
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Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: In this landmark of third-wave feminism, Judith Butler advances a novel conception of gender identity. Against the prevailing tradition that presupposes gender to be fixed, binary, and implicitly heterosexual, Butler exhibits its dynamic nature as a coercive social force, which maintains its power through the gendered performances of each individual. Gender
Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue Book: This small volume conveys a vibrant sense of the life of philosophy. With intellectual honesty reminiscent of Augustine’s Confessions, we see a mind relentlessly unearthing previously unexamined presuppositions, exposing misleading conceptual models that would oversimplify language, and sustaining a self-analytical scrutiny concerning its own inward impulsions to take wrong turns, to
Upanishads: A repository of some of humanity’s earliest philosophical explorations – including an appearance by the first documented female philosopher, Gargi. Through dialogues, stories, debates, and arguments, various figures investigate questions about the nature of reality and its relationship to the self. Among them: Who am I? What is the self (ātman)? How is the
Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life: We humans are creatures of thought, but also of ‘flesh and bone.’ That reason and feeling are at odds is the ‘tragic sense of life.’ We cannot help but want to live forever. Our reason, however, assures us that both body and mind will assuredly return to ‘nothingness.’
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Raymond Tallis, Enemies of Hope: A Critique of Contemporary Pessimism: A long book you won’t want to end, which is sometimes funny, often passionate, optimistic, and grounded in common sense. The unique structure adds greatly to the appeal-Tallis was commissioned to write an 800-word review of Dudley Young’s Origins of the Sacred: the Ecstasies of
L. S. Stebbing, Thinking to Some Purpose: Susan Stebbing (1885-1943) is a significant but often overlooked figure in twentieth-century philosophy. In 1939, just under a year before the outbreak of the Second World War, she published Thinking to Some Purpose. In publishing this text with the widely popular Pelican series, Stebbing hoped to make a
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Samuel Scheffler, Death and the Afterlife: If you discovered the human race were going to be annihilated soon after you died, how would you react? With profound dismay, Scheffler expects. Social and personal activities would lose their meaning. What matters to us now is grounded by the assumption that humanity has a future. Our social-distancing
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile: Despite misanthropic tendencies and profound failure as a father, Rousseau deigns to offer advice on educating a child disconnected from peers and in strict accordance with nature. Long before the pandemic brought them to light, Émile called out the artificiality of fashionable expectations and the ravages of inequality. Freed from the chains of
Plato, The Phaedo: Plato’s Phaedo is about the meaning of life and death. Socrates is about to be executed and his friends challenge his reassurances about immortality. Socrates replies by developing increasingly sophisticated conceptions of the soul. More than any dialogue but the Republic, the Phaedo encapsulates Plato’s philosophy generally: the nature of philosophy, the
Plato, Apology of Socrates: Socrates subjected his fellow Athenians to prolonged interrogation, bringing home to them how little they knew about what really matters, and goading them to live better. He enthralled some. He riled others so much that they put him on trial, and sentenced him to death. Plato was one of the enthralled.
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Blaise Pascal, Pensés: The Pensés are an enduring testament to the powers and limitations of human expression. Pascal wrote about our self-love, the grandeur and misery of life, our ceaseless search for meaning: ‘The heart has reasons reason does not understand;’ ‘The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrify me;’ ‘The parrot wipes its beak
Iris Murdoch, A Word Child: A Word Child is first and foremost a work of fiction, and a very finely crafted one at that. Its pace is lively, its characterization sharp, and its dense plot tightly controlled and deeply involving. Iris Murdoch repeatedly insisted that philosophy and literature are distinct and that her novels should
V. Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa: The Idea of Africa traces notions of Africanity within a variety of historical archives and using a transdisciplinary perspective. The inter-relation of transdisciplinarity and African philosophical tendencies endows his project with an uncommon energy, texture and tonality. Mudimbe also investigates the Colonial Library in relation to Africa. Ideas
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Mencius, The Mencius: Dr. Anthony Fauci’s face palm behind a president railing against the ‘Deep State Department’ illustrates an age-old problem: what to do about leaders who ignore better-informed advisers? This is a problem Mencius struggled with his whole career. The great Confucian philosopher instructed violent provincial warlords about the essential goodness in human nature,
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things: This great Latin poem, a guided tour of the infinite, reveals a universe of atoms and void, gloriously free from controlling deities and the horrors of hell. Why then should Lucretius’ epic celebration of life end on the theme, poignantly topical today, of grim suffering and mass death in
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Søren Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death: ‘Sickness unto Death’ isn’t an encouraging title in pandemic times, but Kierkegaard claims that the only thing we need really fear is despair, whether this manifests as fake optimism or morbid depression. For him, despair is typically caused by living according to others’ agendas and ideals. An example: health workers
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Sandra Harding, Objectivity and Diversity: Can anything intelligible come from the whirlwind of pandemic evidence and punditry currently bombarding us? Yes, answers Harding, who reassuringly explains how objective scientific results emerge from pluralistic, democratic practices. Science works best, she contends, by integrating diverse voices and perspectives, and actively focusing on problems of the disadvantaged. Racial
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Philip P. Hallie, The Paradox of Cruelty: Understood as ‘the infliction of ruin, whatever the motives,’ cruelty upon humans subdivides into fatal cruelties, which are caused by nature, and human violent cruelties, which are caused by people. The latter type can be explicit, i.e., springing from a patent intention to hurt, or implicit, i.e., springing
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Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: One thing we’ve learned from this pandemic: those in power often ignore those in the know. Historically marginalized people will be all too familiar with what Fricker calls ‘credibility deficit’ – i.e., being perceived as less knowledgeable than one is. Since intelligence is central to humanity, disregard of this sort is
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Epictetus, The Manual (Enchiridion): ‘What is the path to happiness?’ This is surely the most important philosophical question, and no one has answered it as clearly and as forcefully as the first century philosopher Epictetus. Unhappiness, he argues, is mostly caused by the fact that we have false and unrealistic desires and beliefs. In words
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Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), in which he argues for the evolution of organisms by virtue of natural selection, is a seminal work in the history of science. It is also a work of enduring philosophical interest, specifically about Darwin’s methodology, as he tries to persuade the reader
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Confucius, The Analects: In China today, one may find statues of Confucius or Kongzi (551-479 B.C.E) depicting him as the ‘model teacher for 10,000 generations.’ Consisting of roughly five hundred sayings compiled after Confucius’ death, The Analects traditionally was learned through a process of memorization and recitation beginning at an early age. Guided by the
Giordano Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper: Bruno’s dialogue defends the new Copernican astronomy, but also presents our world as a mere speck in an overwhelmingly immense universe. Bruno develops this cosmology together with a philosophy, almost a theology, of nature. God pervades the infinity of the universe with a world soul that animates the infinite
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Henry Bugbee, The Inward Morning: A philosophical journal that presents the task of thinking above all as giving expression to what presents itself to us on any given day. Sensitive and accessible in its reading of both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions, the book is at the same time authentically American in the tradition of
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Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy: In 523 CE Boethius lived his final year in detention under suspicion of plotting against Ostrogothic King Theodoric, conqueror of Rome. Facing certain, violent death he asked: Why would God allow evil to befall an innocent such as himself? Is there a purpose to the universe? Do we have free
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Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity: De Beauvoir explores the implications of a central political tension: as existential agents, we each freely set our own goals; as ethical agents, we must harmonize these goals with other people and institutions that often impede their realization. This natural tension in political life becomes a crisis, however,
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Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition: The human condition, for Arendt, is defined not by the universality of death but the uniqueness of each birth, not by individualism but by recognition of each other. Her book articulates the dignity of human activity: our ‘labor’ (repeated tasks to sustain life), ‘work’ (building things that last), and ‘action’
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Linda Martín Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self: The book takes heed of Western philosophy’s ocularcentrism and argues that race and gender function as our defining visible identities. Race and gender are not, as various foundationalist and postmodernist philosophers have contended over the years, essentialist concepts or wishy-washy social constructs that can be
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