Friday, December 5, 2014

My reading list

I am currently undergoing a time of education on top of my senior year in college right now (my major is economics and political science) where I am listening to and reading some great books of philosophy. The following is the list of what I am going to read. Suggestions for books I should read which are not here are appreciated!

To be clear, this list is trying to be inclusive of most points of view, but there are a handful of schools I am not interested in reading, one is existentialism (which I read some of in high school and hated) and anything having to do with or influenced by Ayn Rand. There is no Subjectivism on this list either. It also is focused on post-Renaissance European/American philosophy. I hopefully will do another survey of Chinese philosophy in the future, and hopefully Indian as well. It is also focused on political philosophy. I've tried to include at least one book from every major philosopher. Some such as Mill, Kant, and Rawls are too important and influential to pick one so I've tried to pick their most influential books. As time goes on I will 
  1. The Prince By Niccolo Machiavelli (1513)
  2. Essays by Francis Bacon (1597-1625)
  3. Leviathan By Thomas Hobbs (1651)
  4. Principles of Philosophy by Rene Descartes (1644)
  5. Two Treatises of Government by John Locke (1689)
  6. A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume (1739)
  7. Candide by Voltaire (1759)
  8. The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)
  9. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant (1781)
  10. The Federalist Papers by James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton (1787/1788)
  11. Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant (1788)
  12. Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant (1790)
  13. Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841, 1844)
  14. Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1854)
  15. A General View of Positivism by Auguste Comte (1856)
  16. On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (1859)
  17. Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill (1861)
  18. Das Kapital by Karl Marx (1867)
  19. The Division of Labor in Society by Comte (1893)
  20. The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper (1945)
  21. Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953)
  22. My Philosophical Development by Bertrand Russell (1959)
  23. The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961)
  24. Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick (1974)
  25. Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault (1975)
  26. A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (1971)
  27. Political Liberalism by John Rawls (1993)
I have already read On Liberty and Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, and they have greatly effected the way I see politics and the world. I have also read The Wretched of the Earth and Discipline and Punish so I will just skip over them. I include them for people who are interested, and I recommend them all.

I also thank the people who wrote these two very different lists giving me some ideas on which political philosophers to include: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/the-20-most-important-philosophers-of-the-modern-era.html and https://bryannelson.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/the-20-most-important-philosophers-of-the-modern-era/

No comments:

Post a Comment