10 Best Philosophy Books to Read
Getting into philosophy books is like a dive into an ocean. You can explore aplenty and reach to new uncharted depths. Unlike many other genres, philosophical books are meant for selected audiences which have the audacity to cogitate on their existence and courage to pull out the taboos of life and their surroundings.
Philosophy books have immense power to influence one’s beliefs and tenacity, and they give us a new dimension to think about various issues that are grappling the world now. So, if you are someone who is most of the times overwhelmed with philosophical thoughts and would love to read more. Well, here is the hot list of 10 books for you.
- The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant:
This is a wonderful book for the beginners seeking an introduction to philosophy. It covers the work of Plato, Aristotle, Voltaire, Kant, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Spencer, Nietzsche etc. A brilliant read to show the evolution of thought and ideas in general.
2. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus:
Albert Camus is my personal favorite when it comes to philosophy. The Myth of Sisyphus subtly explains the idea of absurdism, which would then become the backbone of all the important works by Camus. He shows how all our efforts might slowly get undone, resulting in no sustainable consequence and hence might make our life a pointless/absurd expedition.
“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world,” he says. Other works of Camus that I absolutely love: The Rebel and The Stranger.
3. Arya Dharma: The Noble Dharma by Bollachettira Dhyan Appachu:
Arya Dharma is a work of non-fiction by Bollachettira Dhyan Appachu, the book runs over 600 pages. It tries to settle down the dust on one of the most pressing issues the world facing nowadays — conflict of interests due to different religions. The whole world is prejudiced and fighting to prove their mastery and superiority with respect to their religions. The author Dhyan takes a sneak into the matter and comes up with a presumably solution — Arya Dharma.
4. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Frederich Nietzsche:
Your guide to nihilism and the concept of Ubermensch. This book unravels the whole point of Nietzsche regarding the meaninglessness of a materialistic life, the importance/unimportance of relationships, the purpose of man’s life according to him and the veil of ignorance under which he thinks people normally live. What I absolutely loved about this book, is the criticism of Buddhism. Nietzsche detests the idea of spending a lifetime only in expectation of a freer afterlife, and in hope of escaping reincarnation.
5. Justice by Michael Sandel:
Its Goodreads description is a precise summary of the content of this book. “What are our obligations to others as people in a free society? Should government tax the rich to help the poor? Is the free market fair? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Is killing sometimes morally required? Is it possible, or desirable, to legislate morality? Do individual rights and the common good conflict?” Sandel’s series of lecture have been popular over the Internet since a long time and can be found on YouTube.
6. Irrational Man by William Barrett:
Detailed study of existentialism, covering the work of the greatest existentialists of all times. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. It further shows how their work impacted the art and literature of their corresponding ages. Quoting Barrett:
“Man’s feeling of homelessness, of alienation has been intensified in the midst of a bureaucratized, impersonal mass society. He has come to feel himself an outsider even within his own human society. He is terribly alienated: a stranger to God, to nature, and to the gigantic social apparatus that supplies his material wants. But the worst and final form of alienation, toward which indeed the others tend, is man’s alienation from his own self. In a society that requires of man only that he perform competently his own particular social function, man becomes identified with this function, and the rest of his being is allowed to subsist as best it can — usually to be dropped below the surface of consciousness and forgotten.”
7. The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker:
“Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level”, says Becker. In this book, he shows how the very anxiety/fear of death, often moderates most of the actions we take in our lives, and hampers our thinking at many levels. Best thing about the book: criticism of Freudian theories and how.
8. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius:
Aurelius is purging. His writing is poetic, serene and revisitable. It is a light read, which explains the behavior of world as we know it and helps us in dealing with the same.“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
9. The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris:
Easily proves how atheism can replace the good parts of religion and in a much more logical way. This book shows how morality and human values can be very well explained and guided by science and is not at all, incoherent with it. Also, I love Harris’ witty and intelligent writing. “Our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail). The second illusion can be called the wag-the-other-dog’s-tail illusion: In a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of an opponent’s arguments to change the opponent’s mind. Such a belief is like thinking that forcing a dog’s tail to wag by moving it with your hand will make the dog happy.”The End of Faith is another good book by the same author.
10. A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell:
Everything philosophy at one place! Begins with Thales and Pythagoras, mentions Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus. Further writes about Jewish and Islamic Philosophy. And then Hobbes, Locke, Descartes, Machiavelli (don’t miss The Prince), Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, etc.
