Philosophy has become my abiding passion over the last few years. However, I have found that it is difficult to understand one philosopher's work without understanding who he his reacting to. So, I decided to read the major philosophers in chronological order. Unfortunately, I could not find a comprehensive list. So I made this list, grabbing from several resources. Hopefully, I can save you some time or inspire you to read some of these great works.
- Plato: Essential Dialogues of Plato; Plato's Republic
- Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics; The Metaphysics; The Politics; The Four Causes
- Epicurus: To Menoecus
- Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
- Confucius: Analects
- Plotinus: The Enneads
- St. Augustine: Confessions; On the Teacher; On the Trinity; On Free Will
- St. Anselm: The Monologion; Proslogion; Curs De Homo
- St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica
- Machiavelli: The Prince; The Discourses
- Michel de Montaigne: Essays
- Francis Bacon: Colors of Good and Evil; Sacred Meditations; Confession of Faith; History of Life and Death; Things Thought and Things Seen
- Descartes: The Meditations; Discourse on Method
- Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
- Blaise Pascal: The Pensees, Discourse on the Passion of Love, Lettres Provinciales
- Baruch de Spinoza: Metaphysical Thoughts; Ethics; Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well Being
- John Locke: Two Treatises on Government; Essay Concerning the Human Understanding; The Reasonableness of Christianity
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Discourse on Metaphysics; Monadology; Theodicy
- George Berkeley: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge; Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonus
- David Hume: A Treatise on Human Nature; The Enquiries
- Voltaire: Candide; Zadig
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract; Emile
- Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason; Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
- George Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit; The Philosophy of Right
- Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations; The Theory of Moral Sentiments
- Jonathan Edwards: Freedom of the Will; Religious Affections
- Thomas Paine: Common Sense; Rights of Man; The Age of Reason
- Arthur Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation
- John Stuart Mill: On Liberty; Utilitarianism
- Auguste Comte: The Positive Philosophy of August Comte
- Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays
- Charles Darwin: On the Origin of Species; The Descent of Man
- Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto; Capital
- Sigmund Freud: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality; The Ego and the Id; Civilization and Its Discontents
- Soren Kierkegaard: The Journals of Kierkegaard; Fear and Trembling; The Sickness unto Death
- Friedrich Nietzche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Will to Power
- William James: Pragmatism; A Pluralistic Universe; The Meaning of Truth
- George Santayana: The Sense of Beauty; The Life of Reason;
- Bertrand Russell: Problems of Philosophy; History of Western Philosophy; Essays
- Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; Philosophical Investigations
- Martin Heidegger: Being and Time
- CS Lewis: Mere Christianity
- Jean-Paul Sartre: Being and Nothingness
- Hans-Georg Gadamer: Truth and Method
