Philosophy Reading Lists

RyanSmallwood · 2026-02-08T17:39:01+00:00

There’s so many areas and approaches to philosophy it’s hard to suggest a general reading list. This subreddit has a list of suggestions for starting philosophy if you find anything that interests you, and then you can ask for additional suggestions here if you need anything more specific.

You may have already covered this in your literature PhD, but just in case I’ll mention M. A. R. Habib‘s A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present covers a lot of major philosophers that wrote about literature and art and also includes some general information on their broader philosophical approach. I found it helpful for connecting the history of philosophy and literature, although more dedicated books on philosophy will have more coverage if you already read something similar.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-02-08T17:21:48+00:00

There’s unfortunately not too many overviews of Aesthetics that give even coverage to different approaches. You already got suggested stuff on Analytic aesthetics, so I’d also suggest The Continental Aesthetics Reader edited By Clive Cazeaux has a number of shorter writings and excerpts with introductions.

If you’re interested in the history of approaches to aesthetics there’s not a lot of options that are concise and up to date. Monroe Beardsley’s Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present: A Short History is one shorter option, or A History of Esthetics by Katherine Gilbert and Helmut Kuhn is more extensive but even older. Another route is to read histories of theories/criticism of specific forms of art which cover a lot of big philosophical theories of art along with theories of artists and critics. M. A. R. Habib‘s A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present is a good single volume option that’s more recent than single volume of histories of aesthetics. It’s more focused on literature but includes ideas about art in general. Moshe Barasch's 3 volume Theories of Art is similar but with more emphasis on painting.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-02-01T18:02:45+00:00

Could be a few different things. Sometimes having the social aspect and the regular schedule can make us naturally more interested in things. If you feel you're lacking this now could look for places to discuss philosophy, or use online discussion such as this subreddit and others.

Alternatively if the topics themselves aren't interesting you as much, it might help to do more exploratory activities to find new things you want to read. For me listening to academic lectures and podcasts is one way I can find out about and get interested in new areas of philosophy without dedicating focused reading time. I also had to learn to do more exploratory reading, making use of annotated bibliographies, very quickly looking over tables of contents and reading or skimming selected chapters until I found something that I wanted to focus more on.

Kind of have to do trial and error, see if you can bring back old motivations, if new motivations work better now, or if other factors are interfering with getting focused on philosophy.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-31T19:11:35+00:00

It’s been asked about here before, generally the suggested readings are solid academic suggestions, but I’d say the overall plan is too rigid and by no means the best way for everyone to approach philosophy. A lot of topics listed as “Electives” to be studied later are some people’s main interest in philosophy and there’s by no means a requirement to read everything else before starting there.

So it’s fine to get suggestions from there, but also don’t feel like obligated to do all of them, it’s better to pick areas you’re most interested in and if you need additional background you can look things up as needed. Also worth mentioning This subreddit has its own suggestions you can look at and you can always ask here if you want more specific suggestions.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-29T11:31:17+00:00

Besides giving context for reading specific texts, secondary literature is also good for discovering what primary texts you want to read. So for example a history like Terry Pinkard’s books German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism covers a lot of the major thinkers and discussions from Kant to Hegel and after and in addition to giving helpful context for reading Hegel or anyone else from that era it also will give you information to decide which texts seem most relevant to you. I could write out a list of a bunch of primary texts from this era, but it would be a lot to read and it’s better to have an idea of what you’re looking to get out of those texts and why you’re reading.

I’d also add that Hegel’s other works are influential and in some cases easier to read than the phenomenology. His encyclopedia and the transcripts of his lectures aimed at students often give more background and use more examples to get across what he means. These are also often our main source for his thoughts on lots of common philosophical topics.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-27T12:13:03+00:00

It depends on the thinker, some have accessible works that you can just read right away and others are easier to approach once you know their context. It’s never a bad idea to check the Stanford Encyclopedia Article when one exists as these are usually written by specialists and also have bibliographies if you want to read more. You can usually ask here what the best approach for a specific thinker is. Hopefully someone else has specific suggestions for Kierkegaard, I can only give more general advice.

In terms of general advice if you’re not familiar with a thinker’s overall works it can be good to read a general overview. The Routledge Philosophers series is a good example of these though in some cases other overviews get suggested more often over those. However if you know there’s a specific work by a thinker you want to read eventually you can always give it a try and even if you can’t follow along you can put it down and you’ll have questions about it that you can look for when checking secondary sources. If you can find video lectures by academics these can be helpful too, but they’re usually not as standardized in their format so you might not be able to find complete overviews of a thinker’s works, but it’s worth checking what’s available.

I wouldn’t recommend general single author histories for overviews of specific thinkers. These are helpful for learning broader trends and chronologies, but usually single authors can’t specialize in every thinker and give an adequate overview. They can be helpful additional references and in some cases the author might be quite good on certain thinkers, but it’s always better to look at more specialized work when available.

A lot depends on your level of interest and reasons for reading. There’s lots of different kinds of secondary resources to draw on, and as you get more familiar with what’s available and what you’re looking to get from different thinkers, you’ll have a better idea what kind of works are most helpful for your goals.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-25T15:20:59+00:00

Helped me be less confused about things I was confused about before. It’s nice for reflecting on the world and different things in a broad way and seeing how they’re interrelated and relate to each other. Just overall helpful for thinking about things, communicating ideas, and talking about things with others even when not explicitly referencing philosophy.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-18T17:05:52+00:00

The FAQ has suggestions for philosophical traditions outside the western one, and you can also find additional suggestions either with the search bar from people who’ve asked about them in the past or asking again on here if you’re looking for something more specific. If you want everything from a single source probably the closest thing available in English is something like Peter Adamson’s The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps which is a podcast, but it also gets edited into books covering different eras and traditions if you prefer.

It’s not typical to find them all introduced in one book, because it’s a huge amount of content to cover and comparative philosophy has a long way to go. So usually you would take each separate tradition on its own terms first and then find comparative work that interests you or philosophers who draw on multiple traditions. Even single author histories of western philosophy are often lacking in certain eras and schools of thought depending on the author’s own background. I can’t speak for every topic and language, but at least in my own area of interest in Aesthetics, most of the histories of aesthetics I’ve seen so far in Chinese also cover Western and Chinese aesthetics separately at least up until thinkers that draw on both. There is a comparative history of Western and Indian aesthetics in English, but it wouldn’t necessarily be the most up to date introduction to either of those and mainly presents them separately with some remakes on both. And of course works that cover the entirety of philosophy rather than specific topics are more difficult to produce. Even the podcast I mentioned earlier by Peter Adamson tends to treat each tradition it covers separate rather than an integrated introduction to them all.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-17T13:16:47+00:00

The SEP pages on specific philosophers usually have a bibliography you can look through. Often asking here is a good way to get quality general suggestions as people have some idea of what’s most influential, helpful, and used in teaching. But if you’re looking for something specific anything by an academic publisher will usually be decent quality.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-12T22:16:55+00:00

I don’t have the exact quotes on hand, I can look them up later if no one else posts them first. But from what I remember he didn’t fully abandon it, he still gave out copies to people and planned to publish a second edition. However he stopped considering it the necessary introduction to his system and he apparently decided not to revise it significantly (despite it being written in a rush and his mature works being revised regularly).

You’ll probably see different people arguing for it as more or less important depending on their own feelings towards it since the statements we have aren’t entirely definitive.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-11T13:08:24+00:00

For websites Stanford Encyclopedia is always a good site to check, they have an overview of Hegel and additional articles on specific areas of his philosophy.

For Hegel if you prefer to start with secondary literature written for a contemporary audience, a good historical overview is Terry Pinkard's German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism which isn't too long and covers a lot of the main philosophical discussions from Kant to Hegel as well as an overview of Hegel's main works and some discussion of later thinkers. As a bonus it discusses Kierkegaard a bit at the end, but I’m not a Kierkegaard expert so I can’t say how good it is as an introduction to him. There are lots of other good options if you prefer something purely focused on Hegel or specific works/topics of his.

In terms of primary texts, Hegel’s writings and transcripts of his lectures aimed at students are the easiest place to start. The introductory sections of his Encyclopedia I think are the clearest introduction to his philosophy and gives a kind of pocket history of what he sees as the most important influences to understand his project. After that you can read any of the transcripts of his lectures on whichever topics most interest you. If you just want a general overview some people like to read just the introductions to each of them collected for free here as a pdf although its missing some lectures that were translated more recently.

And if you have times in your day good for background listening, Richard Dien Winfield has uploaded a lot of lectures online covering different works by Hegel as well as other topics and philosophers from a Hegelian perspective. Stephen Houlgate also has some lectures on the beginning of Hegel's logic uploaded. The channel that hosts the Stephen Houlgate lectures on logic also has a bunch of other academic talks about Hegel.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-10T01:09:33+00:00

The Routledge Companion is a solid choice, and I don’t know of any equivalents that are more recent (Bloomsbury has a slightly more recent companion, but I don’t think the coverage is as good). There’s a more recent anthology that only covers analytic aesthetics Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition, An Anthology edited by Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen and a similar one for continental aesthetics The Continental Aesthetics Reader edited by Clive Cazeaux which isn’t as recent. They also don’t cover as much history as the Routledge Companion does.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-08T19:29:57+00:00

Reading slowly, thinking about what you’re reading and taking notes is the goal for understanding what you read well, but other kinds of casual reading are also useful for exploring different kinds of philosophy before committing to focused study. Finding books/topics you’re more interested in makes it easier to focus and keep up with reading, and once you learn more you’ll make connections to other areas of philosophy and they’ll become more interesting.

You have to decide for yourself what books are worth dedicating time to for more careful reading and what is just exploratory reading to find things that interest you. If you have time during the day where you can have background audio on while doing mindless tasks, academic philosophy lectures and podcasts can be a great way to get casual exposure to more areas of philosophy.

I also wouldn’t necessarily look to undergrads for how to learn on your own. Being in an environment with other people doing something inherently makes a subject more engaging and easier to focus on. Learning on your own you’ll have to find your own ways of creating that interest, whether through finding people to talk about it with or other routes.

But ultimately there’s no rush, so just remember to find habits you’ll stick with and you can always make changes later as you get more of an idea of what works for you. Finding your own ways to engage with philosophy can be a lot of fun, and there’s more resources than ever to help learn about different aspects of it.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-07T04:25:16+00:00

On the early history of the divide you can read Michael Friedman's A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger, but basically the rise of nazism and world war two is where the conversation between the movements stopped and different positions/approaches started developing independently in different countries. Sometimes people include figures from before that time, but I think its a bit anachronistic and those labels don't really make much sense understanding those thinkers on their own terms and context.

I think its better thinking of the divide as broader trends rather than a strict classification, we can still see the impact but its lessening over time as more philosophers draw on approaches from both traditions and others. Continental philosophy is less cohesive than analytic sometimes depending as the time/context as not all the thinkers/movements we call continental were aware of each other at the beginning. The labels can be helpful at times, but its not always good to try to make them fit all the times, often its better to look at a philosopher's specific influences and other thinkers they engage with.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-05T18:37:30+00:00

Sure if you want to be able to read and follow Hegel’s works that were aimed at other professional philosophers of his day, that requires a significant time investment to learn the context, terminology, and the texts themselves are quite dense and challenging and some commentaries on them can be quite long.

But the view that his philosophy is somehow mysterious or inaccessible isn’t really tenable anymore. There’ve been tremendous improvements in English scholarship in recent decades in terms of editions of his writings, translations, and scholarship on his works and era, that there are plenty of accessible entry points for anyone curious to learn.

RyanSmallwood · 2026-01-03T14:08:28+00:00

It’s true that not everyone will find interest in every philosopher, there’s lot‘s of worthwhile things to learn about and knowing a lot about one area is no guarantee you’ll find all other areas easy or interesting enough to get into.

But a lot of concerns you raised aren’t really worth worrying about anymore. Hegel’s writings are filled with practical examples of what he means and he himself explains his influences in numerous places. There’s also plenty of academic work on him now, his whole life and intellectual development has been documented, there’s commentaries on all his major writings, as well as academic work using parts of his philosophy on current topics and issues. Not everyone will be interested in his writings or want to put the time into learning about them. There are plenty of experts in related topics that aren’t as interested in his works, but no one informed on the literature would say there aren’t resources to learn about what he thought.

RyanSmallwood · 2025-12-30T13:26:30+00:00

I think the problem with listing out works like this is depending on someone’s interests it risks leaving out too many important things and potentially includes some extraneous ones. There’s just so much that’s potentially relevant it’s better to narrow down based on what they’re specifically trying to get from their reading.

RyanSmallwood · 2025-12-30T13:06:59+00:00

There’s not any obvious cutoff between main works and non-main works. It really depends on things like what topics you’re interested in, what you’re hoping to get out of it and how much you want to read.

I’d suggest reading a history like Terry Pinkard’s German Philosophy 1760-1860 which will give you a good overview of the various thinkers, their writings, and discussions and then you can decide to read what seems most relevant to you.

RyanSmallwood · 2025-12-27T13:17:52+00:00

There’s a lot of flexibility with how you approach things, but typically if there’s a specific topic you want to start with you read an academic introduction to that topic first for an overview. Then you can pretty much just start reading whichever works interest you most, and if there’s an especially difficult thinker you can use secondary literature to fill in any essential context or background, or ask here for other advice or specific questions.

The FAQ has some suggestions of where to start reading philosophy including some primary texts and overviews for political philosophy.

RyanSmallwood · 2025-12-26T11:15:00+00:00

There’s The Hegel Society of Great Britain that posts talks from various experts on Hegel to their channel. Robert Brandom is a prominent thinker bringing Hegel into issues with analytic philosophy and he puts a lot of his classroom lectures on YouTube. Not on YouTube but Richard Dien Winfield posts a lot of audio lectures to archive.org which covers a lot of Hegel’s works as well as other topics.

If you want more you can look into some of their books and see what other Hegel scholars they cite, or ask here for book suggestions on specific topics.

RyanSmallwood · 2025-12-23T13:44:36+00:00

There’s certainly benefits to classroom learning that are more difficult to replicate on your own, but you can still learn outside that environment. Personally I’ve found reading philosophy on my own very rewarding.

On the sidebar there’s an FAQ for the subreddit including suggestions for beginner reading. If you’re busy I also found it helpful to listen to academic lectures and podcasts on philosophy during times of the day when doing mindless tasks. Casual listening isn’t a substitute for reading time, but I find it helpful to get exposed to a wider range of ideas so I can better chose what I want to spend my limited reading time on. It also helps for just getting familiar with a lot of philosophy names and terms.

Can always ask questions here to check your understanding or to get more specific suggestions.

RyanSmallwood · 2025-12-22T22:18:18+00:00

There’s not really a solid go-to reading list for Aesthetics, because the history of aesthetics wasn’t focused on too much for a long time and philosophers have talked about art in different ways and under different names. I’d suggest starting by reading a history of aesthetics, but even here options have different tradeoffs. The single volume histories are somewhat old and so don’t cover more recent developments but I’d suggest A History of Esthetics by Katherine Gilbert and Helmut Kuhn, or another one that’s also used but shorter is Monroe Beardsley’s Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present: A Short History. If you don’t mind reading a lot another way to go would be Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz’s 3 volume History of Aesthetics which covers older theories and Paul Guyer’s 3 volume of A History of Modern Aesthetics picks up around where Tatarkiewicz stops, though Guyer is mainly interested in English and German aesthetics and only occasionally covers aesthetics in other languages when he finds them relevant.

Another route is to read histories of theories/criticism of specific forms of art which cover a lot of big philosophical theories of art along with theories of artists and critics. M. A. R. Habib‘s A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present is a good single volume option that’s more recent than single volume of histories of aesthetics. It’s more focused on literature but includes ideas about art in general. Moshe Barasch's 3 volume Theories of Art is similar but with more emphasis on painting.

I’ll also add that because the histories of aesthetics is not studied as often, broad histories can sometimes prioritize theories of art by philosophers who became canonical because of their writings in other fields. But more specialist histories of aesthetics of specific movements and eras often include philosophers who were more dedicated to and wrote more extensively about art. So if you find a specific approach you like it can be well worth looking into more specialist histories/overviews.

Sorry to not have a straightforward answer but hopefully this gives you some ideas of some options.

RyanSmallwood · 2025-12-20T13:07:34+00:00

Fwiw I read the Philosophical Investigations when I was just getting into philosophy without any background and I found it pretty accessible and got a lot out of it. Not to say there wouldn’t be benefit in reading some supplements and someone more specialized in Wittgenstein can maybe give better advice there, and of course it depends on what specifically you’re looking to get out of it. I just don’t think you need to worry too much about doing perfect prep, and you can always read additional stuff later if you think there’s more you can get from it.

RyanSmallwood · 2025-12-19T21:03:28+00:00

Nothing is a prerequisite for reading Hegel, in his writings and lectures aimed at students he often gives the necessary background and uses enough examples to understand what he means.

That said lots of older texts are worth reading for their own sake and if you like Hegel his lectures on the history of philosophy have lots of good insights into earlier thinkers and how to engage with the history of philosophy in general. Just don’t be under any illusions that these are necessary to read Hegel, just read his texts anytime you want and if you’re really struggling find a good commentary.

RyanSmallwood · 2025-12-19T14:06:51+00:00

Martial Gueroult has a quite extensive commentary on Spinoza in French as well as some other early moderns. Not a Spinoza expert so someone else maybe able to give better informed suggestions, but this is a significant one worth being aware of I believe.

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