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Stoicism

The Practicing Stoic

A non-academic work, perfect as an introduction for readers unfamiliar with the basics of Stoic principles. Focusses on Roman Stoicism. Feel free to skip this book if you have read about Stoicism before.

Book

Thing


Branches and schools​

Pre-Socratics​
  • The First Philosophers: The Presocratis and the Sophists (Waterfield)
  • The Presocratic Philosophers (Kirk, Raven, Schofield)
Plato and Neo-Platonism​
  • Plato: Phaedo, Euthyphro, Symposium, Timaeus, Laws, Phaedrus, Sophist
  • Xenophon: Conversations of Socrates
  • Plotinus: Enneads
  • Julian the Apostate:
Stoicism​
  • The Practicing Stoic (Farnsworth)
  • The Cambradige Companion to Stoics
  • Marcus Aurelius' Meditations: Annotated Edition
  • Enchiridion video series by Sadler
  • Cicero De Officiis
  • The Philosophy of Crysippus (Gould)
  • The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition
Existentialism​
  • Copleston vol. 9 - 11
  • Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, by Walter Kaufmann
  • Either/Or (Kierkegaard)
  • Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche) or The Portable Nietzsche
  • Sartre: Being and Nothingness, No Exit, Existentialism is a Humanism
  • Camus: The Stranger

Subjects/fields​

Metaphysics​
  • Inwagen: Introduction to Metaphysics
  • Plato: Phaedo
  • Aristotle's Metaphysics
  • Kant: Critique of Pure Reason
  • Being and Time (Heidegger)
Epistemology​
  • Plato: Theaetetus
  • Descartes: Discorse on the Method
  • The Rationalists (Cottingham)
  • The Empiricists (Woolhouse)
Science​
  • Chalmers: Introduction to Philosophy of Science
  • Lindberg: Origins of Western Science
  • Two books by Lloyd on Greek Science
Ethics​
  • James Rachels: Introduction to Ethics
Political thought​
Important founding works​
  • The Prince (Machiavelli)
  • Leviathan (Hobbes)
  • Social Contract (Rousseau)
  • Second Treatise of Government (Locke)
Classical Liberalism​
  • John Stuart Mill's On Liberty
  • Rousseau's Social Contract
  • Rawls's A Theory of Justice
Socialism​
  • Kolakowski: Main currents of Marxism (I’d buy the whole thing as a reference work, but for our purposes I’d read only the first volume)
  • Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism
Minarchism and Anarchism​
  • The Conquest of Bread (Kropotkin)
  • Anarchy, State and Utopia (Nozick)
Progress and primitivism​
  • Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited (Huxley)
  • Industrial Society and its Future (Kaczynski)

Time periods​

Hellenic and Roman philosophy​
  • Copleston vol. 1
  • The Hellenistic Philosophers by Long and Sedley (vol. 1 + 2)
  • From Epicurus to Epictetus (Long)
Medieval philosophy​
  • Copleston vol. 2 + 3
  • Aquinas
Continental philosophy​
  • Copleston vol. 4 - 7
  • Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit
  • The Portable Nietzsche by Kaufmann (and the Kaufmann biography)
Analytical philosophy​
  • Compleston vol. 8
  • Logic for Dummies (Zegarelli)
  • The two books by Wittgenstein
Post-structualism​
  • Copleston vol. 9
  • The Foucault Reader