Subject: Philosophy
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A Modern Utopia H. G. Wells
Wells' uncanny ability to highlight the problems which are now most acute and supply tentative solutions that allow a maximum of individual freedom merits serious consideration. A Modern Utopia is one of the first important blueprints for the modern welfare state and an early major statement of Wells' idea of the... read more »
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Areopagitica John Milton
Areopagitica: A speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England is John Milton's famous tract against censorship. Named after a speech by Isocrates, a fifth century BC Athenian orator, the work is counted as one of the most influential and inspired defenses of the right to freedom of... read more »
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A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers Henry David Thoreau
Based on a trip with his brother in 1839, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is an excellent example of Thoreau's talent for naturalistic writing. In exquisite detail Thoreau depicts the nature that surrounds him over the course of his trip. One of only two books to be published during his lifetime, Thoreau... read more »
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Beyond Good and Evil Friedrich Nietzsche
A scathing and powerful critique of philosophy, religion and science. Here Nietzsche presents us with problems and challenges that are as troubling as they are inspiring, while at the same time outlining the virtues, ideas, and practices which will characterise the philosophy of the future. Relentless, energetic... read more »
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Candide Voltaire
Political satire doesn't age well, but occasionally a diatribe contains enough art and universal mirth to survive long after its timeliness has passed. Candide is such a book. Penned by that Renaissance man of the Enlightenment, Voltaire, Candide is steeped in the political and philosophical controversies of the... read more »
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Crito Plato
Crito is a short but important dialogue by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. It is a conversation between Socrates and his wealthy friend Crito regarding justice (δικη), injustice (αδικια), and the appropriate response to injustice. Socrates thinks that injustice may not be answered with injustice, and... read more »
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Discourses on Livy Niccolò Machiavelli
The Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius is one of the masterpieces by Machiavelli. This work narrates the writer's comments as to how a democratic government should be established. Through the comparison of Venice and Rome a detailed analysis of different kinds of governments is given. Machiavelli has... read more »
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Erewhon Samuel Butler
Setting out to make his fortune in a far-off country, a young traveller discovers the remote and beautiful land of Erewhon and is given a home among its extraordinarily handsome citizens. But their visitor soon discovers that this seemingly ideal community has its faults - here crime is treated indulgently as a... read more »
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Erewhon Revisited Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler's Erewhon Revisited is a satirical sequel to his highly successful Erewhon. Mr. Higgs meets many unpleasant accidents and surprises in Butler's utopian nation. A new religion has come into existence as a result of distorted and misunderstood sayings, and corruption has taken over society. Butler's... read more »
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Eugenics and Other Evils G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton was an early critic of the philosophy of eugenics, expressing this opinion in his book, Eugenics and Other Evils. Its advocates regarded eugenics as a social philosophy for the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.Today it is widely regarded as a brutal... read more »
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Euthyphro Plato
These four dialogues enact the trial and execution of Socrates, presenting a dialectical process that shows not only why the Athenians condemned him to death but, much more to the point, the reason why Socrates lived and devoted himself to examining the meaning of life. These works not only offer the best... read more »
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Free Culture Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig, “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era”, masterfully argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers... read more »
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Lazarus and his Beloved Kahlil Gibran
The garden outside of the home of Lazarus and his mother and sisters in Bethany Late afternoon of Manday, the day after the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the grave. At curtain rise: Mary is at right gazing up towards the hills. Martha is seated at her loom near the house door, left. The Madman is seated... read more »
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Letters on England Voltaire
Also known as the Lettres anglaises ou philosophiques, Voltaire's response to his exile in England offered the French public of 1734 a panoramic view of British culture. Perceiving them as a veiled attack against the ancient regime, however, the French government ordered the letters burned and Voltaire persecuted. read more »
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Leviathan Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Influenced by the English Civil War, Hobbes wrote that chaos or civil war-situations identified with a state of nature and the famous motto Bellum omnium contra omnes ("the war of all against all")-could only be averted by strong central... read more »
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Nature Ralph Waldo Emerson
Originally published anonymously, Nature was the first modern essay to recommend the appreciation of the outdoors as an all-encompassing positive force. Emerson’s writings were recognized as uniquely American in style and content, and launched the idea of going for a walk as a new way of looking at the world... read more »
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Optimism Helen Keller
Optimism is an important essay whcih was written by American author and lecturer Helen Keller. Due to illness, Keller was left blind and deaf at a young age and spent a great deal of years lecturing on behalf of those with similar issues and and facing the same problems that she has. In optimism she writes about how... read more »
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Orthodoxy G. K. Chesterton
This book is meant to be a companion to "Heretics," and to put the positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained of the book called "Heretics" because it merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy. This book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is... read more »
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Phaedo Plato
The Phaedo is acknowledged to be one of Plato's masterpieces, showing him both as a philosopher and as a dramatist at the height of his powers. For its moving account of the execution of Socrates, the Phaedo ranks among the supreme literary achievements of antiquity. It is also a document crucial to the... read more »
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Philosophical Dictionary Voltaire
The Philosophical Dictionary is one of the most lively, amusing and various books of fact and illustration now in existence; comprising information adapted to every taste and lines of study, delivered with the wit, animation, and ease for which its gifted author was unrivalled. There is scarcely a topic which has... read more »
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Rights of Man Thomas Paine
The authorities in power in England during Thomas Paine’s lifetime saw him as an agent provocateur who used his seditious eloquence to support the emancipation of slaves and women, the demands of working people, and the rebels of the French and American Revolutions. History, on the other hand, has come to regard... read more »
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Siddhartha Hermann Hesse
In the novel, Siddhartha, a young man, leaves his family for a contemplative life, then, restless, discards it for one of the flesh. He conceives a son, but bored and sickened by lust and greed, moves on again. Near despair, Siddhartha comes to a river where he hears a unique sound. This sound signals the true... read more »
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Spirits Rebellious Kahlil Gibran
When first published in the original Arabic, this book aroused considerable agitation and intrigue. It was burned publicly in the Beirut market place by furious church and state officials, who denounced it as poisonous and dangerous to the peace of the country. Gibran himself was exiled. But this was at a time when... read more »
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The Antichrist Friedrich Nietzsche
This work is both an unrestrained attack on Christianity and a further exposition of Nietzsche's will-to-power philosophy so dramatically presented in Zarathustra. Christianity, says Nietzsche, represents 'everything weak, low, and botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism towards all the self-preservative... read more »
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The Book of Tea Kakuzō Okakura
At the turn of the 20th century, in Boston, a small esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the famous salon of Isabella Gardner. It was authored by Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher, art expert, and curator. Little known at the time, Kakuzo would emerge as one of the great... read more »
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The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Dostoyevsky’s towering reputation as one of the handful of thinkers who forged the modern sensibility has sometimes obscured the purely novelistic virtues–brilliant characterizations, flair for suspense and melodrama, instinctive theatricality–that made his work so immensely popular in nineteenth-century... read more »
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The Conduct of Life Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson's The Conduct of Life is among the gems of his mature works. First published in the year of Abraham Lincoln's election as President, this work poses the questions of human freedom and fate. The book, here newly edited from the original 1860 edition and fully annotated to illuminate and trace... read more »
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The Dawn of Day Friedrich Nietzsche
When Nietzsche called his book The Dawn of Day, he was far from giving it a merely fanciful title to attract the attention of that large section of the public which judges books by their titles rather than by their contents. The Dawn of Day represents, figuratively, the dawn of Nietzsche's own philosophy. Hitherto... read more »
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The Discovery of the Future H. G. Wells
The Discovery of the Future is a philosophical lecture by H. G. Wells that argues for the knowability of the future. It was originally delivered to the Royal Institution on January 24, 1902. Before appearing in book form. Wells begins by distinguishing between "two divergent types of mind," one that judges and... read more »
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The Earth Gods Kahlil Gibran
The last book to be published while Gibran was still in this world, came into the poet's hands two weeks before he was to lay aside all earthly volumes. He had a peculiar feeling of tenderness for this book, unlike what he felt for any of the others. 'Because,' he said, 'it was written out of the poet's hell—a... read more »