100 books like What Is Philosophy For?

The opening of this book about how public transport systems have been designed to get men where they need to go (to the city center for work) but not women where we often go (all over neighborhoods caring for people) just blew my mind.

I loved how Criado Perez challenges so many things we take for granted – like why you can go out with a client after work and expense your steak and drinks but not the babysitter you have to hire. Her explanations of how the world is basically designed for men helped me understand why the voice control system in my car never seems to understand me and why there’s always a line for the ladies’ room.

Based on scientific arguments, this book shows how strongly incorrect drives are stuck in our brains, causing us to think that we are making a logical decision, while this is not the case.

The best example I tell everybody: Look at your attic that you want to clean out. You empty your cupboards, and almost always, a large part goes back into the cupboard because it is a waste. But if you are offered the same stuff for free, you usually don't want it.

The message of this example: Your brain finds it difficult to get rid of something you have, and it is a non-rational reaction that occurs in our fixed brain.

The investment world is dominated by players who essentially have the same beliefs and say the same things. I love writers who offer a unique perspective informed by an independent framework.

One of the greatest challenges in investing is distinguishing luck from skill. Taleb does a masterful job of raising the readers’ awareness of this common oversight. I believe reading this book will make you a more thoughtful investor. 

This is a slim, passionate, personal book by one of the most significant American educators and activists of the last century. It’s part of her “teaching” trilogy (the other two books cover Community and Freedom) and is founded on the belief that “one could choose to educate for the practice of freedom.” Critical thinking is often treated as an emotionless, logical discipline, but this book shows how it’s rooted in a deep human longing for understanding—and is also vital to informed, equitable democratic participation. Teaching Critical Thinking is a profound testament to the significance of emotionally, politically, and intellectually engaged pedagogy – and why these three things are ultimately inseparable. 

In this book, one of the great philosophers of the first half of the 20th century sketches his take on two central philosophical tasks -- explaining what kinds of things exist in reality, and how they are related, and delineating what we can know and how we know it.  In so doing, Russell illustrates the new method of logical and linguistic analysis he used in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918), to lay the foundations of an epistemological and metaphysical system rivaling the great systems of the past. A key transitional figure linking the history of the subject to contemporary concerns, he raised logic and language to central subjects of philosophical study in their own right, without losing sight of their relevance for more traditional philosophical quests.

Dussel does what Latin American philosophers allegedly should not do. That is what I love about this book.

Whereas Latin American philosophers allegedly should take for granted assumptions from supposedly “enlightened” philosophers who have worked in the Global North, Dussel rejects such assumptions, say, the one that philosophers should never talk about imperialism as if this political issue were philosophically irrelevant.

Whereas Latin American philosophers allegedly should only tackle disputes in metaphysics raised by philosophers from the Global North, Dussel articulates disputes these likes usually ignore, e.g., the dispute on how or under which conditions a liberation could exist.

Whereas Latin American philosophers allegedly should import Northern right-wing policies of depoliticization, Dussel politicizes philosophy in a left-wing vein while opposing the war-driven attitudes of the likes of Henry Kissinger. 

This book, given as three lectures in 1970 by a 28-year-old wunderkind, made its author one of the greatest philosophers of our era.  Just as Russell transformed the philosophy of his day by demonstrating the significance of an advanced system logic he helped to found, so Kripke transformed the philosophy descending from Russell by inventing an expressively richer version logic, and illustrating its significance. This book, more than any other,  provided the starting point for contemporary metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. It is, nevertheless, remarkably accessible.  Delivered in a delightfully informal style, it presents ideas capable of far-reaching technical elaboration in their simplest and most comprehensible form, revealing their intuitive essence. If you want to understand philosophy today, you need to read this book.

Immanuel Kant is one of the most important figures in the history of philosophy – specifically regarding metaphysics – because he discovered the internal logic and organization for all of philosophical metaphysics. The book with which Kant accomplished that monumental feat is extremely difficult to read and understand. Therefore, Kant wrote an easier-to-read version, and that is the book that I am recommending: Philosophy of Material Nature. This book is highly affordable and readable.

The book that the Philosophy of Material Nature paraphrases is, of course, the Critique of Pure Reason. What all of these works show us is that philosophical metaphysics naturally divides into theological metaphysics, cosmological metaphysics, and psychological metaphysics. Kant’s achievement is standardly characterized as the articulation of philosophical metaphysics as a science. The general term for such a science is “transcendental philosophy.” Thus, the rest of the books in this recommendation list relate to… show more.

An Italian aristocrat who led a magical order in the 1920s, Evola is a fascinating and controversial figure who has become influential in the New Right. Even though I am a Leftist, I find many of his ideas important and helpful—along with his fellow “traditionalists.” Rene Guenon and Fritjof Schuon. Evola believes we are in a period of accelerating decline known as the Kali Yuga, the age of iron and materialism, where the true spiritual knowledge has been almost entirely lost. He argues there is no way to stop the destruction of this civilization and it is best to focus on self-transformation through alchemical and magical practices. His books on Buddhism, eroticism, tantra, and alchemy are also fascinating! 

Even though this book is really for adults, I am recommending it to parents because I love to have meaningful conversations with my kids and grandkids.

This book helps me answer their hard questions on race, God, sex, punishment, gender, and truth. The author, Scott Hershovitz, also suggests ways I can keep our conversations flowing with questions like: What do you think? Why do you think so? Can you think of any reasons you might be wrong?