The most recommended ontology books

Our views of how the future will unfold affect how we behave in the present.

This book summarizes the interdisciplinary research into how people anticipate the future and how this influences decisions. With the exception of one highly technical chapter (whose results are reprised in plain language), the book is very accessible.

I stumbled upon this one because Trump had it on his desk—go figure. Tillich, a Christian philosopher, explains how fear and anxiety drive people to irrationality. It’s wild because the very ideas he discusses were twisted for Trump’s campaign.

But Tillich’s insights on how fear pushes us to lose our mind—and how to stay courageous when the world seems to have lost its grip—are pure gold. This book is as relevant as ever.

Marder’s book is a brilliant exploration of plants in a philosophical (not a botanical) sense. It’s one of the most eye-opening (and accessible) philosophy books I’ve ever read, illuminating a swathe of life on Earth I honestly had never thought much about before.

Marder writes clearly and cogently about how we’ve thought about plants and how we’ve been wrong: we’ve been blind to plants; we’ve shaped them as our absolute opposite; we’ve treated them only instrumentally, exploiting them for what they can do for us. And then he makes a real effort to think through what plants are–what vegetal being actually is. One of the most mind-blowing things, he argues, in my view, is that we are much closer to plants than we think–we have our own buried “vegetal being.”

Marder’s elaboration of plant life–and how we’ve misunderstood and abused it–is literally the theoretical scaffold of all fiction and film… show more.

Dr. Neil Theise is a physician scientist whose been on a spiritual journey since childhood. A constant part of his explorations has been to understand how complex systems behave that illuminate the very nature of life itself, from quantum foam to single-celled organisms, to human beings, to entire ecosystems, and beyond.

In this book, Neil elegantly illuminates in clear and accessible prose the many surprising underlying connections within a universe that is itself one vast complex system. He takes us to the frontiers of human knowledge, where science meets philosophy and beyond.

He restores wonder to our experience of the every day, allowing us to approach the world with greater understanding and a renewed sense of meaning.

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. 

Beauty transcends transience and remains a thing of beauty that is a joy forever. The words of the odes of John Keats are familiar, but we forget that the poet was originally apprenticed to a surgeon in 1811. He knew disease and death firsthand, and many of his odes were written while he himself was suffering.

His medical training and recognition of death informed his vivid imagery; his awareness of the brevity of life compelled him to capture beauty in the ephemeral and transcendence in the transient. I boldly propose that Keats’s poetry would resonate with this generation of young readers. They will lean into its musicality and find comfort in the cadence of his verse.   

This book challenges us to leave behind the conventional distinctions and classifications that separate plants from animals and humans. Instead, Wood urges us to view different species and kingdoms from the standpoint of their collaborative being-with. Seemingly familiar realities, including human and vegetal realities, become strange, indeed, uncanny. Throughout, he focuses on plants—trees, above all—to illustrate the main point of his important study. Wood’s philosophical concern is similar to my own: he wishes to save plants from the unfair neglect, to which philosophers have historically submitted them, and to restore to them their rightful place in the history of life and of thought.

As with all Oliver Burkeman's writing, it challenges my thinking, my perspectives on life, society's assumptions and our typical daily habits. It really challenges our relationship with time which is a fundamental part of being human and starts prompting us to rethink how we consider concepts of productivity, success, and how we spend our time.

The first in a series of surreal, poetic short novels, set in the fictional city of Ravicka, a “linguist-traveler” arrives during an unspecified state of emergency. Event Factory feels like a travelog of an unsettling yet beautiful dream. I return to this book often and always get something different—the events evaporate, but the details remain. You can easily enjoy Event Factory as a standalone novel. Gladman is a master. Fun fact: Dorothy, the small feminist press which publishes these books, began specifically to launch these singular novels. 

If aliens land and ask me what it’s like to be a human, I’ll give them Heidegger’s first book, Being and Time. Of course, that might prompt them to destroy all humans out of frustration at the difficulty of his writing, but if they persevere, they will find the best description of what it’s like to live out your time on this planet (One Hundred Years of Solitude comes in second).