"How We Think" by John Dewey is a groundbreaking exploration of the process of thinking and its role in education and problem-solving. In this influential work, Dewey delves into the nature of intelligence, inquiry, and reflective thought, offering valuable insights into how individuals can enhance their thinking abilities and engage in meaningful learning experiences. The book begins by challenging traditional notions of thinking as a passive, linear...

Similar to Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explores another facet of good living by outlining the best governing practices that benefit the majority, and not the minority. In The Politics, he defines various institutions and how they should operate within an established system. The Politics provides an analysis of contemporary government as it relates to all people. Aristotle discusses the positive and negative qualities of authority and how they affect...

Considered the inventor of the essay itself, Michel de Montaigne published Essays (Essais, literally "Attempts") in 1850. Known for his skill at merging serious intellectual debate with personal anecdotes, his vast work collects together some of the most influential essays the world has ever seen, shaping the thoughts Blaise Pascal, René Descartes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Stefan Zweig, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Isaac

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"Bertrand Russell was one of the greatest logicians since Aristotle, and one of the most important philosophers of the past two hundred years. The Problems of Philosophy, one of the most popular works in Russell's prolific collection of writings, has become core reading in philosophy. Clear and accessible, this little book is an intelligible and stimulating guide to those problems of philosophy which often mistakenly make the subject seem too lofty...

The eighteenth-century philosopher’s landmark treatise against monarchy that inspired the French and American Revolutions.
 “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
 
With these stirring words, Jean-Jacques Rousseau begins The Social Contract—the first shot in a battle of ideas that would set the stage for the American War of Independence and the French Revolution....

How do we decide what is "good" and what is "bad"? According to the ethical theory of Utilitarianism, to do good is to "always perform that act, of those available, that will bring the most happiness or the least unhappiness." By far the most widely read introduction to this theory, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism is one of the most important and controversial works of moral philosophy ever written. In this major contribution to ethical history,...

The Subjection of Women by John Mill was first published in 1869, written in 1861 about women's rights. The ideas from this essay John developed jointly with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill. John Mill was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century, and English philosopher, and a civil servant and Member of the Parliament. John shows us how institutions are vital to the happiness of society and to the individual and as these institutions are...

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"Moral philosophy, or the science of human nature, may be treated after two different manners; each of which has its peculiar merit, and may contribute to the entertainment, instruction, and reformation of mankind. The one considers man chiefly as born for action; and as influenced in his measures by taste and sentiment; pursuing one object, and avoiding another, according to the value which these objects seem to possess, and

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First published posthumously in 1779, "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" is Scottish philosopher David Hume's classic work of religious philosophy. This detailed and exhaustive examination of the nature and existence of God was begun by Hume in 1750, but not completed until shortly before his death in 1776. Hume was an important and influential English Empiricist, along with other English philosophers such as Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Thomas...