Philosophy Books for Beginners: By Tradition and by Question

The best philosophy books for beginners are short and start from a question you already have. Begin with one clear introduction, such as Thomas Nagel’s What Does It All Mean? or Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy, then read a primary text you can finish in an evening: Plato’s Apology, Epictetus’s Handbook, the Analects or Al-Ghazali’s Deliverance from Error.

Most lists of philosophy books to read offer a single canon, usually Greek and European, in rough date order. This guide is arranged two other ways: by tradition, so you can start in India, China or Baghdad as easily as in Athens, and by question, so you can follow the problem that actually bothers you. Every title links to its page in the site’s Book corner, which says where to start reading.

How to choose your first philosophy book

Four choices matter more than the title.

• Introduction or primary text? An introduction gives you the map: the question, the main answers, the vocabulary. A primary text, in the philosopher’s own words, shows the argument being made, gaps and all. Read one of each, introduction first.
• Short first. A dialogue of seventy pages read twice teaches more than a treatise of five hundred abandoned on page forty. Leave the great systems, such as Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae or Spinoza’s Ethics, until you have a reason to read them.
• Choose the translation with care. Most classics reach English readers in translation, and translations differ a great deal. For terse texts such as the Daodejing or the Dhammapada, compare two side by side. For texts dense with technical terms, such as the Analects or Aristotle’s ethics, pick an edition with notes.
• Read with a question. Decide what you want to find out first, such as whether morality is objective. A question tells you what to look for.

The Book corner rates each title Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced. Beginner means readable without background, not simple.

Short philosophy books for beginners

• What Does It All Mean? by Thomas Nagel (1987). Short chapters, each on one question, from other minds and free will to death and the meaning of life. Read them in order, one per sitting.
• The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell (1912). Read the first chapter, on appearance and reality, and the last, on the value of philosophy, then the middle.
• The Elements of Moral Philosophy by James Rachels (1986) and Ethics: The Fundamentals by Julia Driver (2006). Two compact introductions to ethics; Rachels starts with the objections beginners usually raise.
• Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction by Stephen Mumford (2012), which starts from an ordinary table, and Logic: A Very Short Introduction by Graham Priest (2000), which starts from validity.
• What Is This Thing Called Science? by Alan Chalmers (1976), on observation, induction, Popper and Kuhn.
• Death by Shelly Kagan (2012); start with the chapters on why death is bad, then go back to the metaphysics.

For history rather than problems, four beginner-level surveys each cover a different world. Anthony Gottlieb’s The Dream of Reason runs from the Presocratics to the Renaissance. Peter Adamson’s Philosophy in the Islamic World begins with the translation of Greek works into Arabic. Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri’s Classical Indian Philosophy starts with the Upaniṣads and early Buddhism. Bryan W. Van Norden’s Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy is best read from Confucius straight to the debate between Mencius and Xunzi on human nature.

Disclosure: the book behind this site’s question cards, The Coordinates of Thought, is by the site’s founder, Syed Raheel Shahzad. It is a reference map rather than a book to read straight through: you arrive with a name, a term, a date or a question and look it up.

Beginner-level titles in the Book corner:

Classic philosophy books you can read in a weekend

These primary texts are short enough to finish in a day or two and clear enough to read without a teacher.

• Apology by Plato. Socrates on trial, defending a life of questioning. Read it in one sitting, ideally with the short Crito.
• Symposium by Plato. Speeches in praise of love at a dinner party; read Diotima’s teaching first.
• Handbook by Epictetus. A Stoic manual built on the line between what is up to us and what is not. Read chapter 1 several times before going on.
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. An emperor’s notes to himself. Dip into Books II to IV, and read Book I last.
• Analects of Confucius. Sayings on learning, ritual and humaneness. Books 1 to 4 first, in a translation with notes.
• Daodejing attributed to Laozi. Eighty-one short chapters on the Way and on acting without forcing.
• Dhammapada. Verses traditionally attributed to the Buddha. Read the first two chapters slowly.
• The Questions of King Milinda. A king questions the monk Nagasena about the self; the chariot argument and the questions on rebirth take only an evening.
• Bhagavad Gita. A warrior refuses to fight and is answered. Chapters 1 to 3 hold the dilemma and the first replies.
• Deliverance from Error by Al-Ghazali. An account of doubt, of the senses and of reason itself, and of how he came through it. The opening invites comparison with Descartes.
• Hayy ibn Yaqzan by Ibn Tufayl. A child grows up alone on an island and reasons his way to the nature of the world. Go straight to the story and read the introduction afterwards.
• Tannishō. A disciple’s record of the Pure Land teacher Shinran. Read the first ten sections, then section 3 again.
• The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. Is a life without ultimate meaning worth living? Read the opening section, then the short last chapter.

Philosophy books for beginners, by tradition

Starting points from the Book corner, tradition by tradition. The Traditions page introduces each one.

Greek and Roman

After the Apology and the Handbook, try Seneca’s Letters on Ethics, the first dozen in order and then by subject. In Plato’s Republic, read Books I and II, then the cave in Book VII. For Aristotle, read Books I and II of the Nicomachean Ethics, then the books on friendship. Begin Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things at Book III, on death.

Indian

The Bhagavad Gita is the gentlest entry. For The Upanishads, start with the Kaṭha, where a boy questions Death himself. Then try a school text: the Sāṃkhya Kārikā can be read in one sitting, and the Tattvārtha Sūtra is a compact statement of Jain philosophy. Bimal Krishna Matilal’s The Character of Logic in India covers the schools’ rules of debate.

Buddhist

Begin with the Dhammapada and The Questions of King Milinda, then The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, a founding text of Chan (Zen): read the autobiography and the verse contest first. Śāntideva’s The Way of the Bodhisattva rewards starting at chapter 6, on patience. Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way is advanced; read chapter 24 first, with a commentary.

Chinese

After the Analects and the Daodejing, read the seven Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, especially the first two. For political thought, Han Feizi is the classic statement of rule by impersonal standards; start with “The Two Handles”. Later Confucian thought opens up in Instructions for Practical Living, the recorded teaching of Wang Yangming.

Islamic and Persian

Beside Deliverance from Error and Hayy ibn Yaqzan, Ibn Hazm’s The Ring of the Dove is an eleventh-century treatise on love, and ʿAṭṭār’s The Conference of the Birds is a Persian allegory best read straight through for its frame story. Next, Miskawayh’s The Refinement of Character sets Greek virtue ethics in an Islamic setting, and Ibn Khaldun’s The Muqaddimah, read in an abridgement, asks why societies rise and fall. Alberuni’s India is an eleventh-century Muslim scholar’s study of Indian thought.

Jewish

The Book corner has no Beginner title here yet. The nearest are Judah Halevi’s The Kuzari, whose Part I contains the core of the book, and Martin Buber’s I and Thou, best read a few paragraphs at a time. Maimonides’ The Guide for the Perplexed is advanced; begin with the introduction to Part I, including his instructions to the reader.

African and Africana

H. Odera Oruka’s Sage Philosophy records conversations with individual sages. W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk introduces double consciousness in its first chapter. Then read Paulin Hountondji’s African Philosophy: Myth and Reality for the critique of ethnophilosophy, and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks.

Japanese and Korean

Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, an essay on beauty and dimness, can be read in one evening with the lights low. Alongside the Tannishō, Kuki Shūzō’s The Structure of Iki analyses a single aesthetic ideal. Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō and Yi Hwang (Toegye)’s Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning come later.

Latin American

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Response to Sor Filotea (1691) defends a woman’s right to study. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed is best begun at chapter 2.

Medieval and modern European

Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies (1405) answers the slanders against women of her day, and Augustine’s Confessions turns, in Book XI, to an essay on time. Mill’s On Liberty, Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and William James’s Pragmatism are all rated Beginner.

Philosophy books by question

If a question brought you here, follow it. Each heading links to the card that sets out the rival answers.

Are my choices free?

Start with Nagel’s chapter on free will. Then read the classics in their own words: Section VIII of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, “Of Liberty and Necessity”, argues that freedom and causal necessity are compatible, and Section III of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals argues that morality requires us to think of ourselves as free.

How should I live, and what makes an act right?

After Rachels or Driver, meet the main theories in their sources: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics for character, Kant’s Groundwork for duty and Mill’s Utilitarianism for consequences. Set beside them the Analects on roles and ritual, Epictetus on what is up to us, and Miskawayh on refining character. J. L. Mackie’s Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong asks whether there are moral facts at all; its first chapter stands on its own. Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics applies theory to animals, poverty and life and death.

How do we know anything?

Russell’s Problems is the classic introduction. Then pair Descartes’s Meditations with Al-Ghazali’s Deliverance from Error: both doubt the senses and reason before looking for firm ground, and they find different ground. Hume’s Enquiry (Sections II, IV and V) shows why reasoning from experience is harder to justify than it looks. Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice asks whose testimony gets believed.

Does life have meaning, and what about death?

Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus and the last chapters of Nagel’s book take the question head on. Kagan’s Death asks whether death is bad for the one who dies. Plato’s Phaedo calls philosophy practice for dying, Book III of Lucretius argues that death is nothing to us, and The Conference of the Birds tells the search for meaning as the birds’ long flight to the Simorgh.

Where to start reading philosophy: three first shelves

• If you like arguments: Nagel, then the Apology, then Descartes’s Meditations, then Hume’s Enquiry.
• If you want a way of living: Epictetus’s Handbook, the Analects, the Dhammapada, the Bhagavad Gita. Notice where they agree and where they cannot both be right.
• If you want the whole map: one chapter each from the Indian, Chinese, Islamic and Greek surveys above, then a primary text from whichever world caught you.

Philosophy books read better with other people: the site’s reading groups take a text a section at a time. New to the subject as a whole? Philosophy for beginners suggests ten questions to start with, and Famous philosophers introduces the authors.

Where do you stand?

Every question here has serious answers on more than one side. Pick a card, read the rival answers, then say which you find strongest and why. Members ask, reply and take sides; reading is free for everyone.

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