Philosophy

The poems of two of China’s most influential classical poets: Tu Fu, called “China’s Shakespeare” (BBC), and Li Po, the subject of Ha Jin’s The Banished Immortal and “China’s most beloved poet”...

'Better mad with the crowd than sane all alone'In these witty, Machiavellian aphorisms, unlikely Spanish priest Baltasar Gracian shows us how to exploit friends and enemies alike to thrive in a world of deception and illusion.Introducing Little Black...

A groundbreaking treatise by one of the great mathematicians of our age, who outlines a style of thinking by which great ideas are conceived.What inspires and spurs on a great idea? Can we train ourselves to think in a way that will enable world-changing...

You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide...

Edmund Burke was one of the foremost philosophers of the eighteenth century and wrote widely on aesthetics, politics and society. In this landmark work, he propounds his theory that the sublime and the beautiful should be regarded as distinct and wholly...

[T]he present groundwork is nothing more than the identification and vindication of the supreme principle of morality.' In the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Immanuel Kant makes clear his two central intentions: first, to uncover the...

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary thinkers in Western philosophy. Here he sets out his subversive views in a series of aphorisms on subjects ranging from art to arrogance, boredom to passion, science to vanity, rejecting conventional...

First published in French in 1907, Henri Bergson’s L’évolution créatrice is a scintillating and radical work by one of the great French philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This outstanding new...

Although dour in appearance and formidable in reputation, Friedrich Nietzsche was an ardent practitioner of the art of poetry—known in twelfth-century Provençal as "the gay science." This extensive collection of prose and verse offers a...

Two of the most important Buddhist tracts from JapanA Penguin ClassicBoth of these works on life’s fleeting pleasures are by Buddhist monks from medieval Japan, but each represents a different worldview. In Essays in Idleness, his lively and...

Herman Hesse's classic novel has delighted, inspired, and influenced generations of readers, writers, and thinkers. In this story of a wealthy Indian Brahmin who casts off a life of privilege to seek spiritual fulfillment. Hesse synthesizes disparate...

Universally acclaimed, rapturously reviewed, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and an instant New York Times bestseller, Chanel Miller's breathtaking memoir gives readers the privilege of knowing her not just as Emily...

Discover Virginia Woolf's landmark essay on women's struggle for independence and creative opportunity A Room of One's Own is one of Virginia Woolf's most influential works and widely recognized for its extraordinary contribution to the women's movement...

'The perfect guide for a course correction in life' -- Deepak ChopraIf we open our eyes and see clearly it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant An insightful exploration into the origins and history of Zen Buddhism from...

Timaeus and Critias is a Socratic dialogue in two parts. A response to an account of an ideal state told by Socrates, it begins with Timaeus’s theoretical exposition of the cosmos and his story describing the creation of the universe, from its very...

"Upon the whole, he added nothing to his own happiness by all the dangers, the fatigues, and the perpetual anxiety which he had incurred in the pursuit of unlimited power," - Suetonius on Julius Caesar. "Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob,...

"It is not the well-being of individuals that makes cities great, but the well-being of the community"Few figures in intellectual history have proved as notorious and ambiguous as Niccolò Machiavelli. But while his treatise The Prince made his name...

Best known for his revolutionary free-market economics treatise The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher. In his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he investigated the flip side of economic self-interest: the...

Blending intellectual speculation with anecdote and personal reflection, the Renaissance thinker and writer Montaigne pioneered the modern essay. This selection contains his idiosyncratic and timeless writings on subjects as varied as the virtues of...

In late 1888, only weeks before his final collapse into madness, Nietzsche (1844-1900) set out to compose his autobiography, and Ecce Homo remains one of the most intriguing yet bizarre examples of the genre ever written. In this extraordinary work...