A Room of One's Own is a very clear example of how creative thinkers connect and present things in novel ways.Based on the text of a talk given by Virginia Woolf at an all-female Cambridge college, Ro
Why do we attempt to justify decisions that are clearly irrational? The answer lies in "cognitive dissonance," the feeling of mental discomfort we experience when we hold two contradictory beliefs at
Rawls' 1971 text links the idea of social justice to a basic sense of fairness that recognizes human rights and freedoms. Controversially, though, it also accepts differences in the distribution of go
Originally published in 1861, Mill's great work systematically details and defends the doctrine of utilitarianism. Arguing first that a "morally good" action is one that increases the general sum of h
Few works can claim to form the foundation stones of one entire academic discipline, let alone two, but Thucydides's celebrated History of the Peloponnesian War is not only one of the first great work
In his ground-breaking 1936 study The General Theory, Keynes argues that traditional economics has misunderstood the causes of unemployment. Employment is not determined by the price of labor; it is d
The Age of Revolution is the first of four works by Eric Hobsbawm that collectively synthesize the ideas he developed over a lifetime spent studying the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Hobsbawm's v
Excited by the scientific breakthroughs of the day, David Hume set out to construct a science of the mind. 1748's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is the result. A work that had a huge influe
Thomas Piketty is a fine example of an evaluative thinker. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, he not only provides detailed and sustained explanations of why he sees existing arguments relating t
Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy – not to mention one of the most challenging. Its topic is the nature of human knowledge, and
German sociologist Max Weber’s 1919 lecture Politics as a Vocation is widely regarded as a masterpiece of political theory and sociology. Its central strength lies in Weber’s deployment of masterful i
More than 2,500 years after it was written, Symposium remains a key text for philosophers, historians, writers, artists and politicians. Plato imagines seven important historical figures, including th
Few works of history make as well-structured a case for the importance of studying continuity, rather than change, than Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples.Hourani’s work had three major ai
In Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein presents a radical approach to the philosophy of language and the mind, setting out a startlingly fresh conception of philosophy itself. Wittgenste
Published in 1651, Leviathan examines where kings get their authority to rule and what they must, in turn, do for their people. Hobbes argues that kings do not have a divine right to hold power; they
Of all the controversies facing historians today, few are more divisive or more important than the question of how the Holocaust was possible. What led thousands of Germans – many of them middle-aged
A key theme of Gayatri Spivak's work is agency: the ability of the individual to make their own decisions. While Spivak's main aim is to consider ways in which "subalterns" – her term for the indigeno
"How do we know what knowledge is? In his remarkable 1963 article, Gettier proves that Plato's 2000-year-old definition of knowledge is flawed-in just 930 words.
American political scientist Robert Putnam wasn’t the first person to recognize that social capital – the relationships between people that allow communities to function well – is the grease that oils
John Locke’s 1689 Two Treatises of Government is a key text in the history of political theory – one whose influence remains marked on modern politics, the American Constitution and beyond.Two Treatis
