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Significant Books in Philosophy over the last Quarter-Century?

Brian Leiter

UPDATE (12/16): I’m moving this to the front, in hope of eliciting more comments (thanks to those who have posted so far). More than 1,000 visits to the site yesterday, and while many are law students and faculty, I’m sure there were more philosophers than the 15 who posted. Don’t be bashful!

==================

I thought it might be interesting to invite philosophy faculty and graduate students (and those in cognate fields with significant philosophical interests) to list (and, if you like, comment on) what you take to be the most significant books over roughly the last quarter-century in your field. “Significant” books need not be books you agree with, just ones that are of high quality and have been an important stimulus to additional work. I realize, of course, that articles are often as significant as books in philosophy, and so collections of papers are welcome too. Individuate the sub-fields of philosophy however it makes sense to you to do so. Please don’t post anonymously and say who you are: e.g., “Brian Leiter, Faculty, UT Austin.” Also, try not to list more than three books in each field.

Hopefully, the resulting list will provide some useful guidance (to me and other readers) as to what books deserve attention for those not working in that immediate area.

Here’s my list:

PHILOSOPHY OF LAW:

Joseph Raz, The Authority of Law (Oxford, 1979)
John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford, 1980)
Leslie Green, The Authority of the State (Oxford, 1988)

METAETHICS:

Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Harvard, 1990)
Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Blackwell, 1994)
Peter Railton, Facts, Values and Norms (Cambridge, 2003)

NIETZSCHE STUDIES

Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge, 1990)
Peter Poellner, Nietzsche and Metaphysics (Oxford, 1995)
John Richardson, Nietzsche’s System (Oxford, 1996)

MARX/MARXISM

G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History (Princeton, 1978)
Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge, 1981)
Michael Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology (Harvard, 1996)

FREUD/PSYCHOANALYSIS

John Deigh, The Sources of Moral Agency: Essays on Moral Psychology and Freudian Theory (Cambridge, 1996)
Sebastian Gardner, Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (Cambridge, 1993)
Jonathan Lear, Open-Minded: Working out the Logic of the Soul (Harvard, 1998)

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35 responses to “Significant Books in Philosophy over the last Quarter-Century?”

  1. Chris Bertram

    POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

    Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue.

    John Rawls, Political Liberalism

    Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom.

    ETHICS

    T.M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Another

    Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons

    HISTORY

    Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition.

    Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke and Equality.

    MARXISM

    G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History

    Jon Elster, Making Sense of Marx

    —
    Posted by Chris Bertram, Faculty, University of Bristol, UK

    (And a brief comment on one of Brian's choices: it seems odd to include Geuss's rather good book in such a list as it is a study of another still-living and still-writing philosopher and sociologist.)

    Reply
  2. Mark Engleson

    The ethics list strikes me as a bit quaint.

    I think Pafit's Reasons and Persons deserves to be on that list.
    There's been very mixed reception of Scanlon's book.
    Bernard Williams's Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy seems a better choice.

    Philosophy grad student, UT Austin

    Reply
  3. duncan bell

    Chris Bertram's selection of 'history' texts strikes me as rather odd. interesting as the books by Hampton and Waldron books are, as works of history they are, i would suggest, of far less significance than,

    J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment

    Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought

    Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1572-1651

    Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes

    posted by Duncan Bell, post-doc, University of Cambridge

    Reply
  4. Keith DeRose

    EPISTEMOLOGY

    Peter Unger, IGNORANCE (cheating here: a bit more than 25 years old)
    Fred Dretske, KNOWLEDGE & THE FLOW OF INFORMATION
    Timothy Williamson, KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITS

    Keith DeRose, faculty, Yale

    Reply
  5. Chris Stephens

    PHILOSOPHY of BIOLOGY

    Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976/89)
    Elliott Sober, The Nature of Selection (1984)
    Philip Kitcher, Vaulting Ambition (1985)

    PHILOSOPHY of SCIENCE

    Clark Glymour, Theory and Evidence (1980)
    Van Fraassen, The Scientific Image (1980)
    Wesley Salmon, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (1984)

    DECISION/GAME THEORY

    Richard Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision (1984)
    Brian Skryms, Evolution of the Social Contract (1996)
    James Joyce, The Foundations of Causal Decision Theory (1999)

    Posted by Chris Stephens, Faculty, UBC, Canada

    Reply
  6. Thony Gillies

    Harper, Stalnaker, & Pearce (eds.), Ifs (1981)

    deserves inclusion, but I'm not sure where. Certainly LOGIC/LANGUAGE (Lewis, Stalnaker, Gibbard seminal papers), probably DECISION/GAME THEORY (Stalnaker's leeter to Lewis is a launching point for causal decision theory, Gibbard & Harper, etc.), and also, I'd argue, EPISTEMOLOGY (Lewis's triviality result, subjectivist guide to objective chance, etc.).

    Thony Gillies, Faculty, Harvard

    Reply
  7. Laurie Paul

    METAPHYSICS
    David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds
    Peter van Inwagen, Material Beings

    It's worth noting that metaphysics is an area where lots of seminal work is published in articles rather than books. There are also lots of books in closely related areas which have strongly influenced metaphysics, such as Tim Williamson's Vagueness (which I class in the language/logic category) and Dave Chalmers' The Conscious Mind.

    L.A. Paul, faculty, Univ. of Arizona

    Reply
  8. Kenny Easwaran

    Philosophy of Mathematics:
    Hartry Field, Science Without Numbers
    Bob Hale and Crispin Wright, The Reason's Proper Study

    Graduate Student, Group in Logic and Methodology of Science, UC Berkeley

    Reply
  9. Fritz

    Keeping in mind that one needn't agree with everything or anything in a book to recognize its importance:

    PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
    Jerry Fodor, Psychosemantics – Wow!
    (Fodor's short book dominated phil of mind from before its publication date until well after)
    Fred Dretske, Explaining Behavior
    Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World

    METAPHYSICS
    Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will – wow!
    David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds

    ETHICS (of all kinds)
    Michael Smith, The Moral Problem
    Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality
    Peter Unger, Living High and Letting Die
    Peter Singer, Animal Liberation
    Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

    EPISTEMOLOGY
    Alvin Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition
    (though really it was more the papers around this book than the book itself I suppose)
    William Alston, Epistemic Justification – wow!
    (collected papers – an amazing collection from Alston at his best)

    RELIGION
    William Alston, Perceiving God
    Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief

    I DON'T CARE WHAT AREA – READ THESE BOOKS
    Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations
    Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere
    Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons – wow!
    Jonathan Bennett, The Act Itself

    Reply
  10. Fritz Warfield

    I forgot to sign:

    Ted A. Warfield, faculty, University of Notre Dame

    Reply
  11. graduate student at Harvard

    Ethics:

    Blackburn: The Ruling Passions
    Gibbard: Wise Choices Apt Feelings
    Korsgaard: The Sources of Normativity*

    Philosophy of Language:

    Kripke: Naming and Necessity
    Dummett: anything really, but I suppose I'd put _The Seas of Language_ at the top; especially the two papers entitled "What is a Theory of Meaning?"

    Free Will:

    Kane: The Significance of Free Will
    Scanlon: The Significance of Choice

    * I know this may raise some eyebrows, but I think the first three lectures of this book are really unsurpassed as a model of what moral philosophy should be. Lecture IV is, admitedly, a bit of a let-down.

    Reply
  12. Tyler

    McDowell: Mind and World

    Grad Student, Ohio State University

    Reply
  13. Chris Blakley

    Ethics:

    B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
    A. MacInture, After Virtue
    E. Levinas, Totality and Infinity
    J. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action

    Chris Blakley, Doctoral Candidate, Southern Illinois University

    Reply
  14. Doug Litowitz

    These lists are heavily tilted toward analytic philosophy. I would add the following for those readers inclined toward postmodernism and critical theory:

    Foucault, Discipline and Punish
    Baudrillard, Simulacra & Simulations
    Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition
    Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action
    Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism
    Said, Orientalism

    As for "You must read this book," I was blown away by Derrick Jensen's The Culture of Make Believe (2002), which is the best of the new 'anti-civilization' books that make you want to go live in a cave somewhere.

    Doug Litowitz
    Ohio Northern University College of Law

    Reply
  15. D. Evans Jr.

    NIETZSCHE STUDIES

    John Richardson and Brian Leiter, Nietzsche, (Oxford, 2001)
    Richard Schacht, Nietzsche's Postmoralism, (Cambridge, 2001)

    Clear, rigorous, and sophisticated philosophical analysis shine through in the above two collections of essays. After Maudemarie Clark's seminal work on Nietzsche these essays further demonstrate the continuing influence of the analytic Anglo-American approach to Nietzshe's work.

    SOCRATIC STUDIES

    Gregory Vlastos, Socratic Studies, CUP, 1994
    Gregory Vlastos, Socratist, Ironist and Moral Philosopher, Cornell U. Press, 1991

    Any serious work on Socrates (whether it be the historical figure known as Socrates or Socrates as a fictitious character used merely as a literary device by ancient Greek writers) cannot ignore the work of Vlastos.

    Doctoral Student, DePaul University

    Reply
  16. Mark Engleson, Grad Student, UT Austin

    What about Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right & Wrong?

    Is it ethics or metaethics?

    Reply
  17. Ryan Wasserman

    METAPHYSICS

    David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds.
    Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will.
    Peter van Inwagen, Material Beings.

    Ryan Wasserman
    Grad Student
    Rutgers

    Reply
  18. Matt

    History of Analytic Philosophy:
    Michael Friedman-
    Reconsidering Logical Positivism

    Dummett's books on Frege

    Tom Rickett's papers (alas, not collected)

    Political Philosophy:
    Rawls-
    Political Liberalism

    Gauthier-
    Morals by Agreement
    (Also ethics, of course, but very interesting and important as pol. phil. too.)

    Walzer-
    Spheres of Justice
    (For my tastes, at least as much for its serious discussions of nationalism and limits on free movement as anything else.)

    Reply
  19. Matt

    Following in Ted Warfield's footsteps (not too bad, I'd guess) I too forgot to sign.
    -Matt Lister, Grad student, Law and Philosophy, U Penn.

    Reply
  20. Micah Schwartzman

    Political Philosophy:

    I agree with Chris Bertram's selections. I would add: Gerald Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism. I don't think the book has received nearly the attention it deserves. I'd also probably include: A. John Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligations. In the category of collected papers (and Rawls aside), I would include Jeremy Waldron, Liberal Rights.

    Philosophy of Law:

    Dworkin's Law's Empire should be on the list. Whether one agrees with Dworkin is another matter. Notwithstanding Prof. Leiter's criticisms, it (along with Taking Rights Seriously) is clearly one of the most 'significant' books in jurisprudence of the last 25 years.

    Micah
    dphil (oxon), law student (virginia)

    Reply
  21. Brian Leiter

    Micah: I agree opinions differ about Dworkin, and some would include him, but whether Law's Empire has really been a fruitful stimulus for further research in philosophy of law is highly debatable. TRS is different, but I guess I was thinking that, strictly speaking, it was just outside the time frame. But I can see putting it in.

    Chris: I included the Geuss book because the category was Marx/Marxism, and the Geuss book is, along with Rosen's, one of the two most stimulating, it seems to me, in thinking about Marx's philosophical legacy via the Frankfurt School.

    Reply
  22. pekka

    Since disagreement needn't block the recognition of importance . . .

    ETHICS/METAETHICS

    Samuel Scheffler: The Rejection of Consequentialism (1982, rev. 1994).

    Derek Parfit: Reasons and Persons (1984).

    Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985).

    Shelly Kagan: The Limits of Morality (1989).

    Allan Gibbard: Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (1990).

    Michael Smith: The Moral Problem (1994).

    Many papers in McDowell's Meaning, Value, and Reality (1998) have been very influential, but the quality of the philosophy they have spawned is debatable. R.M. Hare's Moral Thinking (1981) generates similar mixed feelings.

    I'd disagree with the above suggestion to include Korsgaard's The Sources of Normativity (1996).

    The eventual influence of Scanlon's WWOTEO (1998) is hard to assess at this point. But projecting from the influence of "Contractualism and Utilitarianism" (1982) gives a case for inclusion that's not easily reasonably rejected.

    Pekka Vayrynen, faculty, UC Davis.

    Reply
  23. Frank Williams

    Ethics: Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness
    Phi Sci: Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea
    Ontology: Lynne R. Baker, Persons and Bodies
    Plato Studies: Gerald Press, Who Speaks for Plato?

    Reply
  24. Dominic Murphy

    Philosophy of the Cognitive Sciences:

    David Marr, Vision

    Jerry Fodor, Modularity of Mind

    Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky (eds) Judgement under uncertainty; Heuristics and biases

    Philosophy of the Social Sciences:

    Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul

    Daniel Hausman, The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics

    J.D. Trout, Measuring the Intentional World

    Dominic Murphy, Faculty, Caltech

    Reply
  25. benj

    METACATEGORICAL:

    Gilbert Harman, Reasoning, Meaning, and Mind (Oxford, 1999)

    Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events and Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford, 1980 and 1984)

    PHILOSOPHY OF THOUGHT:

    Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford, 1982)

    Chris Peacocke, A Study of Concepts (MIT, 1992)

    Gabriel Segal, A Slim Book on Narrow Content (MIT, 1999)

    PHILOSOPHY OF INTENTIONALITY:

    Robert Stalnaker, Inquiry (MIT, 1984)

    Hartry Field, Truth and the Absence of Fact (Oxford, 2000)

    Noam Chomsky, New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind (MIT, 2000)

    COLOR:

    David Hilbert, Color: A Study in Anthropocentric Realism (CSLI, 1987)

    Clyde Hardin, Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow (Hackett, 1988 and 1993)

    Alex Byrne and David Hilbert, Readings on Color vols 1 and 2 (MIT, 1997)

    PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION/SENSATION:

    Chris Peacocke, Sense and Content (Oxford, 1983)

    Sydney Shoemaker, The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays (Cambridge, 1996)

    David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (Oxford, 1996)

    PHILOSOPHICALLY INTERESTING SEMANTICS:

    Terence Parsons, Events in the Semantics of English (MIT, 1990)

    Richard Larson and Gabriel Segal, Knowledge of Meaning (MIT, 1995)

    James D. McCawley, Everything that Linguists have Always Wanted to Know About Logic — But Were Ashamed to Ask (Chicago, 1981 and 1993)

    Robert Stalnaker, Context and Content (Oxford, 1999)

    METAPHYSICS:

    Terence Parsons, Nonexistent Objects (Yale, 1980)

    Jonathan Bennett, Events and their Names (Cambridge, 1986)

    Sydney Shoemaker, Identity, Cause, and Mind (Cambridge, 1984 and Oxford, 2003)

    Michael Jubien, Ontology, Modality, and the Fallacy of Reference (Cambridge, 1993)

    (yeah, yeah, and Lewis (with his collections of papers ranked significantly above OPW) and PvI, of course; Naming and Necessity, unfortunately, is too old)

    TO BE EAGERLY AWAITED:

    Paul Pietroski's two forthcoming books, on events and on thought, language, and truth (Oxford)

    Benj Hellie, faculty, Cornell

    Reply
  26. robert allen

    Ontology:

    David Lewis: On the Plurality of Worlds, Parts of Classes

    Eli Hirsch, The Concept of Identity, Dividing Reality

    Peter Simons, Parts: A Study in Ontology

    Lawrence Lombard: Events: A Metaphysical Study

    Jaegwon Kim, Supervenience and Mind

    Joshua Hoffman and Gary Rosenkrantz, Substance Among Other Categories

    Andre Gallois, Occasions of Identity

    Richard Cartwright, Philosophical Essays

    Peter van Inwagen, Material Beings, Ontology, Identity and Modality

    David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance Revisted

    David Armstrong, A World of States of Affairs

    Terence Parsons, Nonexistent Objects

    Ted Sider, Four-Dimensionalism

    Mark Heller, The Ontology of Physical Objects

    E.J. Lowe, Kinds of Being, The Possibility of Metaphysics

    Peter Unger, Identity, Consciousness, and Value

    Free Will:

    Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room

    Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will

    Saul Smilansky, Free Will and Illusion

    Richard Double, The Non-Reality of Free Will

    John Martin Fischer, The Metaphysics of Free Will, Responsibility and Control (with Mark Ravizza)

    Susan Wolf, Freedom Within Reason

    Alfred Mele, Autonomous Agents

    Philosophy of Mind:

    Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy

    Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained

    Robert Allen, The University of Detroit Mercy

    Reply
  27. robert allen

    I should have included on my Ontology list:

    Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi, Holes

    Reply
  28. Mike

    I'm just going to add two stragglers that haven't been mentioned yet.

    Paul Grice, Study in the Ways of Words

    Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language

    Mike Bruno, Graduate Student, University of Arizona

    Reply
  29. Marc Moffett

    Some thoughts on philosophically significant books outside of philosophy proper (mostly a propros of the philosophy of language/mind).

    Formal Syntax:

    Chomsky, Noam. The Minimalist Program.
    Pollard & Sag. Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar.
    Bresnan, Joan. Lexical Functional Syntax.
    Langacker, Ronald. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar.

    (This list slights Optimality Theory.)

    Formal Semantics (excluding philosophers):

    Keenan and Faltz, Boolean Semantics for Natural Language.
    Talmy, Leonard. Toward a Cognitive Semantics.
    Chierchia, Gennaro, Dynamics of Meaning.
    Fillmore, Charles. Form and Meaning in Language.

    (Portner & Partee's book on the essential readings really is essential, and I'd recommend it over any of the above.)

    Pragmatics:

    Gazdar, Gerald. Pragmatics.
    Sperber & Wilson. Relevance.
    Kamp & Reyle. From Discourse to Language.
    Horn, Larry. The Natural History of Negation.

    As for the philosophy of language:

    Schiffer, Stephen. The Things We Mean.
    Soames, Scott. Beyond Rigidity.
    Evans, Gareth. Varieties of Reference.

    (The first two are justified because they represent the most developed views of people who are clearly at the top of the game. It also underscores the fact that since Quine/Kripke/Grice, little work has been done generally in the philosophy of language — though a great deal of extremely good work has been done in specific areas, e.g., Richard on the attitudes, Neale on descriptions, Ludlow on time, etc.)

    Marc Moffett, Faculty, University of Wyoming.

    Reply
  30. Jacob T. Levy

    Political philosophy (again)

    Not asserting these as more significant than many already noted (Political Liberalism, Spheres of Justice, Justifcatory Liberalism, Moral Principles/ Political Obligations– though I would place them ahead of either Sovereign Virtue or Morality of Freedom– in my view Raz's political philosophical books don't compare to his jurispurdential ones). But in the spirit of "useful guidance… as to what books deserve attention for those not working in that immediate area:"

    Jeremy Waldron, _Law and Disagreement,_ is a tremendously important work– and I think that the degree of its importance for democratic theory hasn't yet fully penetrated.

    David Miller, _Principles of Social Justice_– a book I disagree with profoundly, btw, but one I find very challenging.

    Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture– not his best work, but his work that is most centrally philosophy; and a book that served as a tremendous impetus to further work by Kymlicka and many others, almost creating a new subfield of political philosophy by itself.

    Jacob T. Levy
    Assistant Professor of Political Science
    University of Chicago

    Reply
  31. Steve

    Leaving out (reluctantly) some lovely collections of papers and at least a few admirable monographs, and drawing loose distinctions between subfields, here's what I suspect are the best books in aesthetics from the last 25 years or so:

    Theories of Art
    Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981)
    Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990)

    Taste Theory
    Anthony Savile, The Test of Time (1982)
    Mary Mothersill, Beauty Restored (1984)

    Theories of Particular Media
    Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Art (1987?)
    Peter Kivy, The Corded Shell (1980)
    Peter Lamarque & Stein Haugom Olsen, Truth, Fiction, and Literature (1994)

    History of Aesthetics
    Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (1979)
    Christopher Janaway, Images of Excellence (1995)
    Peter Kivy, The Seventh Sense (1976–cheating a bit)

    Steve Jauss, Grad Student, Penn

    Reply
  32. Campbell

    Ethics:
    John Broome, Weighing Goods (1991)

    Campbell Brown
    Grad student, Australian National Univeristy

    Reply
  33. Chris Bertram

    Since others don't seem to have stuck to the limit of three books per field…

    let me note that Simmons, Moral Principles… and Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism were both strong candidates for me. I'd also like to have seen someone mention G.A. Cohen's Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality and/or his If You're an Egalitarian …. Larry Temkin's Inequality is also worthy of consideration as is Sen's Inequality Re-Examined.

    No-one has mentioned Habermas's Between Facts and Norms. I think that omission is significant, and I agree with it.

    And hiving off global justice as its own subfield:

    Rawls, The Law of Peoples
    Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights.

    Chris Bertram, Faculty, Bristol

    Reply
  34. Charles Stewart

    PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC
    (i) Alfred Tarski. Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics.
    (ii) Michael Dummett. The Logical Basis of Metaphysics.
    (iii) John Etchemendy. The Concept of Logical Consequence.

    PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
    (i) Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations.
    (ii) Michael Dummett. Frege: Philosophy of Language.
    (iii) Saul Kripke. Naming and Necessity.
    It's almost unbearable to leave out Austin's "How to do Things with Words" from this list.

    Postdoctoral researcher in theeoretical computer science at Dresden University of Technology.

    Reply
  35. David Watkins

    POLITICAL THEORY

    I'm in general agreement with Jacob Levy on Miller and Kymlicka (haven't read Waldron; suppose I should), as well as puzzlingly popular inclusion of Dworkin and Raz. However, a better book than Kymlicka's that also played a significant role in spawning the subfield he mentions is written by his colleague–Iris Marion Young's Justice and the Politics of Difference.

    David Watkins (doctoral student, Univ. of Washington)

    Reply

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