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The Most Important Philosophical Books Since 1950?

Brian Leiter

Reader Tracy Ho sends along the following interesting information:

I am a reader of your blog. Since you recently launched several polls about The Best Philosopher, I thought you might be interested in the following information.

In 2002, Professor Chen Bo (Philosophy, Peking University) was asked by one Chinese publisher about important contemporary philosophical works for publication in Chinese translation. At that time Prof. Chen was visiting at the University of Miami, so he asked Prof. Susan Haack for suggestions. They sent e-mails to sixteen philosophers in USA, England, Australia, Germany, Finland, and Brazil to recommend TEN of the most important and influential philosophical books after 1950. They received recommendations from twelve philosophers, including:  Susan Haack, Donald M. Borchert (Ohio U.), Donald Davidson, Jurgen Habermas, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, Peter F. Strawson, Hilary Putnam, and G. H. von Wright.  (Sorry I cannot give you the full list, because their names are typed in Chinese. Two of them I cannot identify.)

The results were as follows:

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.  13 votes go to Wittgenstein. Among them, 9 for "Philosophical Investigation." 2 for "On Certainty." Each of "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" and "The Blue and Brown Books" gets one.

2. W. V. Quine, Word and Object.  15 votes go to Quine. 8 for "Word and Object." 5 for "From a Logical Point of View." 2 for "Ontological Relativity."

3. Peter F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics.  11 votes go to Strawson. 8 for "Individuals." "The Bounds of Sense," "Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties," and "Introduction to Logical Theory" obtain one vote for each.

4. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice.  9 votes go to the same book, "A Theory of Justice."

5. Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction and Forecast.  10 votes go to Goodman. 7 for "Fact, Fiction and Forecast." 2 for "Ways of World Making." One for "Languages of Art."

6. Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity.  8 votes go to Kripke. 6 for "Naming and Necessity." 2 for "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language."

7. G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention.  8 votes go for Anscombe. 6 for "Intention." One for each of "The Collected Philosophical Papers" and "Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind."

8. J. L. Austin, How to do Things with Words.  7 votes go to Austin. 5 for "How to Do Things with Words." One for each of "Sense and Sensibilia" and "Philosophical Papers."

9. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  5 votes go to him and this book.

10. M. Dummett, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics.  8 votes go to Dummett. 3 for "The Logical Basis of Metaphysics." 2 for "Frege: Philosophy of Language." One for "Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics" and "Truth and Other Enigmas."

11. Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism.  8 votes go to him. 3 for "The Many Faces of Realism." Two for "Realism and Reason" and "Philosophical Papers." One for "Meaning and the Moral Sciences."

12. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences.  5 votes go to him. Two for "The Order of Things" and "Discipline and Punishment." One for "An Archaeology of Knowledge."

13. Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere. 4 votes go to the same book.

14. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia. 4 votes go to the same book.

15. R. M. Hare obtains 4 votes. Two each for "The Language of Morals" and "Freedom and Reason."

16. John R. Searle obtains 5 votes. Two each for "Intentionality" and "The Rediscovery of the Mind". One for "Speech Acts."

17. Bernard Williams gets 4 votes. Two for "Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.  "One for "Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry" and "Moral Luck：Philosophical Papers 1973-1980."

18. Karl Popper gets 4 votes. One for "Conjecture and Refutation". Two for "Logik der Forschung."  One for "Open Society and Its Enemies." (The last two were published before 1950)

19. Gilbert Ryle gets 3 votes, all of which go to "The Concept of Mind."

20. Donald Davidson gets 3 votes. Two for "Essays on Action and Event." One for "Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation."

21. John Mcdowell gets 3 votes. All go to "Mind and World." (Prof. Chen notes that Strawson and Putnam voted for him.)

22. Daniel C. Dennett gets 3 votes. Two for "Consciousness explained." One for "The Intentional Stance."

23. Jurgen Habermas gets 3 votes. Two for "Theory of Communicative Action." One for "Between Facts and Norm."

24. Jacques Derrida gets 3 votes. "La Voix et le Phenomene" and "De La Grammatologie" and "introduction a “L’origine de la Geometrie” par Edmund Husserl" get one for each.

25. Paul Ricoeur gets 3 votes. Two for "Le Metaphore Vive." One for "Freedom and Nature."

26. Noam Chomsky gets two votes. Each goes to "Syntactic Structure" and "Cartesian Linguistics."

27. Derek Parfit gets two votes. All go to "Reasons and Persons."

28. Susan Haack gets two votes. All go to "Evidence and Inquiry."

29. D. M. Armstrong gets two votes. Each of them goes to "Materialist Theory of the Mind" and "A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility."

30. Herbert Hart gets two votes. Each of them goes to "The Concept of Law" and "Punishment and Responsibility."

31. Ronald Dworkin gets two votes. Each of them goes to "Taking Rights Seriously" and "Law’s Empire."

Since most of the works on list are analytic philosophy, Prof. Chen asked Habermas to recommend some works in Europe. He recommended Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung (1992), Rainer Forst, Kontexte der Cerechtigkeit (1994）and Herbert Schnadelbach, Kommentor zu Hegels Rechtephilosophie (2001).  [BL comment:  Forst was Habermas's student]

It is unclear whether the advisers can vote for their own works.

The original document can be found here.  However, this is in Chinese. I cannot find it in English.  Prof. Chen Bo's website is here.

It might be interesting to see a new result voted by your readers.

Reactions from readers to the preceding?  Maybe we will run a poll on this, so feel free to suggest other volumes that ought to be included as  major post-1950 books in philosophy.

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50 responses to “The Most Important Philosophical Books Since 1950?”

  1. j.s.

    Just a clarification. Brian notes that Forst was one of Habermas's students; so were both Honneth and Schnaedelbach, the other two philosophers that Habermas recommended for readers of German.

    Reply
  2. Richard

    It's nice to see Davidson's 'Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation' recognised. In a similar field, I'd also suggest Paul Grice's 'Studies in the Way of Words'.

    If it's not cheating, I'd suggest the English translation of Merleau-Ponty's 'Phenomenology of Perception' (first published in 1946 but translated only in 1962). Finally, it seems odd to me that there's no mention of Fodor. Granted, the sympathies of those asked are very Wittgensteinian, but 'The Language of Thought' surely deserves a place.

    Reply
  3. Scott Wisdom

    In a footnote at the beginning of LOT 2, Fodor reports "with considerable pride that a very well-known philosopher of mind has chosen LOT 1, among all the books published in the field in the last fifty years, as the one he would most like to see burned. It's the nicest thing anybody ever said about my work." So perhaps there's a need for two lists.

    Reply
  4. Paul

    I would have voted for Nagel's "The Possibility of Altruism" over "The View from Nowhere." Also, Lewis's "On the Plurality of Worlds" is an obvious omission.

    Reply
  5. James C. Klagge

    There was already "What are the Modern Classics? The Baruch Poll of Great Philosophy in the 20th century" published by Douglas Lackey in Philosophical Forum, vol. XXX, no. 4, December, 1999. It ranked books and articles, based on responses from 414 philosophers of about 4000 contacted. Makes for a good read. Wittgenstein's PI came in first in books; Quine's "Dogmas" came in first for articles.

    Reply
  6. Jason

    In addition to Lewis' 'On the Plurality of Worlds,' his 'Philosophical Papers, Volume 1,' 'Counterfactuals,' and 'Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology' would seem to merit inclusion. (At least, I would have put all these works above anything by Goodman!) Harry Frankfurt's two collections of papers, 'The Importance of What We Care About' and 'Necessity, Volition, and Love' seem important to me. A case could be made for Robert Nozick's 'Anarcy, State, and Utopia' or his 'Philosophical Explanations.' J.L. Mackie's 'Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong' should definitely be included.

    Reply
  7. Keith DeRose

    Would be fun. I second the suggestion of Grice's STUDIES. Nozick: Philosophical Explanations. Lewis: Counterfactuals; Convention; On the Plurality of Worlds. van Inwagen: An Essay on Free Will. Williamson: Knowledge and Its Limits. Stalnaker: Inquiry. Gibbard: Wise Choices, Apt Feelings.

    Reply
  8. Wai-hung Wong

    The other two philosophers on the list are Michael Dummett and Oswaldo Chateaubriand Filho.

    Reply
  9. Mark van Roojen

    Gibbard's Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, should be a candidate. And you'd think there ought to be something by David Lewis, though which book is a harder question. Lots of important stuff from this period was in articles, but it seems like cheating to include collections of articles.

    Reply
  10. Thom Brooks

    While there are many I'd recommend from them, my vote would have to include the following three:

    1. Martha Nussbaum's Women and Human Development

    2. Thomas Pogge's World Poverty and Human Rights

    3. John Rawls's Political Liberalism.

    Reply
  11. benj

    * Not obvious that 1950 is a reasonable cut-off date. A big chunk of the most looming works after 1950 — From a Logical Point of View, Naming and Necessity, On the Plurality of Worlds (together with Lewis's prefatory work) — are relatively direct responses to Carnap's Meaning and Necessity. M&N was published in 1947 (though also re-issued in 1956, so perhaps the 2d edition could be admitted on the basis of this technicality; still the 2d edition consists of the 1st edition + a number of lesser works, and it's the 1st edition to which this lit is directly responsive, so this would be a bit of a kludge). 1945 would bring in M&N as well as the Investigations, as well as marking a political turning-point that proved significant to the development of academic philosophy.

    * Goodman's best book, hands down, is The Structure of Appearance.

    * I wonder who read The Many Faces of Realism — clearly something Putnamish belongs on this list but I'd have to give the nod to Reason, Truth, and History: the discussion of brains in a vat has been amazingly influential in epistemology, and can be seen as a relatively direct precursor to the bustling Siewert-Chalmers literature on phenomenal intentionality.

    * The Tractatus was published in 1921!

    Reply
  12. benj

    … and of course have to give a big shout-out to Lewis's Phil Papers I and II!

    Reply
  13. Thomas

    I must ask: why is the Tractatus even on the list? After 1950, was it really that much more influential than the arguments in the Philosophical Investigations that discredited it?

    Secondly, it would be an interesting experiment to see the reaction that Foucault would get based on the isolated introduction of The Order of Things into a relatively Foucault-free intellectual climate. This might prohibit the Discipline and Punish-heavy reading through which most of his critics tend to dismiss him (Anthony Giddens is a particularly telling case).

    Reply
  14. Matt

    Given the particular leanings of those who filled out the poll, I am very disappointed to see Barry Stroud's "The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism" missing from the list. I think this book captures the best of the "should we take scepticism seriously?" debates of the last half-century.

    Reply
  15. Charlie

    I would include Williamson: 'Vagueness' and 'Knowledge and Its Limits', and Chalmers: 'The Conscious Mind'.

    Reply
  16. Dave Maier

    Here's another vote for Stroud, plus 1) Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature; 2) Cavell, The Claim of Reason; 3) Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism; 4) Gadamer, Truth and Method.

    Also, if we are indeed thinking of having our own poll, the book vs. collection-of-articles issue is important (as well as anthology vs. single-author), and 1945 does seem like a better cut-off date.

    Reply
  17. benj

    Thinking about things from the perspective of my own bailiwick, I'd want to nominate for consideration for any such list: Byrne and Hilbert's Readings on Color; Chalmers's The Conscious Mind; Shoemaker's The First-Person Perspective; Siewert's The Significance of Consciousness; Hinton's Experiences; something by Gibson; Evans's Varieties of Reference; Austin's Sense and Sensibilia; Jackson's Perception; Peacocke's Sense and Content; Williamson's Identity and Discrimination (and K&IL); Dummett's Truth and Other Enigmas; Swartz's Perceiving, Sensing, and Knowing; Crane's The Contents of Experience; Valberg's The Puzzle of Experience; Marr's Vision; Price's Perception (2d edition, 1950); and, somewhat grudgingly, the disjunction of Dretske's Naturalizing the Mind and Tye's Ten Problems of Consciousness. Also Martin's Uncovering Appearances!

    Reply
  18. Mike

    Harman's Change in View, Gardenfors' Knowledge in Flux, Salmon's Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, and Cohen's An Essay on Belief and Acceptance all see like possible candidates.

    Reply
  19. Tim

    I'm surprised not to see Alasdair MacIntyre's "After Virtue" on the list.

    Reply
  20. Mark S

    Hopefully, these might be available to be voted on…?

    "Truth and Method" by Gadamer
    "Against Method" by Feyerabend
    "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" by Rorty

    Reply
  21. Michael Rosen

    Forst, Honneth and Schnaedelbach in front of Adorno's *Negative Dialektik*? Shame on you Juergen! (And shame on them all for no votes for *The Claim of Reason*.)

    Reply
  22. George Pappas

    I think that Sellars' Science, Perception & Reality belongs on this list; as does Goldman's Epistemology and Cognition.

    Reply
  23. Steven Hales

    Surely Roderick Chisholm's The Theory of Knowledge (or at least something by RMC) should be on this list. He is a vastly more influential epistemologist than Susan Haack, and arguably the most important epistemologist of the 20th century.

    Reply
  24. grad student

    If we were talking about importance in the sense of importance to the world as a whole then my vote would have to go to Ayn Rand (probably The Fountainhead). The only good philosopher who comes even close to Rand in societal importance would probably be Peter Singer.

    But that doesn't seem to be what's being discussed, instead the discussion seems to be of the most important philosopher in philosophy departments. A more useful list would probably be one that focused on importance in particular philosophical subfields. By that measure a lot of the answers would be obvious (would anyone familiar with the field deny that A Theory of Justice is the most important work in analytic political philosophy of the past fifty years? Or that the Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the most important in philosophy of science?), which seems to imply that this poll is as much a ranking of interest in different subfields as of importance to the field as a whole.

    Reply
  25. Dave

    How about Lakatos' first volume of papers, "On the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" and Sellars' "Empiricism & the Philosophy of Mind"?

    Reply
  26. Kevin Schutte

    Since 1950 is too much. I'd much rather see nominations for the best books published since 1980 or since 1990. Maybe that would be too edgy.

    Reply
  27. J.C. Berendzen

    It seems extremely odd to me that Paul Ricoeur received multiple votes, but there was not one vote for Gadamer's Truth and Method, which was published in the early 60s.

    While I think the suggestion that the English translation of Phenomenology of Perception be included is a little silly, Merleau-Ponty's Visible and Invisible would make the date cutoff…

    Also, I would assume that Habermas was just thinking of books recently published in Germany when he gave his additions (with that said, I think Struggle for Recognition and Contexts of Justice are both fantastic books).

    I am also slightly surprised that Brandom's Making it Explicit didn't get a vote (based on the blurb from Habermas on the back of the paperback edition, one might have thought he would vote for it…).

    Reply
  28. Edward Song

    One can always quibble about these things, but its a pretty nice list. The first thing that jumped out at me was that it didn't include MacIntyre's After Virtue.

    Reply
  29. Chris Swoyer

    I think it's time for another of Brian's polls. Or two.

    Might also do one on the most influential articles (On what there is, Two concepts of Rules, lots of room for endless debates here too).

    The book poll favors philosophers with one or two really influential books. A lot of good philosophy in the last few decades only shows up in collected works, so they need to be on the list of choices.

    Reply
  30. Mike Tiddey

    I suggest:
    Cora Diamond, The Realistic Spirit

    Reply
  31. Adam

    Something by Hintikka, no?

    Reply
  32. Carl Seaquist

    I don't think anyone's mentioned Hempel's Aspects of Scientific Explanation yet. That's certainly more important than Kuhn, and more foundational than anything by Salmon.

    Reply
  33. harvardgrad

    Another vote for Macintyre's *After Virtue*. Though it's fairly uneven in quality, it's still wide-ranging, learned, provocative, and rich. It contains several important contributions to normative ethics (his account of the virtues as culturally bound), action theory (his concept of narrative intelligibility), and the philosophy of social science (his discussion of why the social sciences fail to predict events and what this suggests about them). And the historical thesis that frames that book has to be one of the most original and intriguing to date. All in all, a lot to dispute, certainly, but also a lot to admire…

    Reply
  34. SC

    I am not sure how we are supposed to compare/contrast works from such diverse areas as phil of science, phil of mind, epistemology, and ethics. Was Kripke's N&N as influential as Chalmer's The Conscious Mind? Well, N&N influenced Chalmers, so maybe it's MORE influential? But N&N affects not only phil of mind, but metaphysics and epistemology too. Does this make it more influential than a book that has importance only in one area? And these are books that deal mostly with M&E issues. I can't imagine how to rank them next to works of political/moral philosophy, other than just compare the amount of attention they have gotten. But is this a good standard? Maybe some works within very narrow areas received a lot of attention, but only within those narrow areas. Does this count less than a work that received a lot of attention across all areas?

    Reply
  35. Robert Allen

    Chisolm's Person and Object, Robert Kane's The Significance of Free Will, Peter Simons' Parts, and Alvin Plantinga's The Nature of Necessity should also be on the list.

    Reply
  36. grad student

    These seem left out (although some might be borderline philosophy):

    Systematic Theology – Paul Tillich
    Insight: A Study of Human Understanding – Bernard Lonergan
    The Second Sex – Simone de Beauvoir
    Road to Serfdom – Friedrich Hayek
    Warrant and Proper Function – Alvin Plantinga

    Reply
  37. Dan Ryder

    Millikan's Language, Thought, & Other Biological Categories.

    Reply
  38. James Harold

    Aesthetics is a small field, and so it is unlikely that aesthetics texts would gather many votes in a poll, but Danto's _Transfiguration of the Commonplace_ and Walton's _Mimesis as Make-Believe_ are both modern classics of great depth and influence. (As is Goodman's _Languages of Art_, but Goodman's work is well-represented already.)

    Reply
  39. Iain Martel

    I'm surprised no-one has mentioned van Fraassen's Scientific Image. I would also add Reichenbach's The Direction of Time. Perhaps also Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie. Each has had a large influence on philosophy of science/physics.
    I'm curious as to how a poll of all of these books would turn out. It seems that everyone has a list of the half-dozen or so books that are most important in their sub-discipline, but that there is fairly little overlap between the lists. So a poll might not show much more than the relative proportions of poll-taking philosophers in each sub-discipline.

    Reply
  40. Geoff

    Dark horse: Peter Unger's 'Ignorance'

    Reply
  41. Stephen Krogh

    Nothing from historical philosophy? What about Guthrie's History of Greek Philosophy? Anything by Vlastos? Etienne Gilsen? Oh well. I suppose everyone will have his complaint…

    Reply
  42. Norm Jones

    J-F Lyotard, THE DIFFEREND, and Judith Butler, GENDER TROUBLE.

    Reply
  43. grad student

    Sartre, "Being and Nothingness," "Critique of Dialectical Reason"
    De Beauvoir, "The Second Sex"
    Gilles Deleuze, "Difference & Repetition," "A Thousand Plateus," "Cinema 1 & 2"
    Hannah Arendt, "The Human Condition"

    Reply
  44. Varol Akman

    Tarski not mentioned? I find it amazing.. Wouldn't the following hugely qualify?

    1983 (1956). Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, Corcoran, J., ed. Hackett. 1st edition edited and translated by J. H. Woodger, Oxford Uni. Press.

    Reply
  45. Rich

    Walton's Mimesis and Make Believe should be on the list, as should Crispin Wright's Truth and Objectivity. And its frankly *bizarre* that Lewis is totally absent.

    Reply
  46. Eric

    I'm sure it's been mentioned, but Peter Singer's Animal Liberation and/or Practical Ethics were crucial in putting 'applied ethics' deep into the fray. Both are still widely used.

    I'd also offer Philippa Foot's Virtues and Vices. There are enough classic pieces in there to give it some thought.

    And Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars is THE starting point for philosophical approaches to the just war tradition.

    Reply
  47. Andy Lamey

    I know a great procrastination opportunity when I see one. For this reason, I took the names on Prof. Chen’s list and typed them into Google Scholar to see which book by each philosopher mentioned has the most citations. The results are below.

    When interpreting the results, I think it is helpful to recall an observation John Kvanvig once made on his blog Certain Doubts about citation patterns for philosophy journals. What Kvanvig said of journals appears to be true of books as well. They come in three broad categories:

    Books on topics of extra-disciplinary interest (philosophy of science, political philosophy, philosophy of language broadly construed) are cited the most.

    Books of primarily disciplinary interest (metaphysics, logic, epistemology) are cited less frequently.

    Books on the history of philosophy are cited less frequently still.

    This raises the possibility that works of philosophy can be “important” in more than one way. Some speak to a large audience beyond the discipline, while others revolutionize our understanding of a topic that of interest primarily to philosophers, but are no less important for that. And no doubt many books achieve some combination of both.

    Note that because people sometimes cite the same book slightly differently, it is very common for one book to have multiple entries on Google Scholar. My flawlessly scientific way of dealing with this issue was to combine the two highest entries for each book and ignore the rest.

    1. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
    (30, 689 + 138) 30,827

    2. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
    (16, 914 + 75) 16,989

    3. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
    (10,153 + 3,995) 14,148

    4. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations*
    (12,029 + 1455) 13, 484

    5. J. L. Austin, How to do Things with Words*
    (10,911 + 214) 11,125

    6. Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax**
    (10,105 + 26) 10,131

    7. John Searle, Speech Acts
    8,252 + 30) 8,282

    8. Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
    (5,659 + 7) 5,666

    9. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia
    (5,332 + 210) 5,542

    10. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind
    (5,182 + 25) 5,2007

    11. Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action
    (4,293 + 219) 4,512

    12. Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
    (4,320 + 18) 4,338

    13. W. V. Quine, Word and Object
    (3,765 + 48) 3,813

    14, Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity
    (3,781 + 5) 3,786

    15, Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology
    (2,794 + 888) 3,682

    16, Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously
    (2,848 + 14) 2,862

    17, Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons
    (2,406 + 10) 2,416

    18, H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law
    (2,132 + 20) 2,152

    19. Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere
    (1,713 + 127) 1,840

    20. Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events
    (1,805 + 7) 1,812

    21. Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction and Forecast
    (1,600 + 90) 1,690

    22. Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History**
    1,672 + 11) 1,683

    23. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
    (1,485 + 9) 1,494

    24. Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language
    (1,099 + 14) 1,113

    25. R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals
    (985 + 97) 1,082

    26. G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention
    (1045 +8) 1,053

    27. D. M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind
    (1005 + 2) 1,007

    28. John McDowell, Mind and World
    (927 + 6) 933

    29. Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning
    (907 + 2) 909

    30. Peter F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics
    (660 + 2) 662

    31. Susan Haack, Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology***
    (228 + 135) 363

    * Google Scholar seems to have an unusually large number of entries for Philosophical Investigations and How to do Things with Words. Adding every last one would affect either total, but would probably not change either book’s ranking.

    **Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax and Putnam’ Reason, Truth and History both received no votes in the original survey. (RTH has a higher number of citations than the combined total of the three other Putnam titles that were listed.)

    ***Haack has another book that scores somewhat higher, but it appears to be a textbook.

    Reply
  48. Andy Lamey

    Google Scholar nut here again. Here is another list of titles from the same period. It is made up of some of the titles suggested by previous commentators in this thread, as well as a few random ones thrown in by me (before I finally had to force myself to stop and get back to work).

    Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
    (7,383 + 29) 7,412

    Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
    (2,984 + 2,472) 5,456

    Jerry Fodor, The Modularity of Mind: An Essay of Faculty Psychology
    4,352 + 905) 5,257

    Hans-George Gadamer, Truth and Method
    (4,694 + 313) 5,007

    Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
    (4,810 + 52) 4,862

    Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
    (4,464 + 372) 4,836)

    A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
    Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
    (3,628 + 462) 4,080

    Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity
    (2,706 + 1,335) 4,041

    Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights
    (2,921 + 11) 2,932

    Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality
    (1,469 + 1,424) 2,893

    David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory
    (1,413 + 1,277) 2,690

    F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty
    (2,375 + 136) 2,511

    Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice
    (2,100 + 17) 2,117

    Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology
    (1,874 + 3) 1,877

    Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach
    (1,419 + 2) 1,421

    David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement
    (1,359 + 7) 1,366

    David Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Volume II
    (1,027 + 174) 1,203

    J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong
    (1,126 + 9) 1,135

    Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits
    (754 +1) 755

    Alan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings
    (677 + 15) 692

    Peter Van Ingwagen, An Essay on Free Will
    (405 + 26) 431

    Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls*
    (319 + 3) 322

    Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism
    (282 + 0) 282

    Paul Grice, Studies in the Way of Words
    (169 + 1) 170

    *Pogge has other work that is more widely cited, but it is published in the 21st century.

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  49. Robert Hockett

    Not necessarily by way of wholesale endorsement, but simply to recognize their importance, I would add:

    Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values

    Brandom, Making It Explicit

    Chalmers, The Conscious Mind

    Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense

    Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality

    Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas

    Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue (assuming we can count 2000 – the key chapters/articles are from the 1980s, anyway)

    Goodman, The Structure of Appearance

    Kolm, Justice et Equite

    McIntyre, After Virtue

    Priest, In Contradiction

    Roemer, Theories of Distributive Justice

    Roemer, Equality of Opportunity

    Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

    Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (once it became a book!)

    Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare

    Tarski, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics

    Reply
  50. D. Auerbach

    No stunning surprises. Except, I'm surprised by the Ryle. Should I be? Or is it explained by its punching bag status?

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