Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Jason Aleksander's avatar
  2. J.P. Loo's avatar
  3. Sebastian Sunday Grève's avatar
  4. Giovanni Molteni Tagliabue's avatar
  5. Fabien Muller's avatar

Most influential books of philosophy of the last 20 years?

Brian Leiter

There was some chatter on Twitter about this, but here's what Google Scholar tells us about which books are being cited the most.

Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) looks to be the hands-down winner, with multiple books cited more than 1,500 times, including Women and Human Development (2001), with nearly 11,00 citations; but also Frontiers of Justice (2009), with 6,100 citations; Upheavals of Thought (2002), with 6,600 citations; and Hiding from Humanity:  Disgust, Shame and the Law (2009), with more than 2,000 citations.

Here are some other philosophy books published since 2000 with more than 1,500 citations according to Google Scholar (cite count rounded to the nearest 100):

Timothy Williamson (Oxford), Knowledge and Its Limits (2000), 5,400 citations

Miranda Fricker (CUNY Grad Center), Epistemic Injustice (2007), 4,000 citations

Cristina Bicchieri (Penn), The Grammar of Society (2006), 2700 citations

Jerry Fodor (late of Rutgers), The Mind Doesn't Work That Way (2001), 2,600 citations

Robert Brandom (Pittsburgh), Articulating Reasons (2009), 2,300 citations

Ted Sider (Rutgers), Four-Dimensionalism (2001), 2,200 citations

Ronald Dworkin (late of NYU), Justice for Hedgehogs (2011), 2,100 citations

Timothy Williamson (Oxford), The Philosophy of Philosophy (2008), 2,000 citations

Derek Parfit (late of Oxford), On What Matters (2011), 1,900 citations

John Hawthorne (ACU & USC), Knowledge and Lotteries (2004), 1,800 citations

Philip Kitcher (Columbia), Science, Truth and Democracy (2003), 1,800 citations

Christine Korsgaard (Harvard), Self-Constitution (2009), 1,700 citations

Brian Skyrms (UC Irvine), Evolution of the Social Contract (2014), 1,700 citations

Jeff McMahan (Oxford), The Ethics of Killing (2002), 1,600 citations

Brian Skyrms (UC Irvine), The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure (2004), 1,600 citations

Ernest Sosa (Rutgers), A Virtue Epistemology (2007), 1,600 citations

Jaegwon Kim (late of Brown), Physicalism, or Something Near Enough (2007), 1,500 citations

Obviously the more recently a book was published, the harder it is to rack up 1,500 or more citations.  So here are some well-known works from the last decade that seem headed to citation counts like those above:

Christian List & Philip Pettit, Group Agency (2011), 1200 citations

Philip Pettit, On the People's Terms:  A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (2012), 1,000 citations

John MacFarlane, Assessment Sensitivity (2014), 800 citations.

But in that most important sub-field of philosophy, Nietzsche studies, no one in the last twenty years can match by Nietzsche on Morality (2002) with nearly 900 citations!

Comments are open for readers to add philosophy books with more than 1500 citations since 2000, or with more than 750 citations since 2010.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

27 responses to “Most influential books of philosophy of the last 20 years?”

  1. Edouard Machery

    J. Doris Lack of Character 2002 1900 citations
    J. Prinz gut reactions 2004 1800 citations
    J. Woodward Making things happen 2005 4000 citations
    A. Clark Supersizing the mind 2008 4100 cit.
    A. Clark Natural born cyborgs 2001 2900 cit
    T. Burge Origins of objectivity 2010 1200 cit

    Reply
  2. anon

    Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalised OUP 2007 – 1525 citations on Google Scholar many of which are in scientific journals

    BL COMMENT: The authors are James Ladyman and Don Ross–commenters, please include the author names!

    Reply
  3. Josiah

    Sort of interesting to break this down by gender.

    Of the 18 authors listed with more than 1,500 citations, 3 are women.

    Totaling the number of citations by gender, 34,100 citations were for female authors. 30,100 citations were for male authors.

    Reply
  4. Edouard Machery

    A. Noe Action in perception 2004 4900 cit.

    Reply
  5. Erik D.

    L. Floridi, "The Philosophy of Information", 2013 (1100 citations)
    L. Floridi, "The Fourth Revolution", 2014 (1000 citations)
    N. Bostrom, "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies", 2014 (2500 citations)

    Reply
  6. a different anon

    Charles Taylor – Modern Social Imaginaries (2004) – 5080
    Plantinga – Warranted Christian Belief (2000) – 1864

    Reply
  7. Ibphillips

    A. Clark Surfing Uncertainty 2015 1115 cites
    D. Dennett Freedom Evolves 2004 1906 cites
    P. Churchland Braintrust 2018 820 cites
    C. Craver Explaining the Brain 2007 2006 cites

    Reply
  8. a third anon

    Bernard Williams – Truth and Truthfulness (2002) – 2331
    Jonathan Dancy – Ethics without Principles (2004) – 1731

    Reply
  9. A.P.H

    A few in political philosophy:

    John Dryzek – Deliberative Democracy and Beyond (2000): 6477
    Allen Buchanan – Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination (2003): 1770 citations
    David Miller – National Responsibility and Global Justice (2007): 1601 citations
    Simon Caney – Justice Beyond Borders (2005): 1574 citations
    Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka – Zoopolis (2011): 1146 citations
    Joseph Carens – The Ethics of Immigration (2013) : 1032 citations

    Reply
  10. Hilary Kornblith

    Alvin Goldman: Simulating Minds (2006), 2429 citations
    Alvin Goldman: Knowledge in a Social World (2002), 2297 citations

    Reply
  11. Curtis Franks

    Evan Thompson /Mind in Life/ 3991 citations

    Reply
  12. Gristle McThornbody

    The year of publication of Brandom's "Articulating Reasons" ought to be "2001".

    Reply
  13. Garo again

    F.Recanati. 2004. Literal meaning. 2061
    E. Sober. 2014. The nature of selection. 2755

    Reply
  14. doris

    Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes (2013), 1500

    BL: A work of philosophy?

    Reply
  15. Stephen

    John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A restatement (2001) 8000 citations
    David Estlund, Democratic Authority (2009) 1600 citations
    Stephen Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint (2006) 1900 citations
    G.A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality (2009) 1600 citations
    David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (2007) 1600 citations
    Amartya Sen, Rationality and Freedom (2004) 2300 citations

    Reply
  16. Matt

    Charles Taylor – A Secular Age (2007): 9,505 citations
    Ted Sider – Writing the Book of the World (2011): 1,274 citations
    Thomas Nagel – Mind and Cosmos (2012): 1,347 citations
    Jose Medina – The Epistemology of Resistance (2013): 909 citations

    Reply
  17. Daniel Kodsi

    Angelika Kratzer – Modals and Conditionals (2012) – 797 citations

    Reply
  18. Scott

    Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (2000) , 9365 citations

    Reply
  19. HS

    A. Chemero – Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (2009) – 2,268 citations

    Reply
  20. doris

    I'm not good at questions in the vicinity of "Is it philosophy?", and in many contexts, I doubt they are useful questions.

    But for this exercise, fair enough.

    Among the many references to philosophers and philosophical discussions in the book's index, we find the following:

    "utilitarianism and prospects for sophisticated moral theory"

    I could go on, but this decisively supports a "yes" answer to your query. 🙂

    Reply
  21. Caleb

    Seyla Benhabib – The claims of culture: Equality and diversity in the global era (2002) 4292 citations
    Seyla Benhabib – The rights of others: Aliens, residents, and citizens (2004) 3270 citations
    Seyla Benhabib – Another Cosmopolitanism (2006) 1658 citations
    Seyla Benhabib – The reluctant modernism of Hannah Arendt (2003) 1543 citations
    Iris Marion Young – Inclusion and democracy (2000) 9385 citations
    Iris Marion Young – On female body experience:" Throwing like a girl" and other essays (2005) 1878 citations
    Virginia Held – The ethics of care: Personal, political, and global (2006) 3200 citations
    Philippa Foot – Natural Goodness (2003) 1925 citations
    Linda Martín Alcoff – Visible identities: Race, gender, and the self (2005) 1897 citations
    Gail Weiss – Body images: Embodiment as intercorporeality (2013) 1167 citations
    Elizabeth Grosz – Becoming undone: Darwinian reflections on life, politics, and art (2011) 786 citations
    Elizabeth Anderson – The imperative of integration (2013) 781 citations

    Reply
  22. elliott sober

    Elliott Sober, and David S. Wilson (1999), Unto Others – the Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, 4973 citations

    BL COMMENT: 2000 was the official cut-off for purposes of this exercise. Of course, this was close to the line!

    Reply
  23. Doug Stalker

    Clark Glymour et al., Causation, Prediction, and Search (2000), 7,741 citations

    Reply
  24. Al

    David Enoch, Taking Morality Seriously (2011), 753 citations.

    Reply
  25. Torsten Wilholt

    Helen Longino, The Fate of Knowledge (2002), 1774 citatons on Google Scholar
    Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology (2002), 2196 citations

    Reply
  26. Serdal

    P. Churchland Braintrust should be 2011 instead of 2018. (2018) is the latest edition.

    Reply
  27. Student

    Borderline philosophy, but much cited and influential:
    Judea Pearl, Causality (2000/2009 2nd ed.), 17259 citations on Google Scholar

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

    Reply

Designed with WordPress