Eminent Philosophers Name the Most Important Philosophy Books from 1950-2000

Since R.M. Hare&#x27;s &quot;Language of Morals&quot; is on the list, I recommend Alasdair MacIntyre&#x27;s &quot;After Virtue&quot; should be on the list for any one who want to study Moral Philosophy today.<p>Along with Popper and Kuhn&#x27;s works on that list, read Larry Laudan&#x27;s &quot;Progress and its problems&quot; and &quot;Science and Relativism: some key controversies in the philosophy of science&quot;. This goes under Philosophy of Sciences.

&gt; Solomon maintains that “nothing has been more harmful to philosophy than its ‘professionalization,’ which on the one hand has increased the abilities and techniques of its practitioners immensely, but on the other has rendered it an increasingly impersonal and technical discipline, cut off from and forbidding to everyone else.”<p>&gt; As an addendum, Ho adds that “most of the works on the list are analytic philosophy,”...<p>Interesting that analytic philosophy is both seen as being the most harmful yet also most prestigious.

Unsurprisingly, this list is heavily biased towards analytic philosophers.<p>They don&#x27;t even mention Heidegger, the most influential 20th Century philosopher in the Continental tradition. <i>Being and Time</i> is his most influential book.<p>They don&#x27;t mention Sartre, who probably comes in 2nd. <i>Being and Nothingness</i> is his most famous book (you can tell the Heidegger influence just from the title).<p>Their token Continentals are Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, and Ricouer... out of a list of 30.<p>Update: Looks like I misread the title of the article as being about philosophers from 1900-2000, but it&#x27;s from 1950-2000. Sorry. My bad.

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I&#x27;d argue that <i>every</i> programmer interested in language design needs to read Wittgenstein. His later work in ethics and epistemology (that the article recommends, Philosophical Investigations) is hit or miss, but his <i>Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus</i>, which deals with the nature of language as it relates to our ability to think and formulate ideas, is undeniable. He essentially builds a framework for breaking reality down into logically composable components which can be reasoned over in their own right, regardless of semantics.<p>See this article which was posted here a few years ago: Wittgenstien for Programmers <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hxa.name&#x2F;notes&#x2F;note-hxa7241-20110219T1113Z.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hxa.name&#x2F;notes&#x2F;note-hxa7241-20110219T1113Z.html</a>

Can we estimate in any way about how happy these people were?<p>I doubt there&#x27;s an objective measure, but I feel like how to be happy and to live a good life are among of the main goals of philosophy. Are they? Did many of them succeed?

Does anyone have recommendations for a layman interested in philosophy?

This being HN, I can’t believe anyone hasn’t mentioned Searle (on the list) or Hofstaedter yet as prominent thinkers on computing, philosophy of maths, and the limits of the ongoing AI summer. In ‘Goedel, Escher, Bach’ Hofstaedter has entire chapters dedicated to LISP and its philosophical implications &#x2F; foundations, ie homoiconicity, metacircularity.

David Armstrong and David lewis for metaphysics! Quine word and object is great, but some of his short essays are more accessible. For a good logic book graham priest an intro to non classical logic. Russell is pleasant intro, but you&#x27;ll probably want to go deeper.

&quot;<i>As an addendum, Ho adds that “most of the works on the list are analytic philosophy,” therefore Prof. Chen asked Habermas to recommend some additional European thinkers, and received the following: “Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung (1992), Rainer Forst, Kontexte der Cerechtigkeit (1994) and Herbert Schnadelbach, Kommentor zu Hegels Rechtephilosophie (2001).”</i>&quot;<p>Note also that this list was collected &quot;at the behest of a Chinese publisher seeking important philosophical works for translation&quot;, so the fact that A.C. Graham is missing doesn&#x27;t disturb me much.

&gt; two professors emailed sixteen philosophers in the U.S., England, Australia, Germany, Finland, and Brazil, asking specifically for &quot;ten of the most important and influential philosophical books after 1950.&quot; &quot;They received recommendations,” writes Ho, &quot;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.&quot; (Ho was unable to identify two other names, typed in Chinese.)

I would recommend all the works by Robert Nozick, listed at #14 on the list for &quot;Anarchy, State and Utopia&quot;. While that might be his most influential book, I found his other books more fun to read.

It&#x27;s nice and all that but I think there has been far more influence on what would be called philosophical questions like why are we here, how should we live, why is there evil, what is consciousness and the like from scientific discovery than from any of the books in the list. Things like the discovery of DNA, the big bang, evolutionary psychology and neuroscience have had a big impact on how we see the world. Those books I&#x27;m not so sure.

*Western.<p>There&#x27;s a whole wide world out there.

E.O Wilson&#x27;s (the Nobel prize winner) book &quot;Consilience&quot; should be on a list like this but probably isn&#x27;t. He&#x27;s a biologist after all, not a philosopher. But a lot of thoughtful people would likely find a lot more to ponder than in it than most of the &#x27;real&#x27; philosophy texts.

Weird, no Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, one of the best applications of utilitarianism.

Richard Rorty &quot;Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature&quot;<p>Need a little Pragmatism on this list.

Have your book list posted on HN with Amazon (affiliate) links =&gt; Profit :)

Glad to see Parfit on the list. Reasons and Persons could honestly be the foundational text of a civilization.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, What Color is Your Parachute are both absent. Also, science fiction.

No Paul Feyerabend, I see.