100 Books Like Minima Moralia

I love this book because it shows me the intensity with which the intellectual challenges that the revolution in theoretical physics after Einstein brought about were forcing Erwin Schrödinger to escape to Helgoland. Carlo Rovelli’s description of this unique historical episode, which changed the path of natural sciences, which gave birth to quantum theory, made me trust in the possibility of singular theoretical breakthroughs.

Rovelli has been called the poet in the current gallery of leading scientists in quantum theory. With this book, he showed me that he really is. When Schrödinger escapes from the stagnating attempts of formalisation of observed phenomena to go to Helgoland, when he then returns with a stupifying solution that overthrows the intellectual world into a delightful turmoil—that is poetry and knowledge packed in the same book.

I chose this book as an easy leisure read for a holiday in Greece, and I fell in enduring love with it. Umberto Eco is not only the master of the theory of sign systems (semiotics) but also able to escape from the dry plains of scientific conclusions to the rich landscapes of historical narratives.

In this book, he shows us that Europe’s early development has not just been the linearly ascending advance from ancient Greece, via the Roman Empire, to the Renaissance. The narrator he invented for his book lets us return to the many threats from which the Middle Ages in Europe could emerge.

I started reading it as an entertaining storytelling book, but in the middle of this adventure, I realized how deeply into scientific thought Eco, the specialist in medieval studies, had abducted me.

Like most students, I first came to classes expecting to absorb knowledge from my teachers. Rancière made me think again.

Every good professor knows from experience that learning is always a two-way process. Rope learning might prepare us for ‘the real world,’ but the real world is not a place of freedom.

For Rancière, if we really want to change the world, the educator must be transformed from the venerable sage into the honest tyrant who proclaims: “You’ve got to think for yourselves, even if you must be told to do it.”

I regard this book as perhaps the greatest book about the nature of science ever published. In it, Popper spells out his dramatic view that science proceeds by putting forward bold, imaginative guesses, which are then subjected to ferocious attempts at empirical refutation. When these conjectured theories are refuted, scientists are forced to think up a better conjectural theory–and that is how science makes progress.

In this book, Popper shows how this dramatic account of how science proceeds by a process of conjecture and refutation has implications for fields beyond science, such as philosophy, in that it implies that, whatever we are doing, our best hope of success in solving our problems is to consider possible solutions and subject them to ferocious criticism.

Capital requires agreement. This was Bourdieu’s fundamental lesson, and he reveals how it can apply to everything: money, authority, language, prestige, leadership, education, and even knowledge itself. Bourdieu was not alone in subjecting the social field to market analysis, but in books like this one, he attained a level of analytical rigour and sociological imagination which has rarely been equalled.

Throughout my education, I have found (and still find) that the best books will expose the reader to completely new ideas that seem like the kind of thing you always already knew. That could almost be a definition of ‘philosophy’–one that empowers the reader. Bourdieu writes that way. 

An interdisciplinary study taken to its logical conclusion. Starting with a powerful interpretation of Romanticism back in the 1950s, Peckham’s work culminated in an ambitious "general theory of human behaviour."

In essence, this book helped me understand that explanation is a form of violence–all languages, and all cultures, strive to enforce predictable behaviour in other human beings. Despite his flaws, Peckham offers a fascinating example of the power of interdisciplinarity. All subjects, when followed through, lead to all the others. 

When I read Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus logico-philosophicus’ some 50 years ago, I was immediately fascinated. Throughout my academic career, this most mysterious—and at the same time clearest—philosophic mind of his generation has inspired me in many ways.

He had tried to nail down the clarity of mathematical argumentation in his early work, only to escape to the jungle of arguments following his concept of ‘sprachspiele’ in his second philosophical stage. And parallel to this mental journal, he physically escaped to a lonely hut in Norway to live in solitude.

Constantine Sandis, the author of this brand-new book, is the leading expert on Wittgenstein studies. He takes the reader on a journey that leads right up to the current debates on artificial intelligence. Wittgenstein returns!   

There were a few books that were able to carry me off into an entirely new cultural environment without reducing my interest in its multi-faceted characters and the seemingly trivial biographical stories. For me, Maxim Gorki, the artist, is a monolith in literature, and this book is a marvel.

The protagonist, young Gorki, has escaped the narrow and backward childhood in rural, almost medieval, Russia and tries to study at a university. It is his insatiable will to learn, to understand, which makes him so special. But every move towards university, towards more knowledge, turns out to be in vain. It leaves him a bit sad, but not hopeless.

He can always return to his reassuring doubt, a lonely doubt. Like the author in his later life—the book was published in 1924—the protagonist is lonely, ever lonelier. He escapes and returns from the pulsation of life itself, of its unknown… show more.

It’s not enough to know that Godot is a modern classic blah-blah-blah. I found that learning why was a crash course in creativity.

This play taught me so many profound lessons/strategies: Inaction is action; you cannot be inactive unless you have an active motivation; silence is brimming with sound; you can write a great play, and your characters can be anything but great; you can make a great philosophical statement through the most mundane of scenes.

Greatness comes with the overall synthesis of all the elements of the theatrical art – dialogue, story, stage, costume, etc. “Godot” is the most incredible name/metaphor. Can be anything, can be nothing.

I directed this play twice, and am still learning from it. I bow down to you, Samuel Beckett.

This is an amazing and brief explanation of what existentialism is and why it should matter to anyone looking for meaning in their life.

I love that Satre demystifies his philosophy, making it accessible and understandable to anyone. The book is actually the transcription of a lecture he gave, so it is wonderfully readable and full of examples and situations that I learned a lot from.

He also defends existentialism from some of its common critiques, which makes the book even more useful as an introduction. Many of my questions were answered here!