100 Books Like The Culmination

I like books that change the very ways in which I see and understand the world.

Polanyi’s The Great Transformation from the end of WW2 made it much clearer to me how a world which regularly finds technological solutions to humankind’s problems could also descend into barbarism. Modern capitalism’s subordinating the functioning of society to the demands of the market changes the status of nature itself in ways that I am increasingly aware of, as the ecological crisis threatens the very survival of humankind.

The book appeals to me not least because of the ways in which it draws important philosophical conclusions from a detailed historical narrative rather than just stating theoretical positions.

I have been frustrated for years at how much philosophy fails to find ways of both acknowledging the astounding achievements of modern science and responding to how exclusive focus on the sciences can seem to make the world mechanical and meaningless.

Instead of seeing science as the search for a timeless true picture of the world, Dewey shows how to attend to all the ways in which we actively participate in and interact with the world. This chimes with my experience that being actively involved in music makes more sense of the world than almost anything else I do.

I have never found many philosophical accounts of ethics very satisfactory, because they don’t adequately explore how value is rooted in the myriad ways we relate to the world.

Graeber’s book takes a key notion, debt, that connects economics to ethics, in order to try and understand the origins and development of the distortions of human relationships that are characteristic of modern capitalism.

His conclusion that ‘money has no essence. It’s not “really” anything; therefore, its nature has always been and presumably always will be a matter of political contention’, which he arrives at through a detailed historical and anthropological investigation of debt, led me to reexamine very many assumptions about how the world works.

Moore’s book seems exemplary to me because it offers a broad historical picture of alternatives in modern philosophy, based on the simple idea that metaphysics is ‘the most general attempt to make sense of things’. 

This connects philosophy to everyday experience, which relies precisely on how we make sense of things.

I like the fact that the book allows one to ask questions about the sense knowledge makes of the world, given that much of the sense we make actually comes through active participation in the world, for example in listening to or playing music, or, indeed, in doing philosophy in relation to a real world problem.

Aristotle’s Metaphysics marks the beginning of attempts to articulate the philosophy of metaphysics as a science. Retrospectively applying Kant’s division of metaphysics as transcendental philosophy to Aristotle’s writings: Aristotle’s Metaphysics is an in-depth examination of cosmological and theological metaphysics.

I personally enjoy Aristotle’s Metaphysics because it is mysterious. It is difficult to read, and the fact that it was written with an entirely different alphabet is exciting. Aristotle’s Metaphysics is his attempt to systematically blend his particular preference for empiricism with metaphysical insights learned from Plato’s philosophy.

The history of Aristotle’s Metaphysics – in terms of, for example, its title and organization – is fascinating in itself; however, what always stood out for me was recognizing Aristotle’s own excitement. Book 5 of his Metaphysics is often thought of as a kind of metaphysical dictionary, and shortly after this summary of vocabulary terms, it is as if Aristotle grabs hold of… show more.

In this book, one of the great philosophers of the first half of the 20th century sketches his take on two central philosophical tasks -- explaining what kinds of things exist in reality, and how they are related, and delineating what we can know and how we know it.  In so doing, Russell illustrates the new method of logical and linguistic analysis he used in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918), to lay the foundations of an epistemological and metaphysical system rivaling the great systems of the past. A key transitional figure linking the history of the subject to contemporary concerns, he raised logic and language to central subjects of philosophical study in their own right, without losing sight of their relevance for more traditional philosophical quests.

I love this book because it shows that consciousness is the fundamental reality. It’s a very readable guide to the scientific discoveries that (paradoxically) will force science to reconsider its materialistic worldview. Laboratory results in quantum mechanics reveal that there is no “objective world” out there. Brain imaging studies in neuroscience indicate that consciousness is not “manufactured” by the brain.

In fact, consciousness expands when brain centers responsible for our sense of self are inhibited. And the ultimate consciousness expansion appears to take place at death as brain function ceases entirely, according to the growing number of people revived after cardiac arrest. Suddenly, science is discovering that the mystics have been right for thousands of years.

If aliens land and ask me what it’s like to be a human, I’ll give them Heidegger’s first book, Being and Time. Of course, that might prompt them to destroy all humans out of frustration at the difficulty of his writing, but if they persevere, they will find the best description of what it’s like to live out your time on this planet (One Hundred Years of Solitude comes in second).

Naming and Necessity had a profound impact on my understanding of the importance of using proper names in programming (for functions, variables, etc.). I was fascinated by Kripke’s exploration of the usage of names in our day-to-day language. His arguments challenged my thinking and introduced me to new ways of considering reference and meaning.

The clarity and rigor of his analysis pushed me to refine my reasoning skills. Despite being a challenging read, I found it incredibly rewarding.

First published in 1956 Dion Fortune recalls her heroine Vivian le Fay, first introduced in The Sea Priestess fifteen years earlier.

In Moon Magic she is conjured as Lilith le Fay, mysterious and alluring. Interestingly, considering Dion Fortune died before finishing the book, its completion was brought about by an acolyte ‘channeling the author’ after her death. 

Her play on the dynamic of the male and female polarity allows the story to evolve on different levels, as an interesting, if dated view of a society in need of a spiritual revelation, and a treatise on genuine esoteric practices. Fortune’s clipped prose style gives the reader's imagination free rein, allowing her to influence our understanding of certain concepts and provide an entertaining tale to boot.