This is (possibly) the first ever First Contact story and was written by French philosopher Voltaire in 1752.

The imagery is beautiful. Micromegas glides on a sunbeam between planets, something that, today, we’d call the use of a solar sail. Humanity is reduced to ants scurrying in the dirt before this giant alien. Voltaire uses his fictional story to challenge the prevailing philosophies of his day, including the insistence of humans declaring the universe was made for them (to which Micromegas laughs).

Although this book is long out of print, it can be read for free online as part of the Gutenberg Project.  

My writing focuses on ethical failure, situations where people, when given the choice between the morally right and the morally wrong, choose the latter. Tackling the thornier “right versus right” ethical dilemmas is far more challenging. To do it requires an individual who is both a masterful thinker and writer. Joseph Badaracco is just that. In this brilliant book, Badaracco takes the reader into the minds of business people, at different levels of seniority, facing right versus right ethical dilemmas of increasing complexity. By doing so Badaracco not only provides insight into how challenging these dilemmas are to navigate, but also how finding a sensible path through is possible. This book is a must-read for business ethics students and practitioners.

The Analects of Confucius are a treasure trove of ancient ethical wisdom. Without explicitly discussing reason, as it came to be known in the West, Confucius’s maxims were implicitly based on reason and moderation. He articulated the concept of the ethical mean (avoiding both excess and deficiency) about 150 years before Aristotle taught a similar concept. He expressed the principle of the Golden Rule hundreds of years before Jesus, though other thinkers had formulated it even earlier. Much of what Confucius said had to do with ritual and political matters unique to his time and place. However, some of his ethical sayings are as true today as they were when he first uttered them millennia ago. In reading and reflecting upon them, I was struck by their contemporary relevance.

This astonishingly rich and beautifully written survey shows how deeply love is involved in what has always been one of my main philosophical preoccupations – the human search for meaning. Simon May reveals love as the ‘harbinger of the sacred,’ while at the same time warning of how often it bears the burden of unrealistic and misconceived expectations.

I was captured by the first sentence in this book: “Between 1550 and 1650 Western thinkers ceased to believe that they could find all important truths in ancient books.” I think this is the greatest intellectual revolution in history—when we stopped looking back in time for the truth about the world and started looking forward. 

We stopped believing that ancient thinkers—Moses, Aristotle, Galen—had privileged access to knowledge. We realized that Newton was better equipped to understand the world than Aristotle and that Darwin knew more than Moses. This realization made science possible, but it’s a fragile insight.

Thom's work on the "physics of meaningful forms," also known as Semiophysics, deeply influenced our approach to modeling structural changes in Memory-Evolutive Systems (MES). Indeed, in ‘natural’ systems, he classifies these changes as one of four standard changes—Birth, Death, Confluence, and Scission—which offer valuable insights into how components and interactions evolve over time within these systems. Integrating Thom's framework has enriched our understanding of MES dynamics. 

In MES, this led us to formulate the "Complexification Theorem," which characterizes the resulting category following structural changes: Birth or Death corresponds to adding or removing components, while Confluence leads to the formation of a colimit for a specific pattern of interconnected components, and Scission results in the decomposition of a given colimit.

While this draws on many earlier works and is somewhat influenced by romantic ideas of the time (in 1894) it contains much which you would struggle to find elsewhere unless you had access to a huge academic library.

The author gives his personal opinion on the reference material to a large extent, but he is quite explicit in that regard, so even though it is very dated, the reader is well aware of what is stated as pure fact and what is his own interpretation.

An essential work for those with an interest in the Irish form of Druidism and Paganism, which offers a unique insight and perspective long before the Druid revival reached Ireland.

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.

Magee’s splendid introductory book is my go-to recommendation for those who wish to enter the world of philosophical ideas. Yes, it’s old-school in the sense that it can be annoyingly androcentric and Eurocentric. A supplement like Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting’s remarkable Philosopher Queens or Julian Baggini’s volume below should be read in tandem. Having said that, however, no one else pulls together the history of western philosophy with terse, informative, and fascinating accounts of important figures and schools as well as Magee. Plus, Magee’s text luxuriates amidst the lush, generous, and illuminating visuals that make Dorling Kindersley volumes so voluptuous. 

What I most admire about Autocracy and Redistribution is that it brings the best of contemporary political science to bear on questions of deep scholarly and real-world importance: what explains redistributive land reform? Albertus argues that redistributive land reform is much more likely when 1) top-level state leaders and large landowners have diverging interests and 2) institutional barriers to achieving large-scale reform are lower. Albertus shows that redistributive land reform is more likely under dictatorship than democracy.