An inner library.
A hundred and fifty guides to explore the collection’s works. Return to your saved readings and build a path of your own.
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The guides
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Begin with what is yours to choose
A way into Books II, IV and VIII: distinguish the event, the judgment and the response.
MeditationsJustice beyond the self
Read Books V, VI and IX to see why self-command is not enough.
MeditationsTime, change and what matters
A path through Books III, X and XII about no longer postponing life.
MeditationsWhat does it mean to examine a life?
Enter Apology through Socrates’ mission, his encounters and the difference between knowing and appearing to know. A guide to Plato’s text, without assuming that it reproduces every word of the trial.
Plato — Apology of SocratesMust we always obey the law?
Follow Crito’s argument without turning it into a slogan of absolute obedience. The dialogue brings together injustice suffered, commitments made and the responsibility of the person who acts.
Plato — CritoMeeting more than one Socrates
Discover Xenophon’s Socrates and learn to compare testimonies. A way to read the sources without inventing a body of writings authored by Socrates.
Xenophon — MemorabiliaLeaving the cave, returning to the city
Connect the famous image of the cave with Republic’s political project. The question is not only who sees truly, but what that understanding obliges someone to do.
RepublicWhat desire makes us seek
Read Symposium as a conversation with several voices rather than a single formula about love. Eros brings lack, beauty, education and the wish to endure into speech.
SymposiumThinking about the soul through argument
Enter Phaedo through its proposed proofs, objections and dramatic setting. Socrates’ serenity does not replace examination of what he claims.
PhaedoHow a habit becomes a virtue
Read the opening books of Nicomachean Ethics by connecting a good life with everyday character formation, without reducing Aristotle to an ethics of compromise.
Nicomachean EthicsWhat is a political community?
Explore citizenship and the common good while confronting the text’s exclusions. Understanding Aristotle does not mean accepting the limits he places on the community.
PoliticsLearning how to ask “why”
A first journey through Metaphysics via the desire to understand, types of explanation and the distinction between potentiality and actuality. An invitation to slow down over its terms.
MetaphysicsLearning that changes how we live
Enter the Analects through learning: why study, whom to learn from and how to recognise knowledge that genuinely changes a life.
AnalectsWhen gestures become care
Explore the relationship between ren and li: how humaneness and shared forms of living can support one another, or come apart.
AnalectsTo govern is to answer for yourself
Read the political reflections of the Analects while distinguishing example, responsibility and the limits of a model based on social roles.
AnalectsLearning to guide your reason
Begin with Parts II and III of the Discourse: how to inquire methodically without waiting to know everything before living.
Discourse on the MethodMoving through doubt
Follow the first two Meditations, then place the cogito within the movement of the complete six-meditation work.
Meditations on First Philosophy, Objections and RepliesUnderstanding what moves us
Read the passions as a question of embodied life, distinguishing the text’s philosophical interest from its historical physiology.
The Passions of the SoulReading affects without condemning them
Enter Ethics through Part III, then return to the architecture connecting nature, mind and freedom.
EthicsWhy leave minds free?
Connect the critical reading of religious texts with the defence of free inquiry, particularly in Chapter XX.
Theological-Political TreatiseDesigning institutions for real human beings
Approach the final treatise without overlooking its unfinished state or the distance between its proposals and present-day democracies.
Political TreatiseWhat it means to know
Approach the first Critique through its project and fundamental distinctions, without confusing the limits of knowledge with relativism.
Critique of Pure ReasonActing without reducing others to means
Read the Groundwork’s three sections through good will, maxims and respect for persons.
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of MoralsThinking for yourself, together
A short essay for examining intellectual dependence and the conditions of thought that can be publicly challenged.
An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?When certainties begin to shift
Approach The Gay Science as a laboratory: learn to question your certainties without confusing clarity, cynicism and withdrawal from life.
The Gay ScienceWhere do our values come from?
Follow the three inquiries of On the Genealogy of Morality: how history, affects and relations of power enter into our evaluations.
On the Genealogy of MoralityEntering a demanding fable
Read Thus Spoke Zarathustra beyond its famous formulas: a work of transformation, solitude and returns to the world.
Thus Spoke ZarathustraBeing free in a resistant world
Read The Ethics of Ambiguity through the question of responsibility: how to act without denying constraints or retreating into helplessness.
The Ethics of AmbiguityHow a society produces the Other
Enter The Second Sex by following its movement: from explanations and myths to lived experience, then to the question of emancipation.
The Second SexReading a life as it takes shape
Discover Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter as a story of formation in which individual choices meet family, norms and available resources.
Memoirs of a Dutiful DaughterWhen do we have enough?
Read the Letter to Menoeceus by distinguishing needs, pleasures, and fears.
Letter to MenoeceusNature without divine threat
Understand how physics enters a philosophy of happiness.
Letter to HerodotusCan security be shared?
Connect the doctrines about friendship with those about justice and agreements.
Principal DoctrinesRecover the use of your time
Read On the Shortness of Life as an inquiry into commitments, leisure and the meaning of being occupied.
On the Shortness of LifePause before wanting punishment
Trace the movement from a first emotional shock to the deliberate endorsement of revenge.
On AngerRead friendship against social rank
Bring letters 3, 9 and 47 together to examine trust, independence and the limits of Seneca’s moral community.
Moral Letters to LuciliusSeparate your choice from the outcome
Read Handbook 1 and 5 without turning the distinction into a promise of total emotional control.
HandbookUnderstand roles without becoming passive
Use Discourses II.10 and III.2 to connect personal freedom with practical obligations to others.
DiscoursesRead a quotation without inventing a lost book
Follow two sayings through Marcus Aurelius and learn what indirect evidence can and cannot establish.
Fragments and TestimoniesWhen other people’s gaze becomes power
Follow the emergence of comparison in the Second Discourse.
Discourse on the Origin of InequalityObeying law while remaining free
Examine general will, majority, and government as distinct concepts.
The Social ContractLearning freely in a prepared world
Question Emile’s experiences and his tutor’s power.
Emile, or On EducationDistinguish habit from proof
Twelve sections reorganize the theory of knowledge around ideas, causation, liberty, miracles and a mitigated skepticism.
An Enquiry concerning Human UnderstandingFeel, compare and judge
Hume investigates qualities that attract approval and esteem, connecting utility, agreeableness, sentiment and correction of our personal viewpoint.
An Enquiry concerning the Principles of MoralsRead a controversy without confusing its voices
Cleanthes, Demea and Philo debate what cosmic order, evil and human limitations permit us to conclude about a deity.
Dialogues concerning Natural ReligionHow does consciousness learn?
Read the Introduction and the first stages of the Phenomenology as an experiment in revising standards of knowledge.
Phenomenology of SpiritWhere does freedom become real?
Follow the Philosophy of Right from legal personality to social institutions.
Elements of the Philosophy of RightReading a logical transition
Approach the opening of the Science of Logic without reducing dialectic to a three-word formula.
Science of LogicFrom body to will: follow the argument
Enter The World through the body’s double experience and test the transition to a metaphysics of nature.
The World as Will and Representation — ICan compassion ground morality?
Read On the Basis of Morality through motives, visible actions and attention to other beings.
On the Basis of MoralityRecognize a stratagem without losing the question
Use Eristic Dialectic to notice when discussion leaves relevant reasons behind.
Eristic Dialectic — The Art of Being RightWhat does a commodity conceal?
Enter the first chapter without conflating price, usefulness, and value.
Capital, Volumes I–IIIActing within inherited history
Read a coup through institutions, classes, and representations.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis BonaparteWhat does changing the world mean?
Read the eleven Theses as a problem of practice and knowledge.
Theses on FeuerbachChoosing without a recipe
Read the existentialism lecture by distinguishing freedom, situation and justification.
Existentialism Is a HumanismRecognizing bad faith
Examine an ontological concept through scenes from Being and Nothingness.
Being and NothingnessFrom gathering to collective action
Follow the movement from series to group in Critique of Dialectical Reason.
Critique of Dialectical Reason IRecovering a shared world
Read The Human Condition through the activities that make up an ordinary day.
The Human ConditionReading the mechanisms of domination
Approach The Origins of Totalitarianism without turning a historical concept into a generic insult.
The Origins of TotalitarianismResponsibility and the banality of evil
Read Eichmann in Jerusalem by separating Arendt’s argument, trial evidence and subsequent historical research.
Eichmann in JerusalemRead a question in the Summa
This vast inquiry, arranged in questions and articles, examines God, creation, human action and Christ. It stages objections and replies within a carefully structured teaching format.
Summa TheologiaeDistinguish essence and existence
This short treatise distinguishes what a thing is from its act of existing and examines genus, species and individuals in material and immaterial substances.
On Being and EssenceWho thinks? A medieval controversy
Aquinas disputes the thesis that all human beings share numerically one possible intellect. His case joins an interpretation of Aristotle to an account of personal action.
On the Unity of the Intellect against the AverroistsWork and freedom
Weil investigates how division of labor, machinery and collective organization can impose an opaque necessity on workers. Freedom requires understanding and directing the conditions of action.
Reflections on the Causes of Liberty and Social OppressionAttention and grace
This collection of fragments explores the gravity of psychological and social mechanisms, attention and grace. Its brief formulations demand a reading that preserves their tensions.
Gravity and GraceRoots and obligations
Written for Free France, this work asks how to rebuild collective life after war through needs of the soul, obligations and rootedness. Weil also criticizes the idolatry of national force.
The Need for RootsChoose a life, read many voices
The pseudonymous editor Victor Eremita presents contrasting papers associated with an aesthetic and an ethical outlook. Their tensions invite readers to examine how a life is chosen rather than accept one narrator as a final verdict.
Either/OrAnxiety and open possibilities
Vigilius Haufniensis examines anxiety as a response to possibility and freedom, using the story of Adam to investigate innocence and the emergence of sin. The psychological inquiry does not replace a clinical account of anxiety disorders.
The Concept of AnxietyLove as action
This signed series of Christian reflections examines love of the neighbor as a practice rather than a private feeling alone. It questions preference and social distinction while remaining situated within a demanding religious ethics.
Works of LoveReading the way
This short work explores the Dao, the strength of flexibility and the dangers of domination. Images of water, emptiness and return address government as well as personal conduct.
Dao De JingSpace and change
Explore images of emptiness, return and the limits of language in the Dao De Jing.
Dao De JingSimplicity and government
Examine simplicity, humility and criticism of coercion in shared life.
Dao De JingLaw and demonstration
Averroes examines the relationship between philosophical demonstration and revealed law. Rational study of the world can be a religious obligation, while different forms of discourse address different audiences.
The Decisive TreatiseReading a controversy
Averroes responds point by point to al-Ghazali’s criticisms of philosophers. The debate concerns causation, divine knowledge and the eternity of the world without reducing opponents to caricatures.
The Incoherence of the IncoherenceIntellect and soul
Averroes reads Aristotle on sensation, imagination and intellect. His account of intellect and its relation to individuals generated enduring philosophical debate.
Long Commentary on the De animaListening for logos
Enter the fragments without turning difficulty into mystification.
Fragments and testimoniesReading an uncertain life
Separate sources, anecdotes and reconstruction in Diogenes’ biography.
Diogenes Laertius — Life of HeraclitusThe river and names
Compare Plato’s reading with the fragments and their context.
Plato — Cratylus: fluxEvidence and legend
Arrange sources to understand what can be attributed to Pythagoras.
Ancient testimoniesA philosophy lived together
Explore community through Iamblichus’ late portrait.
Iamblichus — On the Pythagorean LifeReading the Golden Verses
Understand a moral poem without wrongly attributing it to the founder.
Golden VersesTesting hypotheses
Follow the role of hypotheses and experiment in Foundations of Physics.
Foundations of PhysicsMeasuring force
Reconstruct the physical and institutional questions in the dispute with Mairan.
Reply to MairanStudy and happiness
Read passions and the desire to know in their historical conditions.
Discourse on HappinessReading institutions
Reconstruct discipline, surveillance and norms through Discipline and Punish.
Discipline and PunishExploring archives
Examine statements and historical rules in The Archaeology of Knowledge.
The Archaeology of KnowledgePower and sexuality
Question the repressive hypothesis and power relations in The Will to Knowledge.
The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: The Will to KnowledgeFrom experience to ideas
Read the Essay by distinguishing sensation, reflection and limits of knowledge.
An Essay concerning Human UnderstandingConsent and property
Examine rights, power and appropriation in the second treatise.
Second Treatise of GovernmentToleration and exclusions
Read the Letter by confronting principles with historical limits.
A Letter concerning TolerationPhysics against fear
Follow how atoms, void and the mortality of the mind support the claim that death is nothing to us in On the Nature of Things.
On the Nature of ThingsThe first attested reader
Read Cicero’s single sentence on the poems of Lucretius, its date and its disputed wording, as evidence of the poem’s first circulation in Rome.
Cicero, Letter to His Brother QuintusUntangling a legend
Separate the dates, the love potion, the madness and Cicero’s editing in Jerome’s brief notice, and weigh each claim against earlier evidence.
Jerome, ChronicleWandering with the Inner Chapters
Follow perspective, skill and the usefulness of the useless through the seven Inner Chapters, from the great bird Peng to Cook Ding.
Inner ChaptersFish, tortoise and mourning
Read the debates and anecdotes of the outer and miscellaneous chapters on knowledge, office and death, and compare them with the inner core.
Outer and Miscellaneous ChaptersReading through Guo Xiang
Examine how Guo Xiang’s commentary turns the parables into a philosophy of spontaneity and allotted nature that shaped later readings.
Guo Xiang’s CommentaryVerses on the mind
Follow the Dhammapada’s paired verses on mind, hatred and heedfulness, distinguishing each verse from the story its later commentary adds.
DhammapadaThe four truths as tasks
Reconstruct the first discourse: the rejection of two extremes, the four noble truths and the task each truth assigns to the listener.
Setting in Motion the Wheel of DhammaSages of the oldest verses
Explore the old chapters of the Sutta Nipāta on letting go of views, boundless goodwill and the brahmin defined by conduct rather than birth.
Sutta NipātaThe self in the Confessions
Follow how the Confessions turn a life story into an inquiry into desire, memory and time.
ConfessionsHistory and the two cities
Read The City of God as a response to the fall of Rome and a reflection on what politics can and cannot achieve.
The City of GodFreedom, evil and the will
Examine how On Free Choice of the Will links the origin of evil to the will and defends freedom against necessity.
On Free Choice of the WillFortune and happiness
Follow Philosophy’s argument in the Consolation, from the losses inflicted by Fortune to the search for the true good.
The Consolation of PhilosophyLogic and theology
Examine how the theological tractates use categories, definitions and axioms to clarify doctrines received through faith.
Theological TractatesThe question of universals
Reconstruct Porphyry’s three questions and the answer Boethius gives them in his second commentary on the Isagoge.
Commentaries on Porphyry’s IsagogeReason and revelation
Follow how the Guide reads biblical language, speaks of God by negation and weighs creation against eternity.
The Guide of the PerplexedOrdering the Law
Examine how the Mishneh Torah arranges the whole of Jewish law and why it opens with the knowledge of God.
Mishneh TorahVirtue as a remedy
Study the Eight Chapters on the faculties of the soul, the mean and free will, and compare them with Aristotle.
Eight ChaptersBuilding the city
Follow how Reason, Rectitude and Justice turn examples of women into an argument against learned misogyny.
The Book of the City of LadiesPrudence for every estate
Compare the counsel given to princesses, estate managers, townswomen and poor women in the Book of the Three Virtues.
The Book of the Three VirtuesThe head and the members
Examine how the Book of the Body Politic binds prince, nobles and people through reciprocal duties.
The Book of the Body PoliticPolitics without illusions
Follow effectual truth, appearances and fortune through the central chapters of The Prince and test how far its advice reaches.
The PrinceConflict and free republics
Examine how the Discourses turn civic conflict, mixed government and popular judgement into conditions of liberty.
Discourses on LivyArms and citizenship
Read The Art of War as a political argument linking military discipline, citizen soldiers and the stability of a state.
The Art of WarTesting one’s judgment
Follow how the Essays turn borrowed examples into a trial of judgment and a portrait of the writer in motion.
The EssaysDoubt against presumption
Examine how the Apology uses animals, the quarrels of philosophers and the weakness of the senses to humble reason.
Apology for Raymond SebondTravelling to compare customs
Read the Travel Journal as a field record of customs, religion and illness that feeds the later Essays.
Travel JournalMisery, diversion and the wager
Follow the Pensées from the analysis of human restlessness to the argument that one must wager.
PenséesCasuistry and irony
Study how the Provincial Letters turn quotations from moral theologians into a public argument about conscience.
The Provincial LettersExperiment against authority
Reconstruct the experiments on the vacuum and Pascal’s rules for testing a hypothesis against the phenomena.
Writings on the Vacuum and the Weight of AirThe garden against the system
Follow Candide’s journey to see how a philosophical tale tests optimism against war, disaster and injustice.
Candide, or OptimismEngland as a mirror
Read the Philosophical Letters as an indirect critique of France through religion, commerce and science.
Philosophical LettersThe Calas affair and tolerance
Trace how a judicial error becomes a general argument for tolerance in the Treatise.
Treatise on ToleranceReason and women’s education
Follow the argument of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman from shared reason to the reform of girls’ education and of women’s place in civic life.
A Vindication of the Rights of WomanRights against tradition
Read the reply to Burke to see how Wollstonecraft sets rights grounded in reason against the authority of inheritance and custom.
A Vindication of the Rights of MenA philosophical journey north
Explore the Scandinavian letters, where the observation of landscapes and societies turns into a reflection on feeling, reason and commerce.
Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and DenmarkTesting the harm principle
Follow how On Liberty limits coercion by law and by opinion, and examine where its exceptions and boundaries lie.
On LibertyWeighing happiness
Reconstruct the greatest happiness principle and the distinction between higher and lower pleasures in Utilitarianism.
UtilitarianismArguing for equality
Examine how The Subjection of Women challenges custom, claims about nature and the marriage laws of its time.
The Subjection of WomenLiving deliberately at Walden
Follow the reckoning of needs, the daily routine and the turning seasons through which Walden tests what a human life really requires.
Walden; or, Life in the WoodsConscience and the law
Examine how the essay moves from one night in jail to an argument about complicity, majority rule and the duties of citizens toward an unjust state.
Civil DisobedienceTravel, friendship and mourning
Read the river journey as an elegy for John and as a workshop for the digressive essay form that Walden would later refine.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversFreedom against the Crystal Palace
Follow the underground man’s case against rational egoism and ask whether the freedom he defends amounts to more than spite.
Notes from UndergroundA theory tested by life
Examine how Crime and Punishment turns Raskolnikov’s theory of extraordinary people into a lived experiment with unforeseen consequences.
Crime and PunishmentRebellion and the Grand Inquisitor
Read Ivan Karamazov’s rebellion and his poem of the Grand Inquisitor alongside Zosima’s teaching, the novel’s indirect reply.
The Brothers KaramazovMeaning in the face of death
Follow the crisis of A Confession from the questions that halt a successful life to the faith by which working people live.
A ConfessionSincere art and its counterfeits
Test Tolstoy’s definition of art as the transmission of lived feeling against the works you value most.
What Is Art?Nonviolence and conscience
Examine how The Kingdom of God Is Within You turns the Sermon on the Mount into a critique of the state.
The Kingdom of God Is Within YouDevotion in everyday life
Follow how Gitanjali joins devotion, ordinary labour, nature and freedom of mind in short prose poems.
Gitanjali: Song OfferingsSelf, nature and the infinite
Examine how Sadhana rereads the Upanishads to connect the individual, nature, love and action.
Sadhana: The Realisation of LifeNation and humanity
Weigh Tagore’s critique of the Nation as a machine of power against his call for social cooperation and reform.
NationalismA family facing transformation
Follow body, work and care in The Metamorphosis, from Gregor’s awakening to the family’s outing after his death.
The MetamorphosisReading the court and its parable
Examine the arrest, the intermediaries and the doorkeeper parable in The Trial, keeping its unfinished state in view.
The TrialApproaching the unreachable castle
Trace K.’s attempts to reach the castle authorities and the village life that is organised around them.
The CastleMoney, a room and freedom
Follow how A Room of One’s Own turns income, privacy and education into conditions of literary creation.
A Room of One’s OwnOutsiders against war
Examine how Three Guineas connects the exclusion of women from education and the professions to militarism and fascism.
Three GuineasReading for oneself
Use The Common Reader and Modern Fiction to practise a free, attentive way of reading that forms its own judgments.
The Common ReaderThe limits of language
Follow the numbered propositions of the Tractatus from facts and pictures to the silence of its final line.
Tractatus Logico-PhilosophicusMeaning and use
Test language games, family resemblance and the remarks on rules against examples drawn from everyday speech.
Philosophical InvestigationsCertainty and doubt
Examine how Wittgenstein answers Moore and the skeptic by asking what has to stand fast for doubt to make sense.
On CertaintyAn original introduction. This guide accompanies the work; it is neither the complete text nor a translation.