James Wood and Jonathan Rée introduce their new Close Readings series, Conversations in Philosophy, running throughout 2025. They explain the title of the series and why they'll be challenging a hundred years of academic convention by reuniting the worlds of literature and philosophy.

James Wood teaches literature at Harvard University and is a staff writer for The New Yorker as well as a contributor to the London Review of Books. His books include How Fiction Works, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self.

Jonathan Rée is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and a freelance writer and philosopher. His most recent book on philosophy is Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English.

The full list of texts for the series:

Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

Ludwig Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, translated by George Eliot

Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Circles’ and other essays

John Stuart Mill, An Autobiography

F.H. Bradley, ‘My station and its duties’

Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’

William James ‘The Will to Believe’

Martin Heidegger, ‘The Thing’

Jean-Paul Sartre, Theory of the Emotions

Simone de Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity

Albert Camus, The Fall

Iris Murdoch, Sovereignty of Good 

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse