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Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals by David Hume.

David Hume, an eminent Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist, explores the nature and foundation of Morals in this book, which was written as a popular summary of Book III in A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume states: “There has been a controversy started of late, much better worth examination, concerning the general foundation of Morals; whether they be derived from Reason, or from Sentiment; whether we attain the knowledge of them by a chain of argument and induction, or by an immediate feeling and finer internal sense; whether, like all sound judgement of truth and falsehood, they should be the same to every rational intelligent being; or whether, like the perception of beauty and deformity, they be founded entirely on the particular fabric and constitution of the human species.”

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Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume.

The Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a shortened and simplified version of Hume's masterpiece A Treatise of Human Nature. It sought to reach a wider audience, and to dispel some of the virulent criticism addressed toward the former book. In it, Hume explains his theory of epistemology, and argues against other current theories, including those of John Locke, George Berkeley, and Nicolas Malebranche.

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Introduction to The Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

The introduction to Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of world history is often used to introduce students to Hegel's philosophy, in part because Hegel's sometimes difficult style is muted in the lectures, and he discourses on accessible themes such as world events in order to explain his philosophy. Much of the work is spent defining and characterizing Geist or spirit. Geist is similar to the culture of people, and is constantly reworking itself to keep up with the changes of society, while at the same time working to produce those changes through what Hegel called the "cunning of reason". Another important theme of the text is the focus on world history, rather than regional or state history. The obscure writings of Jakob Böhme had a strong effect on Hegel. Böhme had written that the Fall of Man was a necessary stage in the evolution of the universe.

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Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill.

John Stuart Mill's book Utilitarianism is one of the most influential and widely-read philosophical defenses of utilitarianism in ethics. The essay first appeared as a series of three articles published in Fraser's Magazine in 1861; the articles were collected and reprinted as a single book in 1863. It went through four editions during Mill's lifetime with minor additions and revisions. Although Mill includes discussions of utilitarian ethical principles in other works such as On Liberty and The Subjection of Women , Utilitarianism contains Mill's only major discussion of the fundamental grounds for utilitarian ethical theory.

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Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant.

The Critique of Practical Reason ( Kritik der praktischen Vernunft ) is the second of Immanuel Kant's three critiques, first published in 1788. It follows on from his Critique of Pure Reason and deals with his moral philosophy. The second Critique exercised a decisive influence over the subsequent development of the field of ethics and moral philosophy, becoming the principle reference point for ethical systems that focus on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions. Subsequently termed “deontological ethics”, Kant’s ethical system also laid the groundwork of moral absolutism, the belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, devoid of the context of the act.

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American Philosophy Collection Vol. 1.

This collection of articles in early 20th Century American philosophy focuses on the topics of realism, experience, and ideas, with particular attention to the pragmatic naturalism of John Dewey. In tracks 1-5, Dewey responds to critics of his famous article “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism” (available in Short Nonfiction Collection Vol.034) . Tracks 6-12 constitute a series of pointed debates between Dewey and E. B. McGilvary on the topics of time, ideas, and reality. Tracks 13-16 include stand-alone articles on related topics, including Dewey’s influential critique of “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology.” Authors include: John Dewey, B. H. Bode, Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, J. A. Leighton, Evander Bradley McGilvary, John E. Boodin, and Sterling P. Lamprecht.

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Proposed Roads to Freedom by Bertrand Russell.

Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (1872 – 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, political activist and Nobel laureate. He led the British "revolt against idealism" in the early 1900s and is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege and his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this book, written in 1918, he offers his assessment of three competing streams in the thought of the political left: Marxian socialism, anarchism and syndicalism.

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Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.

Bertrand Russell wrote 'Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy' while imprisoned for protesting Britain's involvement in World War I. Russell summarizes the significance of the momentous work of mathematicians in the late nineteenth-century. He further describes his own philosophy of mathematics, Logicism (the view that all mathematical truths are logical truths), and his earlier, influential work solving the paradoxes that plagued mathematical foundations, which crystallized after ten years of dogged effort into the co-authored (with Alfred North Whitehead), three-volume 'Principia Mathematica'. Russell emphasizes the importance of a doctrine of types, the truth of Logicism, and the clarity brought to the philosophy of mathematics by the method of logical analysis.

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Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy by George Santayana.

Before the beginning of World War II, during the time of the Modernist movement in philosophy, George Santayana wrote these five descriptive essays. He examined John Locke’s sensationalism, British Idealism, the “Theory of Relativity”, Freud’s psychology, and Julien Benda’s preachment on the relations between God and the world.

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Our Knowledge of the External World As a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.

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