The Best Philosophy Books for Beginners

Why create a reading list of the best philosophy books for beginners? Well, Bertrand Russell once said that ‘science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know’, and when it comes to philosophy - I don’t know nearly enough. The vastness and occasional intangibility of the subject can make it feel inaccessible for novices. Like trying to find the end of a piece of sellotape, it can be frustrating to know where to start. In situations like this, there is only one thing you can do - ask the experts what they’d recommend as the best philosophy books for beginners. Luckily for me, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing some of the world’s finest philosophical minds.

Books List:
1/ Plato: Five Dialogues by Plato
2/ Paradoxes by Mark Sainsbury
3/ At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell
4/ Mortal Questions by Thomas Nagel
5/ The Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose
6/ Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries
7/ Meno, Euthydemus by Plato
8/ Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault by Pierre Hadot
9/ History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston
10/ The Treatise of Zera Yacob by Zera Yacob
11/ The Philosopher Queens: The lives and Legacies of Philosophy’s Unsung Women by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting
12/ Republic by Plato
13/ Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
14/ The Stranger by Albert Camus
15/ Symposium by Plato
16/ The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
17/ Brainstorms by Daniel Dennett
18/ What Is This Thing Called Science by Alan F. Chalmers
19/ Conduct of the Understanding by John Locke
20/ Introducing Time: A Graphic Guide by Craig Callender and Ralph Edney
21/ Morality: An Introduction to Ethics by Bernard Williams
22/ Confessions by Saint Augustine
23/ Utilitarianism, For and Against by J.J.C Smart and Bernard Williams
24/ Becoming Beauvoir by Kate Kirkpatrick
25/ Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith
26/ The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
27/ Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel
28/ She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir