Civilization: Reading List

This is the projected reading list for the Civilization Saturday feature. Suggestions for other texts are welcome, and suggestions within the texts--some of them are pretty unwieldly length-wise--are welcome as well. Also, several of the books will be discussed in sections rather than as a whole. I'll try to keep things limited to a hundred pages of reading or so a week.

• The Book of Genesis (Discussion here)


• The Book of Exodus (Discussion here)


• Thucydides, "Pericles' Funeral Oration," from the History of the Peloponnesian War (Discussion here)


• Plato, The Republic (Discussions: Books I-IV here, Books V-VII here, and Books VIII-X here.)


• Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (Discussions: Books I-III here, Books IV-VI here, Books VII-X here)


• Aristotle, The Politics


• Cicero, On the Good Life


• The Book of Isaiah


• The Gospel According to Matthew


• The Acts of the Apostles


• St. Paul the Apostle, Epistle to the Romans


• St. Paul the Apostle, First Epistle to the Corinthians


• St. Paul the Apostle, Epistle to the Galatians


• The Epistle of James


• The Book of Revelation


• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations


• St. Augustine, City of God


• Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy


• Al-Qur'an


• Paul E. Sigmund, ed., St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics


• Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies


• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince


• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses


• Hans J. Hillerbrand, ed., The Protestant Reformation (Readings from Martin Luther and others to be determined)


• John Calvin, The Institutes (Reading selections to be determined; suggestions are welcome)


• René Descartes, Discourse on Method


• René Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy


• John Milton, Areopagitica


• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan


• John Locke, Second Treatise of Government


• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principals of Morals


• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality


• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract


• Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments


• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations


• Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence (draft and final versions)


• Immanuel Kant, "What Is Enlightenment?"


• Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals


• Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers


• The Constitution of the United States of America


• The Bill of Rights


• Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen


• The Preface to the French Constitution of 1793


• Maximilien Robespierre, On the Moral and Political Principles of Domestic Policy


• Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France


• Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women


• G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit


• G.W.F. Hegel, Appendix to The Philosophy of Right


• G.W.F. Hegel, Introduction to The Philosophy of History


• Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America


• Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844


• Karl Marx, The German Ideology, Part I


• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto


• Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"


• John Stuart Mill, On Liberty


• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism


• Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species


• Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man


• Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals


• W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk


• William James, Pragmatism


• Max Weber, Essays in Sociology


• V.I. Lenin, Imperialism


• V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution


• Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents


• Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings


• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex


• Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism


• Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition


• Hannah Arendt, On Violence


• Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth


• Jürgen Habermas, Transformation of the Public Sphere


• T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions


• Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches


• The Autobiography of Malcolm X


• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice


• Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia


• Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish


• Edward Said, Orientalism


• Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance!


• Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent


• Catherine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State


• Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History