The 100 most influential books ever written : the history of thought from ancient times to today

518 Pages·2004·22.64 MB·English

by  Seymour-Smith, Martin

THE
1□□ M OST INFLUENTIAL
BO O K S EVER WRITTEN

THE
1□□ MOST INFLUENTIAL
B ם □ KS EVER WRITTEN
THE H IST O R Y □ F T H O U G H T FROM
A N C IE N T TIM ES TO TODAY
MA RT I N S E Y M O U R - S M I T H
Barnes & Noble Books
NEW YORK
Fine Communications
322 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written
LC Control Number 2004104107
ISBN 1-56731-6786־
Copyright © 1998 by Martin Seymour-Smith
This special edition published by MJF Books in arrangement with
Citadel Press, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and
retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Manufactured in the United States of America on acid-free paper 00
MJF Books is a trademark of Fine Creative Media, Inc.
QM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
To James Hodgson
THIS WORLD IS NOT CONCLUSION
Emily Dickinson
This world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music,
But positive, as sound.
It beckons and it baffles;
Philosophies don’t know,
And through a riddle, at the last,
Sagacity must go.
To guess it puzzles scholars;
To gain it, men have shown
Contempt of generations,
And crucifixion known.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XJ
PHOTO CREDITS xii
INTRODUCTION xiii
1. The I Ching 3
2. The Old Testament 8
3. The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer 13
4. The Upanishads 19
5. The Way and Its Power, Lao-tzu 24
6. The Avesta 29
7. Analects, Confucius 35
8. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides 40
9. Works, Hippocrates 44
10. Works, Aristotle 47
11. History, Herodotus 53
12. The Republic, Plato 58
13. Elements, Euclid 66
14. The Dhammapada 71
15. The Aeneid, Virgil 76
16. On the Nature of Reality, Lucretius 80
17. Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws,
Philo of Alexandria 85
18. The New Testament 88
19. Lives, Plutarch 92
20. Annals, From the Death of the Divine Augustus,
Cornelius Tacitus 96
21. The Gospel of Truth 100
22. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius 107
Contents
23. Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus 112
24. Enneads, Plotinus 116
25. Confessions, Augustine of Hippo 121
26. The Koran 127
27. Guide for the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides 132
28. The Kabbalah 135
29. Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas 140
30. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri 144
31. In Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus 149
32. The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli 154
33. On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church,
Martin Luther 159
34. Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais 164
35. Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin 168
36. On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs,
Nicolaus Copernicus 172
37. Essays, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne 176
38. Don Quixote, Parts I and II, Miguel de Cervantes 181
39. The Harmony of the World, Johannes Kepler 186
40. Novum Organum, Francis Bacon 190
41. The First Folio, William Shakespeare 194
42. Dialogue Concerning Two New Chief World Systems,
Galileo Galilei 199
43. Discourse on Method, René Descartes 203
44. Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes 211
45. Works, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 215
46. Pensées, Blaise Pascal 221
47. Ethics, Baruch de Spinoza 227
48. Pilgrims Progress, John Bunyan 232
49. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,
Isaac Newton 237
50. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke 242
51. The Principles of Human Knowledge, George Berkeley 246
52. The New Science, Giambattista Vico 251
53. A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume 256
54. The Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot, ed. 260
55. A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson 265
56. Candide, François־Marie de Voltaire 270
57. Common Sense, Thomas Paine 274
Contents IX
58. An Enquiry Into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith 278
59. The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon 281
60. Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant 286
61. Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau 290
62. Reflections on the Revolution in France,
Edmund Burke 296
63. Vindication of the Rights of Woman,
Mary Wollstonecraft 300
64. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice,
William Godwin 304
65. An Essay on the Principle of Population,
Thomas Robert Malthus 309
66. Phenomenology of Spirit,
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 313
67. The World as Will and Idea, Arthur Schopenhauer 319
68. Course in the Positivist Philosophy, Auguste Comte 324
69. On War, Carl Marie von Clausewitz 328
70. Either/Or, S0ren Kierkegaard 333
71. The Manifesto of the Communist Party,
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 338
72. “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau 343
73. The Origin of Species by Means
of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin 348
74. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill 352
75. First Principles, Herbert Spencer 356
76. “Experiments With Plant Hybrids,” Gregor Mendel 361
77. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy 365
78. Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism,
James Clerk Maxwell 370
79. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche 375
80. The Interj)retation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud 380
81. Pragmatism, William James 385
82. Relativity, Albert Einstein 389
83. The Mind and Society, Vilfredo Pareto 395
84. Psychological Types, Carl Gustav Jung 400
85. I and Thou, Martin Buber 404
86. The Trial, Franz Kafka 408
Contents
87. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper 414
88. The General Theory of Employment Interest,
and Money, John Maynard Keynes 418
89. Being and Nothingness, Jean־Paul Sartre 422
90. The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek 427
91. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir 433
92. Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener 438
93. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell 442
94. Beelzebub s Tales to His Grandson,
George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff 447
95. Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein 453
96. Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky 458
97. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, T. S. Kuhn 463
98. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan 468
99. Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Mao Zedong 471
100. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B. F. Skinner 476
AUTHORS, TITLES, AND PUBLISHERS OF THE
100 MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS EVER WRITTEN 481
INDEX 485