Subreddit

Top books from r/askphilosophy

A Q&A subreddit moderated by academic philosophers and graduate students, where users ask direct questions about philosophical texts, arguments, and traditions.

Updated September 2026 — rankings refresh with each new pull of comment data.

Books ranked

2,002

Published mentions

sum of exact per-book subreddit rows

592k

Members

Years tracked

About this ranking

r/askphilosophy is where actual reading recommendations happen: the top result is Kant's Critique of Pure Reason at 216 mentions, followed by Camus's Myth of Sisyphus (152) and the Tractatus (136) — a spread that reflects genuine breadth across analytic and continental traditions. Compare that to r/philosophy, where the same titles appear but at a fraction of the volume (Critique pulls only 21 mentions there), and r/Stoicism, which is essentially a Meditations monoculture (990 mentions) built around a handful of accessible Roman texts. r/askphilosophy skews toward primary sources and canonical difficulty: Heidegger's Being and Time (131 mentions), Nicomachean Ethics (134), and Philosophical Investigations (95) all outrank any popular-press philosophy title. The moderation keeps discussion text-focused, which filters out self-help adjacents that dominate elsewhere.

Guides built from this community

Ranked best-of lists and editorial guides that draw on r/askphilosophy's tracked mentions.

By year

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Most-mentioned in r/askphilosophy

Ordered by tracked mention count across all published years. Sentiment is shown as context and does not change the order. The Upvotes toggle re-sorts by comment-score weight — display only, the canonical order stays mention-count.

Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions

Critique of Pure Reason

Immanuel Kant

The book a supervillain's aide reads for fun in Superman III, and the one r/askphilosophy treats as the actual prerequisite.

223 in this sub positive

The Myth of Sisyphus

Albert Camus

Camus decides the only real philosophical question is whether to keep living, then imagines a man happy pushing a boulder forever anyway.

158 in this sub positive

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Ludwig Wittgenstein

A philosopher publishes seven numbered propositions about the limits of language, then spends the rest of his career arguing he got it wrong.

144 in this sub positive

Being and Time

Martin Heidegger

Heidegger argues human existence only gets its meaning by being oriented toward its own death, and builds an entire system around that fact.

141 in this sub positive

Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle

Aristotle's 2,400-year-old argument that living well depends on virtue, leisure, and the company you keep — still the canonical text for the field.

136 in this sub positive

Beyond Good and Evil

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche argues that good and evil were invented categories, built by someone, for a reason, and asks who benefits from the invention.

107 in this sub mixed

Philosophical Investigations

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein spends his last two decades dismantling the Tractatus, the book that made him famous.

100 in this sub positive

Phaedo

Plato

Socrates spends his last afternoon before the hemlock arguing that death is not the end.

97 in this sub positive

On the Genealogy of Morals

Friedrich Nietzsche

A philologist turns the word 'good' inside out and finds a slave revolt hiding underneath it.

93 in this sub positive

#10

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Friedrich Nietzsche

A prophet comes down from ten years alone on a mountain to tell humanity God is dead and hand them a superman instead.

68 in this sub mixed

#11

Sophie's World

Jostein Gaarder

A teenage girl starts receiving anonymous letters that walk her through the entire history of Western philosophy, one mystery at a time.

65 in this sub positive

#12

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius

A Roman emperor writes himself private notes on how to stop losing his temper, never expecting anyone else to read them, and two thousand years later everyone has.

54 in this sub Not scored

#13

A History of Western Philosophy

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell surveys 2,500 years of philosophers and never once pretends he doesn't have favorites among them.

51 in this sub mixed

#14

Fear and Trembling

Søren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard uses Abraham's knife at Isaac's throat to ask whether any act of faith can be explained to the person standing next to you.

47 in this sub positive

#15

A Theory of Justice

John Rawls

The 1971 book that reset political philosophy by asking what principles rational people would choose if they didn't know where they'd land in society.

46 in this sub positive

#16

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Immanuel Kant

Kant spends under 100 pages arguing you can never treat a person as a means to an end, and asks you to prove him wrong.

44 in this sub positive

#17

Being and Nothingness

Jean-Paul Sartre

A waiter performs the role of waiter so completely that Sartre uses him to explain how people hide from their own freedom.

41 in this sub mixed

#18

The Problems of Philosophy

Bertrand Russell

Russell spends a hundred pages asking whether the table in front of you is actually there.

37 in this sub positive

#19

The Republic

Plato

A student dares Socrates to prove justice pays even with a ring that makes you invisible, and answering him takes nine more books.

37 in this sub positive

#20

Apology

Plato

A 70-year-old Athenian stands trial for corrupting the youth, defends himself by refusing to grovel, and picks execution over exile.

34 in this sub positive

#21

What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy

Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel surveys free will, knowledge, death, and the meaning of life in 100 pages — the first book assigned on a philosophy degree.

33 in this sub positive

#22

On Liberty

John Stuart Mill

Mill's 1859 case for why society has no right to silence you — even when you're wrong — distilled to 130 pages that r/askphilosophy assigns before almost anything else.

31 in this sub positive