r/askphilosophy · 2022

Most-mentioned books in r/askphilosophy during 2022

This page ranks books by exact tracked mentions in r/askphilosophy within the published source unit for 2022. Counts come from the reconciled subreddit-by-month matrix; a source unit may be a bounded sample.

Books ranked

270

Tracked mentions in 2022

Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions

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.

28 in 2022

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.

27 in 2022

Philosophical Investigations

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

21 in 2022

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.

21 in 2022

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.

21 in 2022

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.

20 in 2022

On the Genealogy of Morals

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

19 in 2022

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.

12 in 2022

Phaedo

Plato

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

10 in 2022

#10

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.

9 in 2022

#11

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.

9 in 2022

#12

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.

7 in 2022

#13

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.

7 in 2022

#14

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.

7 in 2022

#15

The Problems of Philosophy

Bertrand Russell

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

6 in 2022

#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.

5 in 2022

#17

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.

5 in 2022