Subreddit

Top books from r/philosophy

A general philosophy subreddit for discussion of philosophical texts, arguments, and ideas across all traditions and periods.

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

Books ranked

511

Published mentions

sum of exact per-book subreddit rows

18.5M

Members

Years tracked

About this ranking

r/philosophy skews Continental and existentialist in a way neither r/askphilosophy nor r/Stoicism does: Camus's Myth of Sisyphus draws 54 mentions and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil 42, books that barely register in either comparison sub. Meditations appears here too (58 mentions), but at r/Stoicism it commands 990 — this sub treats it as one classic among many rather than a cornerstone text. Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling (11 mentions) and Wittgenstein's Tractatus (19) show up on this list but not on r/Stoicism's at all; conversely, the Stoic practitioner titles that fill r/Stoicism's rankings are entirely absent here. Against r/askphilosophy — which runs heavier on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (216 mentions there vs. 21 here) and analytic-tradition texts — r/philosophy reads more like a curated continental bookshelf.

Guides built from this community

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

By year

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Most-mentioned in r/philosophy

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

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.

103 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.

55 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.

44 in this sub Not scored

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.

37 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.

32 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.

22 in this sub positive

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.

21 in this sub Not scored

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.

19 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.

16 in this sub Not scored

#10

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.

15 in this sub positive

#11

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.

12 in this sub positive

#12

Enchiridion

Epictetus

A freed slave's 2,000-year-old field manual for deciding what you control — and letting go of everything else.

11 in this sub Not scored

#13

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.

9 in this sub positive

#14

Apology

Plato

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

8 in this sub positive

#15

Philosophical Investigations

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

8 in this sub Not scored

#16

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.

8 in this sub Not scored

#17

The Social Contract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau's 1762 argument that legitimate government rests on the will of the people, not the sword — the text prison tutors reach for first.

8 in this sub Not scored

#18

Letters from a Stoic

Seneca

A retired statesman writes his younger friend more than a hundred letters on how to actually die well, and live before that.

7 in this sub positive

#19

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.

6 in this sub Not scored

#20

Meditations on First Philosophy

René Descartes

Descartes locks himself in a room, doubts absolutely everything he can doubt, and tries to rebuild certainty from a single sentence: I think, therefore I am.

6 in this sub positive