r/philosophy · 2024

Most-mentioned books in r/philosophy during 2024

This page ranks books by exact tracked mentions in r/philosophy within the published source unit for 2024. Counts come from the reconciled subreddit-by-month matrix; a source unit may be a bounded sample.

Books ranked

Tracked mentions in 2024

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.

10 in 2024

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.

6 in 2024

Enchiridion

Epictetus

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

3 in 2024

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.

2 in 2024

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.

2 in 2024

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.

2 in 2024

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

David Hume

Hume spends one slim book dismantling cause-and-effect into nothing but expectation and habit, and undergrad syllabi still assign it as homework.

1 in 2024

Apology

Plato

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

1 in 2024

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.

1 in 2024

#10

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.

1 in 2024

#11

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.

1 in 2024