Nigel Warburton

Nearly every human has a sense of self, a feeling that we are located in a body that’s looking out at the world and experiencing it over the course of a lifetime. Some people even think of it as a soul or other nonphysical reality that is yet somehow connected to the blood and bones that make up our bodies. How things seem, however, is quite often an unreliable guide to how things are, says neuroscientist Anil Seth. Here he recommends five key books that led him to his own understanding of consciousness, and explores why it is that what is likely an illusion can be so utterly convincing.

Albert Camus was born in northern Algeria in extreme poverty, but went on to become one of the best-known French philosophers of the 20th century. In 1957, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for illuminating “the problems of the human conscience in our times.” Here, Camus expert Jamie Lombardi talks us through the books that best capture his work and the moral dilemmas he sought to explore.

The author Philip Pullman—creator of the beloved His Dark Materials trilogy, and one of the world’s great storytellers—recommends five of his favourite books: from a fragmentary masterpiece by Fernando Pessoa to P. G. Wodehouse’s comic triumphs.

Thomas Hobbes’s master work Leviathan, in which he argued for the need to unite under a powerful sovereign as part of a ‘social contract’, has become a cornerstone of Western political philosophy. Here, the philosopher and political scientist Arash Abizadeh selects five of the best books for understanding Hobbes’s arguments in their historical context.

Eco-philosophy concerns itself with the intersection of ecology with philosophy—and particularly our response to industrialisation and manmade climate change. Rupert Read, the philosopher-activist and author of Parents for a Future, selects five of the best books that contemplate eco-philosophy and our place on this Earth.

Feeling anxiety is a natural part of being a human being, but for some people it can cause terrible mental and physical anguish and prevents them from leading happy and fulfilling lives. Lucy Foulkes, a psychologist at University College London, talks us through books that can help with anxiety.

The connections between human rights and literature are profound and we ignore the humanities and reading at our peril, says Lyndsey Stonebridge, Interdisciplinary Professor of Humanities at the University of Birmingham. She recommends books that best show the complex relationship between literature and human rights, from Auschwitz to Manus Island.

For the general reader deconstruction has a bad reputation. It is seen as over-complicating, arcane and wilfully obscure—but as its founding genius Jacques Derrida pointed out, “If things were simple, word would have gotten around.” Here Peter Salmon, author of an excellent new biography of Derrida, chooses five books to get you started on the text and everything inside it.

Philosophy is a very verbal discipline with much effort made to express meaning through the very precise use of language. You might think that pictures wouldn’t get much of a look in, but you’d be wrong, as philosopher Helen de Cruz explains. She chooses five books where the philosophical meaning of the subjects under investigation are given greater depth and clarity with the use of illustrations, from ancient Chinese philosophy through to the philosopher queens of the 21st century.

Members of ‘the Vienna Circle’ had strong views on what can and cannot be meaningfully said. They’ve had an enormous impact on modern philosophy, partly because the arrival of fascist rule in Austria scattered them around the world. Here, philosopher David Edmonds, author of The Murder of Professor Schlick, introduces us to their ideas, their milieu and the poignant background to their lives and thinking.