The short answer
- Best history of modern philosophy: The Dream of Enlightenment by Anthony Gottlieb (2016). Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz and Hume, told clearly and with jokes.
- Best primary text to start with: Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes (1641). 6 short meditations, and the book the whole period argues with.
- Best on 20th-century philosophy: At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell (2016). Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus and Heidegger as people.
- Best on philosophy after 1900 as a story: Time of the Magicians by Wolfram Eilenberger (2020 in English). Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Benjamin and Cassirer in the decade that remade the subject.
- Best on living philosophers: The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han (2015 in English). Under 100 pages on why everyone is exhausted.
- Best to read a page a day: 365 Days of Philosophy. Chronological, so the moderns arrive in order, after the Greeks and medievals they were arguing with.
Modern philosophy in the textbook sense (1600 to 1900)
This is the stretch a university course calls "modern": it starts when Descartes decided to doubt everything and ends, more or less, with Nietzsche. The primary texts below are the readable ones. Some of the famous ones (Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel's Phenomenology) are left off on purpose, because they're where good intentions go to die.
| Book | Year | What it does | How hard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meditations on First Philosophy · René Descartes | 1641 | Doubts everything, then rebuilds knowledge from "I think, therefore I am" | Short and readable |
| Think Least of Death · Steven Nadler | 2020 | The way into Spinoza's Ethics (1677), which is written like geometry and reads like it | Easy, and the Ethics itself is hard |
| An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding · David Hume | 1748 | Why you can't prove the sun will rise tomorrow, and why you believe it anyway | Medium. Friendlier than his Treatise |
| Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals · Immanuel Kant | 1785 | The categorical imperative, in under 100 pages | Hard, but short |
| A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Mary Wollstonecraft | 1792 | The argument that women are rational beings who deserve the same education as men | Medium |
| On Liberty · John Stuart Mill | 1859 | The harm principle: where your freedom ends | Easy. Still quoted in every free-speech row |
| Beyond Good and Evil · Friedrich Nietzsche | 1886 | An attack on the morality Europe took for granted, in aphorisms | Medium. Easy to read, hard to pin down |
If you read only one, read Descartes. It's short, it's the starting gun, and every later book on this table is partly an answer to it.
The histories that make modern philosophy make sense
Primary texts are easier when you know who each philosopher was annoyed with. These books supply that.
| Book | Year | Covers | Read it if |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Dream of Enlightenment · Anthony Gottlieb | 2016 | Descartes to the eve of the French Revolution | You want the 1600s and 1700s done properly and briskly |
| A History of Western Philosophy · Bertrand Russell | 1945 | The Greeks to the 1940s | You want one opinionated voice for the whole story. He's unfair to some of them, entertainingly |
| Wittgenstein's Poker · David Edmonds & John Eidinow | 2001 | A 10-minute row between Wittgenstein and Popper in Cambridge, 1946 | You like philosophy told as a true-crime story |
| Time of the Magicians · Wolfram Eilenberger | 2020 (English) | Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Benjamin and Cassirer, 1919 to 1929 | You want 20th-century philosophy as a group biography |
| At the Existentialist Café · Sarah Bakewell | 2016 | Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger and friends | Existentialism is the modern philosophy you mean |
| Metaphysical Animals · Clare Mac Cumhaill & Rachael Wiseman | 2022 | Anscombe, Foot, Midgley and Murdoch at wartime Oxford | You want the story most histories skip |
Modern philosophy in the everyday sense (living philosophers)
The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han is the shortest route into what philosophers are saying now. His claim is that we've swapped a society of rules for a society of self-optimization, and that's why everyone is tired. It's under 100 pages in English.
Reality+ by David Chalmers (2022) is the big contemporary book on minds, simulations and virtual worlds, from one of the best-known living philosophers of mind.
For the newest books, including Agnes Callard's Open Socrates and Shannon Vallor's The AI Mirror, see the best philosophy books to read in 2027.
Reading modern philosophy a page a day
365 Days of Philosophy is ours. It runs chronologically through 130+ thinkers, one per page, so Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Beauvoir and Sartre arrive in the order they wrote, after the Greeks and medievals they were answering.
It's built for range, so each thinker gets one page. If you want depth on one modern philosopher, read the primary text above instead. ★4.5 across 233 Amazon ratings, and the free daily philosophy email sends the same pages if you want to try it.
What order to read them in
Start with a history (Gottlieb, or Bakewell for the 20th century), then one primary text from the same period. Descartes and Mill are the gentlest primary texts. Save Kant until a history has told you what he was worried about.
If "modern" meant "anything after the Greeks", the philosophers worth reading pairs each thinker with a first book, and philosophy books for beginners covers the on-ramps.
Common questions
What counts as modern philosophy?
In academic use, Western philosophy from roughly Descartes (1640s) to the end of the 19th century: Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill and Nietzsche. In everyday use, people often mean philosophy by recent or living writers, which academics call contemporary philosophy.
Who is the father of modern philosophy?
René Descartes, by convention. His Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) set the agenda for the next 2 centuries by asking what we can know for certain, and answering from "I think, therefore I am".
What is the best book on modern philosophy for beginners?
Anthony Gottlieb's The Dream of Enlightenment (2016) for the 1600s and 1700s, or Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Café (2016) for the 20th century. A daily reader like 365 Days of Philosophy covers the whole run in chronological order, one thinker per page.
What is the difference between modern and contemporary philosophy?
Modern philosophy usually means about 1600 to 1900, from Descartes to Nietzsche. Contemporary philosophy means the 20th and 21st centuries, including analytic philosophy, existentialism and living writers such as Byung-Chul Han, David Chalmers and Martha Nussbaum.
Which modern philosophy books are easiest to read?
Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy, Mill's On Liberty and Hume's Enquiry are the most readable primary texts. Kant and Hegel are the hardest, so read a history like Gottlieb's first.