A C Grayling's Top Book Recommendations
Want to know what books A C Grayling recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of A C Grayling's favorite book recommendations of all time.
Recommended by A C Grayling, and 1 others. A C GraylingRussell was an atheist, although he described himself as an agnostic, as [do] a lot of people do who are sensitive to the scientific requirement to be open-minded about even outré possibilities of things. It’s interesting that he should be a public sceptic of religion – that he should be prepared to talk and indeed to write about this matter – at a time when to do that was to put yourself a... (Source)
The debates of the French Enlightenment speak to us vividly in this sparkling new translation, which also includes... more
Recommended by A C Grayling, and 1 others. A C GraylingRameau’s Nephew is perhaps the most immediately accessible and readable of his works, given that so many of them are entries for the encyclopedia of which he and [Jean le Rond] d’Alembert was the editor … And it picks up on these themes which are central to the Enlightenment. (Source)
Published in 1859, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty presented one of the most eloquent defenses of individual freedom in nineteenth-century social and political philosophy and is today perhaps the most widely-read liberal argument in support of the value of liberty. Mill's passionate advocacy of spontaneity, individuality, and diversity, along with his contempt for compulsory uniformity and the despotism of popular opinion, has attracted both admiration and condemnation. less
Nick CleggThe tradition is that it is given to the president of the Liberal Democrats rather than the leader, which is a subtle but important distinction in Lib Dem land. But you’re quite right. The traditions of J. S. Mill are still handed down like some sort of totemic emblem of everything that we’re supposed to still believe in, even now. It’s extraordinary, given it was written in 1859……What we’re... (Source)
A C GraylingOn Liberty is a very important document, and one which, because of the clarity with which one can read it and its brevity, is slightly passed over. (Source)
Peter SingerMill points out that very often, throughout history, people have thought that they were certainly right, and then turned out to be quite wrong. (Source)
Anthony GottliebThe first real biblical criticism, and still the best critique of traditional theism (i.e., the view that God is like a person). (Source)
A C GraylingThis is a work which is perhaps of all Spinoza’s works the most accessible, he is a tremendously significant figure for our modern age. (Source)
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle sets out to examine the nature of happiness. He argues that happiness consists in ‘activity of the soul in accordance with virtue’, for example with moral virtues, such as courage, generosity and justice, and intellectual virtues, such as knowledge, wisdom and insight. The Ethics also discusses the nature of practical reasoning, the value and the objects of pleasure, the different... more
Ryan HolidayAristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics was something I reread and cannot recommend highly enough. (Source)
A C GraylingHe said the great question is how we should live well, so that we live a good life, and he came up with a very positive response – what distinguishes us from the rest of the world is our possession of reason (Source)
Christian B MillerAccording to Aristotle, it is hard to become virtuous, and hard to become vicious too. The character of most people is somewhere in the middle. (Source)
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