The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics

This volume gathers some of the most consequential voices in Western intellectual history, presenting philosophy and economics as interconnected inquiries into how humans understand themselves and organize society. Hegel's Philosophy of History opens the collection with a sweeping argument: history moves eastward to westward, from despotism toward expanding individual freedom. Hume follows with his devastating empiricism, questioning whether we can ever truly know cause and effect, and laying groundwork for a moral philosophy grounded in human sentiment rather than abstract reason. Together, these thinkers interrogate the foundations of knowledge, the nature of freedom, and the relationship between individual consciousness and historical forces. The stakes are nothing less than how we ought to live and what we can legitimately claim to know. For readers seeking to understand the intellectual machinery behind modernity, this anthology offers direct access to the engines of change.