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Philosophy & Ideas

Philosophy & Ideas study guides

2 curricula in this domain. Build real command of an argument — explain it, defend it, and apply it — not just nod along. Every guide in this domain runs concept cards, five-stage retrieval, and spaced review so the ideas stick under pressure.

Related guides

How to study so the book sticks.

Practical how-tos on retrieval, spaced review, and transfer. Browse the full set on the guides index.

Planned in this topic

28 more Philosophy & Ideas titles are planned.

None of these has a study guide yet, and we commit to no dates. A title moves up because readers asked for it, not because a calendar said so. Ask to be emailed when one ships, or see the whole backlog on the catalog roadmap.

  • The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

    Benjamin Franklin

    Franklin's own account of building habits deliberately, including the ledger he kept on himself — a systems book two centuries before the genre.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Self-Reliance

    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    One essay on trusting your own judgment against consensus. Short enough to finish in a sitting, dense enough to argue with for years.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Enchiridion

    Epictetus

    The Stoic handbook, compressed to what is and isn't within your control — built for memorisation, which makes it ideal for retrieval practice.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • On the Shortness of Life

    Seneca

    Seneca on where time actually goes. The complaint he answers — too busy to think — is the same one most readers arrive with.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Letters from a Stoic

    Seneca

    Stoicism as correspondence rather than doctrine: each letter is a self-contained argument, which makes the reading naturally sessioned.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Utilitarianism

    John Stuart Mill

    Mill's case that consequences are what moral reasoning is about — and his answers to the objections you'll immediately want to raise.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Walden

    Henry David Thoreau

    Two years of deliberate subtraction, recorded in detail. The counter-argument to a distracted life, written before anyone had invented the distractions.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • As a Man Thinketh

    James Allen

    A short Victorian essay on thought shaping character — the direct ancestor of a whole shelf of modern mindset books.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

    Arnold Bennett

    Bennett's 1908 answer to the reader who says there is no time. Brisk, unsentimental, and uncomfortably still accurate.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Poor Richard's Almanack

    Benjamin Franklin

    Franklin's maxims on thrift, work, and self-command. Aphorisms are the easiest form to recall and the hardest to actually apply.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Tao Te Ching

    Laozi

    Eighty-one short passages on acting through restraint. Terse enough that meaning depends on interpretation — which is where coaching earns its place.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • The Analects

    Confucius

    Recorded conversations on duty, learning, and how a person in authority should behave. Fragmentary by design, cumulative in effect.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Bhagavad Gita

    Vyasa

    A conversation about duty held on a battlefield, at the moment of refusing to act — the founding text on deciding under conflicting obligations.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Nicomachean Ethics

    Aristotle

    Aristotle's argument that character is built by repetition, not resolve. The oldest serious account of how practice becomes disposition.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Rhetoric

    Aristotle

    The original anatomy of persuasion — what makes an argument land, and how to notice when one is being run on you.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Apology, Crito, and Phaedo

    Plato

    Socrates on trial, in prison, and at the end — three short dialogues that are almost entirely cross-examination.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Symposium

    Plato

    Seven speeches on love at a drinking party, each undercutting the last. The structure alone teaches how to compare competing accounts.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Discourses

    Epictetus

    The lectures behind the Enchiridion — longer, more argumentative, and franker about how hard the practice actually is.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Essays

    Michel de Montaigne

    Montaigne thinking on the page and changing his mind in public. He invented the essay by refusing to pretend he had concluded.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Confessions

    Augustine of Hippo

    The first real autobiography, and still one of the sharpest accounts of memory, habit, and wanting to want something else.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • The Consolation of Philosophy

    Boethius

    Written while awaiting execution: an argument with Philosophy herself about fortune, loss, and what can't be taken.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Discourse on Method

    René Descartes

    Descartes dismantling everything he believed to find one thing he couldn't doubt — method described from the inside.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

    David Hume

    Hume on what we can actually claim to know from experience. The sceptical toolkit for anyone who has to weigh evidence.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • The Origin of Species

    Charles Darwin

    Darwin building an enormous case from patient observation, and answering his own objections before his critics could.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • The Varieties of Religious Experience

    William James

    James studying belief as a psychologist rather than a partisan — a model for examining convictions, including your own.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Pragmatism

    William James

    James's test for an idea: what difference does holding it actually make? A working philosophy for people who have to decide things.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • How We Think

    John Dewey

    Dewey on reflective thought and how it can be taught — the closest thing in the canon to a book about this method.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

  • Beyond Good and Evil

    Friedrich Nietzsche

    Nietzsche attacking the foundations of inherited morality. Deliberately difficult, and unrewarding to skim — which is the point.

    Planned — no study guide built yet, and no date promised.

FAQ

Questions about Philosophy & Ideas on MasterTheBook.

Is there a MasterTheBook study guide for The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin or Self-Reliance?
Not yet. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Self-Reliance are on the MasterTheBook catalog roadmap under Philosophy & Ideas: planned, with no study guide built and no committed date. A title moves up because readers asked for it, not because a calendar said so. You can ask to be emailed when one ships. The 2 Philosophy & Ideas titles that already have a finished guide are listed on this page.
What does a finished MasterTheBook guide add to a Philosophy & Ideas book?
A finished guide turns a book into practice: retrieval questions you answer from memory before seeing the text again, a confidence rating on each one so calibration errors surface, and an adaptive spaced review schedule that returns sooner to the concepts you keep missing. Work climbs the Transfer Ladder — recall, explain, recognize, apply, critique — so you end up able to use the idea, not just recognize it. That is retrieval practice rather than rereading, which held up on delayed tests in Roediger and Karpicke (2006). A planned title has none of this built yet — it is a book we intend to build a guide for, nothing more.
How many Philosophy & Ideas titles are planned, and how is the order decided?
28 Philosophy & Ideas titles are queued and 2 have a finished guide today. A title moves up because readers asked for it, not because a calendar said so. Asking to be emailed about a planned title is what moves it up the queue. No planned title carries a committed ship date.
Can I buy or preview a planned Philosophy & Ideas title now?
No. Planned titles are not purchasable and there is nothing to preview — no curriculum exists behind them yet. A MasterTheBook subscription covers the titles that already have finished guides, and the free preview needs no card. Ask to be emailed and you get one message when a planned title ships.

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