Don’t judge a book by its cover. Do, however, judge the cover.
Philosophers are people, too, and beauty and design are among the many things we should care about, particularly in regard to activities (like work) which take up so much of our time.
Recently, there was a request to open up a space here for people to post philosophy book covers they really like. Maybe the cover captures the ideas or questions of the book in a particularly interesting or creative way, maybe its just a beautiful image or a striking piece of design work, maybe it’s humorous (intentionally or not), maybe you don’t need me to suggest reasons.
We did this 7 years ago, just a few months into DN’s existence (here). The readership of the site is larger now, and comment functionality has improved, so let’s do it again (feel free to repeat your earlier suggestions on this post, if you’d like, but you’re welcome to add new ones, too).
Please honor these few requests:
- one book cover per comment, and please don’t submit more than three comments on this post in a single day
- include an image of the cover; to do this, click the little image icon in the bottom right corner of the comment box
- include the title and author, and if you know it, the publisher and year
You’re of course welcome to explain what you like about the cover.
Posting your own book’s cover is allowed, but that doesn’t stop it from being tacky. Better to do that on your own social media when you share this post. (Was that tacky?)
OK, let’s see ’em!
This has to be the winner, right?
Especially since they evidently took pictures, at the same photo-shoot, for the cover of the non-dog-lovers’ edition:
Practical Ethics, Peter Singer.
I didn’t know that Peter Singer and David Cross were the same person!
Mark Wilson’s Physics Avoidance has a wonderful cover that really captures his main argument: that physicists often have to rely on a whole range of strategies to navigate the treacherous task of getting a good handle on the world.
It’s a played-out classic, but Leviathan surely has one of the most epic covers/frontispieces in any work of philosophy.
One of my favorites
A Van Gogh painting… I always liked MIT Press designs in general. Their logo is really cool too.
The Rediscovery of the Mind, John Searle, The MIT Press 1992
On What Matters: Volume Three, Derek Parfit, 2017
Helen Steward’s A Metaphysics For Freedom (2012)
The cover expresses the theme of the book beautifully – https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199552054.001.0001/acprof-9780199552054
This is one of my recent favorites.
I still haven’t read Heidegger’s *Being and Time*, but I bought the (2008?) HarpersCollins edition just because I liked the cover.
Dancy’s Epistemology book has a near perfect cover. Simple, but not obvious.
it just works for me
I read much of this book while on the NYC subway. I got many quizzical looks and plenty of smirks.
Ah, yes, I remember that cover — it ties in well with the book (Schroeder keeps referring to two characters: one loves dancing, and one hates it).
I know the title is an appropriate reference to Hume, but the combination of the title and the cover image led my thoughts away from anything like that natural interpretation when I was reading it. As soon as I see the book, Bryan Ferry’s song ‘Slave to Love’ starts playing in my head, do as I will to stop it.
This is one of my favourites. It apparently comes from a poster a student drew up for one of Thi’s talks.
Every volume of this particular edition of Copleston’s “History of Philosophy” is just… aggressively ugly
I can’t say I entirely know what it’s going for here, but I like it nonetheless.
C.I. Lewis, Mind and the World Order, Dover 1956 (originally published 1929)
This always reminded me of a rejected Black Sabbath album cover or something.
Nominated as the best comment here!
The Science of Meaning, 2018, Oxford
Not technically philosophy, but theatre with lots of philosophical ideas. The cover nicely portrays the main play.
I very much like the cover of Therese Scarpelli Cory’s Aquinas on Human Self Knowledge (Cambridge UP, 2014). The way the character (Mary Magdalene, in the original) is reflecting on herself in virtue of the light from both the candle and its mirrored reflection encapsulates aspects of Aquinas’s general approach to human self knowledge. It’s pretty nifty. Plus, it’s got a cool skull.
It also spookily rips off the original cover of Nagel’s –Mortal Questions.
Nietzsche’s soul reflecting through his musical composition and pockmarked by his frenemies and nemeses, including himself.
A good one with only text. Mainly because of the background color choice.
I like the juxtaposition of barb wire and the crown of thorns.
There’s hope for climate change (at least when this came out – who knows about now)
Along with being an economist, Smith was a moral philosopher. Something often overlooked. And he’s hip.
Transforming Conciousness: Yogacara Thought in Modern China (Oxford, 2014).
Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Biology, ed. Sophia Connell
Cambridge, 2021
Beautiful, dramatic, nicely historical (if not quite classical Athens)
“Well-Being & Death” (2009) by Ben Bradley
Terrifically bad
Sarah Moss, Probabilistic Knowledge, OUP, 2018
This isn’t about the book’s cover but its spine. Since the spine is usually the only thing you’d see in a bookstore shelf, I don’t know why more folks don’t try to maximize the use of that space. For B-Russell’s book here, the spine is basically an abstract!
Of course, these days, most books are bought online, so the spine matters a lot less… 🙁
Far be it from me to be be tacky, so I won’t post the cover of my new book. As I worked with the publisher to choose it, however, it occurred to me that I was going to a lot of trouble over something few people would see – not just because few people will read the book, but also because few of those who do read it will notice the cover. Increasingly, we read electronic copies of books. We would notice the cover of physical books, because they’d lie around shut when we’re not reading them. But I have little idea of the covers of the books I’ve read over the past few years So maybe this post is a glance back into philosophy’s past.
I really like the cover art for this entire series.
Slightly off topic, but here’s one of the worst covers on my shelf
Always liked this one
This is a very strange (and maybe so bad that it’s good) cover.
I’ve never seen that one before–it’s so unlike the other (much more tasteful & conventional, obviously) Williams covers. But it’s great thematically (is the question-mark–Theory–a burden someone forced him to carry, or a weapon?).
Jason Stanley: How Propaganda Works, Princeton UP (2015)
What I really like about the design of that cover is that it’s clearly reminiscent of certain (Sowiet?) propaganda posters.
Join the discussion
Anthony Everett, The nonexistent, OUP, 2013
Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I think the typical book on my shelf from before 1990 has a way better cover than the typical book since. The typical OUP book now is just a picture slapped on the front in the hope that the reader will see some connection between it and the theme of the book (or at least find it funny).
I disagree with this completely. The covers of philosophy books of a generation ago were often given little attention. Oxford had those solid black or brown covers with nothing else but the title and author. Cambridge’s important Studies in Philosophy series had a standard format which was little more than a little doddle that couldn’t have taken the designer more than two minutes to produce set against a flat white background. Now, many authors clearly give some thought to the covers of their books, and many of them are quite lovely. Obviously, no one will like all of them–I certainly don’t–but the contrast is striking. Compare the blandness of Stroud’s The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism with the gorgeous cover of his The Quest for Reality. Sosa has a number of Vermeers, and what’s not to like about that? Parfit’s covers are graced with his terrific photographs. I particularly like the one on Reasons and Persons. Nagel obviously puts thought into his covers: Mortal Questions and The View from Nowhere are just great. There are bad choices too, and ones which show an aesthetic sense which only some will find appealing. But I’ll take this any day over the formless covers of the past.
Maybe more iconic than creative?
The image reminds me of the animations for Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”
Any book cover by Raymond Smullyan is pretty good.
Here’s a recent one I like.
Ilham Dilman, Freud, Insight and Change (Basil Blackwell, 1988). Not the best photo, but the only one I could find online.
Jon Elster, Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Daniel D. Hutto, Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons (MIT Press, 2008)
Cross-Cultural Existentialism – On the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought by Leah Kalmanson; Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Cover image by her husband, Christopher Chiavetta.
Stephen Yablo – Aboutness. Never seen a book better summarized by its cover.
Constantine Sandis, Character and Causation: Hume’s Philosophy of Action (Routledge, 2020)
Daniel Perdue, The Course in Buddhist Reasoning and Debate: An Asian Approach to Analytical Thinking Drawn from Indian and Tibetan Sources (Snow Lion, 2014)
Joerg Tuske, ed. Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)
Thought in Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind, Barbara Gail Montero, Oxford University Press 2016