Reading list

Philosophy: Verso Student Reading

Our Philosophy student reading, featuring Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson, Theodor Adorno, Chantal Mouffe and more. Up to 40% off as part of our student reading sale.

Verso Books 2 September 2025

Back to University. Up to 40% off. Featured reading list: Student Reading - Essential Philosophy

We present a selection of our top philosophy titles to guide you through the thicket of heavy, abstract concepts that you now face. Whether you are au fait with the heady conundrums of philosophical thought, or are are just starting out down the road, this reading list is designed to introduce new ideas and intervene in key philosophical debates.

20% off when you order 2 books
30% off when you order 3 books
40% off when you order 4 or more books
Sale ends September 15th 2025 11:59pm ET
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Frédéric Gros: A Philosopher of Emotion

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Verso Classics

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The Frankfurt School

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20th Century French Philosophy

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Philosophy and Neoliberalism

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Philosophy and the End of History

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A Philosophy of Shame

by Frédéric Gros

Translated by Andrew James Bliss

Can shame become a source of political strength? Faced with injustice, growing inequality and systemic violence, we cry out in shame. We feel ashamed of obscene wealth amid wider deprivation. We fe...
Hardback

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A Philosophy of Walking

by Frédéric Gros

Translated by John Howe

By walking, you escape from the very idea of identity, the temptation to be someone, to have a name and a history ... The freedom in walking lies in not being anyone; for the walking body has no...
Paperback

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Disobey!

by Frédéric Gros

Translated by David Fernbach

The world is out of joint, so much so that disobeying should be an urgent act for everyone. In this provocative essay, Frédéric Gros explores the roots of political obedience, social conformity, ec...
Paperback

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Critique of Everyday Life

by Henri Lefebvre

The three-volume text by Henri Lefebvre is perhaps the richest, most prescient work about modern capitalism to emerge from one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers and is now availabl...
Paperback

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Minima Moralia

by Theodor Adorno

Translated by Edmund F.N. Jephcott

Written between 1944 and 1947, Minima Moralia is a collection of rich, lucid aphorisms and essays about life in modern capitalist society. Adorno casts his penetrating eye across society in mid-cen...
Paperback

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A Companion to Marx's Grundrisse

by David Harvey

When leading scholar of Marx, Roman Rosdolsky, first encountered the virtually unknown text of Marx's Grundrisse - his preparatory work for his masterpiece Das Capital - in the 1950s in New York Pu...
Paperback

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Understanding Brecht

by Walter Benjamin

Introduction by Stanley Mitchell

Translated by Anna Bostock

The relationship between philosopher-critic Walter Benjamin and playwright-poet Bertolt Brecht was both a lasting friendship and a powerful intellectual partnership. Having met in the late 1920s in...
Paperback

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Aesthetics and Politics

by Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht and Georg Lukács

Afterword by Fredric Jameson

No other country and no other period has produced a tradition of major aesthetic debate to compare with that which unfolded in German culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. In Aesthetics and Politics...
Paperback

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Marxist Modernism

by Gillian Rose

Afterword by Martin Jay

Edited by James Gordon Finlayson and Robert Lucas Scott

Marxist Modernism is a comprehensive yet concise and conversational introduction to the Frankfurt School. It is also a new resource from one of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers: ...
Paperback

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Grand Hotel Abyss

by Stuart Jeffries

In 1923, a group of young radical German thinkers and intellectuals came together to at Victoria Alle 7, Frankfurt, determined to explain the workings of the modern world. Among the most prominen...
Paperback

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Walter Benjamin

by Terry Eagleton

This momentous study of Benjamin’s critical practice marks a sea change in Eagleton’s thought. Its goal is not merely to contemplate Benjamin’s approach to language, history, and art but to chart a...
Paperback

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The Destruction of Reason

by Georg Lukács

Introduction by Enzo Traverso

Translated by Peter Palmer

A classic of Western Marxism, The Destruction of Reason is Georg Lukács's trenchant criticism of German philosophy after Marx and the role it played in the rise of National Socialism. Originally pu...
Paperback

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My Teaching

by Jacques Lacan

Preface by Jacques-Alain Miller

Translated by David Macey

Bringing together three previously unpublished lectures presented to the public by Lacan at the height of his career, and prefaced by Jacques-Alain Miller, My Teaching is a clear, concise introduct...
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Between Existentialism and Marxism

by Jean-Paul Sartre

Translated by John Matthews

This book presents a full decade of Sartre’s work, from the publication of the Critique of Dialectical Reason in 1960, the basic philosophical turning-point in his postwar development, to the incep...
Paperback

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The Adventure of French Philosophy

by Alain Badiou

Edited by Bruno Bosteels

The Adventure of French Philosophy is essential reading for anyone interested in what Badiou calls the “French moment” in contemporary thought.Badiou explores the exceptionally rich and varied worl...
Paperback

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A Social History of Analytic Philosophy

by Christoph Schuringa

Analytic philosophy is the leading form of philosophy in the English-speaking world. What explains its continued success? Christoph Schuringa argues that its enduring power can only be understood b...
Hardback

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Psychopolitics

by Byung-Chul Han

Translated by Erik Butler

Byung-Chul Han, a star of German philosophy, continues his passionate critique of neoliberalism, trenchantly describing a regime of technological domination that, in contrast to Foucault’s biopower...
Paperback

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Power and Resistance

by Yoshiyuki Sato

The "structuralist" theories of power show that the subject is produced and reproduced by the investment of power: but how then can we think of the subject's resistance to power? Based on this fund...
Paperback

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Kant

by Alexandre Kojève

Translated by Hager Weslati

Immanuel Kant’s philosophical system, Kojève argues, is haunted by the Thing-in-itself as the ultimate expression of ‘bourgeois hypocrisy’ and its internally divided reason, split between action an...
Paperback

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Déjà Vu and the End of History

by Paolo Virno

Translated by David Broder

This book places two key notions up against each other to imagine a new way of conceptualizing historical time. How do the experience of déjà vu and the idea 'End of History' relate to one another?...
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Politics and History

by Louis Althusser

Translated by Ben Brewster

In the first two essays of this book, Louis Althusser analyses the work of two of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment – Montesquieu and Rousseau. He shows that although they made considerabl...
Paperback

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Disobey!

by Frédéric Gros

Translated by David Fernbach

The world is out of joint, so much so that disobeying should be an urgent act for everyone. In this provocative essay, Frédéric Gros explores the roots of political obedience, social conformity, ec...
Paperback

We are sorry this title is currently out of stock in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

The Politics of Friendship

by Jacques Derrida

Translated by George Collins

Jacques Derrida was one of most influential philosophers of the 20th century. In The Politics of Friendship he explores the idea of friendship and its political consequences, past and future in ord...
Paperback

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Critique of Everyday Life

by Henri Lefebvre

The three-volume text by Henri Lefebvre is perhaps the richest, most prescient work about modern capitalism to emerge from one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers and is now availabl...
Paperback

Add to cart Sale price $59.95

Marx: Towards the Centre of Possibility

by Kojin Karatani

Introduction by Gavin Walker

Edited by Gavin Walker

Translated by Gavin Walker

Originally published in 1974, Kojin Karatani’s Marx: Towards the Centre of Possibility has been among his most enduring and pioneering works in critical theory. Written at a time when the political...
Paperback

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Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche

by Henri Lefebvre

Translated by David Fernbach

Henri Lefebvre saw Marx as an ‘unavoidable, necessary, but insufficient starting point’, and always insisted on the importance of Hegel to understanding Marx. Metaphilosophy also suggested the sign...
Paperback

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Minima Moralia

by Theodor Adorno

Translated by Edmund F.N. Jephcott

Written between 1944 and 1947, Minima Moralia is a collection of rich, lucid aphorisms and essays about life in modern capitalist society. Adorno casts his penetrating eye across society in mid-cen...
Paperback

Add to cart Sale price $25.95

The Left Hemisphere

by Razmig Keucheyan

Translated by Gregory Elliott

As the crisis of capitalism unfolds, the need for alternatives is felt ever more intensely. The struggle between radical movements and the forces of reaction will be merciless. A crucial battlefiel...
Paperback

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The Authoritarian Personality

by Theodor Adorno

What makes a fascist? Are there character traits that make someone more likely to vote for the far right? The Authoritarian Personality, written in the shadow of Fascism and the Holocaust, looked t...
Paperback

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Splinters in Your Eye

by Martin Jay

Although successive generations of the Frankfurt School have attempted to adapt Critical Theory to new circumstances, the work done by its founding members continues in the twenty-first century to ...
Paperback

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Allegory and Ideology

by Fredric Jameson

Works do not have meanings, they soak up meanings: a work is a machine for libidinal investments (including the political kind). It is a process that sorts incommensurabilities and registers contra...
Paperback

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Grand Hotel Abyss

by Stuart Jeffries

In 1923, a group of young radical German thinkers and intellectuals came together to at Victoria Alle 7, Frankfurt, determined to explain the workings of the modern world. Among the most prominen...
Paperback

We are sorry this title is currently out of stock in your selected territory. Please check back or contact us for more information.

Hegemony and Socialist Strategy

by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe

In this hugely influential book, Laclau and Mouffe examine the workings of hegemony and contemporary social struggles, and their significance for democratic theory. With the emergence of new soci...
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Ethics

by Alain Badiou

Translated by Peter Hallward

Ethical questions dominate current political and academic agendas. While government think-tanks ponder the dilemmas of bio-ethics, medical ethics and professional ethics, respect for human rights...
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The Philosophy of Marx

by Étienne Balibar

Translated by Gregory Elliott and Chris Turner

Written by one of political theory’s leading thinkers, The Philosophy of Marx examines all the key areas of Marx’s writings in their wider historical and theoretical context—including the concepts ...
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The Sublime Object of Ideology

by Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek, the maverick philosopher, author of over 30 books, acclaimed as the “Elvis of cultural theory”, and today’s most controversial public intellectual. His work traverses the fields of ph...
Paperback

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Metaphilosophy

by Henri Lefebvre

Edited by Stuart Elden

Translated by David Fernbach

In Metaphilosophy, Henri Lefebvre works through the implications of Marx’s revolutionary thought to consider philosophy’s engagement with the world. Lefebvre takes Marx’s notion of the “world becom...
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Towards a New Manifesto

by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

Translated by Rodney Livingstone

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote the central text of “critical theory”, Dialectic of Enlightenment, a measured critique of the Enlightenment reason that, they argued, had resulted in fascism...
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Contingency, Hegemony, Universality

by Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek

What is the contemporary legacy of Gramsci’s notion of Hegemony? How can universality be reformulated now that its spurious versions have been so thoroughly criticized? In this ground-breaking proj...
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First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

by Slavoj Žižek

Billions of dollars were hastily poured into the global banking system in a frantic attempt at financial stabilisation. So why has it not been possible to bring the same forces to bear in addressin...
Paperback

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Filed under: student-reading, versoreadinglists

Verso Classics

The Frankfurt School

20th Century French Philosophy

Philosophy and Neoliberalism

Philosophy and the End of History

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