The website Open Culture, offering “the best free cultural and educational media on the web,” has announced the release of a collection of 110 works of philosophy, “from Aristotle to Nietzsche & Wittgenstein,” for free access online. And although, despite the wording of Open Culture’s announcement, not all are available to download rather than to read online, this is still a collection worth browsing and, well, learning from.
“The list will keep growing at a steady clip,” writes Open Culture. “But if you see any crucial texts missing, please let us know, and we will try to get them added ASAP. Of course, we’re looking for works in the public domain.”
Many of the works have long been available through the public domain, like the works of Aristotle, or William James’s Pragmatism, or even the translations of Søren Kierkegaard. But there are a number of more modern titles that I wasn’t aware were accessible yet: Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, for instance, or Isaiah Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty, or even Albert Camus’s The Stranger. They alone make the archive worth visiting.
Concludes Open Culture: “You might want to complement the Philosophy eBooks with our big list of Free Online Philosophy Courses. The two collections go hand in hand.” There, what are you waiting for?
I was surprised that Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism was included, since it’s from the 1950s and unlikely to be in the public domain.
Just be advised that that book and perhaps others in the collection are from the Internet Archive, which means the scanned text may not have been proofed like those from Gutenberg. Some people don’t mind, but I find it irritating. Having worked as a proofreader for Microsoft Press, I want to take out a pencil and mark up corrections.
I didn’t see a link in the article, so here it is:
http://www.openculture.com/free-philosophy-ebooks
There’s also 550 free audiobooks here:
http://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks
Although some are links to Youtube performances.