This is one of the best introductions to philosophy, especially in epistemology, a little metaphysics, and early modern philosophy. Epistemology means the study of theories of knowledge, which Russell views as the area in which philosophy is best equipped to give interesting speculations on. You can also find readers on epistemology, but those essays tend to be quite challenging.

Morton has excellent commentary of the selected articles. This book hits on topics of perception, dualism, identity theory, the Turing test (http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html), functionalism, and more.

Short guides to help you through many classic books of philosophy: Plato's 'Phaedo' & 'Republic', Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' & 'Nicomachean Ethics', Descartes' 'Meditations', Locke's 'Essay...', Spinoza's 'Ethics', Hume's 'Treatise of Human Nature', Nietzsche's 'Beyond Good and Evil', Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations'. And 51 others: Aquinas, Kant, William James, Sarte, Quine, etc.

Guthrie was one of the best ancient Greek scholars. This is a short and well written overview of Presocratics, Plato, and about Aristotle. Sometimes it is easy to force our concepts on the ancient Greeks, making them polytheists or Aristotle a devotee of freewill or the Presocratics materialists, but careful study of their context shows they had different, more Greek, aims and concerns.

Albert Einstein once visited Spinoza's old home and signed in as a visitor; Einstein thought of himself as a follower of Spinoza. Spinoza's intense metaphysical system can be a turn off, but it leads to one of the best ethical points of view in history. Most intro to morality books skip his "Ethics"; perhaps I just don't like Ethics, but Spinoza is one of my favorite moral philosophers by far.

The hard core philosophers often say that this book is a lesser version of his "A Treatise of Human Nature," but it is more readable!

Daniel Dennett calls this one of the truly great works in philosophy for its clear reasoning on several topics related to the philosophy of religion.

This is Kant's simplification of his tremendously difficult book "Critique of Pure Reason."

Aesthetics is closely aligned with ethics. Paul Guyer is a Kantian scholar, so this would be particularly interesting for those studying Kant's theory of beauty. It has a section on 'Mostly Before Kant', 'Mostly Kant', 'Mostly After Kant'.

I personally can't stand philosophy of language for very long at a time, but you can skip those parts of Russell and still find a very clear headed thinker for the times!

Nice large biography, very much needed for a good start on the difficult philosopher.

My very favorite modern philosopher because he loves a trimmed down parsimonious ontology. He is known for his great essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (which is much greater in scope and ideas than the awful title suggests; ignore the title). I also love his essay "On What There Is."

Still the great classic for those who want to understand liberalism (as in liberal democracy, not the democratic party or those kind of liberals) or the U.S. Constitution. This is especially important now as individual liberty is under threat of extinction.

Smart wrote the first half in favor of utilitarianism and Bernard Williams wrote the against part.

It's the most complete survey of ethics I've seen; it actually includes Spinoza for heavens sake. Note: other moral philosophers elsewhere on this list include the ancient Greeks, Spinoza, the chapters on morality in Guyer's "Kant," Nietzsche (esp. "Basic Writings"), Mill's "On Utilitarianism," Hobbs' "Leviathan," William James, Santayana, Rousseau, and the existentialism of Sartre & Camus.

Influential for Kant and to understanding his moral system, but it's simply an excellent perspective on its own. Rousseau is quite a character, skeptical of normal scholarly conventions, inventive and independent, rigorous in detail. He draws from Plato's "Republic" & Locke's work on Education in this treatise on education and life.

"The Plague" is one of the best books I ever read. He generalizes the idea of the plague to let it stand as a symbol of cultural ideas or memes, I believe, so that the plague is also a process of getting assimilated.

I have warm feelings for silly Bill James; though he has one of the strangest metaphysics in the history of thought (you mean someone's belief in a Spaghetti Monster may imply that it "exists" if it works for them!). Bertrand Russell crushes the whole movement of pragmatism, but I like reading James all the same. He is fairly easy to read, and he has many perceptive psychological comments.

Goedel is extremely important in logic; he is even mentioned by Stephen Hawking. He helps show that certain logico-mathematical systems cannot attain complete coherence on their own, or that the need for certain clear & distinct intuitions about those systems indicate a rationalist base in our "knowledge".