Ergo Reader
Classic philosophy,
made for reading.
Carefully selected public-domain editions of major works in philosophy, reset for calm, focused reading on a computer or phone.
Every reader preserves the original wording, identifies its exact edition and translator, and includes a linked guide to the text.
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (1883)
Kant’s compact search for the supreme principle of morality—and one of philosophy’s most influential accounts of duty, freedom, and the good will.
Meditations on First Philosophy
Translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (1911)
Descartes begins again from radical doubt, searching for what can be known with absolute certainty.
The Republic
Translated by Benjamin Jowett (1892)
Socrates and his companions ask what justice is—and imagine a city and a soul ordered by philosophy.
The Critique of Pure Reason
Translated by Norman Kemp Smith (1929)
Kant investigates the powers and limits of reason—and asks how experience, science, and metaphysics are possible.
The Nicomachean Ethics
Translated by W. D. Ross (1925)
Aristotle asks what it means to flourish and how character, habit, friendship, and practical wisdom make a good life.
Beyond Good and Evil
Translated by Helen Zimmern (1906)
Nietzsche challenges inherited morality and the philosophical prejudices hidden inside claims to truth.
The Genealogy of Morals
Translated by Horace B. Samuel (1913)
Nietzsche traces guilt, conscience, punishment, and asceticism through a provocative history of moral values.
Theaetetus
Translated by Benjamin Jowett (1892)
Plato’s great dialogue on knowledge tests whether knowing is perception, true judgment, or something more.
Symposium
Translated by Benjamin Jowett (1892)
A succession of speeches about love culminates in Socrates’ account of desire, beauty, and philosophy.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Hume asks what experience can justify—and exposes the uncertainty beneath causation, induction, and belief.
The Social Contract
Translated by G. D. H. Cole (1913)
Rousseau asks how people can obey a common political authority while remaining free.
On Liberty
Mill defends individuality, free discussion, and a strict limit on society’s power over the person.
Ergo Reader Lab
Experiments
New ways to make difficult philosophy more approachable. These source-first drafts are works in progress, with their methods and review status shown openly.
Kant in Modern English
Complete Groundwork · German and modern English
Kant’s original German beside a new contemporary-English translation made directly from the source—not from an existing English edition.
Being and Time
Introduction · Chapter One · §§1–4
Heidegger’s German aligned with an experimental English translation, plus explicit terminology choices and editorial notes for close reading.
Apology
Pilot · Stephanus 17a–24b · Ancient Greek and modern English
Plato’s Greek aligned with an experimental contemporary-English translation made directly from the source, with standard Stephanus references preserved.