Philosophy books for autumn 2026: algorithms, ethics and a new Zarathustra

The autumn lists of the university presses are out. Four titles stand out — and between them they summarise the field's present agenda.

Profiling — Philippe Huneman#

Profiling: How Predictive Algorithms Shape Identity and the Social Fabric, from Stanford University Press, examines how predictive algorithms shape identity and the social fabric.

The subject continues a line this site follows closely. When an algorithm classifies you as "a person with a high probability of behaving in this way", it is not merely making a prediction. That classification affects your credit, your insurance, your job application and sometimes your liberty. A prediction can become a self-fulfilling category.

The philosophical question: when is it legitimate to treat an individual on the basis of a statistical pattern?

Buddha, Socrates, and Us — Stephen Batchelor#

Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times, from Yale University Press, sets two traditions side by side.

Batchelor's interesting choice is to compare the Buddha and Socrates not through similarities of doctrine but through method. Neither wrote a book; each proceeded by questioning his interlocutor; each proposed a practice rather than transmitting a ready-made teaching.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra — a new Stanford translation#

The seventh volume of Stanford University Press's complete works of Nietzsche contains a new English translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Paul S. Loeb and David F. Tinsley.

Translating Nietzsche is itself a philosophical problem: the density of the poetry, the wordplay and the stylistic allusions to the Bible make every translation an interpretation as well.

Critical theory and the philosophy of education#

Critical Theory and the Philosophy of Education: Normativity, Social Pathologies, and Educational Justice, from Columbia University Press, is edited by Tobias Lensch and Krassimir Stojanov. It connects the Frankfurt School tradition to the argument about educational justice.