First published in 1651, Leviathan drove important discussions about where kings get their authority to rule and what those kings must, in turn, do for their people. This is known as the "social contract". Thomas Hobbes wrote the book while exiled from his native England following the English Civil War that unseated King Charles I. In the face of England's radical - if temporary - rejection of its monarchy, Hobbes wanted to explain why it was important to have a strong central government, which in his time meant having a sovereign at its head.

On the Genealogy of Morality was written in 1887 when Friedrich Nietzsche was at the height of his powers as a philosopher and master of German prose writing. Here, he criticizes the idea that there is just one conception of moral goodness, dissecting the contemporary practice of morality and looking at it from a historical viewpoint. Rather than following a metaphysical or religious approach, Nietzsche adopts a naturalistic framework, which is grounded in history and natural science, to understand our concepts of good and evil in the Christianized Western world.

How do those in power exercise that power over a state's citizens? French thinker Michel Foucault's 1975 work Discipline and Punish looks to answer this question by investigating the prison system. Foucault does not believe that the modern-day system developed out of reformers' humanitarian concerns. He argues that prison both created and then became part of a bigger system of surveillance that extends throughout society.

What might society look like if we were brave enough to emerge fully from the shadow of the Christian God? The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche explores this intriguing question in his 1886 work, Beyond Good and Evil. Going further, Nietzsche then asks of his "philosophers of the future" that they take on the challenge of supplying humanity with new ideals to live by.

A work that had a huge influence on great thinkers including celebrated German philosopher Immanuel Kant, An Enquiry is Hume's examination of how we obtain information and form beliefs. He argues that we mainly gain knowledge through our senses, a theory known as empiricism. But while the impressions from our senses are key to our beliefs about the world, Hume argues that reason and facts play only a limited part.