Voices we read
The people who shaped the questions we ask here — and the books they left us
54 names across the fields the salon keeps returning to, plus a library of books and a philosophy shelf. Not a ranking — a reading list, and an invitation to argue with it. In their own words where they can be quoted exactly.
Philosophy for Children & Communities
The tradition of doing philosophy together — in classrooms, libraries and community rooms — rather than about each other.
01
Matthew Lipman
Founder, Philosophy for Children
Turned the classroom into a community of inquiry and wrote the first philosophical novels for children.
A book by Lipman: Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery
“It introduces moral and aesthetic considerations where other forms of inquiry hang back.”
Inquiry, Democracy and Childhood — interview, 200002
Ann Margaret Sharp
Co-founder, IAPC
Insisted that thinking well and caring well are the same practice.
A book by Sharp: her collected writings
03
Gareth B. Matthews
Philosopher
Argued that children's questions are genuine philosophy, not rehearsal for it.
A book by Matthews: Philosophy and the Young Child
“Children, from the ages of about 3 or 4 to about 7 or 8, raise almost all of the basic questions of philosophy in some form or other.”
Philosophy and the Young Child04
Karin Murris
Educator and theorist
Works on picturebooks as philosophical texts and on listening to children as thinkers.
A book by Murris: The Posthuman Child
05
Oscar Brenifier
Philosophical practitioner
Runs philosophical consultations and workshops built on uncomfortable questions.
A book by Brenifier: his philosophical workshops in print
06
Peter Worley
Co-founder, The Philosophy Foundation
Designs sessions that give facilitators a way to stay quiet and let thinking happen.
A book by Worley: The If Machine
07
Michel Sasseville
Université Laval
Built one of the widest reaching programmes for training philosophy facilitators.
A book by Sasseville: his writing on philosophy with children
08
Walter Kohan
Philosopher of childhood
Reads childhood as a condition of thought rather than a stage to grow out of.
A book by Kohan: his writing on childhood and philosophy
09
Thomas Wartenberg
Mount Holyoke College
Uses children's picture books to open questions of justice, identity and knowledge.
A book by Wartenberg: Big Ideas for Little Kids
10
Jana Mohr Lone
University of Washington
Writes on the philosophical child and the ethics of taking young voices seriously.
A book by Lone: The Philosophical Child
11
Belmin Dumlu Savaskan
Founder, Art & Beyond
The salon's founder takes its own questions to print: whether a sustainable life is something we move to, or something we build where we stand — in the city, in the village, in a shrinking world.
In print — Gıda Türk, Kasım–Aralık 2020 Kentten Köye Göç İle Sürdürülebilir Bir Yaşama Kavuşabilir miyiz?
In print — Edebiyat Atölyesi Dergisi, “Sizden Gelenler”, 30 Ağustos 2020: Salgın yangın yeri şu küçülen dünyada…
Writers
Writers whose work sits where the salon does: between image, idea and the difficulty of saying a true thing.
01
Jorge Luis Borges
Fiction, essays
Libraries, mirrors and infinities — the patron saint of questions that refuse to close.
A book by Borges: Ficciones
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
Poema de los dones, 196002
John Berger
Critic, novelist
Ways of Seeing made looking at art a political and intimate act.
A book by Berger: Ways of Seeing
“Seeing comes before words.”
Ways of Seeing, 197203
Susan Sontag
Essayist
Asked what images do to us, and argued against interpretation as a reflex.
A book by Sontag: On Photography
“To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.”
On Photography, 197704
Italo Calvino
Novelist
Lightness, exactitude, multiplicity — a working list of virtues for any conversation.
A book by Calvino: Invisible Cities
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
Why Read the Classics?, 199105
Maggie Nelson
Poet, essayist
Writes at the seam of art criticism, theory and personal life.
A book by Nelson: The Argonauts
06
Rebecca Solnit
Essayist
On getting lost, on hope, on how stories build or dissolve communities.
A book by Solnit: The Faraway Nearby
07
James Baldwin
Novelist, essayist
The clearest demonstration that disagreement can be a form of love.
A book by Baldwin: The Fire Next Time
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
As Much Truth As One Can Bear, 196208
Anne Carson
Poet, classicist
Moves between ancient texts and contemporary grief without a seam showing.
A book by Carson: Autobiography of Red
09
Olga Tokarczuk
Novelist
Writes constellation novels — many voices, one question held in common.
A book by Tokarczuk: Flights
10
Ataol Behramoğlu
Poet
A poet of solidarity and plain speech; wrote the foreword to Kanatlarımızda Gökyüzü.
A book by Behramoğlu: his poems
Art Therapy
Practitioners and theorists who treat making as a language in its own right, not as an illustration of words.
01
Edith Kramer
Art as therapy
Held that the act of making is itself the healing, before any interpretation.
A book by Kramer: Art as Therapy
02
Margaret Naumburg
Pioneer of art therapy
Brought analytic listening to spontaneous images and founded the field in the US.
A book by Naumburg: Dynamically Oriented Art Therapy
“Art therapy is based on the recognition that the client's fundamental thoughts and feelings are often expressed in images rather than words.”
Dynamically Oriented Art Therapy, 196603
Shaun McNiff
Expressive arts therapy
Works across media — image, movement, sound — and trusts the imagination's own intelligence.
A book by McNiff: Trust the Process
“Trust the process.”
Trust the Process, 199804
Cathy Malchiodi
Trauma-informed practice
Links art making to the body and to how trauma is actually held.
A book by Malchiodi: Trauma and Expressive Arts Therapy
05
Judith Rubin
Clinician and author
The Art of Art Therapy remains the field's most humane training text.
A book by Rubin: The Art of Art Therapy
06
Lucia Capacchione
Creative journaling
Developed non-dominant-hand drawing and writing as a route to unheard voices.
A book by Capacchione: The Creative Journal
07
Bruce Moon
Existential art therapy
Treats the studio as an ethical space where the therapist also makes work.
A book by Moon: Existential Art Therapy
08
Pat Allen
Open Studio Project
Intention, attention, witness writing — a practice anyone can hold without a clinician.
A book by Allen: Art Is a Way of Knowing
09
Frances Kaplan
Researcher
Presses the field on evidence, art and the science of emotion.
A book by Kaplan: Art, Science and Art Therapy
10
Marian Liebmann
Groups and conflict
Uses art therapy in community settings, restorative justice and group work.
A book by Liebmann: Art Therapy for Groups
The Library
Seventeen writers, one book each — the shelf the salon keeps returning to when a Spark needs a companion.
01
Fernando Pessoa
The Book of Disquiet
A hundred selves thinking out loud — proof that one person is already a community.
A book by Pessoa: The Book of Disquiet
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
The Book of Disquiet02
José Saramago
Blindness
Asks what holds people together when everything visible falls away.
A book by Saramago: Blindness
“There was a time when I said I liked what this country made of me — one of the finest praises a person can give.”
Interview with Público and Rádio Renascença, 2009 · “gostava daquilo que este país fez de mim”03
Voltaire
Candide
Optimism tested by the world; the answer is to cultivate the garden together.
A book by Voltaire: Candide
“We must cultivate our garden.”
Candide, 175904
Victor Hugo
Les Misérables
Mercy as a public act, not a private feeling.
A book by Hugo: Les Misérables
“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further.”
Les Misérables, 186205
Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina
Every family unhappy in its own way — the great study of how lives entangle.
A book by Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Anna Karenina, 187706
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
What happens when the image is asked to carry what the person will not.
A book by Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Lady Windermere's Fan, 189207
Marcel Proust
In Search of Lost Time
Memory as the slowest and most faithful form of looking.
A book by Proust: In Search of Lost Time
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
In Search of Lost Time08
George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four
A warning that language is the first thing power comes for.
A book by Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Preface to Animal Farm, 194509
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Little Prince
What is essential is invisible to the eye — the salon's unofficial motto.
A book by Saint-Exupéry: The Little Prince
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
The Little Prince, 194310
Gabriel García Márquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude
A whole town as one family memory, told until it becomes myth.
A book by Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
One Hundred Years of Solitude, 196711
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
A ruler writing to himself at night — stoic philosophy as a private practice of staying human.
A book by Aurelius: Meditations
“Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.”
Meditations, Book 5 (trans. George Long, 1862)12
Homer
The Odyssey
The oldest story of leaving, and the longest story of coming home.
A book by Homer: The Odyssey
“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns.”
The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles13
Toni Morrison
Beloved
Shows that what a community refuses to remember, it is forced to repeat.
A book by Morrison: Beloved
“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”
Beloved, 198714
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov
Faith, doubt and guilt argued across a dinner table for six hundred pages.
A book by Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
“Beauty will save the world.”
The Idiot, 186915
Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
The comedy of first impressions — and the discipline of revising them.
A book by Austen: Pride and Prejudice
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Pride and Prejudice, 181316
Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird
The discipline of climbing into another life before judging it.
A book by Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
To Kill a Mockingbird, 196017
Suzanne Nelson
The Librarians of Lisbon
Two American librarians turned spies in neutral Lisbon — a story of banned books, double-edged secrets and a friendship that outlasts a war.
A book by Nelson: The Librarians of Lisbon
“In a glittering city of secrets and shadows, love is the most perilous gamble of all.”
Jacket copy, The Librarians of Lisbon, 2025
Ten Philosophy Books That Change How You Think
A list by Entelektüel Sözlük: books that don't hand you ready answers but leave you with harder questions. From Plato to Camus — six verified here, the rest on their way from the carousel.
01
Platon
Devlet (Republic)Adil bir toplum nasıl mümkün olur? The cave, the shadows, and the long walk toward what is real.
02
Aristoteles
Nikomakhos'a Etik (Nicomachean Ethics)İyi bir hayat nasıl yaşanır? Virtue as a habit, happiness as a practice, not a prize.
03
Marcus Aurelius
Kendime Düşünceler (Meditations)Gerçekten neyi kontrol edebiliriz? An emperor's private notebook on the only thing we govern: ourselves.
04
Baruch Spinoza
Etika (Ethics)Özgürlük ne demektir? Freedom as understanding necessity — geometry applied to the soul.
05
Friedrich Nietzsche
Böyle Buyurdu Zerdüşt (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)Ahlak nereden gelir? A book for everyone and no one, asking who gave our values their value.
06
Albert Camus
Sisifos Söyleni (The Myth of Sisyphus)Hayatın hazır bir anlamı yoksa ne yapacağız? The absurd, and why Sisyphus must be imagined happy.
Artwork by Entelektüel Sözlük (Instagram: @entelektuelsozlukk) — “İnsanın düşünme biçimini değiştiren 10 felsefi kitap”. The list lives in the philosophy shelf above.