Get Out is a film that explores identity as it intersects with societal values. Using horror tropes and themes, it dissects racial identity, encouraging the audience to experience a similar fear to that which many people of color in the United States experience due to racism. It also analyzes the concept of self as it relates to bodies and physical forms. Peele explores the impact of a self changing bodies on identity, suggesting that one remains themselves despite a change in form.

John Locke's chapter titled "Of Identity and Diversity" in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding explores the relationship between identity, substances, and consciousness. Locke explains his belief that a person is made up of and extended consciousness, while a man is simply the human body, defined by its continuous life. He analyzes the separateness of self and body through various allegories, and he emphasizes the importance of memory in creating the consciousness (or multiple consciousnesses) that defines a person.

Metamorphosis uses the transformation of the narrator's body in order to explore themes of alterity and identity. The spontaneous metamorphosis forces the narrator to reconstruct his perception of his self and struggle to find a new purpose for his existence. The theme of alterity is crucial to the text, and Kafka uses it in order to make subtle social commentary about those who are deemed other by society. The text also looks at the impact of other people's perception on one's existence and personhood.

Marcel Proust's "Combray" chapter in Swann's Way focuses on the concepts of recollection and identity. Through the narrator's recounting of his childhood, we witness his process of remembrance and identity formation through said remembrance. Proust also explores the nature of consciousness, how it may be interrupted by dreaming or forgetfulness, and the impact of past emotions on one's current self. Finally, Proust famously elucidates the idea of involuntary memory, which is intense memory that is triggered by some event outside of the mind. The literary aspect of the novel makes many of these high level, theoretical concepts digestible and relatable, and provides the reader with a more grounded vision of often lofty philosophy.

The Second Sex is an essay which analyzes the role of women within society. To do so, it examines the ideas of Subject and Other, noting that throughout history, man has existed as the Subject, while woman is the Other. This theme of permanent alterity serves as the foundation upon which Simone de Beauvoir is able to deconstruct gender relations within society. Her analysis of gender also greatly intersects with ideas of race, labor, sexuality, and religion. In her conclusion, she expresses a desire for men and women to exist as "brothers," understanding one another as equals. She also famously discusses idea that one is not born woman, but becomes her, implying that gender is something placed upon a human and therefore not inherent to them.

Antigone tells the story of a young woman's effort to properly bury her brother, who is deemed a traitor for fighting against their city. Sophocles explores themes of duty and loyalty through the opposing viewpoints of Antigone and the king of the city, who believes it disrespectful to give the fallen brother a proper burial. The ambiguous nature of morality within the play leaves many of the decisions about a human's true duty up to the reader. It also explores the contrast between loyalty to deities and loyalty to one's state.

The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas is a science fiction short story in which an entire town's happiness depends on the suffering of a single child. This story deals directly with the philosophy of utilitarianism, using allegory in order to analyze it in context. Within the text, those who walk away from the town are the ones who do not believe in the "utility" of the child's suffering, but it is not fully clear if these people are presented as heroic by the author. The fictional aspect of the text allows the author to root philosophical concepts in a medium that is more easily understood by many, and inn doing so also brings increased context to these concepts, demonstrating their real life application. This effect may cause certain utilitarians (in theory) to question the philosophy in reality.

The Act of Killing is a documentary that focuses on the leaders of paramilitary organizations that aided in carrying out the mass killings of 1965 in Indonesia. The director of the documentary allows these leaders to tell their stories by reenactment of the killings, creating a sort of film within the film. Overall, the documentary explores the contrasting nature of the horrific killings and the seemingly normal men that helped carry them out. Through interviews as well as dramatization, the viewer is forced to view the harsh reality that evil does not always manifest in obvious villains, but is often much more subtle in nature. It also explores the long-term effects of trauma and violence, both on the victim and the perpetrator.

Arendt's text details the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a man who aided in the genocide of Jews during the Holocaust. In doing so, she gives the reader a vision into the mind of a "monster," exploring his motives, thoughts, and feelings surrounding his actions during the war. However, she also highlights what she deems as "the banality of evil," a term which she uses to describe the often alarming reality that evil is often enacted by people who are strikingly "normal" in a manner that is often clinical and detached. She commenst on Eichmann's argument that he was simply following Kant's categorical imperative, noting that he was confusing with universal duty with the duty to one's state. She also discusses the inherent link between evil and thoughtlessness in her text.

Judith Butler's text explores her notion of performativity as it relates to gender, presenting gender as something which is performed, rather than being inherent to a person. In doing so, she crucially distinguishes between biological sex and societal gender, noting the separateness between the two. She argues that the performance of gender has a clear audience (often the rest of society), and that the manners of performing it are passed down generationally. She uses the language and ideas of theater in her discussion of gender performance, commenting however on the clear difference between the two in perception of reality. Butler emphasizes that in theater, there is a clear understanding of what is real and what isn't, where many of the societal issues and fear surrounding gender come from its indistinguishability from reality.

J. S. Mill's Utilitarianism is an exploration of Mill's own moral theory, unsurprisingly titled utilitarianism. The theory's main tenant is that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." This happiness is necessarily universal, meaning that an action is not moral because it promotes the happiness of the one performing, but because it promotes the largest amount of global happiness possible. In terms of what this "happiness" actually is, Mill describes the utilitarian pleasure at its core as the absence of pain. However, he also notes that there are pleasures which are more "base" than others, and he argues that pleasures which are derived from one's higher faculties should hold more weight than others. Finally, Mill expresses his belief that all human desires can be connected to a desire for happiness. This is his reasoning for why the most moral action is the one with the highest amount of happiness created.

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals outlines and explores his extremely influential moral philosophy. As Kant believes that a moral philosophy must be able to apply universally, he argues that it must therefore be based on something which is universal to all humans: reason. He He formulates his famous "categorical imperative," where he suggests that actions must only be taken if one would wish that the motive behind the action became universal law. Because of this, Kant's moral philosophy is very much linked to the motives behind actions, even more so than the actions themselves. He believes that morality stems originally from the "good will," which comes from respect of moral law and performance of actions with respect to morality alone.

Existentialism is a Humanism serves to define and explain existentialism to Sartre's audience. His principle claim is that "existence precedes essence," meaning that humans exist first and define themselves later. Following this notion, Sartre asserts that humans are completely responsible for their own actions, and by proxy humankind as a whole. He defines the effects of this responsibility, including anguish and despair, which he believes are related to the understanding that humankind is shaped by the individual. He also counters many of the common beliefs that existentialism is a bleak philosophy by emphasizing that existentialist thought liberates humans and is optimistic about their ability to impact humankind.

Nietzsche's expansive text, Beyond Good and Evil serves to outline his core philosophy, which, in many ways, is done through the critique of other philosophies. His text attacks previous philosophers for being dogmatists, arguing that their philosophies only serve to justify their own personal prejudices and individualistic beliefs. Instead, Nietzsche advocates for a more ambiguous morality, one that quite literally moves "beyond good and evil" and acknowledges the importance of perspective in philosophy and morality. He advocates against "herd" behaviors/ideologies, which he believes to be distinguish the average person from the strong person, who is much more solitary and does not seek to dull their suffering through religion or other dogmatisms. Overall, this text is an expansive critique of much or moral philosophy with various explanations of what is truly noble in a human being.

Descartes begins Meditations by throwing out everything he deems to be uncertain. He is left with next to nothing but his own existence, and he struggles with the confusion that results from doubting everything from his senses to the physical world around him. He then analyzes the relationship between ideas and things, noting the separation between them, and eventually realizes that one of the only things he can truly understand is his own mind. The famous line, "I think, therefore I am" follows from this logic. Later in Meditations, he devines the existence of God through two arguments, describing how God is the only idea that has infinte "formal reality" as well as "objective reality," and all existence must therefore stem from Him. Finally, this text elucidates the idea of mind-body dualism, wherein one's mind and body are entirely distinct. Because of this, the bodily senses cannot be trusted as a source of complete truth.

The first chapter of The Souls of Black Folk explores W. E. B. Du Bois concepts of "double consciousness" and the "veil." As he describes, black folks in the United States exist with two separate consciousnesses: that of American, and that of "Negro." He references the constant duality of thought experienced by black people where they are caught between genuine self reflection and self reflection through the eyes of white people. Du Bois also discusses his metaphor of the "veil," which symbolizes the color line in the United States. He argues that all non-ignorant black people in the U.S. are constantly aware of their alterity and thereforced forced to see the world through this lens.

In his essay, The Metaphysics of Race, Mills explains the lack of foundation for race in biology. Instead, he describes race as something which is constructed societally by people who wish to remain in power over others. He also argues that race cannot truly form someone's identity as racial identities are filled with countless contradictions. His essay also encourages the acknowledgement of race by white people and the philosophical world at large as he believes that race is the fundamental issue of the 20th century.