The Continental Philosophy Reader is the first comprehensive anthology of key writings from the major figures in European thought. The anthology is organised in three sections which map out the broad territory covered in The Continental Philosophy Reader: from Phenomenology to Hermeneutics, from Marxism to Critical Theory and from Structualism to Deconstruction. Within each section classic thinkers and writings of these movements are presented. The selections have been carefully chosen to be representative of the thinkers, and each piece of writing is introduced and placed in their historical and philosophical context by the editors. There is also a helpful chronology that allows the tradition to be seen in light of twentieth century thought and culture.

The thinkers and writing covered in The Continental Philosophy Reader include: Husserl on Phenomenology, Heidegger from Being and Time, Jaspers from the Philosophy of Existence, Sartre on Existentialism, Merleau-Ponty from Phenomenology of Perception, de Beauvoir from The Second Sex, Gadamer on Hermenuetics, Levinas on Ethics, Ricoeur on Interpretation, Luxemborg on Marxism, Lukacs from History and Class Consciousness, Gramsci on Intellectuals, Adorno & Horkhiemer from the Dialectic of the Enlightenment, Benjamin on History, Marcuse from Eros and Civilisation, Habermas on Philosophy, Althusser from Reading Marx, Arendt from Between Past and Future, de Saussure on Signs, Levi-Strauss on Myth, Lacan on the Mirror Stage, Foucault on Power, Barthes on Semiology, Kristeva on Women's Time, Deleuze on Philosophy, Irigaray on the Feminine, Lyotard on the Postmodern