PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: philosophy

632 Biographies
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Socrates
Greek philosopher
Socrates ancient Greek philosopher whose way of life, character, and thought exerted a profound influence on Classical antiquity and Western philosophy. Socrates was a widely recognized and controversial...
Aristotle
Greek philosopher
Aristotle ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of Classical antiquity and Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became...
Plato
Greek philosopher
Plato ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470–399 bce), teacher of Aristotle (384–322 bce), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence....
Francis Bacon
British author, philosopher, and statesman
Francis Bacon lord chancellor of England (1618–21). A lawyer, statesman, philosopher, and master of the English tongue, he is remembered in literary terms for the sharp worldly wisdom of a few dozen essays;...
John Locke
English philosopher
John Locke English philosopher whose works lie at the foundation of modern philosophical empiricism and political liberalism,classical liberalism in particular. He was an inspirer of both the European...
Justus of Ghent: Saint Augustine
Christian bishop and theologian
St. Augustine ; feast day August 28) bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430, one of the Latin Fathers of the Church and perhaps the most significant Christian thinker after St. Paul. Augustine’s adaptation of...
Immanuel Kant
German philosopher
Immanuel Kant German philosopher whose comprehensive and systematic work in epistemology (the theory of knowledge), ethics, and aesthetics greatly influenced all subsequent philosophy, especially the various...
Karl Marx
German philosopher
Karl Marx revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and economist. He published (with Friedrich Engels) Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848), commonly known as The Communist Manifesto, the most celebrated...
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
German philosopher
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel German philosopher who developed a dialectical scheme that emphasized the progress of history and of ideas from thesis to antithesis and thence to a synthesis. Hegel was the...
Voltaire
French philosopher and author
Voltaire one of the greatest of all French writers. Although only a few of his works are still read, he continues to be held in worldwide repute as a courageous crusader against tyranny, bigotry, and cruelty....
René Descartes
French mathematician and philosopher
René Descartes French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher. Because he was one of the first to abandon Scholastic Aristotelianism, because he formulated the first modern version of mind-body dualism,...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Swiss-born French philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose treatises and novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and the Romantic generation. Rousseau was the least...
Noam Chomsky
American linguist
Noam Chomsky American theoretical linguist whose work from the 1950s revolutionized the field of linguistics by treating language as a uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity. Through his...
Benedict de Spinoza
Dutch-Jewish philosopher
Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher, one of the foremost exponents of 17th-century Rationalism and one of the early and seminal figures of the Enlightenment. His masterwork is the treatise...
David Hume
Scottish philosopher
David Hume Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. Hume conceived of philosophy as the inductive, experimental science...
Adam Smith
Scottish philosopher
Adam Smith Scottish social philosopher and political economist, instrumental in the rise of classical liberalism. Adam Smith is a towering figure in the history of economic thought. Known primarily for...
John Stuart Mill
British philosopher and economist
John Stuart Mill English philosopher, economist, and exponent of utilitarianism. He was prominent as a publicist in the reforming age of the 19th century, and remains of lasting interest as a logician...
St. Thomas Aquinas
Italian Christian theologian and philosopher
St. Thomas Aquinas ; canonized July 18, 1323; feast day January 28, formerly March 7) Italian Dominican theologian, the foremost medieval Scholastic. He developed his own conclusions from Aristotelian...
Thomas Hobbes
English philosopher
Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, scientist, and historian, best known for his political philosophy, especially as articulated in his masterpiece Leviathan (1651). Hobbes viewed government primarily...
Hilary Putnam
American philosopher
Hilary Putnam leading American philosopher who made major contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mathematics,...
Gabriel Marcel
French philosopher and author
Gabriel Marcel was a French philosopher, dramatist, and critic who was associated with the phenomenological and existentialist movements in 20th-century European philosophy. His work and style are often...
Søren Kierkegaard
Danish philosopher
Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and cultural critic who was a major influence on existentialism and Protestant theology in the 20th century. He attacked the literary, philosophical,...
Bertrand Russell
British logician and philosopher
Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, and social reformer, a founding figure in the analytic movement in Anglo-American philosophy, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950....
Huxley, Thomas Henry
British biologist
Thomas Henry Huxley was an English biologist, educator, and advocate of agnosticism (he coined the word). Huxley’s vigorous public support of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary naturalism earned him the nickname...
Martin Heidegger
German philosopher
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher, counted among the main exponents of existentialism. His groundbreaking work in ontology (the philosophical study of being, or existence) and metaphysics determined...
Ludwig Wittgenstein
British philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein Austrian-born British philosopher, regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Wittgenstein’s two major works, Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (1921; Tractatus...
Michel Foucault
French philosopher and historian
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and historian, one of the most influential and controversial scholars of the post-World War II period. The son and grandson of a physician, Michel Foucault was...
Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. His attempts to unmask the motives that underlie traditional...
Cicero
Roman statesman, scholar, and writer
Cicero Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and writer who vainly tried to uphold republican principles in the final civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic. His writings include books of rhetoric, orations,...
Averroës (Ibn Rushd)
Muslim philosopher
Averroës was an influential Islamic religious philosopher who integrated Islamic traditions with ancient Greek thought. At the request of the Almohad caliph Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf, he produced a series of summaries...
Alfred North Whitehead
British mathematician and philosopher
Alfred North Whitehead English mathematician and philosopher who collaborated with Bertrand Russell on Principia Mathematica (1910–13) and, from the mid-1920s, taught at Harvard University and developed...
Martin Buber
German religious philosopher
Martin Buber was a German-Jewish religious philosopher, biblical translator and interpreter, and master of German prose style. Buber’s philosophy was centred on the encounter, or dialogue, of man with...
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
German philosopher and mathematician
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher, mathematician, and political adviser, important both as a metaphysician and as a logician and distinguished also for his independent invention of the...
Blaise Pascal
French philosopher and scientist
Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal’s...
Friedrich Schiller, painting by Anton Graff, c. 1785.
German writer
Friedrich Schiller was a leading German dramatist, poet, and literary theorist, best remembered for such dramas as Die Räuber (1781; The Robbers), the Wallenstein trilogy (1800–01), Maria Stuart (1801),...
Helmholtz.
German scientist and philosopher
Hermann von Helmholtz German scientist and philosopher who made fundamental contributions to physiology, optics, electrodynamics, mathematics, and meteorology. He is best known for his statement of the...
Burke, Edmund
British philosopher and statesman
Edmund Burke was a British statesman, parliamentary orator, and political thinker prominent in public life from 1765 to about 1795 and important in the history of political theory. He championed conservatism...
Werner Heisenberg
German physicist and philosopher
Werner Heisenberg German physicist and philosopher who discovered (1925) a way to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices. For that discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1932....
Edmund Husserl
German philosopher
Edmund Husserl was a German philosopher, the founder of Phenomenology, a method for the description and analysis of consciousness through which philosophy attempts to gain the character of a strict science....
John Searle
American philosopher
John Searle American philosopher best known for his work in the philosophy of language—especially speech act theory—and the philosophy of mind. He also made significant contributions to epistemology, ontology,...
Gotthold Lessing, detail of an oil painting by Georg May, 1768; in the Gleimhaus, Halberstadt, Ger.
German author
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German dramatist, critic, and writer on philosophy and aesthetics. He helped free German drama from the influence of classical and French models and wrote plays of lasting...
George Berkeley
Irish philosopher
George Berkeley Anglo-Irish Anglican bishop, philosopher, and scientist best known for his empiricist and idealist philosophy, which holds that reality consists only of minds and their ideas; everything...
Philo Judaeus
Jewish philosopher
Philo Judaeus was a Greek-speaking Jewish philosopher, the most important representative of Hellenistic Judaism. His writings provide the clearest view of this development of Judaism in the Diaspora. As...
The title page of the 1556 edition of Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb). This edition (sometimes called the 1556 Basel edition) was translated by  medieval scholar Gerard of Cremona.
Persian philosopher and scientist
Avicenna was a Muslim physician, the most famous and influential of the philosopher-scientists of the medieval Islamic world. He was particularly noted for his contributions in the fields of Aristotelian...
William James
American psychologist and philosopher
William James was an American philosopher and psychologist, a leader of the philosophical movement of pragmatism and a founder of the psychological movement of functionalism. James was the eldest son of...
Japanese philosopher
Nishida Kitarō was a Japanese philosopher who exemplified the attempt by the Japanese to assimilate Western philosophy into the Oriental spiritual tradition. Nishida’s father, Nishida Yasunori, was for...
Karl Jaspers
German philosopher
Karl Jaspers was a German philosopher, one of the most important Existentialists in Germany, who approached the subject from man’s direct concern with his own existence. In his later work, as a reaction...
Giambattista Vico
Italian philosopher
Giambattista Vico was an Italian philosopher of cultural history and law, who is recognized today as a forerunner of cultural anthropology, or ethnology. He attempted, especially in his major work, the...
Jonathan Edwards
American theologian
Jonathan Edwards was the greatest theologian and philosopher of British American Puritanism, stimulator of the religious revival known as the “Great Awakening,” and one of the forerunners of the age of...
Giordano Bruno
Italian philosopher
Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and occultist whose theories anticipated modern science. The most notable of these were his theories of the infinite universe and the...