PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: philosophy and religion
Jesus, religious leader revered in Christianity, one of the world’s major religions. He is regarded by most Christians as the Incarnation of God. The history of Christian reflection on the teachings and...
Greek philosopher
Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and...
Greek philosopher
Socrates, ancient Greek philosopher whose way of life, character, and thought exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy. Socrates was a widely recognized and controversial figure in his native...
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....
English poet
John Milton, English poet, pamphleteer, and historian, considered the most significant English author after William Shakespeare. Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, widely regarded as the greatest...
Christian Apostle
St. Paul the Apostle, one of the leaders of the first generation of Christians, often considered to be the most important person after Jesus in the history of Christianity. In his own day, although he...
Chinese philosopher
Confucius, China’s most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, whose ideas have profoundly influenced the civilizations of China and other East Asian countries. Confucius was born near the...
president of United States
Thomas Jefferson, draftsman of the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the nation’s first secretary of state (1789–94) and second vice president (1797–1801) and, as the third president...
German religious leader
Martin Luther, German theologian and religious reformer who was the catalyst of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. Through his words and actions, Luther precipitated a movement that reformulated...
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;...
English philosopher
John Locke, English philosopher whose works lie at the foundation of modern philosophical empiricism and political liberalism. He was an inspirer of both the European Enlightenment and the Constitution...
Italian poet
Dante, Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy)....
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...
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...
Holy Roman emperor [747?–814]
Charlemagne, king of the Franks (768–814), king of the Lombards (774–814), and first emperor (800–814) of the Romans and of what was later called the Holy Roman Empire. Around the time of the birth of...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
pope
St. John Paul II, ; beatified May 1, 2011; canonized April 27, 2014; feast day October 22), bishop of Rome and head of the Roman Catholic Church (1978–2005), the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and...
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...
French heroine
St. Joan of Arc, ; canonized May 16, 1920; feast day May 30; French national holiday, second Sunday in May), national heroine of France, a peasant girl who, believing that she was acting under divine guidance,...
Dutch-Jewish philosopher
Benedict de Spinoza, 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 Ethics...
French theologian
John Calvin, theologian and ecclesiastical statesman. He was the leading French Protestant reformer and the most important figure in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation. His interpretation...
Christian Apostle
St. Peter the Apostle, disciple of Jesus Christ, recognized in the early Christian church as the leader of the 12 disciples and by the Roman Catholic Church as the first of its unbroken succession of popes....
Italian statesman and writer
Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian Renaissance political philosopher and statesman, secretary of the Florentine republic, whose most famous work, The Prince (Il Principe), brought him a reputation as an atheist...
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...
Scottish philosopher
Adam Smith, Scottish social philosopher and political economist. Adam Smith is a towering figure in the history of economic thought. Known primarily for a single work—An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes...
prophet of Islam
Muhammad, the founder of Islam and the proclaimer of the Qurʾān. Muhammad is traditionally said to have been born in 570 in Mecca and to have died in 632 in Medina, where he had been forced to emigrate...
English philosopher
Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher, scientist, and historian, best known for his political philosophy, especially as articulated in his masterpiece Leviathan (1651). Hobbes viewed government primarily...
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...
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...
pope
St. Gregory VII, ; canonized 1606; feast day, May 25), one of the greatest popes of the medieval church, who lent his name to the 11th-century movement now known as the Gregorian Reform or Investiture...
French philosopher and author
Gabriel Marcel, French philosopher, dramatist, and critic who was associated with the phenomenological and existentialist movements in 20th-century European philosophy and whose work and style are often...
Dutch humanist
Erasmus, Dutch humanist who was the greatest scholar of the northern Renaissance, the first editor of the New Testament, and also an important figure in patristics and classical literature. Using the philological...
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,...
Danish philosopher
Søren Kierkegaard, 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,...
British logician and philosopher
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, logician, and social reformer, founding figure in the analytic movement in Anglo-American philosophy, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Russell’s...
Muslim caliph
ʿAlī, cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, and fourth of the “rightly guided” (rāshidūn) caliphs, as the first four successors of Muhammad are called. Reigning from 656 to 661, he was...
British biologist
Thomas Henry Huxley, 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...
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...
president of United States
John Adams, an early advocate of American independence from Great Britain, a major figure in the Continental Congress (1774–77), the author of the Massachusetts constitution (1780), a signer of the Treaty...
archbishop of Canterbury
Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury (1533–56), adviser to the English kings Henry VIII and Edward VI. As archbishop, he put the English Bible in parish churches, drew up the Book...
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...
pope
St. Gregory the Great, ; Western feast day, September 3 [formerly March 12, still observed in the East]), pope from 590 to 604, reformer and excellent administrator, “founder” of the medieval papacy, which...
German philosopher
Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, counted among the main exponents of existentialism. His groundbreaking work in ontology (the philosophical study of being, or existence) and metaphysics determined...
French philosopher and historian
Michel Foucault, 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 born...
pope
Innocent III, the most significant pope of the Middle Ages. Elected pope on January 8, 1198, Innocent III reformed the Roman Curia, reestablished and expanded the pope’s authority over the Papal States,...
English author
John Bunyan, celebrated English minister and preacher, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), the book that was the most characteristic expression of the Puritan religious outlook. His other works include...
- apologetics
- astrology
- Buddhism
- Ch'ondogyo
- Christianity
- Confucianism
- Daoism
- ecumenism
- hagiography
- Hinduism
- humanism
- Islam
- Jainism
- Judaism
- logic
- meditation
- mission
- monasticism
- mysticism
- patristic literature
- philosophy
- political philosophy
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- religious literature
- Roman Catholicism
- scripture
- Shinto
- Sikhism
- Sufism
- televangelism
- theology
- Unitarianism
- Zoroastrianism