PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: philosophy
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
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
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....
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...
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...
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...
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 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 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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
Muslim philosopher
Averroës, 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...
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...
German religious philosopher
Martin Buber, 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 other...
German philosopher and mathematician
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German philosopher, mathematician, and political adviser, important both as a metaphysician and as a logician and distinguished also for his independent invention of the differential...
French philosopher and scientist
Blaise Pascal, 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 principle...
German writer
Friedrich Schiller, 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), and...
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...
British philosopher and statesman
Edmund Burke, 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...
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....
German philosopher
Edmund Husserl, 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....
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,...
German author
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, 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 importance....
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...
Jewish philosopher
Philo Judaeus, 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...
Persian philosopher and scientist
Avicenna, 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 philosophy...
American psychologist and philosopher
William James, 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 Henry...
Japanese philosopher
Nishida Kitarō, 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 a time...
German philosopher
Karl Jaspers, 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 to...
Italian philosopher
Giambattista Vico, 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 Scienza...
American theologian
Jonathan Edwards, 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 Protestant...
Italian philosopher
Giordano Bruno, 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 multiplicity...
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