Philosophers
Western
ThalesTraditionally counted the first Greek philosopher, he held that water is the origin of all things.
AnaximanderMilesian thinker who wrote the first Greek book of prose about nature, deriving all things from "the Boundless" and picturing an earth that floats unsupported in space.
PythagorasGreek sage who taught that the soul is immortal and is reborn in other bodies, and founded a disciplined way of life; later legend made him the father of mathematics.
XenophanesWandering poet who mocked the idea that gods look and behave like humans, described one greatest god unlike mortals, and doubted that anyone can know the plain truth.
HeraclitusEphesian thinker who held that everything is in flux, that opposites form a unity, and that change is governed by a rational principle, the logos.
AnaxagorasThe first philosopher to live in Athens, he held that everything contains a share of everything else, and that a cosmic mind, _nous_, set the world spinning into order.
ParmenidesAuthor of a metaphysical poem arguing that what is cannot come to be or pass away, so that change and plurality are illusions of the senses.
ProtagorasThe first to call himself a sophist, he taught argument for a fee, held that "man is the measure of all things", and said he could not know whether the gods exist.
EmpedoclesSicilian poet-philosopher who explained all change as the mixing and separating of four eternal roots, earth, water, air and fire, by two forces, Love and Strife.
SocratesAthenian who wrote nothing but, through relentless questioning about how to live, became the founding figure of Western moral philosophy.
Zeno of EleaParmenides' younger associate, famous for paradoxes, among them Achilles and the tortoise, that draw contradictions out of common beliefs about plurality and motion.- DemocritusCo-founder of ancient atomism, who held that the world is made of indivisible atoms moving in void, and that the good life is one of cheerfulness.
PlatoStudent of Socrates and founder of the Academy, whose dialogues range across ethics, politics, knowledge and reality, and introduce the theory of Forms.
Diogenes of SinopeThe model Cynic, who lived in a storage jar in Athens, flouted convention to show that a life according to nature and reason needs almost nothing, and called himself a citizen of the world.
AristotlePlato's student, who systematised logic and wrote on nearly every field of knowledge, from biology and physics to ethics, politics and metaphysics.
EpicurusTaught that the good life is one of tranquil pleasure, free from fear of the gods and of death, and explained the world as atoms moving in the void.
ChrysippusThird head of the Stoic school and its great systematiser, who developed a logic of propositions and argued that a fated world leaves room for moral responsibility.
CiceroRoman statesman and orator whose dialogues brought Greek philosophy into Latin, setting rival schools' views side by side in the spirit of Academic scepticism.
LucretiusRoman poet whose _On the Nature of Things_ set out Epicurus' atomism in Latin verse, to free readers from fear of the gods and of death.
SenecaRoman Stoic, statesman and adviser to Nero, whose letters and essays made Stoic ethics a practical guide to living and shaped how later readers saw Stoicism.
EpictetusFormer slave turned Stoic teacher, who taught that our freedom lies entirely in our own choices and judgements, and that everything else is outside our control.- Sextus EmpiricusPyrrhonian sceptic and doctor whose Outlines of Pyrrhonism is our fullest account of ancient scepticism, which sets argument against argument to reach tranquillity.
Marcus AureliusRoman emperor and Stoic whose private notebook, the Meditations, shows him trying to live by the Stoic view that virtue is the only good.
PlotinusFounder of Neoplatonism, who taught that all reality flows from a single, indescribable source, the One, and that the soul can return to it.
AugustineBishop of Hippo whose writings on sin, grace, free will and time made him the most influential Christian thinker of late antiquity and the Latin Middle Ages.- ProclusHead of the Platonic school in Athens for nearly fifty years, who built Neoplatonism into a rigorous system that reached the Middle Ages under other names.
BoethiusRoman statesman who handed Aristotle's logic to the Latin Middle Ages, and wrote The Consolation of Philosophy in prison while awaiting execution.
John Scottus EriugenaIrish scholar at the Frankish court who knew Greek, translated the Greek Christian Neoplatonists and wove them into a vast system in which all of nature flows out of God and returns.- Anselm of CanterburyBenedictine abbot and Archbishop of Canterbury, famous for the ontological argument, which defines God as "that than which a greater cannot be thought".
Peter AbelardThe pre-eminent philosopher of the twelfth century, a great logician and the first great nominalist, who held that intention alone makes an act right or wrong.
BonaventureFranciscan master at Paris and head of his order, who read the whole of creation as signs leading the mind to God, and argued that a created world cannot be eternal.
Thomas AquinasDominican friar and theologian who combined Aristotle's philosophy with Christian doctrine in the most influential synthesis of medieval scholasticism.- Meister EckhartDominican master of theology and preacher whose Latin treatises and German sermons describe God as a boundless "nothing" and call the soul to let go of everything so that God may be born in it.
John Duns ScotusFranciscan philosopher-theologian, "the Subtle Doctor", known for the univocity of being, the "thisness" that makes each thing an individual, and a will free at the very moment of choice.
William of OckhamFranciscan logician and nominalist, remembered for "Ockham's Razor", the principle that we should not assume more entities than we need.
Nicholas of CusaCardinal, church reformer and self-taught philosopher whose _On Learned Ignorance_ taught that the infinite God, in whom all opposites coincide, lies beyond every measure of the mind.
Desiderius ErasmusHumanist scholar who edited the Greek New Testament, satirised scholastic theology in _The Praise of Folly_, and defended free will against Luther with a sceptic's reluctance to assert.
Niccolò MachiavelliFlorentine diplomat and political thinker whose Prince analysed power without moralising, and whose Discourses on Livy championed republican liberty.
Michel de MontaigneFrench essayist who revived ancient scepticism, took "What do I know?" as his motto, and made the free exercise of one's own judgement the aim of philosophy.
Giordano BrunoRenaissance philosopher who took Copernicus as proof of an infinite, living universe full of other worlds, in which God is present in all things. He was burned as a heretic in Rome.
Francis BaconEnglish statesman and philosopher who planned a great renewal of all knowledge, based on experiment, a new method of induction and the conviction that knowledge is power.
Thomas HobbesEnglish philosopher who argued in Leviathan that people escape a state of war only by submitting to an absolute sovereign, and defended a materialist view of the world.
René DescartesOften called the father of modern philosophy, he sought certain foundations for knowledge through methodical doubt and the insight 'I think, therefore I am'.
Blaise PascalFrench mathematician and scientist whose unfinished Pensées, a defence of Christianity, reflect on human wretchedness and greatness, the thinking reed.
Baruch SpinozaRationalist who identified God with Nature and set out his ethics in the form of geometrical proofs.
John LockeEnglish empiricist who argued that all ideas come from experience, and whose case for natural rights and government by consent shaped liberal political thought.
Nicolas MalebrancheFrench priest and Cartesian who joined Descartes to Augustine, holding that we perceive bodies by way of ideas that exist in God, and that nothing but God truly causes anything.
Gottfried Wilhelm LeibnizRationalist polymath who co-invented the calculus and argued that the world consists of simple substances, monads, and is the best of all possible worlds.
George BerkeleyIrish philosopher and bishop who argued that there is no matter, only minds and their ideas, so that for ordinary things to be is to be perceived.
MontesquieuEnlightenment political philosopher who explained forms of government by their causes, from climate to commerce, and argued that liberty needs separate legislative, executive and judicial powers.
David HumeScottish empiricist and sceptic who argued that our beliefs about cause and effect rest on habit rather than reason.
Jean-Jacques RousseauGenevan thinker who argued that society corrupts naturally good human beings, and that legitimate law must express the general will of free and equal citizens.
Adam SmithScottish moral philosopher who grounded ethics in sympathy and an imagined impartial spectator, and whose _Wealth of Nations_ defended the natural liberty of ordinary people to run their affairs.
Immanuel KantArgued that the mind actively structures experience, reconciling rationalism and empiricism, and grounded morality in the rational will.
Jeremy BenthamEnglish jurist and reformer who gave utilitarianism its first systematic form, holding that pleasure and pain are our sovereign masters and that law should promote the greatest happiness.
Mary WollstonecraftEnglish moral and political philosopher whose Vindication of the Rights of Woman argued that women, as rational beings, need the same education and rights as men.
G. W. F. HegelThe most systematic of the German idealists, who saw reality and history as the unfolding of spirit, and whose dialectical method shaped much of later philosophy.
Arthur SchopenhauerGerman philosopher who held that the world at its core is a blind, restless Will, and that art, compassion and ascetic renunciation offer release from suffering.
John Stuart MillThe nineteenth century's most influential philosopher writing in English: an empiricist, a utilitarian and a liberal, author of On Liberty.
Søren KierkegaardDanish writer who opposed philosophical system-building, and explored faith, anxiety and what it means to exist as a single individual.
Karl MarxPhilosopher and revolutionary who analysed history in terms of material production and class struggle, and capitalism as a system that alienates workers.
Charles Sanders PeirceLogician, scientist and founder of American pragmatism, who held that a concept's meaning lies in its conceivable practical effects, and who developed a general theory of signs.
William JamesPsychologist and philosopher whose Principles of Psychology described the 'stream of thought', and who made pragmatism famous with a theory of truth as what works.
Friedrich NietzscheGerman philosopher and cultural critic who attacked traditional morality and religion, announced that “God is dead”, and asked how life can be affirmed without them.
Gottlob FregeGerman logician who invented modern predicate logic, tried to derive arithmetic from logic, and distinguished the sense of an expression from what it refers to.
Edmund HusserlFounder of phenomenology, who studied consciousness as it is experienced, bracketing our taken-for-granted belief in the world to reveal how things show up for us.
Henri BergsonFrench philosopher of time and life, famous in his day, who contrasted lived duration with measured time and explained evolution by a 'vital impulse'.
John DeweyPragmatist and perhaps the most prominent American intellectual of his time, who treated thinking as a way of solving problems and saw democracy and education as bound together.
Alfred North WhiteheadMathematician who wrote Principia Mathematica with Russell, then turned to metaphysics at Harvard and founded process philosophy, which treats the world as interdependent events rather than things.
Bertrand RussellBritish philosopher and logician who argued that mathematics reduces to logic, helped found analytic philosophy, and campaigned for peace.
G. E. MooreCambridge philosopher who helped found analytic philosophy, argued that goodness cannot be defined in natural terms, and defended common sense against sceptics and idealists.
Ludwig WittgensteinAustrian-born philosopher of logic and language whose Tractatus and later Philosophical Investigations transformed analytic philosophy twice over.
Martin HeideggerGerman philosopher whose Being and Time asked what it means to be, and shaped existentialism, phenomenology and much of later European thought.- Rudolf CarnapLeading figure of logical empiricism and a founder of the philosophy of science, who saw philosophy as the engineering of clearer languages and rejected metaphysics as empty.
- Karl PopperPhilosopher of science who made falsifiability the mark of a scientific theory, and a political philosopher who defended the 'open society' against totalitarianism.
Theodor W. AdornoFrankfurt School philosopher, sociologist and music critic whose Dialectic of Enlightenment, written with Horkheimer, argued that modern reason had turned into a new form of domination.
Jean-Paul SartreFrench existentialist philosopher, novelist and public intellectual, who held that human beings are condemned to be free and responsible for what they make of themselves.
Hannah ArendtGerman-American political thinker who analysed totalitarianism, defended political action and plurality, and coined the phrase "the banality of evil".- Maurice Merleau-PontyThe leading phenomenologist of post-war France, who made the lived, perceiving body the starting point for understanding mind, world, language and art.
Simone de BeauvoirFrench existentialist philosopher and novelist whose The Second Sex argued that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”.
W. V. O. QuineHarvard logician and philosopher who attacked logical empiricism's distinction between analytic and synthetic truths and saw philosophy as continuous with science.
Simone WeilFrench philosopher, activist and mystic who worked in factories to understand oppression, and whose late thought centred on attention, affliction and the soul's need for roots.
Albert CamusFrench novelist, journalist and philosopher of the absurd, who asked whether life is worth living in a silent universe and answered with revolt.
Elizabeth AnscombeWittgenstein's student and translator, whose Intention founded modern action theory and whose 'Modern Moral Philosophy' urged philosophers to abandon the moral 'ought'.- Iris MurdochBritish philosopher and novelist whose Sovereignty of Good defended a Platonic moral realism, in which moral life is chiefly a matter of attentive, loving vision of others.
John RawlsAmerican political philosopher in the social contract tradition, whose A Theory of Justice asks what principles free and equal citizens would choose behind a veil of ignorance.
Thomas KuhnPhysicist turned historian and philosopher of science whose Structure of Scientific Revolutions argued that science advances through paradigm shifts, not steady accumulation.- Michel FoucaultFrench historian and philosopher who wrote histories of madness, the prison and sexuality to show how knowledge and power shape what seems natural and necessary.
Jürgen HabermasGerman social theorist and public intellectual who grounded morality and democracy in communication aimed at agreement, and defended the public sphere against its erosion.- Jacques DerridaAlgerian-born French philosopher who founded deconstruction, a way of reading texts and institutions that unsettles the oppositions on which Western thought is built.
Jewish
- Saadia GaonRabbi and head of the Sura academy whose Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, written in Arabic, argues that reason and revelation confirm each other.
Solomon ibn GabirolAndalusian Hebrew poet and Neoplatonist whose Fountain of Life, read in Latin as the work of 'Avicebron', taught that even souls and intellects are made of matter and form.
Judah HaleviHebrew poet of the 'Golden Age of Spanish Jewry' whose Kuzari defends Judaism against the philosophers, holding that God is known through history and prophecy rather than proof.
MaimonidesRabbi, physician and the greatest Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, whose Guide of the Perplexed reconciles scripture with Aristotelian philosophy while stressing the limits of human knowledge.- GersonidesProvençal philosopher, astronomer and biblical commentator whose Wars of the Lord trusts reason to settle even creation and God's knowledge, sometimes against tradition.
- Hasdai CrescasRabbi and leader of Aragon's Jews whose Light of the Lord attacks Aristotle's physics, arguing for an actual infinite and an infinite void, and whose ideas reached Spinoza.
Arabic and Islamic
al-KindiThe first thinker in the Arabic tradition to call himself a philosopher, who worked alongside translators of Greek texts and held that philosophy and revelation agree.- Abu Bakr al-RaziPhysician and controversial philosopher who held that the world arose from five eternal principles, and was reported to have argued that reason, not prophecy, guides us.
al-FarabiCalled the 'Second Teacher' after Aristotle, he established the Arabic tradition of Aristotelian logic and wrote on the ideal, virtuous city.
AvicennaPhilosopher and physician who built a comprehensive system from Aristotelian and Neoplatonic ideas, known for the distinction between essence and existence.
al-GhazaliSunni theologian, jurist and mystic whose Incoherence of the Philosophers condemned key doctrines of the Aristotelian philosophers while adopting their logic.- AvempaceAndalusian philosopher who taught how the lone philosopher should live in an imperfect city, and rise towards union with the Active Intellect.
AverroesAndalusian judge and philosopher whose commentaries on Aristotle earned him the title 'the Commentator' in medieval Europe.- Fakhr al-Din al-RaziTheologian and philosopher who tested every argument of Avicenna's system in turn, and whose critical commentaries set the agenda for later Islamic thought.
SuhrawardiFounder of the Illuminationist school, who described reality as a hierarchy of lights and held that the deepest knowledge comes through direct presence.- Ibn ArabiAndalusian thinker, called the Greatest Master, who taught that there is no true existence but God, and gave imagination a central place in knowledge and in the cosmos.
- Ibn TaymiyyaDamascene scholar and reformer who attacked Aristotelian logic and the theology of the philosophers, and argued that true revelation and sound reason never conflict.
Mulla SadraPersian philosopher whose “transcendent philosophy” joined Avicennan, Illuminationist and mystical thought, arguing that existence, not essence, is what is real.
Indian
The BuddhaFounder of Buddhism, who taught that suffering arises from craving and can be ended, and that there is no enduring self.
NāgārjunaBuddhist philosopher who founded the Madhyamaka ('middle way') school, arguing that all things are empty of intrinsic nature.
VasubandhuBuddhist philosopher whose Treasury of the Abhidharma became a standard handbook, and whose later works argue that the world we experience is “mere cognition”.- BhartṛhariGrammarian-philosopher who held that reality is Brahman, whose essence is the Word, and that the meaning of a sentence is grasped as one indivisible whole.
- GauḍapādaEarly Advaita Vedānta teacher, revered as the teacher of Śaṅkara's teacher, who held that nothing is ever truly born and that the world of plurality is like a dream.
DharmakīrtiBuddhist philosopher of logic and knowledge whose account of perception, inference and “exclusion” dominated Indian and Tibetan debate for centuries.- Kumārila BhaṭṭaMīmāṃsā philosopher who argued that every cognition is to be trusted until overturned, and defended the authority of the Vedas against Buddhist critics.
- ŚāntidevaBuddhist monk and poet whose Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life argues from the absence of a self to boundless care for others, and against the rationality of anger.
ŚaṅkaraThe pre-eminent teacher of Advaita Vedānta, who taught that the self (ātman) is identical with brahman, the one reality, and that plurality is not ultimately real.
ŚāntarakṣitaBuddhist philosopher who joined Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and the logic of Dharmakīrti into one system, then took it to Tibet as the first abbot of Samye.
RāmānujaChief proponent of Viśiṣṭādvaita, “qualified non-dualism”, which affirms both the unity of all in God and the reality of individual persons and things.- ŚrīharṣaIndian philosopher and poet whose Sweets of Refutation argued that every attempt to define knowledge, truth or the categories of reality collapses under its own standards.
MadhvaFounder of the Dvaita, or dualist, school of Vedānta, which holds that God, individual selves and the world are really and eternally distinct.- GaṅgeśaLogician of the Nyāya school whose Jewel founded “New Nyāya” (Navya-Nyāya), the standard technical language of Indian philosophical argument for centuries.
Chinese
LaoziSemi-legendary sage traditionally credited with the Daodejing, the founding text of Daoism, which counsels living in harmony with the dao through simplicity and non-action.
ConfuciusTeacher and would-be adviser to rulers, whose sayings about virtue, ritual and good government became the foundation of Confucianism.- MoziFounder of Mohism, who argued for impartial care for everyone and against offensive war, and was the first Chinese thinker to argue systematically for his views.
MenciusKnown as the 'Second Sage' of Confucianism, he argued that human nature is good and that virtue grows from innate moral sprouts.
ZhuangziDaoist thinker whose playful, paradoxical stories question fixed points of view and celebrate a spontaneous, free-flowing way of life.
XunziConfucian who argued, against Mencius, that human nature is bad and must be reformed through ritual, learning and the teachings of the sages.
Han FeiLeading thinker of the Legalist, or fa, tradition, who argued that order depends not on virtue but on clear laws, reliable rewards and punishments, and the power of the ruler’s position.- Wang ChongEastern Han critic who tested received teachings, sages included, against the evidence, and explained nature as the spontaneous workings of qi rather than the will of Heaven.
Wang BiNeo-Daoist commentator, dead in his early twenties, who read the Dao as nothingness, the ground of all beings, and whose edition of the Laozi became the standard text.
HuinengSemi-legendary Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, whose Platform Sutra teaches that Buddha-nature is our own nature and that awakening needs no study of texts.
Zhou DunyiNorthern Song thinker, honoured as the first Neo-Confucian master, whose Diagram of the Supreme Polarity traced the cosmos from its source to human beings and the sage.
Zhang ZaiNorthern Song pioneer of Neo-Confucianism who held that everything is qi, condensing and dispersing, and taught that we form one body with all things.
Cheng YiNorthern Song Neo-Confucian who made principle (li) the ground of all existence and morality, and taught cultivation through composure and investigating things.
Zhu XiThe leading Neo-Confucian philosopher, whose synthesis and commentaries on the Four Books became the basis of Chinese state examinations for centuries.
Wang YangmingMing statesman, general and Neo-Confucian thinker who taught that moral understanding is innate in every mind, and that knowing and acting are one.- Dai ZhenQing scholar who argued, against Zhu Xi, that pattern lies in everyday things and that ethics begins from fulfilling people's wants and feelings, not suppressing them.
Japanese
KūkaiFounder of Shingon esoteric Buddhism, often called Japan's greatest premodern systematic thinker, who taught that the cosmos is the Buddha's body and that one can become a Buddha in this very body.
HōnenTendai monk who founded the Pure Land school, teaching that simply saying Amida Buddha's name in trust, open to everyone, is the one path to liberation left in a degenerate age.
Nishida KitarōThe most influential Japanese philosopher of the twentieth century, founder of the Kyoto School, who grounded self and world in 'pure experience' and in the place of absolute nothingness.- Tanabe HajimeNishida's colleague and critic in the Kyoto School, who rethought absolute nothingness as 'absolute mediation' and, after the war, wrote a philosophy of repentance, Philosophy as Metanoetics.
Watsuji TetsurōPhilosopher of ethics and culture who answered Heidegger's stress on time with space and climate, and defined the human being by the 'betweenness' of people.
Nishitani KeijiKyoto School philosopher of religion, inspired by Nishida, who held that nihilism can be overcome only by passing through it to the 'field of emptiness'.