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Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#801

Brian Cantwell Smith

#3354

Overall Influence

Brian Cantwell Smith is a philosopher and cognitive scientist working in the fields of cognitive science, computer science, information studies, and philosophy, especially ontology. His research has focused on the foundations and philosophy of computing, both in the practice and theory of computer science, and in the use of computational metaphors in other fields, such as philosophy, cognitive science, physics, and art. He is currently professor of information, computer science, and philosophy at University of Toronto.

#802

Gary Steiner

#18341

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Gary Steiner is an American moral philosopher, and the John Howard Harris Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University. Steiner's particular focus is animal rights, Descartes, and 19th- and 20th-century continental philosophy.

#803

David Albert

#5768

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

David Z. Albert is Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy and Director of the MA Program in The Philosophical Foundations of Physics at Columbia University in New York. Education and career He received his bachelor's degree in physics from Columbia College and his PhD in theoretical physics from The Rockefeller University under Professor Nicola Khuri. Afterwards he worked with Yakir Aharonov of Tel Aviv University. He has spent most of his career in the philosophy department at Columbia University, although he has also been a frequent visiting professor of philosophy at Rutgers University.

#804

Robert A. McDermott

#6407

Overall Influence

Robert McDermott is professor of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. in 1969 in philosophy from Boston University and is president emeritus of the California Institute of Integral Studies. He has taught at Manhattanville College and is professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Philosophy at Baruch College, CUNY . He was secretary of the American Academy of Religion and secretary treasurer of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy .

#805

Predrag Vranicki

#18733

Overall Influence

1922 - 2002 (80 years)

Predrag Vranicki was a Marxist Humanist and member of the Praxis school in the 1960s in Yugoslavia. Life Vranicki was born in 1922, in Benkovac, Croatia. During World War II he fought with the National Liberation Army against the Fascist occupation of Yugoslavia. He received a diploma in philosophy from the University of Zagreb in 1947 and earned his PhD from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy in 1951. From 1964 to 1966 he was dean of the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, and rector of the Zagreb University from 1972 to 1976. Vranicki became president of the Yugoslav Society for ...

#806

Barry Stroud

#17329

Overall Influence

1935 - 2019 (84 years)

Barry Stroud was a Canadian philosopher and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Known especially for his work on philosophical skepticism, he wrote about David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the metaphysics of color, and many other topics.

#807

Janet Biehl

#8615

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Janet Biehl is an American author, copyeditor, translator, and artist. She authored several books and articles associated with social ecology, the body of ideas developed and publicized by Murray Bookchin. Formerly an advocate of his antistatist political program, she broke with it publicly in 2011 and now identifies as a progressive Democrat.

#808

Rahel Jaeggi

#14940

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Rahel Jaeggi is a professor of practical philosophy and social philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research areas are in social philosophy, political philosophy, ethics, philosophical anthropology, social ontology, and critical theory. Since February 2018 she has been the head of the Berlin campus of the newly founded International Center for Humanities and Social Change.

#809

Nancy Bauer

#9325

Overall Influence

For the Canadian writer and editor, see Nancy Bauer. Nancy Bauer is an American philosopher specializing in feminist philosophy, existentialism and phenomenology, and the work of Simone de Beauvoir. She was recently Chair of the Philosophy Department at Tufts University and is currently Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Philosophy as well as the Dean of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts. Her interests include methodology in philosophy, feminism, metaphysics, social/political/moral philosophy, philosophy of language, phenomenology, and philosophy in film.

#810

Constantine Sandis

#18445

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Constantine Sandis is a Greek and British philosopher and entrepreneur. Having worked on philosophy of action, moral psychology, David Hume, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, in 2013 he became Professor of Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University. He is currently Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, a Founding Director of author services firm Lex Academic and Chief Operations Officer of lexacademic.science.

#811

Svetozar Stojanović

Svetozar Stojanović

#18093

Overall Influence

1931 - 2010 (79 years)

Svetozar "Sveta" Stojanović was a Serbian philosopher and political theorist. Biography Stojanović was an intellectual in the European tradition, an academic who contributed to philosophical theory and engaged in practical politics. He bridged the divide between the more grand and speculative Continental philosophy and analytic Anglo-American ethical theory. His doctoral dissertation on Contemporary Meta-ethics was grounded on his study of ordinary language analysis at the University of Oxford and later he met weekly at the University of Michigan to discuss ethical issues with William Frankena, Richard Brandt and Charles Stevenson.

#812

Uma Narayan

#8726

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Uma Narayan is an American feminist scholar and a current professor of philosophy at Vassar College on the Andrew W. Mellon Chair of Humanities. Narayan's work focuses on the epistemology of the inequities involving postcolonial feminism.

#813

Mark Wrathall

#16273

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Mark Wrathall is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is considered a leading interpreter of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Wrathall is featured in Tao Ruspoli's film Being in the World. According to a recent reviewer of Wrathall's latest book, "Wrathall's writing is clear and comprehensive, ranging across virtually all of Heidegger's collected works.... Wrathall's overall interpretation of Heidegger's work is crystal clear, compelling, and relevant."

#814

Michael Lou Martin

#15331

Overall Influence

1932 - 2015 (83 years)

Michael Lou Martin was an American philosopher and former professor at Boston University. Martin specialized in the philosophy of religion, although he also worked on the philosophies of science, law, and social science. He served with the US Marine Corps in Korea.

#815

Gérard Granel

#9361

Overall Influence

1930 - 2000 (70 years)

Gérard Granel was a French philosopher and translator. Life and work Born in Paris, Granel attended the lycée Louis-le-Grand and the courses of Michel Alexandre, Jean Hyppolite and, later, of Louis Althusser and Jean Beaufret. He taught in Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Aix, before being appointed professor of philosophy at the Université de Toulouse-Le-Mirail, a position he held from 1972 until his death.

#816

Jordan Howard Sobel

#17274

Overall Influence

1929 - 2010 (81 years)

Jordan Howard Sobel was a Canadian-American philosopher specializing in ethics, logic, and decision theory. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, Canada. In addition to his areas of specialization, Sobel made notable contributions in the fields of philosophy of religion, and value theory. Before his death, Sobel was considered by Christian apologist William Lane Craig to be the leading philosophical defender of Atheism prior to Graham Oppy.

#817

Baruch Brody

#13315

Overall Influence

1943 - 2018 (75 years)

Baruch A. Brody was an American bioethicist. He was the Leon Jaworski Professor of biomedical ethics and former Director of the Center for Ethics, Medicine and Public Issues at The Baylor College of Medicine and Andrew Mellow professor of Humanities in the Department of Philosophy at Rice University.

#818

Mario De Caro

#14372

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Mario De Caro is an Italian philosopher, professor of moral philosophy at the University of Rome III in Italy. Since 2000, he has also been teaching at Tufts University, where he is regularly a visiting professor. He is interested in moral philosophy, the free-will controversy, theory of action, history of science, Donald Davidson's and Hilary Putnam's philosophies, and early modern philosophy. With David Macarthur, he has defended a metaphilosohical view called liberal naturalism.

#819

Michael Frede

#19469

Overall Influence

1940 - 2007 (67 years)

Michael Frede was a prominent scholar of ancient philosophy, described by The Telegraph as "one of the most important and adventurous scholars of ancient philosophy of recent times." Education and career Frede earned his Ph.D. at the University of Göttingen in 1966 and worked there as an assistant from 1966 to 1971.

#820

Charles Beitz

#6460

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Charles R. Beitz is an American political theorist. He is Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics at Princeton University, where he has been director of the University Center for Human Values and director of the Program in Political Philosophy. His philosophical and teaching interests focus on global political theory, democratic theory, the theory of human rights and theories of property.

#821

Jean Borella

#14696

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Jean Borella is a Christian philosopher and theologian. Borella's works are inspired by Ancient and Christian Neoplatonism, but also by the Traditionalist School of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon.

#822

James Randi

#466

Overall Influence

1928 - 2020 (92 years)

James Randi was a Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry , and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation . Randi began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims. Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, and from his foundation at 87.

#823

Peter Checkland

#971

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Peter Checkland is a British management scientist and emeritus professor of systems at Lancaster University. He is the developer of soft systems methodology : a methodology based on a way of systems thinking systems practice. Systems practice is the idea of uncovering an optimal solution within complex environments, thus leading to a thorough understanding of the system, analysing and adapting to change in the environment. In an important way his work preceded data science and change management disciplines in the next century.

#824

Richard Schacht

#16913

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Richard Schacht is an American philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign now residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is an expert on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, was the editor of International Nietzsche Studies, and is former executive director of the North American Nietzsche Society. His philosophical interests include European philosophy after Kant, particularly Friedrich Nietzsche and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and concepts such as human nature, alienation, and value theory.

#825

Christine Grady

#12389

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Christine Grady is an American nurse and bioethicist who serves as the head of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Early life and education Grady was born and raised in Livingston, New Jersey. Her father, John H. Grady Jr., was a graduate of Yale University and a U.S. Navy veteran who served as the mayor of Livingston. Her mother, Barbara, was an assistant dean at Seton Hall University School of Law.

#826

Wayne Proudfoot

#9510

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Wayne Lee Proudfoot is an American scholar of religion and has written several works in that field, specializing in the philosophy of religion. Proudfoot earned the degree of Master of Theology from the Harvard Divinity School in 1969, after which he taught at the College of Liberal Arts at the Lincoln Center campus of Fordham University in midtown Manhattan.

#827

James V. Schall

#7259

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

James Vincent Schall was an American Jesuit Roman Catholic priest, teacher, writer, and philosopher. He was Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. He retired from teaching in December 2012, giving his final lecture on December 7, 2012, at Georgetown; it was entitled "The Final Gladness," and was sponsored by the Tocqueville Forum. has been described as "a reflection on different aspects of lifelong learning" by the National Catholic Register.

#828

Paul Horwich

#16685

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Paul Gordon Horwich is a British analytic philosopher at New York University, noted for his contributions to philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, the philosophy of language and the interpretation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy.

#829

Thomas Starzl

#2166

Overall Influence

1926 - 2017 (91 years)

Thomas Earl Starzl was an American physician, researcher, and expert on organ transplants. He performed the first human liver transplants, and has often been referred to as "the father of modern transplantation." A documentary, entitled "Burden of Genius," covering the medical and scientific advances spearheaded by Starzl himself, was released to the public in 2017 in a series of screenings. Dr. Starzl also penned his autobiography, "The Puzzle People: Memoirs Of A Transplant Surgeon," which was published in 1992.

#830

Daniel A. Bell

#8833

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Daniel A. Bell is a Canadian political theorist. He is currently Chair of Political Theory at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law. He was previously Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University and professor at Tsinghua University .

#831

Alice von Hildebrand

#10394

Overall Influence

1923 - 2022 (99 years)

Alice Marie von Hildebrand, GCSG was a Belgian-born American Catholic philosopher, theologian, author, and professor. She taught philosophy at Hunter College for 37 years. She was also the second wife of Dietrich von Hildebrand.

#832

Gustave Thibon

#7387

Overall Influence

1903 - 2001 (98 years)

Gustave Thibon was a French philosopher. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times by Édouard Delebecque, in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966 and 1968. Biography Although essentially self-taught , Thibon was an avid reader – especially of poetry, in French, Provençal and Latin. He was very impressed by the First World War, which led him to hate patriotism and democracy. The young Gustave Thibon travelled extensively, at first to London and Italy, and later to North Africa, where he served in the military, before returning to his native village at the age of 23. Under the influence of writers such as Léon Bloy and Jacques Maritain he converted to Catholicism.

#833

Theodore Sider

#16297

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Theodore "Ted" Sider is an American philosopher specializing in metaphysics and philosophy of language. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Family Sider is the son of theologian Ronald Sider. He is the partner of Jill North, who is also hired by Rutgers' philosophy faculty.

#834

Clive Hamilton

#4691

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Clive Charles Hamilton AM FRSA is an Australian public intellectual currently serving as Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics and the Vice-Chancellor's Chair in Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University. He is a member of the Board of the Climate Change Authority of the Australian Government, and is the Founder and former Executive Director of The Australia Institute. He regularly appears in the Australian media and contributes to public policy debates. Hamilton was granted the award of Member of the Order of Australia on 8 June 2009 for "service ...

#835

Li Zehou

#9358

Overall Influence

1930 - 2021 (91 years)

Li Zehou was a Chinese scholar of philosophy and intellectual history. He resided in the United States. He is considered an important modern scholar of Chinese history and culture whose work was central to the period known as the Chinese Enlightenment in the 1980s.

#836

John Earman

#8361

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

John Earman is an American philosopher of physics. He is an emeritus professor in the History and Philosophy of Science department at the University of Pittsburgh. He has also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, Rockefeller University, and the University of Minnesota, and was president of the Philosophy of Science Association.

#837

Holmes Rolston III

Holmes Rolston III

#13654

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Holmes Rolston III is a philosopher who is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is best known for his contributions to environmental ethics and the relationship between science and religion. Among other honors, Rolston won the 2003 Templeton Prize, awarded by Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace. He gave the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1997–1998. He also serves on the Advisory Council of METI .

#838

Louise Antony

#24166

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Louise M. Antony is an American philosopher who is professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She specializes in epistemology and feminist theory. Education and career Antony received a bachelor's in philosophy from Syracuse University in 1975, after which she went to Harvard University for her doctorate, which she received in 1981. Her first academic position was at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1980-81. She taught at Boston University from 1981 to 1983; Bates College from 1983 to 1986; North Carolina State University from 1986 to 1993; the Univers...

#839

John Charles Cutler

#4146

Overall Influence

1915 - 2003 (88 years)

John Charles Cutler was a senior surgeon, and the acting chief of the venereal disease program in the United States Public Health Service. After his death, his involvement in several controversial and unethical medical studies of syphilis was revealed, including the Guatemala and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments.

#840

Enrico Berti

#25188

Overall Influence

1935 - 2022 (87 years)

Enrico Berti was an Italian philosopher. He was professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Padua. Biography Born in Valeggio sul Mincio, Italy, Berti graduated in philosophy in 1957 at the University of Padua, and after a few years teaching at the University of Perugia he was professor in his alma mater for almost forty years. His major interest was Aristotle, to whom he dedicated many works, and of whom he made his own translation of the Metaphysics, published in 2017.

#841

Timo Airaksinen

Timo Airaksinen

#19270

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Timo Airaksinen is Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Discipline of Social and Moral Philosophy at Helsinki University. By longstanding tradition in the University of Helsinki, the philosophy faculty is divided into two major areas, the practical and the theoretical. He graduated from the University of Turku in 1971 and defended his doctoral dissertation The Hegelianism of Bradley and McTaggart in 1975. He specializes in ethics and social philosophy, ethics of technology, the history of philosophy, and education. He has written on a wide range of topics dealing with these issues, from the thinking of Hobbes to Marquis de Sade.

#842

Abraham Kaplan

#8390

Overall Influence

1918 - 1993 (75 years)

Abraham Kaplan was an American philosopher, known best for being the first philosopher to systematically examine the behavioral sciences in his book The Conduct of Inquiry . His thinking was influenced by pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey.

#843

Alice Ambrose

#14954

Overall Influence

1906 - 2001 (95 years)

Alice Ambrose Lazerowitz was an American philosopher, logician, and author. Early life and education Alice Loman Ambrose was born in Lexington, Illinois and orphaned when she was 13 years old. She studied philosophy and mathematics at Millikin University . After completing her PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1932, she went to Cambridge University to study with G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein, where she earned a second PhD in 1938.

#844

William Bechtel

#8059

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

William Bechtel is a professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and the Science Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego. He was a professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis from 1994 until 2002 . Bechtel was also the chair of the Philosophy Department from 1999 until 2002 and was heavily involved with the Philosophy-Psychology-Neuroscience program, serving at different times as Assistant Director and Director. Before that, he was at Georgia State. Bechtel earned his PhD from the University of Chicago and his BA from Kenyon College.

#845

Richard David Precht

Richard David Precht

#8448

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Richard David Precht is a German philosopher and author of successful popular science books about philosophical issues. He hosts the TV show "Precht" on ZDF. He was an honorary professor of philosophy at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg from 2011 to October 2023 and is an honorary professor of philosophy and aesthetics at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin. Since the great success with Wer bin ich – und wenn ja, wie viele? , Precht's books on philosophical or sociopolitical topics became bestsellers.

#846

Gustavo Bueno

#11995

Overall Influence

1924 - 2016 (92 years)

Gustavo Bueno Martínez was a Spanish philosopher, founder of a philosophical doctrine dubbed by himself as "philosophical materialism". Pupil of the national-syndicalist Santiago Montero Díaz, Bueno's ideological path reached a blend of right-wing and left-wing autoritarianism during the years of the late francoism.

#847

Karel Lambert

#24326

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Karel Lambert is an American philosopher and logician at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Salzburg. He has written extensively on the subject of free logic, a term which he coined.

#848

John Norman

#13424

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

John Frederick Lange Jr. is an American writer who, as John Norman, has authored the Gor series of science fantasy novels. Norman is also a philosophy professor. Early life and education Lange was born in Chicago, Illinois, to John Frederick Lange and Almyra D. Lange .

#849

Roberto Torretti

Roberto Torretti

#10575

Overall Influence

1930 - 2022 (92 years)

Roberto Torretti was a Chilean philosopher, author and academic who was internationally renowned for his contributions to the history of philosophy, philosophy of physics and philosophy of mathematics.

#850

Lara Denis

#19421

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Lara Denis is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy and Director of Ethics Program at Agnes Scott College. She is known for her works on Kantian ethics. Denis is a former President of Phi Beta Kappa .

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