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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,

#1001

James Burnham

1905 - 1987 (82 years)

James Burnham was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy; his first book was An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis . Burnham became a prominent Trotskyist activist in the 1930s. He later rejected Marxism and became an even more influential theorist of the political right as a leader of the American conservative movement. His book The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941, speculated on the future of capitalism. Burnham was an editor and a regular contributor to William F. Buckley's conservative magazine National Review on a variety of topics.

#1002

Paul Oskar Kristeller

#7172

Overall Influence

1905 - 1999 (94 years)

Paul Oskar Kristeller was a scholar of Renaissance humanism. He was awarded the Haskins Medal in 1992. He was last active as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University in New York, where he mentored both Irving Louis Horowitz and A. James Gregor.

#1003

Ernst Laas

1837 - 1885 (48 years)

Ernst Laas was a German positivist philosopher. Biography Laas was born in Fürstenwalde, Brandenburg, Prussia. He studied theology and philosophy under Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg at the University of Berlin. In 1859, he completed a doctorate at Berlin with a thesis titled Das Moral-Prinzip des Aristoteles.

#1004

Oswald Hanfling

#9075

Overall Influence

1927 - 2005 (78 years)

Oswald Hanfling was an English philosopher who worked from 1970, until his death, at the Open University in the UK. Early life Oswald Hanfling was born in Berlin in 1927. His parents were Jewish and when their business was vandalised on Kristallnacht in 1938, he was sent to England by Kindertransport and lived in Bedford with a foster family. After the Second World War, he traced his family to Israel, with the help of the Red Cross.

#1005

Georges Braque

1882 - 1963 (81 years)

Georges Braque was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1905, and the role he played in the development of Cubism. Braque's work between 1908 and 1912 is closely associated with that of his colleague Pablo Picasso. Their respective Cubist works were indistinguishable for many years, yet the quiet nature of Braque was partially eclipsed by the fame and notoriety of Picasso.

#1006

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Peter Wessel Zapffe

1899 - 1990 (91 years)

Peter Wessel Zapffe was a Norwegian philosopher, author, artist, lawyer and mountaineer. He is often noted for his philosophically pessimistic and fatalistic view of human existence. His system of philosophy was inspired by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, as well as his firm advocacy of antinatalism. His thoughts regarding the error of human life are presented in the essay "The Last Messiah" . This essay is a shorter version of his best-known and untranslated work, the philosophical treatise On the Tragic .

#1007

Jacob Klein

1899 - 1978 (79 years)

Jacob Klein was a Russian-American philosopher and interpreter of Plato, who worked extensively on the nature and historical origin of modern symbolic mathematics. Biography Klein was born in Libava, Russian Empire. He studied at Berlin and Marburg, where he received his Ph.D. in 1922. A student of Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, and Edmund Husserl, he later taught at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland from 1938 until his death. He served as dean from 1949 to 1958.

#1008

Arnold Geulincx

Arnold Geulincx

1624 - 1669 (45 years)

Arnold Geulincx , also known by his pseudonym Philaretus, was a Flemish philosopher, metaphysician, and logician. He was one of the followers of René Descartes who tried to work out more detailed versions of a generally Cartesian philosophy. Samuel Beckett cited Geulincx as a key influence and interlocutor because of Geulincx's emphasis on the powerlessness and ignorance of the human condition.

#1009

Carlos Astrada

1894 - 1970 (76 years)

Carlos Astrada was an Argentine philosopher. Astrada was born in Córdoba. He completed his secondary school studies at the Colegio Nacional de Monserrat in Córdoba, and his university studies in law at the National University of Córdoba. His 1926 essay "The Epistemological Problem in Philosophy", earned an Astrada scholarship to Germany. He studied at the Universities of Cologne, Bonn, and Freiburg, under Max Scheler, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Oskar Becker during his four years there.

#1010

David Sztybel

#11340

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

David Sztybel is a Canadian philosopher specializing in animal ethics. Education and career Sztybel was born in Toronto, Ontario. He obtained his BA in philosophy in 1991, his MA in 1994, and his PhD in 2000 – for a thesis entitled "Empathy and Rationality in Ethics" – from the University of Toronto.

#1011

Martial Gueroult

1891 - 1976 (85 years)

Martial Gueroult was a French philosopher. His primary areas of research were in 17th- and 18th-century philosophy as well as the history of philosophy. Biography Gueroult was born on 15 December 1891 in the city of Le Havre in northwestern France. A veteran of both the First and Second World Wars, he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur [Legion of Honour] and twice with the Croix de Guerre [Cross of War]. It was during his time as a prisoner of war in Germany that Gueroult began drafting his first philosophical work on Johann Gottlieb Fichte, later to become L’Évolution et la structure de la doc...

#1012

Dietrich Tiedemann

Dietrich Tiedemann

1748 - 1803 (55 years)

Dietrich Tiedemann was a German philosopher and historian of philosophy born in Bremervörde. He was father to physiologist Friedrich Tiedemann . Biography He studied theology and philosophy at the University of Göttingen, and later was a professor at Collegium Carolinum in Kassel and at the University of Marburg .

#1013

David DeGrazia

#12033

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

David DeGrazia is an American moral philosopher specializing in bioethics and animal ethics. He is Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University, where he has taught since 1989, and the author or editor of several books on ethics, including Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status , Human Identity and Bioethics , and Creation Ethics: Reproduction, Genetics, and Quality of Life .

#1014

Adam Weishaupt

1748 - 1830 (82 years)

Johann Adam Weishaupt was a German philosopher, professor of civil law and later canon law, and founder of the Illuminati. Early life Adam Weishaupt was born on 6 February 1748 in Ingolstadt in the Electorate of Bavaria. Weishaupt's father Johann Georg Weishaupt died when Adam was five years old. After his father's death he came under the tutelage of his godfather Johann Adam Freiherr von Ickstatt who, like his father, was a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt. Ickstatt was a proponent of the philosophy of Christian Wolff and of the Enlightenment, and he influenced the young Weishaupt with his rationalism.

#1015

Nick Zangwill

#9284

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Nick Zangwill is a British philosopher and honorary research professor at University College London and Lincoln University. He is known for his expertise on moral philosophy , and aesthetics . He has also written on metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and logic.

#1016

Jean Grondin

#7326

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Jean Grondin is a Canadian philosopher and professor. He is a specialist in the thought of Immanuel Kant, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Martin Heidegger. His research focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, German classical philosophy and the history of metaphysics.

#1017

Isaac Levi

#10577

Overall Influence

1930 - 2018 (88 years)

Isaac Levi was an American philosopher who served as the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. He is noted for his work in epistemology and decision theory. Education and career Levi was one of several doctoral students of Ernest Nagel at Columbia University who were influential in American post-war philosophy; others were Morton White, Patrick Suppes, and Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. Levi taught at Case Western Reserve University before joining the Columbia faculty in 1970. He was elected in 1986 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#1018

Mark Fisher

#4542

Overall Influence

1968 - 2017 (49 years)

Mark Fisher , also known under his blogging alias k-punk, was an English writer, music critic, political and cultural theorist, philosopher, and teacher based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He initially achieved acclaim for his blogging as k-punk in the early 2000s, and was known for his writing on radical politics, music, and popular culture.

#1019

Anton Wilhelm Amo

Anton Wilhelm Amo

1703 - 1759 (56 years)

Anton Wilhelm Amo or Anthony William Amo was a Nzema philosopher from Axim, Dutch Gold Coast . Amo was a professor at the universities of Halle and Jena in Germany after studying there. He was brought to Germany by the Dutch West India Company in 1707 and was presented as a gift to Dukes Augustus William and Ludwig Rudolf of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, being treated as a member of the family by their father Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. In 2020, Oxford University Press published a translation of his Latin works from the early 1730s.

#1020

Susanne Bobzien

#10660

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Susanne Bobzien is a German-born philosopher whose research interests focus on philosophy of logic and language, determinism and freedom, and ancient philosophy. She currently is senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford and professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford.

#1021

Kendall Walton

#8872

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Kendall Lewis Walton is an American philosopher, the Emeritus Charles Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. His work mainly deals with theoretical questions about the arts and issues of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of language. His book Mimesis as Make Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts develops a theory of make-believe and uses it to understand the nature and varieties of representation in the arts. He has also developed an account of photography as transparent, defending the idea t...

#1022

Vasily Rozanov

1856 - 1919 (63 years)

Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov was one of the most controversial Russian writers and important philosophers in the symbolists' of the pre-revolutionaryary epoch. Views Rozanov tried to reconcile Christian teachings with ideas of healthy sex and family life, but as his adversary Nikolai Berdyaev put it, he "set up sex in opposition to the Word". His interest in these matters, as in matters of religion, brought Rozanov close to Russian Symbolism. Because of references to the phallus in Rozanov's writings, Klaus von Beyme called him the Rasputin of the Russian intelligentsia.

#1023

Jean Beaufret

1907 - 1982 (75 years)

Jean Beaufret was a French philosopher and Germanist tremendously influential in the reception of Martin Heidegger's work in France. Life After graduating from the École Normale Supérieure and completing military service Beaufret passed his agrégation de philosophie in 1933 and undertook a career teaching as a lycée philosophy instructor. His early philosophical interests were in 19th century German philosophy, particularly GWF Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Karl Marx. In the period before the Second World War, he came to know Paul Éluard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, André Breton, and Paul Valéry.

#1024

Ammonius Hermiae

440 - 523 (83 years)

Ammonius Hermiae was a Greek philosopher from Alexandria in the eastern Roman empire during Late Antiquity. A Neoplatonist, he was the son of the philosophers Hermias and Aedesia, the brother of Heliodorus of Alexandria and the grandson of Syrianus. Ammonius was a pupil of Proclus in Roman Athens, and taught at Alexandria for most of his life, having obtained a public chair in the 470s.

#1025

Richard Boyd

#8592

Overall Influence

1942 - 2021 (79 years)

Richard Newell Boyd was an American philosopher, who spent most of his career teaching philosophy at Cornell University where he was Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy and Humane Letters Emeritus. He specialized in epistemology, the philosophy of science, language, and mind.

#1026

Gerolamo Cardano

Gerolamo Cardano

1501 - 1576 (75 years)

Gerolamo Cardano was an Italian polymath whose interests and proficiencies ranged through those of mathematician, physician, biologist, physicist, chemist, astrologer, astronomer, philosopher, writer, and gambler. He became one of the most influential mathematicians of the Renaissance and one of the key figures in the foundation of probability; he introduced the binomial coefficients and the binomial theorem in the Western world. He wrote more than 200 works on science.

#1027

Maṇḍana Miśra

#6746

Overall Influence

Mandana Mishra was a Hindu philosopher who wrote on the Mīmāṃsā and Advaita systems of thought. He was a follower of the Karma Mimamsa school of philosophy and a staunch defender of the holistic sphota doctrine of language. He was a contemporary of Adi Shankara, and while it is said that he became a disciple of Adi Sankara, he may actually have been the most prominent Advaitin of the two until the 10th century CE. He is often identified with Sureśvara, though the authenticity of this is doubtful. Still, the official Sringeri documents recognises Mandana Mishra as Sureśvara.

#1028

Hilary Kornblith

#12966

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Hilary Kornblith is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of contemporary epistemology's most prominent proponents of naturalized epistemology.

#1029

David Miller

#7406

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

David William Miller is an English philosopher and prominent exponent of critical rationalism. He taught in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK. where he is Reader in Philosophy. He has been Honorary Treasurer of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science.

#1030

Jerrold Katz

#6835

Overall Influence

1932 - 2002 (70 years)

Jerrold Jacob Katz was an American philosopher and linguist. Biography After receiving a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University in 1960, Katz became a Research Associate in Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Philosophy there in 1963, and became Professor in 1969. From 1975 until his death, he was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics at the City University of New York.

#1031

François de La Mothe Le Vayer

François de La Mothe Le Vayer

1588 - 1672 (84 years)

François de La Mothe Le Vayer , was a French writer who was known to use the pseudonym Orosius Tubero. He was admitted to the Académie française in 1639, and was the tutor of Louis XIV. Early years Le Vayer was born and died in Paris, a member of a noble family of Maine. His father was an avocat at the parlement of Paris and author of a curious treatise on the functions of ambassadors, entitled Legatus, seu De legatorum privilegiis, officio et munere libellus and illustrated mainly from ancient history. Francois succeeded his father at the parlement, but gave up his post about 1647 and devote...

#1032

Liang Shuming

1893 - 1988 (95 years)

Liang Shuming , born Liang Huanding , courtesy name Shouming , was a Chinese philosopher, politician, and writer in the Rural Reconstruction Movement during the late Qing dynasty and early Republican eras of Chinese history.

#1033

Guy Sircello

#12990

Overall Influence

1936 - 1992 (56 years)

Guy Sircello was an American philosopher best known for his analytic approach to philosophical aesthetics. Biography Guy Sircello was born in Tacoma, Washington, and attended Lincoln High School. His parents were Pete and Teresa Sircello, and he had a younger sister, Teresa. Upon high school graduation, he was awarded the prestigious George Baker full four-year scholarship to Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, and graduated in 1958 with a double major in philosophy and history. In 1960, he married Sharon Chapin, a fellow Reed graduate, and shortly after, they left New York for Hamburg, where ...

#1034

Edzard Ernst

#470

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Edzard Ernst is a retired British-German academic physician and researcher specializing in the study of complementary and alternative medicine. He was Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, the world's first such academic position in complementary and alternative medicine.

#1035

Pope Pius X

1835 - 1914 (79 years)

Pope Pius X was head of the Catholic Church from 4 August 1903 to his death in August 1914. Pius X is known for vigorously opposing modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, and for promoting liturgical reforms and scholastic theology. He initiated the preparation of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, the first comprehensive and systemic work of its kind. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. The Society of Saint Pius X, a traditionalist Catholic fraternity, is named after him.

#1036

Kwasi Wiredu

#8772

Overall Influence

1931 - 2022 (91 years)

Kwasi Wiredu was a Ghanaian philosopher. Often called the greatest African philosopher of his generation, his work contributed to the conceptual decolonisation of African thought. Life and career Wiredu was born in Kumasi, Gold Coast , in 1931, and attended Adisadel College from 1948 to 1952. It was during this period that he discovered philosophy, through Plato and Bertrand Russell. He gained a place at the University of Ghana, Legon. After graduating in 1958, he went to University College, Oxford to read for the B.Phil.

#1037

Helmuth Plessner

Helmuth Plessner

1892 - 1985 (93 years)

Helmuth Plessner was a German philosopher and sociologist, and a primary advocate of "philosophical anthropology". Life and career Plessner had an itinerant education in Germany between 1910 and 1920. He began studying medicine in Friedburg before moving on to zoology and philosophy in Heidelberg. In Göttingen, he studied phenomenology with Husserl, and finally wrote his "Habititationsschrift" under the guidance of Max Scheler. Plessner then held a professorship in Cologne from 1926 to 1933, when he was forced to resign his position because of Jewish ancestry on his father's side. Living in isolation, Plessner initially fled Germany to Istanbul.

#1038

Sharon Street

#7508

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Sharon Street is a professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at New York University. She specializes in metaethics, focusing in particular on how to reconcile our understanding of normativityativity with a scientific conception of the world.

#1039

Edward Nelson

#2946

Overall Influence

1932 - 2014 (82 years)

Edward Nelson was an American mathematician. He was professor in the Mathematics Department at Princeton University. He was known for his work on mathematical physics and mathematical logic. In mathematical logic, he was noted especially for his internal set theory, and views on ultrafinitism and the consistency of arithmetic. In philosophy of mathematics he advocated the view of formalism rather than platonism or intuitionism. He also wrote on the relationship between religion and mathematics.

#1040

José Martí

1853 - 1895 (42 years)

José Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban nationalist, poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher, who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the liberation of his country from Spain. He was also an important figure in Latin American literature. He was very politically active and is considered an important philosopher and political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol of Cuba's bid for independence from the Spanish Empire in the 19th century, and is referred to as the "Apostle of Cuban Independence". From ad...

#1041

Jason Stanley

#5817

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Jason Stanley is an American philosopher who is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is best known for his contributions to philosophy of language and epistemology, which often draw upon and influence other fields, including linguistics and cognitive science. He has written for a popular audience on the New York Times philosophy blog The Stone. In his more recent work, Stanley has brought tools from philosophy of language and epistemology to bear on questions of political philosophy, especially in his 2015 book How Propaganda Works.

#1042

Hans Albert

#4815

Overall Influence

1921 - Present (103 years)

Hans Albert was a German philosopher. He was professor of social sciences at the University of Mannheim from 1963, and remained at the university until 1989. His fields of research were social sciences and general studies of methods. He was a critical rationalist, paying special attention to rational heuristics. Albert was a strong critic of the continental hermeneutic tradition coming from Heidegger and Gadamer.

#1043

Bruno Bauch

1877 - 1942 (65 years)

Bruno Bauch was a German neo-Kantian philosopher. Life and career Bauch was born in Groß-Nossen, Münsterberg District, Silesia, Prussia and studied philosophy at Freiburg, Strasbourg, and Heidelberg. In 1901, he received his doctorate under Heinrich Rickert at Freiburg, which entitled him to teach some courses . Bauch completed his habilitation, entitling him to a professorship, at the University of Halle in 1903. He taught as a "titular professor" at Halle from 1903 to 1910, and from 1911 onward as an "ordinary professor" at the University of Jena.

#1044

Narayana Guru

1855 - 1928 (73 years)

Sree Narayana Guru was a philosopher, spiritual leader and social reformer in India. He led a reform movement against the injustice in the caste-ridden society of Kerala in order to promote spiritual enlightenment and social equality. His famous quote was "one caste one religion and one god for all men".

#1045

Douglas Den Uyl

Douglas Den Uyl

#10015

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Douglas J. Den Uyl is vice president of educational programs at Liberty Fund. Biography Den Uyl earned his B.A. from Kalamazoo College, his MA from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. from Marquette University. Den Uyl's areas of scholarly interest include the history of ideas, moral and political theory, and has published essays or books on Spinoza, Smith, Shaftesbury, Mandeville and others. He taught philosophy and was department chair and full professor at Bellarmine College before coming to Liberty Fund. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. Den Uyl has contributed articles to...

#1046

Hippasus

600 BC - 500 BC (100 years)

Hippasus of Metapontum was a Greek philosopher and early follower of Pythagoras. Little is known about his life or his beliefs, but he is sometimes credited with the discovery of the existence of irrational numbers. The discovery of irrational numbers is said to have been shocking to the Pythagoreans, and Hippasus is supposed to have drowned at sea, apparently as a punishment from the gods for divulging this and crediting it to himself instead of Pythagoras which was the norm in Pythagorean society. However, the few ancient sources who describe this story either do not mention Hippasus by nam...

#1047

Carl Grünberg

1861 - 1940 (79 years)

Carl Grünberg was a German-Austrian Marxist philosopher of law and history. Biography Born in Focșani, Romania, into a Jewish-Bessarabia German family, Grünberg studied law in Strasbourg and worked as an advocate. Later he studied and taught political economy in Vienna. Among his academic teachers were Gustav Schmoller in Strasbourg and Lorenz von Stein and Anton Menger in Vienna. In 1894, he became academic reader for political law and economy at the University of Vienna.

#1048

Seneca the Elder

Seneca the Elder

54 BC - 39 (93 years)

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Elder , also known as Seneca the Rhetorician, was a Roman writer, born of a wealthy equestrian family of Corduba, Hispania. He wrote a collection of reminiscences about the Roman schools of rhetoric, six books of which are extant in a more or less complete state and five others in epitome only. His principal work, a history of Roman affairs from the beginning of the Civil Wars until the last years of his life, is almost entirely lost to posterity. Seneca lived through the reigns of three significant emperors; Augustus , Tiberius and Caligula . He was the father of Lu...

#1049

Don Ihde

#6465

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Don Ihde is an American philosopher of science and technology. In 1979 he wrote what is often identified as the first North American work on philosophy of technology, Technics and Praxis. Before his retirement, Ihde was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 2013 Ihde received the Golden Eurydice Award.

#1050

Trenton Merricks

#14209

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Trenton Merricks is an American philosopher and the Commonwealth Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. While Merricks' primary field of study is metaphysics, he has also published scholarship in epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of religion.

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