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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,

#1201

Loyal Rue

#25311

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Loyal D. Rue is an American philosopher of religion. He is a professor emeritus of religion and philosophy at Luther College of Decorah, Iowa. He focuses on naturalistic theories of religion and has been awarded two John Templeton Foundation fellowships. He has been for many years a member and lecturer at the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science .

#1202

John Kekes

#16691

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

John Kekes is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University at Albany, SUNY. Education Kekes received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Australian National University. Work Kekes is the author of a number of books on ethics, including The Examined Life , The Morality of Pluralism , Moral Wisdom and Good Lives , The Art of Life , The Roots of Evil , Enjoyment , and The Enlargement of Life: Moral Imagination at Work .

#1203

Lopamudra

#3702

Overall Influence

Lopamudra, also known as Kaveri, Kaushitaki and Varaprada, was a philosopher according to ancient Vedic Indian literature. She was the wife of the sage Agastya who is believed to have lived in the Rigveda period as many hymns have been attributed as her contribution to this Veda. She was not only the consort of Agastya but a Rishiki in her own right, as she was the well known Rishiki who visualized the "Hadi Panchadasi" mantra of the Srikul Shakta tradition of Hinduism. She was one of the prominent Brahmavadinis.

#1204

Don Marquis

#25179

Overall Influence

1935 - 2022 (87 years)

Don Marquis was an American philosopher and deontologist whose main academic interests were in ethics and medical ethics. Marquis was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas until his death.

#1205

Rae Langton

#20407

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Rae Helen Langton, FBA is an Australian-British professor of philosophy. She is currently the Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She has published widely on Immanuel Kant's philosophy, moral philosophy, political philosophy, metaphysics, and feminist philosophy. She is also well known for her work on pornography and objectification.

#1206

Alexandre Matheron

#21793

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Alexandre Matheron was a French philosopher specializing in Baruch Spinoza and modern politics. His 1969 work Individu et communauté chez Spinoza is "widely regarded as one of the landmarks of Spinoza scholarship."

#1207

Charles Butterworth

#15931

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Charles E. Butterworth is a philosopher of the Straussian school and currently an emeritus professor of political philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park. Butterworth is also a translator and editor of numerous books about the philosophers Rousseau, Alfarabi, and Averroes.

#1208

Xavier Tilliette

Xavier Tilliette

#18083

Overall Influence

1921 - 2018 (97 years)

Xavier Tilliette was a French philosopher, historian of philosophy, and theologian. A former student of Jean Wahl and of Vladimir Jankélévitch, he was a member of the Society of Jesus and professor emeritus at the Catholic Institute of Paris , having taught also at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome , the Lateran University, and the Centre Sèvres in Paris.

#1209

Debra Satz

#21409

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Debra Satz is an American philosopher and the Vernon R. & Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. She is the Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, Professor of Philosophy and, by courtesy, Political Science. She teaches courses in ethics, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of social science.

#1210

Donald Richie

#3508

Overall Influence

1924 - 2013 (89 years)

Donald Richie was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also directed a number of experimental films, the first when he was seventeen.

#1211

Béatrice Longuenesse

#26874

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Béatrice Longuenesse is a French philosopher and academic, who is the Silver Professor of Philosophy Emerita at New York University. Her work focuses on Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the philosophy of mind. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Longuenesse is one of the most prominent living Kant scholars, and her works have generated significant discussion around parts of Kant's corpus that were previously largely overlooked.

#1212

Gianni Vattimo

#23051

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Gianteresio Vattimo was an Italian philosopher and politician. Biography Gianteresio Vattimo was born in Turin, Piedmont. He studied philosophy under the existentialist Luigi Pareyson at the University of Turin, and graduated with a laurea in 1959. In 1963 he moved to Heidelberg and studied with Karl Löwith, Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer with a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Then, Vattimo returned to Turin where he became assistant professor in 1964, and later full professor of Aesthetics in 1969. While remaining at Turin, becoming Professor of Theoretical Philosoph...

#1213

David Petraeus

#313

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

David Howell Petraeus is a retired United States Army general and public official. He served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 6, 2011, until his resignation on November 9, 2012. Prior to his assuming the directorship of the CIA, Petraeus served 37 years in the United States Army. His last assignments in the Army were as commander of the International Security Assistance Force and commander, U.S. Forces – Afghanistan from July 4, 2010, to July 18, 2011. His other four-star assignments include serving as the 10th commander, U.S. Central Command from October 13, ...

#1214

David Gordon

#13949

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

David Gordon is an American libertarian philosopher and intellectual historian influenced by Murray Rothbard's views of economics. He is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, and is editor of The Mises Review.

#1215

Eli Eduardo de Gortari

#25860

Overall Influence

1918 - 1991 (73 years)

Eli Eduardo de Gortari de Gortari was a logician, philosopher of science and engineer. Biography Elí de Gortari was a student of the Engineering School of the National Autonomous University of Mexico , matriculating in 1938. His goal was to become an engineer, which he achieved in two years. His commitment to public welfare led him to enroll in sanitation engineering, but he continued his studies of mathematics and philosophy. Eventually, in 1948, he would become a professor of philosophy of science. In 1949 he obtained a master's degree in philosophy and published a thesis "The Science of Lo...

#1216

Jean-Louis Vincent

#36172

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Baron Jean-Louis Vincent is a Belgian physician and Professor of intensive care medicine at the Université libre de Bruxelles and intensivist in the Department of Intensive Care at Erasme University Hospital in Brussels.

#1217

Dariush Shayegan

Dariush Shayegan

#8517

Overall Influence

1935 - 2018 (83 years)

Dariush Shayegan was one of the most consequential thinkers of contemporary Iran and the Near East. Life and career He was born in Tabriz from an Shia Iranian Azeri father and a Georgian Sunni mother; his mother descended from an aristocratic family from Georgia. Shayegan studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris. He was a Professor of Sanskrit and Indian religions at the Tehran University. Besides Persian, Shayegan wrote in French and English, and spoke fluently Georgian, Russian, and Turkish .. Having spent his teens at boarding school in Great Britain, Shayegan subsequently lived, during...

#1218

Gernot Böhme

#24107

Overall Influence

1937 - 2022 (85 years)

Gernot Böhme was a German philosopher and author, contributing to the philosophy of science, theory of time, aesthetics, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. He is the main pioneer of German ecocriticism, the study of the relationship between culture and the environment. He has been the director of the Institute for Practical Philosophy in Darmstadt, Hesse, since 2005. Despite being one of Germany's most acclaimed public intellectuals, very little of his work has so far been translated into English.

#1219

Taha Abdurrahman

Taha Abdurrahman

#26002

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Taha Abderrahmane, is a Moroccan philosopher, and one of the leading philosophers and thinkers in the Arab and Islamic worlds. His work centers on logic, philosophy of language and philosophy of morality and contractarian ethics. He believes in multiple modernities and seeks to establish an ethical and humanitarian modernity based on the values and principles of Islam and the Arab tradition.

#1220

Shmuley Boteach

Shmuley Boteach

#2770

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Jacob Shmuel Boteach , commonly known as Shmuley Boteach , is an American rabbi, author, and television host. He is the author of 31 books, including the best-seller Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy and Kosher Jesus . For two seasons, he hosted the prime-time reality television series Shalom in the Home, which was one of the highest-rated shows on TLC. His outspokenness has earned him both praise and criticism; he has been described as one of the most influential Jews in the United States and the world.

#1221

Kate Soper

#16256

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Kate Soper is a British philosopher. She is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Brighton. Background Soper was educated at the University of Oxford and worked as a translator and journalist. Her PhD was from Sussex University titled Marxism and the Theory of Needs. She taught at Sussex university before moving to the University of North London in 1987 . She taught a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in European Studies and Literature and Modernity. She retired c.2009, becoming Emeritus Professor.

#1222

W. B. Gallie

#23733

Overall Influence

1912 - 1998 (86 years)

Walter Bryce Gallie was a Scottish social theorist, political theorist, and philosopher. Career Early life Gallie was born in Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, near Glasgow, the son of an engineer. He worked as a classics teacher at Sedbergh School between the wars and later published his memoirs of this in the book An English School.

#1223

Andrew David Irvine

Andrew David Irvine

#19752

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Andrew David Irvine, FSCC is a Canadian academic who teaches at the University of British Columbia. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Sydney University and is a professor of philosophy and mathematics at UBC Okanagan. He has served as vice-chair of the UBC Board of Governors, as head of the UBCO Department of Economics, Philosophy and Political Science, as president of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, and as a member of the board of directors of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship. An advocate of traditional democratic civil liberties, Irvine has written about the importance of the rule of law for both modern and ancient democracies.

#1224

François Dagognet

#20210

Overall Influence

1924 - 2015 (91 years)

François Dagognet was a 20th-century French philosopher. François Dagognet was born in Langres. He studied both science and philosophy, and was a student of Georges Canguilhem. He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lyon before becoming Professor of Philosophy at Pantheon-Sorbonne University.

#1225

Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins

#26438

Overall Influence

Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins is a Canadian philosopher who holds a Canada Research Chair and is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. She is also a professor at the Northern Institute of Philosophy, University of Aberdeen. Her primary research areas are epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mathematics. She is one of the principal editors of the journal Thought.

#1226

David Theo Goldberg

David Theo Goldberg

#7220

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

#1227

Chester M. Southam

#3944

Overall Influence

1919 - 2002 (83 years)

Chester Milton Southam was an immunologist and oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Cornell University Medical College; he went to Thomas Jefferson University in 1971 and worked there until the end of his career. He ran many experiments involving the injection of live cancer cells into human subjects, without disclosing that they were cancer cells, and using subjects with questionable ability to consent, such as incarcerated people and senile patients in long-term care at a hospital. The New York State Attorney General encouraged the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York to take away Southam's medical license.

#1228

John Frame

#10104

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

John Mcelphatrick Frame is a retired American Christian philosopher and Calvinist theologian especially noted for his work in epistemology and presuppositional apologetics, systematic theology, and ethics. He is one of the foremost interpreters and critics of the thought of Cornelius Van Til.

#1229

Paul Russell

#17465

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Paul Russell is a professor in philosophy at Lund University, where he is Director of the Lund/Gothenburg Responsibility Project [LGRP]. His position at Lund is a half-time research position and has been made possible thanks to a major grant from the Swedish Research Council for "the international recruitment of leading researchers" . Prior to his current position at Lund University he has held positions as Professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, and at Gothenburg University.

#1230

Warren Goldfarb

#29622

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Warren David Goldfarb is Walter Beverly Pearson Professor of Modern Mathematics and Mathematical Logic at Harvard University. He specializes in the history of analytic philosophy and in logic, most notably the classical decision problem.

#1231

Ulla Wessels

#30554

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Ulla Wessels is a German analytic philosopher working in practical philosophy, particularly ethics. She is a Professor of Practical Philosophy in the Philosophy Department of the Saarland University in Saarbrücken.

#1232

Miran Božovič

#23865

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Miran Božovič is a Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, associated with the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis. Božovič was born in Ljubljana. He holds a degree in comparative literature and philosophy from the University of Ljubljana, and a PhD in philosophy. He teaches early modern philosophy at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana.

#1233

Anders Sandberg

Anders Sandberg

#5040

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Anders Sandberg is a Swedish researcher, futurist and transhumanist. He holds a PhD in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, and is currently a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow at Reuben College.

#1234

Donald M. MacKinnon

#26324

Overall Influence

1913 - 1994 (81 years)

Donald Mackenzie MacKinnon was a Scottish philosopher and theologian. Life He was born in Oban on 27 August 1913, the son of Donald M. MacKinnon, Procurator Fiscal, and his wife, Grace Isabella Rhynd.

#1235

Jaap Mansfeld

#33035

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Jaap Mansfeld is a Dutch Emeritus Professor of philosopher and a historian of philosophy. Life Jaap Mansfeld began his studies in 1954 at the University of Utrecht, where he received his doctorate in 1964 with a thesis on Parmenides. From 1973 until his retirement in 2001 he was a professor of ancient philosophy, and subsequently professor of History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, at Utrecht University. He has been a full member of the Academia Europaea since 1989., as well as a member of the board for several scholarly journals. In 1991 he was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#1236

John Russon

#30840

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

John Russon is a Canadian philosopher, working primarily in the tradition of Continental Philosophy. In 2006, he was named Presidential Distinguished Professor at the University of Guelph, and in 2011 he was the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute's Canadian Lecturer to India.

#1237

Mario Dal Pra

#35991

Overall Influence

1914 - 1992 (78 years)

Mario Dal Pra was an Italian philosopher, academic, and historian. During World War II, he was also a partisan. Dal Pra was noted for developing his concept of praxis into an original philosophical approach called "transcedentalism of praxis". His works also included his investigations of Thomas Hobbes' view on logic.

#1238

Annette Baier

#21819

Overall Influence

1929 - 2012 (83 years)

Annette Claire Baier was a New Zealand philosopher and Hume scholar, focused in particular on Hume's moral psychology. She was well known also for her contributions to feminist philosophy and to the philosophy of mind, where she was strongly influenced by her former colleague, Wilfrid Sellars.

#1239

Frederick Suppe

#29353

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Frederick Suppe is a professor Emeritus of philosophy at the University of Maryland. He has prominent work in the philosophy of science including much work with the semantic view of theories. Biography Suppe received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and has research interests in the philosophy of science, epistemology and metaphysics, philosophical theology and philosophy of gender.

#1240

Farah Pahlavi

#950

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Farah Pahlavi is the widow of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and was successively Queen and Empress of Iran from 1959 to 1979. She was born into a prosperous family whose fortunes were diminished after her father's early death. While studying architecture in Paris, she was introduced to the Shah at the Iranian embassy, and they were married in December 1959. The Shah's first two marriages had not produced a son—necessary for royal succession—resulting in great rejoicing at the birth of Crown Prince Reza in October of the following year. Diba was then free to pursue interests other than domestic duties, though she was not allowed a political role.

#1241

Rüdiger Bubner

#35286

Overall Influence

1941 - 2007 (66 years)

Rüdiger Bubner was a German philosopher. Since 1996, he was professor at Heidelberg. He was also member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and honorary member of the Theological Faculty of the University of Fribourg. His main areas of specialisation were aesthetics and practical philosophy with reference to ancient philosophy, German Idealism, and Phenomenology.

#1242

William Sweet

#14526

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

William Sweet is a Canadian philosopher, and a past president of the Canadian Philosophical Association and of the Canadian Theological Society. Biography Sweet was born in St. Albert near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and studied political science, theology, and philosophy in Canada, South Africa, France, and Germany. He completed a DEA in political science at the Sorbonne at the Université de Paris , a PhD in philosophy at the University of Ottawa, a DTh in systematic theology at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, and a D.Ph. at the Université Saint-Paul. He also studied at Carleton University, the University of Manitoba, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Centre Sèvres .

#1243

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

#11475

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is a German metahumanist philosopher, a Nietzsche scholar, a philosopher of music and an authority in the field of ethics of emerging technologies. Life Sorgner was born on 15 October 1973 in Wetzlar . He studied philosophy at King's College London , the University of Durham , the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen and the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena . He taught philosophy and ethics at the Universities of Giessen, Jena, Erfurt and Erlangen. Currently, he teaches at a US Liberal Arts College, John Cabot University. Sorgner is a member of several editorial and adviso...

#1244

Rosemarie Tong

#20992

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Rosemarie "Rosie" Tong is an American feminist philosopher. The author of 1998's Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, an overview of the major traditions of feminist theory, she is the emeritus distinguished professor of health care ethics in the Department of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

#1245

George Annas

#10837

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

George J. Annas is the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health, School of Medicine, and School of Law.

#1246

Michael Bergmann

#36226

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Michael Abram Bergmann is an American analytic philosopher teaching in the department of philosophy at Purdue University. His primary interests are epistemology and philosophy of religion. In epistemology, he writes mostly on externalism and, in philosophy of religion, he mostly writes on the epistemology of religious belief and the problem of evil.

#1247

Thierry Coquand

Thierry Coquand

#6404

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Thierry Coquand is a French computer scientist and mathematician who is currently a professor of computer science at the University of Gothenburg, having previously worked at INRIA. He is known for his work in constructive mathematics, especially the calculus of constructions.

#1248

John Mullarkey

#30224

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

John Mullarkey is the Professor in Film and Television at Kingston University, London, and a member of The London Graduate School. Mullarkey's work explores variations of "non-standard-philosophy", arguing that philosophy is a subject that continually shifts its identity through engaging with "non-philosophical" fields such as film. Mullarkey's work notably engages with that of François Laruelle and Henri Bergson.

#1249

Peter Trawny

#28837

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Peter Trawny is a German philosopher and professor at the University of Wuppertal. Life Peter Trawny studied philosophy, musicology and art history at the Ruhr University Bochum, where he the Magisterium graduated in 1992, after a guest stay at the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg in Breisgau and at the University of Basel. In 1995, he received his doctorate under Klaus Held with a dissertation on Martin Heidegger's phenomenology of the world. With a doctoral scholarship from the Study Foundation of the German people, he was promoted and awarded in 1997 with the Second Prize of all faculties of the University of Wuppertal.

#1250

Moshe Halbertal

Moshe Halbertal

#15321

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Moshe Halbertal is an Israeli philosopher, professor, and writer, a noted expert on Maimonides, and co-author of the Israeli Army Code of Ethics. He currently holds positions as the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Gruss Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. In 2021 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

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