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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,

#14351

Theodor Lessing

Theodor Lessing

1872 - 1933 (61 years)

Karl Theodor Richard Lessing was a German Jewish philosopher. He is known for opposing the rise of Hindenburg as president of the Weimar Republic and for his classic on Jewish self-hatred , a book which he wrote in 1930, three years before Adolf Hitler came to power, in which he tried to explain the phenomenon of Jewish intellectuals who incited antisemitism against the Jewish people and who regarded Judaism as the source of evil in the world.

#14352

Alexander of Hales

Alexander of Hales

1175 - 1245 (70 years)

Alexander of Hales , also called Doctor Irrefragibilis and Theologorum Monarcha, was a Franciscan friar, theologian and philosopher important in the development of scholasticism. Life Alexander was born at Hales, Shropshire , England, between 1180 and 1186. He came from a rather wealthy country family. He studied at the University of Paris and became a master of arts sometime before 1210. He began to read theology in 1212 or 1213, and became a regent master in 1220 or 1221. He introduced the Sentences of Peter Lombard as the basic textbook for the study of theology. During the University stri...

#14353

Gustavo Bontadini

1903 - 1990 (87 years)

Gustavo Bontadini was an Italian philosopher, writer, and a teacher. He was born in Milan and died in 1990, aged 87. Bontadini was also an influential representative known for Neo-Scholasticism in the 20th century. From 1951 to 1973, he became a professor of Theoretical philosophy in the Catholic university in Milan. He was also a teacher of Emanuele Severino, Angelo Scola and other Italian philosophers.

#14354

Harry Houdini

1874 - 1926 (52 years)

Erich Weisz , known as Harry Houdini , was a Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his magical mentor, French magician Robert-Houdin .

#14355

Ibn al-Rawandi

827 - 911 (84 years)

Abu al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Ishaq al-Rawandi , commonly known as Ibn al-Rawandi , was an early Persian scholar and theologian. In his early days, he was a Mu'tazilite scholar, but then rejected the Mu'tazilite doctrine. Afterwards, he became a Shia scholar; there is some debate about whether he stayed a Shia until his death or became a skeptic, though most sources confirm his eventual rejection of all religion and becoming an atheist. Although none of his works have survived, his opinions had been preserved through his critics and the surviving books that answered him. His book with the m...

#14356

Xu Fuguan

1904 - 1982 (78 years)

Hsu Fu-kuan or Xu Fuguan ; 1902/03 – 1982 Biography Xu was born in 1902 or 1903 in a family of farmers and scholars in Hubei Province, China. Hsu's father taught at a private school established for village children who showed academic promise and could sit the imperial examinations to become scholar officials. In his teen-age years, Xu made his way to the provincial capital Wuhan which was then the cultural center where foreign influences and trends abounded. Wuhan was also an important staging area for the 1911 Republican Revolution that ended China's 2000-year-old imperial rule. Xu spent fifteen years with the Nationalist army attaining the rank of senior colonel.

#14357

Frank Ruda

1900 - Present (126 years)

Frank Ruda is a German philosopher. He is professor of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Dundee. He is also a visiting professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Centre in Ljubljana and Professor at the European Graduate School . He received his PhD in 2008 from University of Potsdam under the supervision of Manfred Schneider and Christoph Menke with a work on Hegel's Philosophy of Right and his venia legendi in 2017 from the Free University Berlin.

#14358

Huineng

638 - 713 (75 years)

Dajian Huineng ; , also commonly known as the Sixth Patriarch or Sixth Ancestor of Chan , is a semi-legendary but central figure in the early history of Chinese Chan Buddhism. According to tradition he was an uneducated layman who suddenly attained awakening upon hearing the Diamond Sutra. Despite his lack of formal training, he demonstrated his understanding to the fifth patriarch, Daman Hongren, who then supposedly chose Huineng as his true successor instead of his publicly known selection of Yuquan Shenxiu.

#14359

Je Tsongkhapa

1357 - 1419 (62 years)

Tsongkhapa was an influential Tibetan Buddhist monk, philosopher and tantric yogi, whose activities led to the formation of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is also known by his ordained name Losang Drakpa or simply as "Je Rinpoche" . He is also known by Chinese as Zongkapa Lobsang Zhaba or just Zōngkābā .

#14360

Hugo Kołłątaj

1750 - 1812 (62 years)

Hugo Stumberg Kołłątaj, also spelled Kołłątay , was a prominent Polish constitutional reformer and educationalist, and one of the most prominent figures of the Polish Enlightenment. He served as Deputy Chancellor of the Crown between 1791–92. He was a Roman Catholic priest, social and political activist, political thinker, historian, philosopher, and polymath.

#14361

Jean Gebser

1905 - 1973 (68 years)

Jean Gebser was a Swiss philosopher, linguist, and poet who described the structures of human consciousness. Biography Gebser was born Hans Karl Hermann Rudolph Gebser in Posen in Imperial Germany . His father was lawyer Frederich Gebser and mother was Margaretha Grundmann. He was a cousin of World War I-era chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg.

#14362

Vijnanabhiksu

1600 - 1601 (1 years)

Vijñānabhikṣu was a Hindu philosopher from Bihar, variously dated to the 15th or 16th century, known for his commentary on various schools of Hindu philosophy, particularly the Yoga text of Patanjali. His scholarship stated that there is a unity between Vedānta, Yoga, and Samkhya philosophies, and he is considered a significant influence on Neo-Vedanta movement of the modern era.

#14363

Immanuel Hermann Fichte

Immanuel Hermann Fichte

1796 - 1879 (83 years)

Immanuel Hermann Fichte was a German philosopher and son of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. In his philosophy, he was a theist and strongly opposed to the Hegelian School. Life Fichte was born in Jena. He early devoted himself to philosophical studies, being attracted by the later views of his father, which he considered essentially theistic. He graduated from the University of Berlin in 1818. Soon after, he became a lecturer in philosophy there. He also attended the lectures of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, but felt averse to what he deemed to be his pantheistic tendencies. As a result of semi-offi...

#14364

Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr

Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr

1935 - 1980 (45 years)

Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr , also known as al-Shahīd al-Khāmis , was an Iraqi philosopher, and the ideological founder of the Islamic Dawa Party, born in al-Kadhimiya, Iraq. He was father-in-law to Muqtada al-Sadr, a cousin of Muhammad Sadeq al-Sadr and Imam Musa as-Sadr. His father Haydar al-Sadr was a well-respected high-ranking Shi'a cleric. His lineage can be traced back to Muhammad through the seventh Shia Imam Musa al-Kazim. Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was executed in 1980 by the regime of Saddam Hussein along with his sister, Amina Sadr bint al-Huda.

#14365

Helene von Druskowitz

Helene von Druskowitz

1856 - 1918 (62 years)

Helene von Druskowitz , born Helena Maria Druschkovich, was an Austrian philosopher, writer and music critic. She was the second woman to obtain a Doctorate in Philosophy, which she obtained in Zürich. She usually published under a male alias because of predominant sexism.

#14366

Wilhelm Traugott Krug

Wilhelm Traugott Krug

1770 - 1842 (72 years)

Wilhelm Traugott Krug was a German philosopher and writer. He is considered to be part of the Kantian School of logic. Life Krug was born on June 22, 1770, near Wittenberg to a farming family. He studied at the University of Wittenberg under Franz Volkmar Reinhard and Karl Gottfried Jehnichen, at Jena under Karl Leonhard Reinhold, and at Göttingen. After finishing his studies, he was employed as an adjunct professor at the University of Wittenberg.

#14367

Morris Weitz

1916 - 1981 (65 years)

Morris Weitz "was an American philosopher of aesthetics who focused primarily on ontology, interpretation, and literary criticism". From 1972 until his death he was Richard Koret Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University.

#14368

Ikki Kita

1883 - 1937 (54 years)

was a Japanese author, intellectual and political philosopher who was active in early Shōwa period Japan. Drawing from an eclectic range of influences, Kita was a self-described socialist who has also been described as the "ideological father of Japanese fascism", although his writings touched equally upon pan-Asianism, Nichiren Buddhism, fundamental human rights and egalitarianism and he was involved with Chinese revolutionary circles. While his publications were invariably censored and he ceased writing after 1923, Kita was an inspiration for elements on the far-right of Japanese politics into the 1930s, particularly his advocacy for territorial expansion and a military coup.

#14369

Marcel Janco

1895 - 1984 (89 years)

Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. In the 1910s, he co-edited, with Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara, the Romanian art magazine Simbolul. Janco was a practitioner of Art Nouveau, Futurism and Expressionism before contributing his painting and stage design to Tzara's literary Dadaism. He parted with Dada in 1919, when he and painter Hans Arp founded a Constructivist circle, Das Neue Leben.

#14370

Ludwik Fleck

1896 - 1961 (65 years)

Ludwik Fleck was a Polish Jewish and Israeli physician and biologist who did important work in epidemic typhus in Lwów, Poland, with Rudolf Weigl and in the 1930s developed the concepts of the "Denkstil" and the "Denkkollektiv" .

#14371

Chauncey Wright

Chauncey Wright

1830 - 1875 (45 years)

Chauncey Wright was an American philosopher and mathematician, who was an influential early defender of Darwinism and an important influence on American pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce and William James.

#14372

William Ernest Johnson

William Ernest Johnson

1858 - 1931 (73 years)

William Ernest Johnson, FBA , usually cited as W. E. Johnson, was a British philosopher, logician and economic theorist. He is mainly remembered for his 3 volume Logic which introduced the concept of exchangeability.

#14373

Julien Benda

1867 - 1956 (89 years)

Julien Benda was a French philosopher and novelist, known as an essayist and cultural critic. He is best known for his short book, La Trahison des Clercs from 1927 . Life Born into a Jewish family in Paris, Benda had a secular upbringing. He was educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. After a period at the École Centrale Paris, he turned to history, and graduated at the Sorbonne in 1894.

#14374

Oskar Becker

1889 - 1964 (75 years)

Oscar Becker was a German philosopher, logician, mathematician, and historian of mathematics. Early life Becker was born in Leipzig, where he studied mathematics. His dissertation under Otto Hölder and Karl Rohn was On the Decomposition of Polygons in non-intersecting triangles on the Basis of the Axioms of Connection and Order.

#14375

Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi

Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi

1155 - 1191 (36 years)

"Shihāb ad-Dīn" Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardī was a philosopher and founder of the Iranian school of Illuminationism, an important school in Islamic philosophy. The "light" in his "Philosophy of Illumination" is the source of knowledge. He is referred to by the honorific title Shaikh al-ʿIshraq "Master of Illumination" and Shaikh al-Maqtul "the Murdered Master", in reference to his execution for heresy. Mulla Sadra, the Persian sage of the Safavid era described Suhrawardi as the "Reviver of the Traces of the Pahlavi Sages", and Suhrawardi, in his magnum opus "The Philosophy of Illumination", thought of himself as a reviver or resuscitator of the ancient tradition of Persian wisdom.

#14376

Emil Lask

1875 - 1915 (40 years)

Emil Lask was a German philosopher. A student of Heinrich Rickert at Freiburg University, he was a member of the Southwestern school of neo-Kantianism. Biography Lask was born in Austrian Galicia, as a son of Jewish parents. After completing his philosophical education at Freiburg, he was made lecturer at Heidelberg in 1905, and he was elected professor there just before the outbreak of World War I. When war began in 1914 Lask immediately volunteered. Since, as a Heidelberg professor, he would have been regarded as indispensable on the home front, he did not have to enlist. But, conscientious and idealistic, Lask believed that he had an obligation to serve his country.

#14377

Thomas of Erfurt

1300 - 1350 (50 years)

Thomas of Erfurt was a German philosopher, the most important of the so-called Modistae. He was probably a native of Erfurt. He had some connection to the University of Paris as a teacher or student. He later taught at St Severus' Church and the Schottenkirche in Erfurt.

#14378

Olga Hahn-Neurath

1882 - 1937 (55 years)

Olga Hahn-Neurath was an Austrian mathematician and philosopher. She is best known for being a member of the Vienna Circle. She was sister of the mathematician Hans Hahn. Biography Born in Vienna, Hahn enrolled as a student for math and philosophy studies at the University of Vienna in 1902. She became blind in 1904, when she was 22. In 1911, she became the third ever female graduate in philosophy at Vienna University. Her doctoral thesis, published in 1911, received great compliments from her instructor, Adolf Stöhr, the successor to the chair of Ludwig Boltzmann. Her main interest in math w...

#14379

Elisabeth of the Palatinate

Elisabeth of the Palatinate

1618 - 1680 (62 years)

Elisabeth of the Palatinate , also known as Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Elisabeth of the Palatinate, or Princess-Abbess of Herford Abbey, was the eldest daughter of Frederick V, Elector Palatine , and Elizabeth Stuart. Elisabeth of the Palatinate was a philosopher best known for her correspondence with René Descartes. She was critical of Descartes' dualistic metaphysics and her work anticipated the metaphysical concerns of later philosophers.

#14380

Solomon Dodashvili

Solomon Dodashvili

1805 - 1836 (31 years)

Solomon Dodashvili , also known as Solomon Ivanovich Dodaev-Mogarsky , was a Georgian philosopher, journalist, historian, grammarian, belletrist and enlightener. Dodashvili was born in Magharo, Kakheti, Georgia, then part of Imperial Russia. Having graduated from St Petersburg University in 1827, he obtained a Magister degree in philosophy there in 1828. During his stay in the Russian capital, he was close to Decembrist ideas and witnessed their 1825 mutiny. In 1828, Dodashvili returned to Tiflis, where he worked as an educator. He composed histories, grammars, and summaries of philosophy for his young pupils and led them into political opposition to the Russian rule.

#14381

James Seth

1860 - 1925 (65 years)

James Seth was a Scottish philosopher. His older brother was Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, also a philosopher. Their father, Smith Kimont Seth, was the son of a farmer from the Scottish region of Fife and a bank clerk in the head office of the Commercial Bank of Scotland. Their mother, Margaret, was the daughter of Andrew Little, a farmer from Berwickshire. An elder brother died in infancy. Seth was born in Edinburgh and attended George Watsons College. He was a student of Alexander Campbell Fraser and Henry Calderwood, and won two scholarships. He then went on to Divinity and ordination via ...

#14382

Julius Bahnsen

1830 - 1881 (51 years)

Julius Friedrich August Bahnsen was a German philosopher. Bahnsen is usually considered the originator of characterology and a real-dialectical method of philosophical reflection which he laid down in his two-volume Contributions to Characterology and developed forth with his following works, amongst others his magnum opus The Contradiction in the Knowledge and Being of the World .

#14383

Ibn Tufayl

1110 - 1185 (75 years)

Ibn Ṭufayl was an Arab Andalusian Muslim polymath: a writer, Islamic philosopher, Islamic theologian, physician, astronomer, and vizier. As a philosopher and novelist, he is most famous for writing the first philosophical novel, , considered a major work of Arabic literature emerging from Al-Andalus. As a physician, he was an early supporter of dissection and autopsy, which was expressed in his novel.

#14384

Ludwig Noiré

1829 - 1889 (60 years)

Ludwig Noiré was a German philosopher, known for his studies involving the philosophy of language. He was born in Alzey. He received his education at the University of Giessen, and later relocated to Mainz, where he worked as a grammar school teacher.

#14385

Käte Hamburger

1896 - 1992 (96 years)

Käte Hamburger was a Germanist, literary scholar and philosopher. She was a professor at the University of Stuttgart. Hamburger earned her doctorate in 1922 in Munich. Expelled by the Nazis because of her Jewish heritage, she immigrated to Sweden in 1934, where she lived until 1956, earning her living as a language teacher, journalist and writer. She resumed her university career on her return to Germany, writing about Thomas Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others.

#14386

Siger of Brabant

Siger of Brabant

1235 - 1284 (49 years)

Siger of Brabant was a 13th-century philosopher from the southern Low Countries who was an important proponent of Averroism. Life Early life Little is known about many of the details of his life. In 1266, he was attached to the Faculty of Arts in the University of Paris at the time when a riot erupted between the French and Picard "nations" of students—a series of loosely organized fraternities. The papal legate threatened Siger with execution as the ringleader of the Picard attack on the French, but no further action was taken.

#14387

Joseph Maréchal

Joseph Maréchal

1878 - 1944 (66 years)

Joseph Maréchal, SJ was a Belgian Jesuit priest, philosopher, theologian and psychologist. He taught at the Higher Institute of Philosophy of the University of Leuven and was the founder of the school of thought called transcendental Thomism, which attempted to merge the theological and philosophical thought of St. Thomas Aquinas with that of Immanuel Kant.

#14388

Arthur F. Bentley

1870 - 1957 (87 years)

Arthur Fisher Bentley was an American political scientist and philosopher who worked in the fields of epistemology, logic and linguistics and who contributed to the development of a behavioral methodology of political science.

#14389

Hugo Riemann

1849 - 1919 (70 years)

Karl Wilhelm Julius Hugo Riemann was a German musicologist and composer who was among the founders of modern musicology. The leading European music scholar of his time, he was active and influential as both a music theorist and music historian. Many of his contributions are now termed as Riemannian theory, a variety of related ideas on many aspects of music theory.

#14390

Carl Dahlhaus

1928 - 1989 (61 years)

Carl Dahlhaus was a German musicologist who was among the leading postwar musicologists of the mid to late 20th-century. A prolific scholar, he had broad interests though his research focused on 19th- and 20th-century classical music, both areas in which he made significant advancements. However, he remains best known in the English-speaking world for his writings on Wagner. Dahlhaus wrote on many other composers, including Josquin, Gesualdo, Bach and Schoenberg.

#14391

Jean Arp

1886 - 1966 (80 years)

Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp , better known as Jean Arp in English, was a German-French sculptor, painter, and poet. He was known as a Dadaist and an abstract artist. Early life Arp was born Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp to a French mother and a German father in Straßburg during the period between the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, when the city and surrounding region was under control of the German Empire. Following the return of Alsace to France at the end of World War I, French law required Arp to adopt a French name, and he legally became Jean Arp, although he continued referring to himself as "H...

#14392

Shin'ichi Hisamatsu

1889 - 1980 (91 years)

Shin'ichi Hisamatsu was a philosopher, Zen Buddhist scholar, and Japanese tea ceremony master. He was a professor at Kyoto University and received an honorary doctoral degree from Harvard University.

#14393

Georges Sorel

1847 - 1922 (75 years)

Georges Eugène Sorel was a French social thinker, political theorist, historian, and later journalist. He has inspired theories and movements grouped under the name of Sorelianism. His social and political philosophy owed much to his reading of Proudhon, Karl Marx, Giambattista Vico, Henri Bergson , and later William James. His notion of the power of myth in collective agency inspired socialists, anarchists, Marxists, and fascists. Together with his defense of violence, the power of myth is the contribution for which he is most often remembered.

#14394

Markus Herz

1747 - 1803 (56 years)

Markus Herz was a German Jewish physician and lecturer on philosophy. Biography Born in Berlin to very poor parents, Herz was destined for a mercantile career, and in 1762 went to Königsberg, East Prussia. He soon gave up his position as clerk and attended the University of Königsberg, becoming a pupil of Immanuel Kant, but was obliged to discontinue his studies for want of means. He thereupon became secretary to the wealthy Russian Ephraim, travelling with him through the Baltic Provinces.

#14395

John Fiske

1842 - 1901 (59 years)

John Fiske was an American philosopher and historian. He was heavily influenced by Herbert Spencer and applied Spencer's concepts of evolution to his own writings on linguistics, philosophy, religion, and history.

#14396

Mary Whiton Calkins

Mary Whiton Calkins

1863 - 1930 (67 years)

Mary Whiton Calkins was an American philosopher and psychologist, whose work informed theory and research of memory, dreams and the self. In 1903, Calkins was the twelfth in a listing of fifty psychologists with the most merit, chosen by her peers. Calkins was refused a Ph.D. by Harvard University because of her gender.

#14397

Pietro Pomponazzi

Pietro Pomponazzi

1462 - 1525 (63 years)

Pietro Pomponazzi was an Italian philosopher. He is sometimes known by his Latin name, Petrus Pomponatius. Biography Pietro Pomponazzi was born in Mantua and began his education there. He completed his studies at the University of Padua, where he became a medical doctor in 1487. In 1488 he was elected extraordinary professor of philosophy at Padua, where he was a colleague of Alessandro Achillini, the Averroist. From about 1495 to 1509 he occupied the chair of natural philosophy until the closing of the schools of Padua, when he took a professorship at Ferrara where he lectured on the Aristotle's De anima and entelechy.

#14398

Emil du Bois-Reymond

Emil du Bois-Reymond

1818 - 1896 (78 years)

Emil Heinrich du Bois-Reymond was a German physiologist, the co-discoverer of nerve action potential, and the developer of experimental electrophysiology. His lectures on science and culture earned him great esteem during the latter half of the 19th century.

#14399

Alfred Espinas

1844 - 1922 (78 years)

Alfred Victor Espinas was a French thinker noted for having been an influence on Nietzsche. He was a student of Comte and Spencer. Although initially an adherent of positivism, he later became a committed realist.

#14400

Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis

Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis

1757 - 1808 (51 years)

Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis was a French physiologist, freemason and materialist philosopher. Life Cabanis was born at Cosnac , the son of Jean Baptiste Cabanis , a lawyer and agronomist. At the age of ten, he attended the college of Brives, where he showed great aptitude for study, but his independence of spirit was so great that he was almost constantly in a state of rebellion against his teachers and was finally expelled. He was then taken to Paris by his father and left to carry on his studies at his own discretion for two years. From 1773 to 1775 he travelled in Poland and Germany, and on his return to Paris he devoted himself mainly to poetry.

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