The Most Influential People Across History

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#15651

Addison Webster Moore

1866 - 1930 (64 years)
Addison Webster Moore was a U.S. pragmatist philosopher. He was president of the Western Philosophical Association in 1911 and president of the American Philosophical Association in 1917. He was born in Plainfield, Indiana, United States. He studied at DePauw University, earning an A.B. in 1890 and an A.M. in 1893. He then studied at Cornell and took his Ph.D. in 1898 at the University of Chicago, attracted by John Dewey's arrival there. When Dewey went to Columbia University in 1904, Moore took over the Metaphysics and Logic courses at Chicago, and became professor of philosophy in 1909.
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#15652

Khan Bahadur Ahsanullah

Khan Bahadur Ahsanullah
1874 - 1965 (91 years)
Khan Bahadur Ahsanullah was an educator, litterateur, Islamic theologist and social reformer of pre-partition India. He was instrumental in the formation of the University of Dhaka and is the namesake of Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology.
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#15653

Brice Parain

1897 - 1971 (74 years)
Brice Parain was a French philosopher and essayist. He appeared as himself in Jean-Luc Godard's 1962 film Vivre sa vie. In Éric Rohmer's film My Night at Maud's , conversations about Pascal's Wager are directly inspired by a similar debate between Parain and Dominique Dubarle in an episode of the television series En profil dans le texte called l'Entretien sur Pascal in 1965, also produced by Rohmer.
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#15654

Camillo Golgi

Camillo Golgi
1843 - 1926 (83 years)
Camillo Golgi was an Italian biologist and pathologist known for his works on the central nervous system. He studied medicine at the University of Pavia between 1860 and 1868 under the tutelage of Cesare Lombroso. Inspired by pathologist Giulio Bizzozero, he pursued research in the nervous system. His discovery of a staining technique called black reaction in 1873 was a major breakthrough in neuroscience. Several structures and phenomena in anatomy and physiology are named for him, including the Golgi apparatus, the Golgi tendon organ and the Golgi tendon reflex.
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#15655

Hierocles

Hierocles was a Stoic philosopher. Very little is known about his life. Aulus Gellius mentions him as one of his contemporaries, and describes him as a "grave and holy man." Work Hierocles is famous for a book called Elements of Ethics , part of which was discovered as a papyrus fragment at Hermopolis in 1901. This 300 line fragment discusses self-perception, and argues that all birds, reptiles, and mammals from the moment of birth perceive themselves continuously and that self-perception is both the primary and the most basic faculty of animals. The argument draws heavily on a Stoic concep...
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#15656

Jiva Goswami

Jiva Goswami
1511 - 1596 (85 years)
Jiva Goswami was an Indian philosopher and saint from the Gaudiya Vaishnava school of Vedanta tradition, producing a great number of philosophical works on the theology and practice of Bhakti yoga, Vaishnava Vedanta and associated disciplines. He is known as one of the Six Goswamis of Vrindavan and was the nephew of the two leading figures, Rupa Goswami and Sanatana Goswami.
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#15657

George Syncellus

800 - 810 (10 years)
George Syncellus was a Byzantine chronicler and ecclesiastical official. He had lived many years in Palestine as a monk, before coming to Constantinople, where he was appointed synkellos to Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople. He later retired to a monastery to write what was intended to be his great work, a chronicle of world history, Ekloge chronographias , or Extract of Chronography. According to Anastasius Bibliothecarius, George "struggled valiantly against heresy [i.e. Iconoclasm] and received many punishments from the rulers who raged against the rites of the Church", although the ...
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#15658

Adolphe Franck

Adolphe Franck
1809 - 1893 (84 years)
Adolphe Franck was a French-Jewish philosopher who specialised in Jewish mysticism. Early life Franck was born in Liocourt in 1809. He originally studied to become a rabbi, but decided to become a philosopher instead as a protégé of Victor Cousin.
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#15659

Rigas Feraios

Rigas Feraios
1757 - 1798 (41 years)
Rigas Feraios or Velestinlis ; 1757 – 24 June 1798 Early life Rigas Feraios was born in 1757 as Antonios Rigas Velestinlis into a wealthy family in the village of Velestino in the Sanjak of Tirhala, Ottoman Empire . He later was at some point nicknamed Pheraeos or Feraios, by scholars, after the nearby ancient Greek city of Pherae, but he does not seem ever to have used this name himself; he is also sometimes known as Konstantinos or Constantine Rhigas . He is often described as being of Aromanian ancestry, with his native village of Velestino being Aromanian. Rigas' family had its roots in Perivoli, another Aromanian-inhabited village, but it usually overwintered in Velestino.
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#15660

Julius Frank

1808 - 1841 (33 years)
Johann Julius Gottfried Ludwig Frank or Julius Frank was a professor of history, geography and philosophy from Gotha, Germany. He taught at the Largo de São Francisco's Law School in São Paulo ., Brazil. He was an advocator of a liberal philosophy and founded the Students League in Brazil .
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#15661

Rodolfo Mondolfo

1877 - 1976 (99 years)
Rodolfo Mondolfo was an Italian philosopher who lived in Italy and Argentina. Born in Senigallia into a prominent family of Jewish origin, he studied at University of Florence and the University of Siena. In 1910 he started teaching at University of Turin where he worked until 1914, when he left for University of Bologna and later at the University of Padova.
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#15662

Anthony Collins

Anthony Collins
1676 - 1729 (53 years)
Anthony Collins was an English philosopher and essayist, notable for being one of the early proponents of Deism in Great Britain. Life and writings Collins was born in Heston, near Hounslow in Middlesex, England, the son of lawyer Henry Collins and Mary . He had two sisters: Anne Collins , who married Henry Lovibond , and Mary Collins , who married Edward Lovibond , a merchant and Director of the East India Company. Mary and Edward's son was the poet Edward Lovibond.
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#15663

Robert Broom

Robert Broom
1866 - 1951 (85 years)
Robert Broom FRS FRSE was a British- South African medical doctor and palaeontologist. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1895 and received his DSc in 1905 from the University of Glasgow. From 1903 to 1910, he was professor of zoology and geology at Victoria College, Stellenbosch, South Africa, and subsequently he became keeper of vertebrate palaeontology at the South African Museum, Cape Town.
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#15664

Christopher Jacob Boström

Christopher Jacob Boström
1797 - 1866 (69 years)
Christopher Jacob Boström was a Swedish philosopher. His ideas dominated Swedish philosophy until the beginning of the twentieth century. He also had a great influence on Swedish cultural life. Biography As a student he briefly studied theology, and religion remained his primary interest throughout his life. During his theological studies, he was a classmate of Lutheran revivalist preacher Pehr Brandell.
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#15665

Martin Deutinger

1815 - 1864 (49 years)
Martin Deutinger was a German philosopher and religious writer, born in Langenpreising, Bavaria, and died at Pfäfers, Switzerland. Life Deutinger first studied theology and philosophy at the Lyceum in Dillingen in 1832 before he heard the lectures of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling in Munich in 1833 and became enthusiastic about the philosophy of art. He was ordained as a priest in 1837, and after filling several clerical positions, taught philosophy at Freising , Munich , and Dillingen .
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#15666

Victor Delbos

1862 - 1916 (54 years)
Étienne Marie Justin Victor Delbos was a Catholic philosopher and historian of philosophy. Delbos was appointed a lecturer at the Sorbonne in 1902. In 1911 he became a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. He died in July 1916 as a result of an infectious myocarditis brought on by pleurisy. Maurice Blondel, a close friend, wrote an obituary account of Delbos and saw various posthumous publications through the press.
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#15667

Arignote

530 BC - 450 BC (80 years)
Arignote or Arignota was a Pythagorean philosopher from Croton, Magna Graecia, or from Samos. She was known as a student of Pythagoras and Theano and, according to some traditions, their daughter as well.
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#15668

Nammalvar

Nammalvar
800 - 800 (0 years)
Nammalvar was one of the twelve Alvar saints of Tamil Nadu, India, who are known for their affiliation to the Vaishnava tradition of Hinduism. The verses of the Alvars are compiled as the Naalayira Divya Prabandham, where praises are sung of 108 temples that are classified as divine realms, called the Divya Desams. Nammalvar is considered to be the fifth in the line of the twelve Alvars. He is highly regarded as a great mystic of the Vaishnava tradition. He is also considered to be the foremost among the twelve Alvars, and his contributions amount to 1352 among the 4000 stanzas in the Naalayi...
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#15669

Antonio Caso Andrade

Antonio Caso Andrade
1883 - 1946 (63 years)
Antonio Caso Andrade was a Mexican philosopher and rector of the former Universidad Nacional de México, nowadays known as the National Autonomous University of Mexico from December 1921 to August 1923. Along with José Vasconcelos, he founded the Ateneo de la Juventud, a humanist group against philosophical positivism. The Athenian generation opposed Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer’s philosophical views, giving credence to and expanding on the ideas of Henri Bergson, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and José Enrique Rodó. Caso opposed rationalism. His group the ateneistas believed in a moral, willing, and spiritual individual being.
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#15670

Zengzi

Zengzi
504 BC - 435 BC (69 years)
Zeng Shen , better known as Zengzi , courtesy name Ziyu , was a Chinese philosopher and disciple of Confucius. He later taught Zisi , the grandson of Confucius, who was in turn the teacher of Mencius, thus beginning a line of transmitters of orthodox Confucian traditions. He is revered as one of the Four Sages of Confucianism.
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#15671

Antanas Maceina

1908 - 1987 (79 years)
Antanas Maceina was a Lithuanian philosopher, existentialist, educator, theologian, and poet. Developed philosophy of culture of Stasys Šalkauskis, adjusted Christian philosophy and existentialism, accented an importance of native language to education.
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#15672

Mikhail Ovsyannikov

1915 - 1987 (72 years)
Mikhail Fedotovich Ovsyannikov was a Soviet philosopher and academic who concentrated on in-depth study of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Ovsyannikov was head of the Philosophy Department at Moscow State University from 1968 to 1974.
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#15673

J. N. Findlay

J. N. Findlay
1903 - 1987 (84 years)
John Niemeyer Findlay , usually cited as J. N. Findlay, was a South African philosopher. Education and career Findlay read classics and philosophy as a boy and then at the Transvaal University College, .
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#15674

Delfim Santos

Delfim Santos
1907 - 1966 (59 years)
Delfim Pinto dos Santos , was a Portuguese academic, philosopher, educationist, essayist and book and movie reviewer. Life Delfim Santos was born in Oporto, Portugal in 1907, to Arnaldo Pinto and Amelia dos Santos Oliveira. His father was a goldsmith and trained him for his craft, which Delfim successfully practiced as apprentice until Arnaldo's untimely death, occurred when the son was aged 15. Still under the impact of his recent orphan condition, the young Delfim kept the family business running for a while, only to become aware that his vocation and motivation lay elsewhere and thereby decided to pursue a lifelong engagement with study and intellectual quest.
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#15675

Apollodorus of Seleucia

150 BC - Present (2176 years)
Apollodorus of Seleucia , or Apollodorus Ephillus, was a Stoic philosopher, and a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon. Apollodorus is famous for describing Cynicismism as "the short path to virtue", and he may have been the first Stoic after the time of Zeno and Aristo to systematically attempt to reconcile Stoicism with Cynicism. The lengthy account of Cynicism given by Diogenes Laërtius, which is presented from a Stoic point of view, may be derived from Apollodorus, and it is possible that he was the first Stoic to promote the idea of a line of Cynic succession from Socrates to Zeno .
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#15676

Pope Alexander VI

Pope Alexander VI
1431 - 1503 (72 years)
Pope Alexander VI was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 11 August 1492 until his death in 1503. Born into the prominent Borgia family in Xàtiva under the Crown of Aragon , Rodrigo studied law at the University of Bologna. He was ordained deacon and made a cardinal in 1456 after the election of his uncle as Pope Callixtus III, and a year later he became vice-chancellor of the Catholic Church. He proceeded to serve in the Curia under the next four popes, acquiring significant influence and wealth in the process. In 1492, Rodrigo was elected pope, taking the name Ale...
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#15677

Edward Kelley

Edward Kelley
1555 - 1590 (35 years)
Sir Edward Kelley or Kelly, also known as Edward Talbot , was an English Renaissance occultist and scryer. He is known for working with John Dee in his magical investigations. Besides the professed ability to see spirits or angels in a "shew-stone" or mirror, which John Dee so valued, Kelley also said that he possessed the secret of transmuting base metals into gold, the goal of alchemy, as well as the philosopher's stone itself.
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#15678

John Grierson

John Grierson
1898 - 1972 (74 years)
John Grierson was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert J. Flaherty's Moana.
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#15679

Thomas Spencer Baynes

Thomas Spencer Baynes
1823 - 1887 (64 years)
Thomas Spencer Baynes was an English philosopher. Life Baynes was born in Wellington, Somerset to a Baptist minister. He intended to study for Baptist ministry, and was at a theological seminary at Bath with that view but, being strongly attracted to philosophical studies, left it and went to Edinburgh, where he became the favourite pupil of Sir William Hamilton, of whose philosophical system he continued an adherent.
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#15680

Maitreya-nātha

Maitreya-nātha
270 - 350 (80 years)
Maitreya-nātha is a name whose use was pioneered by Buddhist scholars Erich Frauwallner, Giuseppe Tucci, and Hakuju Ui to distinguish one of the three founders of the Yogacara school of Buddhist philosophy, along with Asanga and Vasubandhu. Some scholars believe this Maitreya to be a historical person in India. The traditions themselves have held that it is referring to Maitreya, the future buddha.
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#15681

Petrus de Ibernia

1101 - 1201 (100 years)
Petrus de Ibernia, also known as Peter of Ireland, was a 13th-century writer and lecturer who is believed to have taught logic and natural philosophy to Thomas Aquinas. Peter of Ireland is mentioned by the Aquinas' biographers Wilhelm of Tocco and Peter Calo.
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#15682

David Gozal

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#15683

Zef Jubani

Zef Jubani
1818 - 1880 (62 years)
Zef Jubani or Giuseppe Jubany in Italian was an Albanian folklorist and activist of the Albanian National Awakening. He is known for the publication of a Collection of Albanian Folk Songs and Rhapsodies in the Gheg Albanian dialect. Jubani advocated the creation of a unique alphabet of the Albanian language. For his political activities, which often were anti-clericalist, Jubani was denounced to the Holy See by the Jesuit missionaries of Shkodër.
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#15684

Eduardo Nicol

1907 - 1990 (83 years)
Eduardo Nicol was a Mexican-Catalan philosopher. He arrived in Mexico in 1939, obtained his major in philosophy from National Autonomous University of Mexico , the biggest university in Mexico, where he taught from 1940. While at UNAM, he became the chairs of adolescent psychology and the history of psychology following .
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#15686

Richard von Schubert-Soldern

1852 - 1924 (72 years)
Richard Ritter von Schubert-Soldern was a philosopher in Austria-Hungary and later Austria. Schubert-Soldern earned a doctorate at the University of Prague in 1879 and habilitated at Leipzig University in 1882 with a thesis titled Ueber Trancendenz des Objects und Subjects .
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#15687

Christian Krohg

Christian Krohg
1852 - 1925 (73 years)
Christian Krohg was a Norwegian naturalist painter, illustrator, author and journalist. Krohg was inspired by the realism art movement and often chose motifs from everyday life. He was the director and served as the first professor at the Norwegian Academy of Arts from 1909 to 1925.
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#15688

Tang Chun-i

1909 - 1978 (69 years)
Tang Chun-I or Tang Junyi was a Chinese philosopher who was one of the leading exponents of New Confucianism. Born in Sichuan, he moved to Hong Kong in 1949 due to the establishment of the People's Republic of China and co-founded New Asia College with the dual objective of modernizing China while upholding its traditional values.
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#15689

Aristobulus of Alexandria

200 BC - Present (2226 years)
Aristobulus of Alexandria also called Aristobulus the Peripatetic and once believed to be Aristobulus of Paneas, was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher of the Peripatetic school, though he also used Platonic and Pythagorean concepts. Like his successor, Philo, he attempted to fuse ideas in the Hebrew Scriptures with those in Greek thought.
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#15690

William H. Dietz

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#15691

Christoph Schrempf

Christoph Schrempf
1860 - 1944 (84 years)
Christoph Schrempf was a German evangelical theologian and philosopher. Life Christoph Schrempf was a pastor and writer from Besigheim, Germany. He had a difficult childhood due to his father's alcoholism. His mother suffered from the violence until she fled, taking the children. Perhaps this made the young Christoph Schrempf sensitive to all forms of violence, including hidden violence. In his youth, Schrempf was an avid Bible reader. He studied religion and was vicar and assistant teacher in Tübingen. The normal path of a Protestant Württemberg Pastor seemed predetermined. He read the Bible with a critical scientific eye and explored the historical background of biblical texts.
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#15692

Philipp Spitta

Philipp Spitta
1841 - 1894 (53 years)
Julius August Philipp Spitta was a German music historian and musicologist best known for his 1873 biography of Johann Sebastian Bach. Life He was born in , near Hoya, and his father, also called Philipp Spitta, was a theologian and wrote the Protestant collection of hymns entitled Psalter und Harfe. As a child, the younger Spitta learnt the piano, pipe organ, and musical composition. He studied theology and classical philology at the University of Göttingen from 1860, graduating in 1864 with a Ph.D. for a dissertation on Tacitus . While at university, he composed, wrote a biography of Robert Schumann, and became friends with Johannes Brahms.
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#15693

Thomas Willis

Thomas Willis
1621 - 1675 (54 years)
Thomas Willis FRS was an English physician who played an important part in the history of anatomy, neurology and psychiatry, and was a founding member of the Royal Society. Life Willis was born on his parents' farm in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, where his father held the stewardship of the manor. He was a kinsman of the Willys baronets of Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire. He graduated M.A. from Christ Church, Oxford in 1642. In the Civil War years he was a Royalist, dispossessed of the family farm at North Hinksey by Parliamentary forces. In the 1640s, Willis was one of the royal physicians to Charles I.
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#15694

Kanji Swami

1890 - 1980 (90 years)
Kanji Swami was a teacher of Jainism. He was deeply influenced by the Samayasāra of Kundakunda in 1932. He lectured on these teachings for 45 years to comprehensively elaborate on the philosophy described by Kundakunda and others. He was given the title of "Koh-i-Noor of Kathiawar" by the people who were influenced by his religious teachings and philosophy.
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#15695

Władysław Mieczysław Kozłowski

Władysław Mieczysław Kozłowski
1858 - 1935 (77 years)
Władysław Mieczysław Kozłowski was a Polish philosopher. Life Kozłowski lectured at Brussels' Université Nouvelle and at Geneva University. In 1919–28 he was professor of the theory and methodology of science at Poznań University.
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#15696

Howard Selsam

1903 - 1970 (67 years)
Howard Selsam was an American Marxist philosopher. Background Howard Brillinger Selsam was born on 28 June 1903 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His parents were John T. Selsam, a grocer, and his mother was Flora Emig Selsam.
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#15697

Eugeniu Sperantia

1888 - 1972 (84 years)
Eugeniu Sperantia was a Romanian poet, aesthetician, essayist, sociologist and philosopher. He was born in Bucharest to folklorist Theodor Speranția and his wife Elena , a relative of poet Mihail Cruceanu. He attended primary and high school in his native city, graduating in 1906. That year, he made his published debut, in Ovid Densusianu's Vieața Nouă. Prior to that, he had frequented Alexandru Macedonski's circle. In 1910, he graduated from the philosophy faculty of the University of Bucharest. Two years later, he received a doctorate in literature and philosophy; his thesis dealt with pragmatic apriorism.
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#15698

Austin Farrer

1904 - 1968 (64 years)
Austin Marsden Farrer was an English Anglican philosopher, theologian, and biblical scholar. His activity in philosophy, theology, and spirituality led many to consider him one of the greatest figures of 20th-century Anglicanism. He served as Warden of Keble College, Oxford, from 1960 to 1968.
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#15699

Christoph Gottfried Bardili

1761 - 1808 (47 years)
Christoph Gottfried Bardili was a German philosopher and cousin of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. He was critical of Kantian idealism and proposed his own system of philosophy known as rational realism, a view based purely upon "thinking as thinking".
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#15700

Simon Foucher

1644 - 1696 (52 years)
Simon Foucher was a French polemic philosopher. His philosophical standpoint was one of Academic skepticism: he did not agree with dogmatism, but didn't resort to Pyrrhonism, either. Life He was born in Dijon, the son of a merchant, and appears to have taken holy orders at a very early age. For some years he held the position of honorary canon at Dijon, but he resigned in order to take up his residence in Paris. He graduated at the Sorbonne, having studied theology, and spent the remainder of his life in literary work in Paris, where he died.
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