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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,

#1651

Crispin Sartwell

#18780

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Crispin Gallagher Sartwell is an American academic, philosopher, and journalist who is a faculty member of the philosophy department at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He has taught philosophy, communication, and political science at a number of schools, including Vanderbilt University, University of Alabama, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and Dickinson College.

#1652

Jenny Teichman

#11402

Overall Influence

1930 - 2018 (88 years)

Jenny Teichman was an Australian-British philosopher, writing mostly on ethics. She was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1930 and grew up in Belgrave. Her uncle was Justus Jorgensen, founder of the artists' colony of Montsalvat. She married the lecturer and political commentator Max Teichmann. She was a research fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, from 1957 until 1960. She taught mostly at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, formerly known as New Hall, where she became an Emeritus Fellow. She also taught for shorter periods in Australia, Canada and the USA.

#1653

Cooper Harold Langford

1895 - 1964 (69 years)

Cooper Harold Langford was an American analytic philosopher and mathematical logician who co-authored the book Symbolic Logic with C. I. Lewis. He is also known for introducing the Langford–Moore paradox.

#1654

Timothy Smiley

#19465

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Timothy John Smiley FBA is a British philosopher, appointed Emeritus Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at Clare College, Cambridge University. He works primarily in philosophy of mathematics and logic.

#1655

Herbert Fingarette

#12877

Overall Influence

1921 - 2018 (97 years)

Herbert Fingarette was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Early life and education Fingarette was born Herbert Borenstein in Brooklyn. His father, David Borenstein, manufactured sewing machine parts. As a teenager, he moved with his family to Los Angeles. He later adopted the last name of his stepfather, Harry Fingarette. Fingarette initially studied chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, but left to serve in the United States Army during World War II, where he was assigned to the Pentagon. He later earned a Bac...

#1656

Martin Balluch

#14090

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Martin Balluch is an Austrian physicist, philosopher, vegan and prominent animal rights activist. He co-founded the Austrian Vegan Society in 1999, and has been president of the Austrian Association Against Animal Factories since 2002. The philosopher Peter Singer has called Balluch "one of the foremost spokesmen in the worldwide animal rights movement for pursuing the nonviolent, democratic road to reform."

#1657

Celia Amorós

#16088

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Celia Amorós Puente is a Spanish philosopher, essayist and supporter of feminist theory. She is a key figure in the so-called equality feminism and focused an important part of her research in the building of relations between Enlightenment and feminism. Her book Hacia una crítica de la razón patriarcal constitutes a new outlook on the gender perspective of philosophy, revealing the biases of androcentrism and claims a critical review on behalf of women.

#1658

Jean Ladrière

#19705

Overall Influence

1921 - 2007 (86 years)

Jean Ladrière was a Belgian logician and philosopher, born in Nivelles. He was professor at the University of Louvain from 1959 to 1986, where he was chair of the Higher Institute of Philosophy from 1977 to 1985.

#1659

Dominique Dubarle

1907 - 1987 (80 years)

Dominique Dubarle was a French Dominican friar and religious philosopher, a professor at the Saulchoir. He was dean of the faculty of philosophy of the Catholic Institute of Paris from 1967 to 1973 and was an expert at the Second Vatican Council .

#1660

Mani

216 - 274 (58 years)

Mani was an Iranian prophet and the founder of Manichaeism, a religion most prevalent in late antiquity. Mani was born in or near Seleucia-Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia, at the time part of the Parthian Empire. Seven of his major works were written in Syriac, and the eighth, dedicated to the Sasanian emperor Shapur I, was written in Middle Persian. He died in Gundeshapur.

#1661

Jonathan Lear

#9201

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Jonathan Lear is an American philosopher and psychoanalyst. He is the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and served as the Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago from 2014 to 2022.

#1662

Peter Ludlow

#8976

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Peter Ludlow , who also writes under the pseudonym Urizenus Sklar, is an American philosopher of language. He is noted for interdisciplinary work on the interface of linguistics and philosophy—in particular on the philosophical foundations of Noam Chomsky's theory of generative linguistics and on the foundations of the theory of meaning in linguistic semantics. He has worked on the application of analytic philosophy of language to topics in epistemology, metaphysics, and logic, among other areas.

#1663

Edward S. Casey

Edward S. Casey

#10006

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Edward S. Casey is an American philosopher and university professor. He has published several volumes on phenomenology, philosophical psychology, and the philosophy of space and place. His work is widely cited in contemporary continental philosophy. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University in New York and distinguished visiting faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute.

#1664

E. J. Lowe

#16783

Overall Influence

1950 - 2014 (64 years)

Edward Jonathan Lowe , usually cited as E. J. Lowe but known personally as Jonathan Lowe, was a British philosopher and academic. He was Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. Biography Lowe was born in Dover, England. His secondary education was at Bushey Grammar School, and he subsequently studied at the University of Cambridge, 1968–72 , and the University of Oxford, 1972–75 .

#1665

Hui Shi

370 BC - 310 BC (60 years)

Hui Shi , or Huizi , was a Chinese philosopher during the Warring States period. A representative of the School of Names , he is famous for ten paradoxes about the relativity of time and space, for instance, "I set off for Yue today and came there yesterday." Said to have written a code of laws, Hui was a prime minister in the state of Wei.

#1666

Maurice Blondel

Maurice Blondel

1861 - 1949 (88 years)

Maurice Blondel was a French philosopher, whose most influential works, notably L'Action, aimed at establishing the correct relationship between autonomous philosophical reasoning and Christian belief.

#1667

Abel Rey

1873 - 1940 (67 years)

Abel Rey was a French philosopher and historian of science. Abel Rey succeeded Gaston Milhaud as professor of the history of philosophy in its relation to science at the Sorbonne, and established the Institut d'histoire des sciences et des techniques to encourage cooperation between the sciences and humanities. It has been argued that Rey influenced Philipp Frank and the formation of the Vienna Circle. Rey's history of science was wide, including sciences from physics to sociology, and deep, ranging from antiquity to the present; moreover, it included the study of culture's influence on the ...

#1668

Anton Marty

1847 - 1914 (67 years)

Martin Anton Maurus Marty was a Swiss-born Austrian philosopher and Catholic priest. He specialized in philosophy of language, philosophy of psychology and ontology. Biography Marty was a student and follower of Franz Brentano, his teacher at the University of Würzburg in 1868–70. He was ordained in 1870, but resigned from the priesthood in 1872.

#1669

Eino Kaila

1890 - 1958 (68 years)

Eino Sakari Kaila was a Finnish philosopher, critic and teacher. He worked in numerous fields including psychology , physics and theater, and attempted to find unifying principles behind various branches of human and natural sciences.

#1670

Peter Carruthers

Peter Carruthers

#8591

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Peter Carruthers is a British-American philosopher and cognitive scientist working primarily in the area of philosophy of mind, though he has also made contributions to philosophy of language and ethics. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park, an associate member of Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, and a member of the Committee for Philosophy and the Sciences.

#1671

Michael E. Rosen

#19644

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Michael Eric Rosen is a British political philosopher active in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental European intellectual thought. He is best known for his work on Hegel and the Frankfurt School. He is currently the Senator Joseph S. Clark Professor of Government at Harvard University.

#1672

Krastyo Krastev

Krastyo Krastev

1866 - 1919 (53 years)

Krastyo Kotev Krastev , popularly known as Dr. Krastev , was a Bulgarian writer, translator, philosopher and public figure most notable as Bulgaria's first professional literary critic. Krastev was an influential member of the modernist Misal circle, a leading collaboration of writers that aimed to revolutionize Bulgarian literature and introduce the modern ideas of European literature and philosophy to the country.

#1673

Otto Liebmann

1840 - 1912 (72 years)

Otto Liebmann was a German neo-Kantian philosopher. Biography He was born at Löwenberg, Silesia, into a Jewish family, and educated at Leipzig and Halle. He was made professor at Strassburg and went to Jena in 1882. He died at Jena. The mathematician Heinrich Liebmann was his son.

#1674

Karl Ludwig Michelet

Karl Ludwig Michelet

1801 - 1893 (92 years)

Karl Ludwig Michelet was a German philosopher. He was born and died in Berlin. Biography Michelet studied at the grammar school and at Humboldt University in his native town, took his degree as doctor of philosophy in 1824, and became professor in 1829, a post which he retained till his death.

#1675

Susan Stebbing

1885 - 1943 (58 years)

Lizzie Susan Stebbing was a British philosopher. She belonged to the 1930s generation of analytic philosophy, and was a founder in 1933 of the journal Analysis. Stebbing was the first woman to hold a philosophy chair in the United Kingdom, as well as the first female President of Humanists UK.

#1676

Frank Meyer

1909 - 1972 (63 years)

Frank Straus Meyer was an American philosopher and political activist best known for his theory of "fusionism" – a political philosophy that unites elements of libertarianism and traditionalism into a philosophical synthesis which is posited as the definition of modern American conservatism. Meyer's philosophy was presented in two books, primarily In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo and also in a collection of his essays, The Conservative Mainstream . Fusionism has been summed up by E. J. Dionne, Jr. as "utilizing libertarian means in a conservative society for traditionalist ends."

#1677

Susan Buck-Morss

#12349

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Susan Buck-Morss is an American philosopher and intellectual historian. She is currently Professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center, and professor emeritus in the Government Department at Cornell University, where she taught from 1978 to 2012. Her interdisciplinary work involves but is not limited to the fields of Art History, Architecture, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, German studies, History, Philosophy, and Visual Studies. She has won a Getty Scholar Grant, a Fulbright Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work.

#1678

Wing-tsit Chan

#8849

Overall Influence

1901 - 1994 (93 years)

Wing-tsit Chan was a Chinese scholar and professor best known for his studies of Chinese philosophy and his translations of Chinese philosophical texts. Chan was born in China in 1901 and went to the United States in 1924, earning a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1929. Chan taught at Dartmouth College and Chatham University for most of his academic career. Chan's 1963 book A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy was highly influential in the English-speaking world, and was often used as a source for quotations from Chinese philosophical classics.

#1679

Martin Hollis

#11979

Overall Influence

1938 - 1998 (60 years)

James Martin Hollis was an English rationalist philosopher. Writing for The Independent, Tim O'Hagan, an Emeritus Professor at the University of East Anglia argued that central to Hollis's rationalism was "the epistemological unity of mankind", the view that "some beliefs are universal ... There are, because there have to be, percepts and concepts shared by all who can understand each other." This rationalism, of Hollis, was in its early formulations strongly influenced by Peter Strawson and applied to understanding and explaining the approach of the social sciences.

#1680

Peter Godfrey-Smith

Peter Godfrey-Smith

#9991

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Peter Godfrey-Smith is an Australian philosopher of science and writer, who is currently Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. He works primarily in philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind, and also has interests in general philosophy of science, pragmatism , and some parts of metaphysics and epistemology. Godfrey-Smith was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022.

#1681

Mario Costa

#12620

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Mario Costa was an Italian philosopher. He was known for his studies of the consequences of new technology in art and aesthetics, which introduced a new theoretical perspective through concepts such as the "communication aesthetics", the "technological sublime", the "communication block", and the "aesthetics of flux".

#1682

Zou Yan

305 BC - 240 BC (65 years)

Zou Yan was a Chinese Warring States-era philosopher and spiritual writer best known as the representative thinker of the Yin and Yang School during the Hundred Schools of Thought era in Chinese philosophy.

#1683

Diogenes of Oenoanda

200 - 200 (0 years)

Diogenes of Oenoanda was an Epicurean Greek from the 2nd century AD who carved a summary of the philosophy of Epicurus onto a portico wall in the ancient Greek city of Oenoanda in Lycia . The surviving fragments of the wall, originally extended about 80 meters, form an important source of Epicurean philosophy. The inscription, written in Greek, sets out Epicurus' teachings on physics, epistemology, and ethics. It was originally about 25,000 words long and filled 260 square meters of wall space. Less than a third of it has been recovered.

#1684

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.

#1685

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...

#1686

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.

#1687

Rick Roderick

#16603

Overall Influence

1949 - 2002 (53 years)

Rick Roderick was an American professor of philosophy, best known for his lectures for The Teaching Company. Life Roderick was born in Abilene, Texas, on June 16, 1949, son of a "con-man" and a "beautician". He was a teacher of philosophy at several universities, where he was much revered by many students for a Socratic style of teaching combined with a brash and often humorous approach. His breakthrough into wider circles came with his engagement with The Teaching Company where he recorded several lecture series. Rick Roderick died on January 18, 2002, from a congestive heart condition.

#1688

Helen Longino

#17164

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Helen Elizabeth Longino is an American philosopher of science who has argued for the significance of values and social interactions to scientific inquiry. She has written about the role of women in science and is a central figure in feminist epistemology and social epistemology. She is the Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. In 2016, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#1689

Frederick G. Lawrence

Frederick G. Lawrence

#10478

Overall Influence

Frederick G. Lawrence is an American hermeneutic philosopher and theologian, and a specialist in Bernard Lonergan, teaching in the Department of Theology at Boston College, Boston, US. Life Fred Lawrence is married to Sue Lawrence. He has been running the annual Lonergan Workshop at Boston College for many years, and is editor of Lonergan Workshop, which publishes the proceedings. He also convened the First and Second International Lonergan Conferences at Rome and Toronto , and the Third and Fourth International Lonergan Conferences at Mainz and Jerusalem respectively.

#1690

Achille Varzi

#13162

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Achille C. Varzi is an Italian-born philosopher who is John Dewey Professor of philosophy at Columbia University. He graduated from the University of Trento and received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto. Varzi is also Bruno Kessler Honorary Professor at the University of Trento and, since 2017, Visiting Professor at the University of Italian Switzerland.

#1691

Eurymedon the Hierophant

#15076

Overall Influence

Eurymedon the Hierophant was a representative of the priestly clan overseeing the Eleusinian Mysteries. Together with Demophilus he reportedly brought a charge of impiety against Aristotle after Alexander the Great's death in 323 BC.

#1692

Michael Inwood

#21554

Overall Influence

1944 - 2021 (77 years)

Michael Inwood was a British philosopher and fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He is known for his works on Hegel, Heidegger and ancient philosophy. Inwood died from lung cancer in Kidlington on 31 December 2021, at the age of 77.

#1693

Marek Jędraszewski

Marek Jędraszewski

#16589

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Marek Jędraszewski is a Polish Roman Catholic prelate who has been Metropolitan Archbishop of Kraków since 8 December 2016. He served as the Metropolitan Archbishop of Łódź from 2012 to 2017. He has also been Vice-President of the Polish Episcopal Conference since 2014.

#1694

Mark Siegler

#11770

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Mark Siegler is an American physician who specializes in internal medicine. He is the Lindy Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Chicago. , He is the Founding Director of Chicago's MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Siegler has practiced and taught internal medicine at the University of Chicago for more than 50 years.

#1695

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 .

#1696

Harold Wolff

1898 - 1962 (64 years)

Harold George Wolff was an American doctor, neurologist and pseudoscientist who conducted intentionally harmful and brain-damaging pseudoscientific human experimentation. He is generally considered the father of modern headache research, and a pioneer in the study of psychosomatic illness.

#1697

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...

#1698

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.

#1699

Duncan Pritchard

#17552

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Duncan Pritchard is the chancellor's professor of philosophy and the director of graduate studies at the University of California, Irvine. He was previously professor of philosophy and chair in epistemology at the University of Edinburgh. His research is mainly in the field of epistemology. He has studied the problem of scepticism, the epistemic externalism/internalism distinction; the rationality of religious belief; testimony; the relationship between epistemic and content externalism; virtue epistemology; epistemic value; modal epistemology; Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology; the history ...

#1700

Alberto Mantovani

#12944

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Alberto Mantovani is an Italian physician and immunologist. He is Scientific Director of Istituto Clinico Humanitas , President and Founder of the Fondazione Humanitas per la Ricerca, and Professor of Pathology at the State University of Milan. He is known for his works in the roles of the immune system in the development of cancer. His research on tumor-associated macrophages established inflammation as one of the causes of cancer. He was the first to identify monocyte chemotactic protein - 1 / CCL2 in 1983, and PTX3 in 1997. His works revealed the existence of decoy receptors in cell-signalling.

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