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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,

#1701

Béla H. Bánáthy

Béla H. Bánáthy

#1989

Overall Influence

1919 - 2003 (84 years)

Béla Heinrich Bánáthy was a Hungarian-American linguist, and Professor at San Jose State University and UC Berkeley. He is known as founder of the White Stag Leadership Development Program, established the International Systems Institute in 1982, and was co-founder of the General Evolutionary Research Group in 1984.

#1702

David Kolb

#9236

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

David Kolb is an American philosopher and the Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Bates College in Maine. Kolb received a B.A. from Fordham University in 1963 and an M.A. in 1965. He later received a M.Phil. from Yale University in 1970 and a Ph.D. in 1972. Kolb's Dissertation was titled "Conceptual Pluralism and Rationality." Most of Kolb's writing deals with "what it means to live with historical connections and traditions at a time when we can no longer be totally defined by that history." Professor Kolb taught at the University of Chicago before moving to Bates in 1977 ...

#1703

Frank Ruda

1900 - Present (124 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.

#1704

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.

#1705

Alexander Spirkin

#16731

Overall Influence

1918 - 2004 (86 years)

Alexander Georgyevich Spirkin was a Soviet and Russian philosopher and psychologist. He was born in Saratov Governorate and graduated from the Moscow State Pedagogical University. In 1959 he received his doctorate in philosophy for a dissertation on the origin of consciousness.

#1706

Adrian Johnston

#12890

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Adrian Johnston is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and a faculty member at the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute in Atlanta.

#1707

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 .

#1708

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.

#1709

F. S. C. Northrop

1893 - 1992 (99 years)

Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop was an American legal philosopher and influential comparative philosopher. After receiving a B.A. from Beloit College in 1915, and an MA from Yale University in 1919, he went on to Harvard University where he earned another MA in 1922 and a Ph.D. in 1924. At Harvard, Northrop studied under Alfred North Whitehead. He was appointed to the Yale faculty in 1923 as an instructor in Philosophy, and later was named professor in 1932. In 1947 he was appointed Sterling Professor of Philosophy and Law. He chaired the Philosophy department from 1938 to 1940 and was the fir...

#1710

Drucilla Cornell

#8473

Overall Influence

1950 - 2022 (72 years)

Drucilla Cornell , was an American philosopher and feminist theorist, whose work has been influential in political and legal philosophy, ethics, deconstruction, critical theory, and feminism. Cornell was an emerita Professor of Political Science, Comparative Literature and Women's & Gender Studies at Rutgers University the State University of New Jersey; Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; and a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. She also taught for many years on the law faculties of the University of Pennsylvania and of Cardozo La...

#1711

Lilli Alanen

#19788

Overall Influence

1941 - 2021 (80 years)

Lilli Kristina Alanen was a Finnish philosopher and Professor Emeritus of History of Philosophy at Department of Philosophy at Uppsala University. She was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.

#1712

Hans-Johann Glock

#21855

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Hans-Johann Glock is a German philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Zurich. Biography Glock studied philosophy, German studies, and mathematics at University of Tübingen, University of Oxford, and the Free University of Berlin, and in 1990 received his DPhil at Oxford. After lectureships at Oxford and the University of Reading, he was appointed a position in 2006 at the University of Zurich, where he holds a chair in Theoretical Philosophy. He is also visiting professor at the University of Reading.

#1713

Bob Hale

#16033

Overall Influence

1945 - 2017 (72 years)

Bob Hale, FRSE was a British philosopher, known for his contributions to the development of the neo-Fregean philosophy of mathematics in collaboration with Crispin Wright, and for his works in modality and philosophy of language.

#1714

Molefi Kete Asante

Molefi Kete Asante

#1546

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Molefi Kete Asante is an American professor and philosopher. He is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies. He is currently a professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University, where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies.

#1715

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.

#1716

Kelly James Clark

#16845

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Kelly James Clark is an American philosopher noted for his work in the philosophy of religion, science and religion, and the cognitive science of religion. He is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Professor at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids Michigan.

#1717

Paul Watzlawick

#1645

Overall Influence

1921 - 2007 (86 years)

Paul Watzlawick was an Austrian-American family therapist, psychologist, communication theorist, and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism, he commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy. Watzlawick believed that people create their own suffering in the very act of trying to fix their emotional problems. He was one of the most influential figures at the Mental Research Institute and lived and worked in Palo Alto, California.

#1718

Michel Henry

#10425

Overall Influence

1922 - 2002 (80 years)

Michel Henry was a French philosopher, phenomenologist and novelist. He wrote five novels and numerous philosophical works. He also lectured at universities in France, Belgium, the United States, and Japan.

#1719

Charles Leonard Hamblin

1922 - 1985 (63 years)

Charles Leonard Hamblin was an Australian philosopher, logician, and computer pioneer, as well as a professor of philosophy at the New South Wales University of Technology in Sydney. Among his most well-known achievements in the area of computer science was the introduction of Reverse Polish Notation and the use in 1957 of a push-down pop-up stack. This preceded the work of Friedrich Ludwig Bauer and Klaus Samelson on use of a push-pop stack. The stack had been invented by Alan Turing in 1946 when he introduced such a stack in his design of the ACE computer. In philosophy, Hamblin is known for his book Fallacies, a standard work in the area of the false conclusions in logic.

#1720

Richard Carrier

Richard Carrier

#9813

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Richard Cevantis Carrier is an ancient historian. He is long-time contributor to skeptical websites, including The Secular Web and Freethought Blogs, Carrier has published a number of books and articles on philosophy and religion in classical antiquity, discussing the development of early Christianity from a skeptical viewpoint, and concerning religion and morality in the modern world. He has publicly debated a number of scholars on the historical basis of the Bible and Christianity. He is a prominent advocate of the theory that Jesus did not exist, which he has argued in a number of his works.

#1721

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.

#1722

Otfried Höffe

#15527

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Otfried Höffe is a German philosopher and professor. Academic career From 1964 to 1970, Höffe studied philosophy, history, sociology and theology at the universities of Münster, Tübingen, Saarbrücken and Munich. His 1971 dissertation was on the practical philosophy of Aristotle. In 1970 and 1971, he was visiting scholar at Columbia University.

#1723

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...

#1724

Ruth Chang

#10773

Overall Influence

Ruth Chang is an American legal scholar who serves as the Professor and Chair of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford, a Professorial Fellow of University College, Oxford, and an American professor of philosophy. She was previously a professor at Rutgers University from 1998 to 2019. She is known for her research on the incommensurability of values and on practical reason and normativity. She is also widely known for her work on decision-making and is lecturer or consultant on choice at institutions ranging from video-gaming to pharmaceuticals, the U.S. Navy, World Bank, and CIA.

#1725

Martin Kusch

#12296

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Martin Kusch is Professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna. Until 2009, Kusch was Professor of Philosophy and Sociology of science at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University. Prior to Cambridge, Kusch was lecturer in the Science Studies Unit of the University of Edinburgh.

#1726

Richard Shusterman

#19190

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Richard Shusterman is an American pragmatist philosopher. Known for his contributions to philosophical aesthetics and the emerging field of somaesthetics, currently he is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University.

#1727

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.

#1728

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.

#1729

Philippe Sollers

Philippe Sollers

#1871

Overall Influence

1936 - 2023 (87 years)

Philippe Sollers was a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde literary journal Tel Quel , which was published by Le Seuil and ran until 1982. Sollers then created the journal L'Infini, published first by Denoel, then by Gallimard with Sollers remaining as sole editor.

#1730

Kuno Lorenz

#15888

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Kuno Lorenz is a German philosopher. He developed a philosophy of dialogue, in connection with the pragmatic theory of action of the Erlangen constructivist school. Lorenz is married to the literary scholar Karin Lorenz-Lindemann.

#1731

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.

#1732

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.

#1733

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.

#1734

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.

#1735

William C. Roberts

William C. Roberts

#16113

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

William Clifford Roberts was an American physician specializing in cardiac pathology. He was a Master of the American College of Cardiology, a leading cardiovascular pathologist, and the former editor of both the American Journal of Cardiology and the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings.

#1736

Rein Raud

#8092

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Rein Raud is an Estonian scholar and author. Early life He was born in 1961 in the family of Eno Raud and Aino Pervik, both children's authors. He is the eldest of three children. His younger brother Mihkel Raud is a playwright, television personality, singer, guitarist, journalist and member of the Estonian Parliament; his sister Piret Raud is an artist and translator. He is the grandson of playwright, poet and writer Mart Raud.

#1737

Babette Babich

#19008

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Babette Babich is an American philosopher who writes from a continental perspective on aesthetics, philosophy of science, especially Nietzsche's, and technology, especially Heidegger's and Günther Anders, in addition to critical and cultural theory.

#1738

Oliver Leaman

#10991

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Oliver Leaman is an American professor of philosophy and Zantker Professor of Judaic studies at the University of Kentucky, where he has been teaching since 2000. He specialized in the history of Islamic, Jewish, and Eastern philosophy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1979.

#1739

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" .

#1740

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.

#1741

Elliott Mendelson

#13891

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Elliott Mendelson was an American logician. He was a professor of mathematics at Queens College of the City University of New York, and the Graduate Center, CUNY. He was Jr. Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University, 1956–58.

#1742

Volker Gerhardt

Volker Gerhardt

#21248

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Volker Gerhardt is a German philosopher. He specializes in ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, metaphysics and theology. His historical studies are centered on Plato, Kant and Nietzsche but have also dealt with Hegel, Marx, Jaspers, Voegelin, Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt and others.

#1743

Eva Kittay

#16007

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Eva Feder Kittay is an American philosopher. She is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University. Her primary interests include feminist philosophy, ethics, social and political theory, metaphor, and the application of these disciplines to disability studies. Kittay has also attempted to bring philosophical concerns into the public spotlight, including leading The Women's Committee of One Hundred in 1995, an organization that opposed the perceived punitive nature of the social welfare reforms taking place in the United States at the time.

#1744

Richard Taruskin

#3061

Overall Influence

1945 - 2022 (77 years)

Richard Filler Taruskin was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation. The breadth of his scrutiny into source material as well as musical analysis that combines sociological, cultural, and political perspectives has incited much discussion, debate and controversy. He regularly wrote music criticism for newspapers including The New York Times. He researched a wide variety of areas, but a central topic was Russian music from the 18th century to the present day. Other subjects he engaged with include the theory of p...

#1745

Kent Bach

#14982

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Kent Bach is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University. His primary areas of research include the philosophy of language, linguistics and epistemology. He is the author of three books: Exit-existentialism: A philosophy of self-awareness, Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts, and Thought and Reference published by Wadsworth, the MIT Press, and Oxford University Press, respectively.

#1746

Jacob Golomb

#18505

Overall Influence

1947 - 2023 (76 years)

Jacob Golomb was an Israeli philosopher. He was professor of philosophy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Golomb specialised in continental philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries, phenomenology, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, philosophy and literature; Philosophy of Zionism and Jewish modern philosophy. Professor Golomb was acting as the Philosophical Editor of the Hebrew University Magnes Press and was a member of its academic committee.

#1747

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.

#1748

Edwin Arthur Burtt

1892 - 1989 (97 years)

Edwin Arthur Burtt , usually cited as E. A. Burtt, was an American philosopher who wrote extensively on the philosophy of religion. His doctoral thesis published as a book under the title The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science has had a significant influence upon the history of science that is not generally recognized, according to H. Floris Cohen.

#1749

Jason Brennan

#6523

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Jason F. Brennan is an American philosopher and business professor. He is currently the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.

#1750

Peter Achinstein

#15469

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Peter Achinstein is an American philosopher of science at Johns Hopkins University. Biography Achinstein is the son of Betty and economist Asher Achinstein. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard with a dissertation on Carnap's theory of probability. It was the German philosopher Carl G. Hempel, in a visit to Harvard in 1953–4 , who motivated him to pursue philosophy of science. Upon getting a Harvard Traveling Fellowship, Achinstein spent a year in Oxford in 1959 working under the guidance of P. F. Strawson. In Oxford he attended seminars and lectures delivered by Gilbert Ryle, A.J. Ayer, and J.L.

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