The Most Influential People Across History

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#18751

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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#18752

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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#18753

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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#18754

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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#18755

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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#18756

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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#18757

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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#18758

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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#18759

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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#18760

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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#18761

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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#18762

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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#18763

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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#18764

David Gozal

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#18765

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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#18766

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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#18768

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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#18769

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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#18770

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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#18771

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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#18772

William H. Dietz

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#18773

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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#18774

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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#18775

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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#18776

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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#18777

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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#18778

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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#18779

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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#18780

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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#18781

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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#18782

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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#18783

Johann Wilhelm Ritter

Johann Wilhelm Ritter
1776 - 1810 (34 years)
Johann Wilhelm Ritter was a German chemist, physicist and philosopher. He was born in Samitz near Haynau in Silesia , and died in Munich. Life and work Johann Wilhelm Ritter's first involvement with science began when he was 14 years old. He became an apprentice to an apothecary in Liegnitz , and acquired a deep interest in chemistry. He began medicine studies at the University of Jena in 1796. A self-taught scientist, he made many experimental researches on chemistry, electricity and other fields.
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#18784

Demetrius of Phalerum

Demetrius of Phalerum
350 BC - 283 BC (67 years)
Demetrius of Phalerum was an Athenian orator originally from Phalerum, an ancient port of Athens. A student of Theophrastus, and perhaps of Aristotle, he was one of the first members of the Peripatetic school of philosophy. Demetrius had been a distinguished statesman who was appointed by Cassander, the King of Macedon, to govern Athens, where Demetrius ruled as sole ruler for ten years. During this time, he introduced important reforms of the legal system, while also maintaining pro-Cassander oligarchic rule.
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#18785

Andrew Taylor Still

Andrew Taylor Still
1828 - 1917 (89 years)
Andrew Taylor Still was the founder of osteopathic medicine. He was also a physician and surgeon, author, inventor and Kansas territorial and state legislator. He was one of the founders of Baker University, the oldest four-year college in the state of Kansas, and was the founder of the American School of Osteopathy , the world's first osteopathic medical school, in Kirksville, Missouri.
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#18786

Jean-Pierre de Crousaz

Jean-Pierre de Crousaz
1663 - 1748 (85 years)
Jean-Pierre de Crousaz was a Swiss theologian and philosopher. He is now remembered more for his letters of commentary than his formal works. Life De Crousaz was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was a many-sided man, whose numerous works on many subjects had a great vogue in their day, but are now largely forgotten. He has been described as an initiateur plutôt qu'un créateur , chiefly because he introduced the philosophy of Descartes to Lausanne in opposition to the reigning Aristotelianism, and also as a Calvinist pedant of the French abbés of the 18th century.
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#18787

John Stuart Mackenzie

1860 - 1935 (75 years)
John Stuart Mackenzie was a British philosopher, born near Glasgow, and educated at Glasgow, Cambridge, and Berlin. In 1884-89 he was a fellow at Edinburgh and from 1890 to 1896 fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured on political economy at Owens College, Manchester, in 1890-93, and in 1895 became professor of logic and philosophy in University College, Cardiff. Mackenzie was an idealist philosopher and a Hegelian of the type of Green, Bradley, Bosanquet, and Caird.
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#18788

Melchiorre Gioia

Melchiorre Gioia
1767 - 1829 (62 years)
Melchiorre Gioja was an Italian writer on philosophy and political economy. His name is spelled Gioia in modern Italian. Biography Gioja was born at Piacenza, in what is now northern Italy. Originally intended for the church, he took orders, but renounced them in 1796 and went to Milan, where he devoted himself to the study of political economy. Having obtained the prize for an essay on "the kind of free government best adapted to Italy" he decided upon the career of a publicist.
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#18789

Félicité de La Mennais

Félicité de La Mennais
1782 - 1854 (72 years)
Félicité Robert de La Mennais was a French Catholic priest, philosopher and political theorist. He was one of the most influential intellectuals of Restoration France. Lamennais is considered the forerunner of liberal Catholicism and social Catholicism.
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#18790

George Frederic Watts

George Frederic Watts
1817 - 1904 (87 years)
George Frederic Watts was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said "I paint ideas, not things." Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.
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#18791

Carl Van Vechten

Carl Van Vechten
1880 - 1964 (84 years)
Carl Van Vechten was an American writer and artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein. He gained fame as a writer, and notoriety as well, for his 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. In his later years, he took up photography and took many portraits of notable people. Although he was married to women for most of his adult years, Van Vechten engaged in numerous homosexual affairs over his lifetime.
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#18792

Phaedrus

500 BC - 393 BC (107 years)
Phaedrus , son of Pythocles, of the Myrrhinus deme , was an ancient Athenian aristocrat associated with the inner-circle of the philosopher Socrates. He was indicted in the profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries in 415 during the Peloponnesian War, causing him to flee Athens.
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#18793

Mirza Fatali Akhundov

Mirza Fatali Akhundov
1812 - 1878 (66 years)
Mirza Fatali Akhundov , also known as Mirza Fatali Akhundzade, or Mirza Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh , was a celebrated Iranian Azerbaijani author, playwright, atheist, philosopher, and founder of Azerbaijani modern literary criticism, "who acquired fame primarily as the writer of European-inspired plays in the Azeri Turkic language".
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#18794

Juan Bautista Muñoz

Juan Bautista Muñoz
1745 - 1799 (54 years)
Juan Bautista Muñoz was an 18th-century Spanish philosopher and historian. Biography Born in Museros in 1745, Juan Bautista Muñoz was the third of four sons. After the death of his father in 1751, his mother placed him under the tutelage of his uncle, the Dominican friar Gabriel Ferrandis at the convent of Pilar de Valencia, where he began to receive his first formal education. From 1753 to 1757, Muñoz was enrolled at the Jesuit seminary in Valencia, where he came under the influence of the polymath Antonio Eximeno Pujades, and began to take an interest in mathematics and modern philosophy...
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#18795

Étienne Vacherot

Étienne Vacherot
1809 - 1897 (88 years)
Étienne Vacherot was a French philosophical writer. Life Vacherot was born of peasant parentage at Torcenay, near Langres in the Haute-Marne département of France. He was educated at the École Normale, and returned there as director of studies in 1838, after some years spent in provincial schoolmasterships. In 1839 he succeeded his master Victor Cousin as professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne. His Histoire critique de l'école d'Alexandrie , was his first and best-known work. It drew on him attacks from the Clerical party which led to his suspension in 1851. Shortly afterwards he refused to swear allegiance to the new imperial government, and was dismissed from his post.
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#18796

Mircea Florian

1888 - 1960 (72 years)
Mircea Florian was a Romanian philosopher and translator. Active mainly during the interwar period, he was noted as one of the leading proponents of rationalism, opposing it to the Trăirist philosophy of Nae Ionescu. His work, comprising some 20 books, shows Florian as a disciple of centrists and rationalists such as Constantin Rădulescu-Motru and Titu Maiorescu.
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#18797

Shriharsha

1200 - 1200 (0 years)
Shri-harsha was a 12th century CE Indian philosopher and poet. Śrīharṣa works discuss various themes in Indian Philosophy, such as pramana. He has been often interpreted as promoting Advaita Vedānta in his Sweets of Refutation , however, this interpretation remains controversial among modern scholars. Śrīharṣa's thought was influential for both Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika thinkers and also for the Advaita Vedānta tradition.
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#18798

Worthington Hooker

1806 - 1867 (61 years)
Worthington Hooker was an American physician, born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Worthington Hooker School in New Haven, Connecticut is named after him. He graduated Yale University in 1825 and Harvard University with a degree in Medicine in 1829. He practiced in Connecticut until 1852. Afterwards, he was professor of the theory and practice of medicine at Yale. He was vice president of the American Medical Association in 1864. His principal works are:Physician and Patient Homeopathy: An Examination of the Doctrines and Evidences physiologyRational Therapeutics Child's Book of Nature 3 volum...
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#18799

Manuel Joël

Manuel Joël
1826 - 1890 (64 years)
Manuel Joël was a German Jewish philosopher and preacher. He was born in Birnbaum , Grand Duchy of Posen. After teaching for several years at the Breslau rabbinical seminary, founded by Zecharias Frankel, in 1863 he became the successor of Abraham Geiger in the rabbinate of Breslau. He made important contributions to the history of the school of Aqiba as well as to the history of Jewish philosophy, his essays on Ibn Gabirol and Maimonides being of permanent worth. But his most influential work was connected with the relations between Jewish philosophy and the medieval scholasticism. He showed...
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#18800

Jalal al-Din Davani

Jalal al-Din Davani
1426 - 1502 (76 years)
Jalal al-Din Davani , also known as Allama Davani , was a theologian, philosopher, jurist, and poet, who is considered to have been one of the leading scholars in late 15th-century Iran. A native of the town of Davan in the southern Iranian region of Fars, Davani completed his education at the provincial capital of Shiraz, where he started to distinguish himself. In the 1460s, he briefly served as the sadr of the Qara Qoyunlu governor of Fars, Mirza Yusuf, and accompanied the latter's father Jahan Shah in his battle against the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan , where the latter emerged victorious.
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