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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,

#1901

George Gurdjieff

George Gurdjieff

1866 - 1949 (83 years)

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was a philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, and composer. Gurdjieff taught that people are not conscious of themselves and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and serve our purpose as human beings. The practice of his teaching has become known as "The Work" and is additional to the ways of the fakir, monk and yogi, so that his student P. D. Ouspensky referred to it as the "Fourth Way".

#1902

Gary Habermas

#10066

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Gary Robert Habermas is an American New Testament scholar and theologian who frequently writes and lectures on the resurrection of Jesus. He has specialized in cataloging and communicating trends among scholars in the field of historical Jesus and New Testament studies. He is distinguished research professor and chair of the department of philosophy and theology at Liberty University.

#1903

David Gorski

#962

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

David Henry Gorski is an American surgical oncologist and professor of surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine. He specializes in breast cancer surgery at the Karmanos Cancer Institute. Gorski is an outspoken skeptic and critic of alternative medicine and the anti-vaccination movement. A prolific blogger, he writes as Orac at Respectful Insolence, and as himself at Science-Based Medicine where he is the managing editor.

#1904

Cheng Hao

1032 - 1085 (53 years)

Chéng Hào , Courtesy name Bóchún , was a Chinese philosopher and politician from Luoyang, China. In his youth, he and his younger brother Cheng Yi were students of Zhou Dunyi, one of the architects of Neo-Confucian cosmology. His philosophy was dualistic and pantheistic ; among his quotes are "outside dao there are no things and outside things there is no dao", "we call it god to emphasize the wonderful mystery of principle in ten thousand things, just as we call it lord to characterize its being the ruler of events" and "in terms of the reality, it is change; in terms of principle, it is da...

#1905

Zhao Tingyang

#10306

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Zhao Tingyang is a political philosopher credited with modernising the ancient Chinese concept of Tianxia. Biography Zhao Tingyang graduated from Renmin University of China and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and is now a professor in the Institute of Philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and is a senior fellow of Peking University Berggruen Research Institute. He was also a Pusey Distinguished Fellow at the Harvard–Yenching Institute in 2013.

#1906

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi

#3750

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi is a Pakistani philosopher, educationist, and a scholar of Islam. He is also the founding President of Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences and its sister organisation Danish Sara.

#1907

M. M. McCabe

#17146

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Mary Margaret Anne McCabe , known as M. M. McCabe, is emerita professor of ancient philosophy at King's College London. She has written books on Plato and other ancient philosophers, including the pre-Socratics, Socrates and Aristotle.

#1908

Raymond Klibansky

#17542

Overall Influence

1905 - 2005 (100 years)

Raymond Klibansky, was a German-Canadian historian of philosophy and art. Biography Born in Paris, to Rosa Scheidt and Hermann Klibansky, he was educated at the University of Kiel, University of Hamburg and Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, where he received a Ph.D. in 1928. From 1927 to 1933 he was an assistant at the Heidelberg Academy and from 1931 until 1933 he was a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. In 1933 he was no longer able to teach since he was a Jew.

#1909

Ellis Sandoz

#9317

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Ellis Sandoz is the Hermann Moyse Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies at Louisiana State University. Sandoz is also the former chairman of that department.

#1910

Nadia Maftouni

#11900

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Nadia Maftouni is an Iranian academic, philosophical author and artist. She is best known as a leading Researcher on Farabian, Avicennian and Suhrawardian philosophy with her modern reading of their works. She is also an established researcher in Jurisprudence and Islamic History. She is an associate professor at University of Tehran, where she is an alumna and a member of the department of Philosophy and Islamic Theology. She is a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School and she is on the board of History of Philosophy Quarterly. She is also famous for proposing to Iranian artist Hossein N...

#1911

Harald Holz

#30539

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Harald Holz is a German philosopher, logician, mathematician , poet and novelist. Life Holz studied philosophy from 1953 to 1957 in Pullach im Isartal/Germany and from 1959 until 1961 Catholic Theology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt/Germany . He continued his study of philosophy at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University Bonn/Germany. There he received his research doctorate in 1964 with Gottfried Martin with the thesis Transcendental philosophy and metaphysics.

#1912

Paulin J. Hountondji

#9770

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Paulin Jidenu Hountondji is a Beninese philosopher, politician and academic considered one of the most important figures in the history of African philosophy. Since the 1970s he has taught at the Université Nationale du Bénin in Cotonou, where he is Professor of Philosophy. In the early 1990s he briefly served as Minister of Education and Minister for Culture and Communications in the Government of Benin.

#1913

David S. Oderberg

#18183

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Professor David Simon Oderberg is an Australian philosopher of metaphysics and ethics based in Britain since 1987. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading. He describes himself as a non-consequentialist or a traditionalist in his works. Broadly speaking, Oderberg places himself in opposition to Peter Singer and other utilitarian or consequentialist thinkers. He has published over thirty academic papers and has authored six books: The Metaphysics of Good and Evil, Opting Out: Conscience and Cooperation in a Pluralistic Society, Real Essentialism, Applied Ethics, Moral Theory, and The Metaphysics of Identity over Time.

#1914

Hermarchus

325 BC - 250 BC (75 years)

Hermarchus or Hermarch , sometimes incorrectly written Hermachus , was an Epicurean philosopher. He was the disciple and successor of Epicurus as head of the school. None of his writings survives. He wrote works directed against Plato, Aristotle, and Empedocles. A fragment from his Against Empedocles, preserved by Porphyry, discusses the need for law in society. His views on the nature of the gods are quoted by Philodemus.

#1915

Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne

#2682

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Massimo Introvigne is an Italian Roman Catholic sociologist of religion and intellectual property attorney. He is a founder and the managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions , a Turin-based organization which has been described as "the highest profile lobbying and information group for controversial religions".

#1916

Paul Ridker

#22886

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Paul M. Ridker is a cardiovascular epidemiologist and biomedical researcher. He is currently the Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine at Harvard University and Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he directs the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention. Ridker also holds an appointment as Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

#1917

Swami Prabhavananda

Swami Prabhavananda

1893 - 1976 (83 years)

Swami Prabhavananda was an Indian philosopher, monk of the Ramakrishna Order, and religious teacher. He moved to America in 1923 to take up the role of assistant minister in the San Francisco Vedanta Society. In 1928 he was the minister of a small group in Portland, OR, but in 1930 he founded the Vedanta Society of Southern California. The Swami spent the rest of his life there, writing and collaborating with some of the most distinguished authors and intellectuals of the time, including Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, and Gerald Heard.

#1918

Anton Denikin

1872 - 1947 (75 years)

Anton Ivanovich Denikin was a Russian military leader who served as the acting supreme ruler of the Russian State and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of South Russia during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923. Previously, he was a general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I.

#1919

Hidé Ishiguro

#29310

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Hidé Ishiguro is a Japanese analytic philosopher and emeritus professor at Keio University, Tokyo. She is considered an expert on the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz on whom she has published many papers. She is also a Wittgenstein scholar.

#1920

Marvin Farber

1901 - 1980 (79 years)

Marvin Farber was an American philosopher and educator. Early life and education He was born in Buffalo, New York to Jewish parents Simon and Matilda Farber. He was the second oldest of their 14 children. One of his brothers was pathologist and cancer researcher Sidney Farber.

#1921

Maurice Mandelbaum

1908 - 1987 (79 years)

Maurice Mandelbaum was an American philosopher and phenomenologist . He was professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University with stints at Dartmouth College and Swarthmore College. He held two degrees from Dartmouth and a PhD from Yale University. He was known for his work in phenomenology, epistemology, philosophy of perception , and the history of ideas.

#1922

Huw Price

#13887

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Huw Price is an Australian philosopher, formerly the Bertrand Russell Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, Cambridge, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was previously Challis Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney, and before that Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh. He is also one of three founders and the Academic Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and the Academic Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.

#1923

Atticus

150 - 200 (50 years)

Atticus was an ancient Platonic philosopher who lived in the second century of the Christian era, under the emperor Marcus Aurelius. His lifetime fell into the epoch of Middle Platonism, of which he was one of the most notable representatives.

#1924

William L. Reese

#25893

Overall Influence

1921 - 2017 (96 years)

William L. Reese was a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy, State University of New York at Albany. He was born in Jefferson City, Missouri. Reese gained his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1947. From 1967 to 1999 he was Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany, and since 1999 has been professor emeritus and research professor in philosophy at the university.

#1925

Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze

#15591

Overall Influence

1963 - 2007 (44 years)

Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze was a Nigerian philosopher. Eze was a specialist in postcolonial philosophy. He wrote as well as edited influential postcolonial histories of philosophy in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. He brought Immanuel Kant's racism to light among Western thinkers in the 1990s, an area of Kant's life that Western philosophers often gloss over. Influences in his own work include Paulin Hountondji, Richard Rorty, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant.

#1926

Christopher Peacocke

#19962

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Christopher Arthur Bruce Peacocke is a British philosopher known for his work in philosophy of mind and epistemology. His recent publications, in the field of epistemology, have defended a version of rationalism. His daughter, Antonia Peacocke, is also a philosopher, now at Stanford University, specialising in philosophy of mind.

#1927

Abraham Wald

1902 - 1950 (48 years)

Abraham Wald was a Jewish Hungarian mathematician who contributed to decision theory, geometry and econometrics, and founded the field of sequential analysis. One of his well-known statistical works was written during World War II on how to minimize the damage to bomber aircraft and took into account the survivorship bias in his calculations. He spent his research career at Columbia University. He was the grandson of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner.

#1928

Michael F. Holick

Michael F. Holick

#22521

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Michael F. Holick is an American adult endocrinologist, specializing in vitamin D, such as the identification of both calcidiol, the major circulating form of vitamin D, and calcitriol, the active form of vitamin D. His work has been the basis for diagnostic tests and therapies for vitamin D-related diseases. He is a professor of medicine at the Boston University Medical Center and editor-in-chief of the journal Clinical Laboratory.

#1929

Carlo Michelstaedter

Carlo Michelstaedter

1887 - 1910 (23 years)

Carlo Raimondo Michelstaedter or Michelstädter was an Italian philosopher, artist, and man of letters. Life Carlo Michelstaedter was born in Gorizia, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian County of Gorizia and Gradisca, the youngest of four children of Albert and Emma Michelstaedter . His older siblings were Gino , Elda and Paula . His full name was Carlo Raimondo . His father was the director of the local branch of the Trieste-based Assicurazioni Generali insurance company. The Michelstaedters were an Italian-speaking upper middle class Jewish family of Ashkenazi origin.

#1930

Emmanuel Mounier

Emmanuel Mounier

1905 - 1950 (45 years)

Emmanuel Mounier was a French philosopher, theologian, teacher and essayist. Biography Mounier was the guiding spirit in the French personalist movement, and founder and director of Esprit, the magazine which was the organ of the movement. Mounier, who was the child of peasants, was a brilliant scholar at the Sorbonne. In 1929, when he was only twenty-four, he came under the influence of the French writer Charles Péguy, to whom he ascribed the inspiration of the personalist movement. Mounier's personalism became a main influence of the non-conformists of the 1930s.

#1931

Mazzino Montinari

1928 - 1986 (58 years)

Mazzino Montinari was an Italian scholar of Germanistics. A native of Lucca, he became regarded as one of the most distinguished researchers on Friedrich Nietzsche, and harshly criticized the edition of The Will to Power, which he regarded as a forgery, in his book The will to power does not exist.

#1932

Sadie Plant

#7218

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Sadie Plant is a British philosopher, cultural theorist, and author. Education She earned her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Manchester in 1989 and subsequently taught at the University of Birmingham's Department of Cultural Studies before going on to found the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit with colleague Nick Land at the University of Warwick, where she was a faculty member. Her original research was related to the Situationist International before turning to the social and political potential of cyber-technology. Her writing in the 1990s would prove influential in the developm...

#1933

Takis Fotopoulos

Takis Fotopoulos

#3961

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Takis Fotopoulos is a Greek political philosopher, economist and writer who founded the Inclusive Democracy movement, aiming at a synthesis of classical democracy with libertarian socialism and the radical currents in the new social movements. He is an academic, and has written many books and over 900 articles,. He is the editor of The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy and is the author of Towards An Inclusive Democracy in which the foundations of the Inclusive Democracy project were set. His latest book is The New World Order in Action: Volume 1: Globalization, the Brexit Revolution and the "Left"- Towards a Democratic Community of Sovereign Nations .

#1934

Gary Gutting

#12058

Overall Influence

1942 - 2019 (77 years)

Gary Michael Gutting was an American philosopher and holder of an endowed chair in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His daughter is writer Tasha Alexander. Work Gutting was an expert on the philosopher Michel Foucault and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Through his publications in such media outlets as The New York Times and The Stone, he adopted the role of a public intellectual. He dealt with both continental and analytic philosophy and had written on bridging the analytic-continental divide.

#1935

Richard Joyce

#21810

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Richard Joyce is a British-Australian-New Zealand philosopher, known for his contributions to the fields of meta-ethics and moral psychology. He is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington.

#1936

Dirk Verhofstadt

#10420

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Dirk Verhofstadt is a Belgian social liberal theorist and younger brother of former Belgian Prime Minister and former ALDE European Parliament Leader Guy Verhofstadt. He has a keen interest in political philosophy, and his philosophical outlook is influenced by Karl Popper, John Stuart Mill, Cesare Beccaria, Thomas Paine, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.

#1937

Georg Friedrich Daumer

Georg Friedrich Daumer

1800 - 1875 (75 years)

Georg Friedrich Daumer was a German poet and philosopher. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native city, at that time directed by the famous philosopher Hegel. In 1817 he entered the University of Erlangen as a student of theology, but abandoned that study for philosophy. For a number of years Daumer was professor at the gymnasium of Nuremberg; owing to ill-health he was pensioned in 1832 and henceforth devoted himself entirely to literary work. While at Erlangen he came strongly under the influence of Pietism. Soon, however, he became sceptical and exhibited decided leanings towards pantheism.

#1938

Jody Azzouni

#25116

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Jody Azzouni is an American philosopher, poet, and writer. He currently is Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Education He received his bachelor's degree and master's degree from New York University and his PhD from the City University of New York.

#1939

Aleksei Aleksandrovich Kozlov

Aleksei Aleksandrovich Kozlov

1831 - 1901 (70 years)

Aleksei Aleksandrovich Kozlov was a Russian philosopher known for his contributions to Russian idealism. He is recognized as the founder of the "neo-Leibnizian" movement in Russia, which involved updating the ideas of philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, as well as the works of R.H. Lotze and Gustav Teichmüller. Kozlov's philosophy is also considered a precursor to Russian personalist metaphysics.

#1940

Gabriel Rockhill

#16272

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Gabriel Rockhill is a French-American philosopher, writer, cultural critic, and activist. He is Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, Director of the Critical Theory Workshop/Atelier de Théorie Critique, and former Directeur de programme at the Collège International de Philosophie.

#1941

Samuel Ramos

1897 - 1959 (62 years)

Samuel Ramos Magaña, PhD , was a Mexican philosopher and writer. Ramos was born in Zitácuaro, Michoacán, and in 1909 entered the Colegio de San Nicolás Hidalgo . He published his first works in the school's student publication Flor de Loto. In 1915 he began to study philosophy under the tutelage of his mentor, José Torres Orozco.

#1942

François Jullien

François Jullien

#16360

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

François Jullien is a French philosopher, Hellenist, and sinologist. Biography An alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure and holder of the agrégation, France's professorial degree, François Jullien studied Chinese language and thought at Peking University and Shanghai University from 1975 to 1977. He received his French university doctorate in 1978 and his French research doctorate in Far East studies in 1983.

#1943

Barry Smith

#19447

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Barry Smith is an academic working in the fields of ontology and biomedical informatics. Smith is the author of more than 700 scientific publications, including 15 authored or edited books, and he is one of the most widely cited living philosophers.

#1944

Theodore Schick

#12766

Overall Influence

Theodore Schick is an American author in the field of philosophy. His articles have appeared in numerous publications and include topics such as functionalism and its effect on immortality, the logic behind the criteria of adequacy, and applying a scientific approach to the paranormal. In 1994, Schick published How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age, which is designed to teach the reader how to think critically about extraordinary claims.

#1945

Stephen Yablo

#22030

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Stephen Yablo is a Canadian-born American philosopher. He is David W. Skinner Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught previously at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He specializes in the philosophy of logic, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mathematics.

#1946

Mark Johnson

#10142

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Mark L. Johnson is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He is known for contributions to embodied philosophy, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, some of which he has coauthored with George Lakoff such as Metaphors We Live By. However, he has also published on philosophical topics such as John Dewey, Immanuel Kant and ethics.

#1947

Ernest Addison Moody

1903 - 1975 (72 years)

Ernest Addison Moody was a noted philosopher, medievalist, and logician as well as a musician and scientist. He served as professor of philosophy at University of California, Los Angeles , where he also served as department chair, and Columbia University. He has an annual memorial conference in his name on the subject of medieval philosophy. He was president of the American Philosophical Association from 1963 to 1964.

#1948

Andrés Bello

1781 - 1865 (84 years)

Andrés de Jesús María y José Bello López was a Venezuelan humanist, diplomat, poet, legislator, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose political and literary works constitute an important part of Spanish American culture. Bello is featured on the old 2,000 Venezuelan bolívar and the 20,000 Chilean peso notes.

#1949

John of Salisbury

John of Salisbury

1110 - 1180 (70 years)

John of Salisbury , who described himself as Johannes Parvus , was an English author, philosopher, educationalist, diplomat and bishop of Chartres. Early life and education Born at Salisbury, England, he was of Anglo-Saxon rather than of Norman extraction, and therefore apparently a clerk from a modest background, whose career depended upon his education. Beyond that, and that he applied to himself the cognomen of Parvus, meaning "short" or "small", few details are known regarding his early life. From his own statements it is gathered that he crossed to France about 1136, and began regular stu...

#1950

Stephan Witasek

1870 - 1915 (45 years)

Stephan Witasek was an Austrian philosopher noted for his contribution to the development of the Graz School. He is cited as the most talented psychologist of the school and was groomed as Alexius Meinong's successor. Witasek is noted for developing a theory of aesthetics within the Graz School's abstract object theory.

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