Philosophy

Thinkers exploring fundamental questions.

People in Philosophy

81 profiles

Philosopher

Simone de Beauvoir

Writing The Second Sex, a foundational work of feminist thought.

Philosopher

Immanuel Kant

Reshaping philosophy’s accounts of knowledge, moral duty and human freedom.

Philosopher

Mary Wollstonecraft

Arguing that women deserve an education grounded in reason and equality.

Philosopher

Søren Kierkegaard

Exploring personal choice, anxiety and the demands of religious faith.

Philosopher

Bertrand Russell

Advancing mathematical logic and campaigning against war and nuclear weapons.

Philosopher

Jean-Paul Sartre

Making existentialism a major force in postwar intellectual life.

Philosopher

Voltaire

Using satire and argument to challenge intolerance, injustice and religious authority.

Linguist

Noam Chomsky

Transforming the study of language through generative grammar and becoming a prominent critic of power.

Philosopher

Confucius

Shaping Chinese philosophy through teachings on character, learning and how people should treat one another.

Political thinker

Hannah Arendt

Examining totalitarianism, political freedom and how ordinary people participate in wrongdoing.

Philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche

Challenging inherited morality and asking how people create values.

Philosopher

René Descartes

Making systematic doubt central to philosophy and linking algebra with geometry.

Philosopher

Baruch Spinoza

Arguing that mind and nature belong to one unified reality.

Philosopher

Albert Camus

Exploring the absurd and human solidarity in The Stranger and The Plague.

Philosopher

Mencius

Developing the Confucian argument that people possess beginnings of moral goodness.

Philosopher

Al-Farabi

Connecting Greek philosophy with Arabic thought on logic, society and knowledge.

Philosopher

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Rejecting spiritual authority and urging people to examine thought and conditioning directly.

Philosopher

Dōgen

Making seated meditation central to the Sōtō Zen tradition in Japan.

Philosopher

Socrates

Making persistent questioning a model of philosophical inquiry.

Philosopher

Plato

Writing the Republic and founding the Academy.

Philosopher

Aristotle

Building influential studies of logic, ethics, politics and the natural world.

Philosopher

Zhuangzi

Using playful stories to question fixed perspectives and conventional judgements.

Philosopher

David Hume

Questioning certainty about causation and grounding accounts of human thought in experience.

Philosopher

John Locke

Arguing for government by consent and examining how knowledge develops from experience.

Political thinker

Chanakya

The tradition of statecraft associated with Chandragupta Maurya and the Arthashastra.

Philosopher

Ibn Rushd

Writing influential commentaries on Aristotle and defending philosophical inquiry.

Philosopher

Adi Shankara

Writing influential commentaries associated with Advaita Vedanta.

Philosopher

Laozi

The teachings associated with the Tao Te Ching and philosophical Daoism.

Historian

Ibn Khaldun

Explaining how social cohesion shapes the rise and decline of states.

Religious leader

Swami Vivekananda

Introducing Vedanta to international audiences and founding the Ramakrishna Mission.

Philosopher

Karl Marx

Developing a critique of capitalism that shaped socialist movements worldwide.

Philosopher

Nishida Kitarō

Founding the Kyoto School and exploring experience before the split between subject and object.

Philosopher

Nagarjuna

Developing the Madhyamaka account of emptiness in Buddhist philosophy.

Philosopher

Hypatia

Teaching philosophy and mathematics in late-antique Alexandria.

Philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Changing how philosophers think about language, meaning and understanding.

Philosopher

John Stuart Mill

Defending individual liberty and arguing for women’s equality.

Philosopher

Epicurus

Teaching that a good life rests on friendship, simple pleasures and freedom from needless fear.

Philosopher

Epictetus

Teaching the Stoic distinction between what we control and what we cannot.

Philosopher

Seneca the Younger

Writing Stoic advice on time, anger and living well while serving at Nero’s court.

Philosopher

Diogenes

Challenging wealth, status and social convention through a radically simple life.

Philosopher

Plotinus

Developing the philosophy now called Neoplatonism around the One, intellect and soul.

Philosopher

Heraclitus

Arguing that change and opposing forces belong to an ordered whole.

Philosopher

Parmenides

Making the nature of being and the limits of thought central philosophical questions.

Philosopher

Zeno of Citium

Founding Stoicism, a philosophy centred on virtue and living in accordance with nature.

Philosopher

Augustine of Hippo

Writing Confessions and The City of God and shaping Christian ideas about grace and human nature.

Philosopher

Thomas Aquinas

Bringing Aristotelian philosophy into a systematic account of Christian theology.

Philosopher

Maimonides

Writing the Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed, major works of Jewish law and philosophy.

Philosopher

Al-Ghazali

Writing The Revival of the Religious Sciences and challenging the claims of philosophical certainty.

Philosopher

Anselm of Canterbury

Formulating the ontological argument for God’s existence in the Proslogion.

Philosopher

Peter Abelard

Developing influential medieval logic and an ethics centred on intention.

Philosopher

Mulla Sadra

Developing a philosophy centred on existence and substantial motion.

Philosopher

Wang Yangming

Arguing that genuine moral knowledge and action cannot be separated.

Philosopher

Zhu Xi

Shaping Neo-Confucian thought through his commentaries on the Four Books.

Philosopher

Mozi

Arguing for impartial concern and against aggressive warfare.

Philosopher

Han Fei

The ancient Chinese thinker whose writings set out a hard-edged theory of law, authority and political control.

Philosopher

Tsongkhapa

The Buddhist thinker whose synthesis of reasoning and practice helped establish the Gelug tradition.

Philosopher

Śāntideva

Writing The Way of the Bodhisattva, an influential Buddhist guide to compassion and wisdom.

Philosopher

Asanga

Helping establish Yogācāra, a major tradition of Buddhist thought about mind and experience.

Philosopher

Dharmakirti

Developing influential Buddhist accounts of knowledge, perception and reasoning.

Philosopher

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Writing influential accounts of identity, cosmopolitanism and obligations across cultural boundaries.

Philosopher

Basava

Using Kannada devotional poetry to challenge social hierarchy.

Philosopher

Narayana Guru

Challenging caste discrimination in Kerala through spiritual teaching, education and social reform.

Philosopher

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Interpreting Indian philosophy and serving as India’s second president.

Philosopher

Kwame Gyekye

Developing moderate communitarianism and examining personhood through Akan philosophy.

Philosopher

Paulin Hountondji

Challenging the idea that African philosophy is a single inherited worldview.

Philosopher

Henry Odera Oruka

Developing Sage Philosophy through conversations with African thinkers outside universities.

Philosopher

Enrique Dussel

Developing a philosophy of liberation centred on people excluded by dominant systems.

Sociologist

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui

Developing Andean critiques of colonialism through oral history and the idea of ch’ixi.

Philosopher

Gloria Anzaldúa

Developing the idea of borderlands as both a place and an experience of mixed identity.

Philosopher

Judith Butler

Developing the theory of gender performativity in Gender Trouble.

Philosopher

Martha Nussbaum

Developing ideas about human capabilities, justice and the value of emotions.

Philosopher

Philippa Foot

Introducing the trolley problem and reshaping debates about moral character.

Writer

Iris Murdoch

Writing morally intricate novels such as The Sea, the Sea.

Philosopher

Simone Weil

Writing about attention, oppression and spiritual responsibility while testing her ideas in lived experience.

Philosopher

Julia Kristeva

Developing influential ideas about intertextuality and abjection.

Philosopher

Sibnarayan Ray

Developing radical humanist criticism and studying M. N. Roy.

Religious leader

Sri Arulparananda Swamigal

Teaching Tamil spiritual thought and advising the Tanjore court.

Philosopher

Kurian Kachappilly

Writing on process philosophy, religion and ethics.

Philosopher

Gyanendra Nath Chakravarti

Representing Theosophy and becoming Lucknow University’s first vice-chancellor.

Philosopher

Abu Sayeed Ayyub

Bringing philosophical analysis to the literature of Rabindranath Tagore.

Philosopher

John Dewey

Pragmatism and education grounded in experience.