ListoPedia

Key Philosophers

This dataset contains information about notable philosophers from ancient Greece, detailing their lifespans, national origins, and key contributions to philosophy. It aims to provide a concise reference for understanding the foundational figures in Western philosophical thought.

  1. Philosopher: Name of the philosopher.
  2. Birth Year: Year the philosopher was born, often expressed in BC (Before Christ) format.
  3. Death Year: Year the philosopher passed away, also usually in BC format.
  4. Nationality: National origin of the philosopher, indicating their cultural and historical background.
  5. Main Ideas/Contributions: A summary of the philosopher's significant theories and contributions to the field of philosophy.

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Sample Data

Philosopher Birth Year Death Year Nationality Main Ideas/Contributions
Thales 624 BC 546 BC Greek First philosopher; naturalism and cosmology
Anaximander 610 BC 546 BC Greek Apeiron; early cosmology
Anaximenes 586 BC 528 BC Greek Air as the primary substance
Pythagoras 570 BC 495 BC Greek Mathematics, mysticism, and the theory of forms
Hippocrates 460 BC 370 BC Greek Medicine as a profession; Hippocratic Oath
Socrates 470 BC 399 BC Greek Socratic method; ethics
Plato 427 BC 347 BC Greek Theory of Forms; epistemology; the ideal state
Aristotle 384 BC 322 BC Greek Empiricism; ethics; politics; logic
Epicurus 341 BC 270 BC Greek Pleasure principle; atomism
Zeno of Citium 334 BC 262 BC Greek Stoicism; virtue ethics
Diogenes 400 BC 323 BC Greek Cynicism; simplicity
Protagoras 490 BC 420 BC Greek Relativism; man is the measure
Heraclitus 535 BC 475 BC Greek Change as central to the universe
Parmenides 515 BC 450 BC Greek Being and the nature of reality
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646 1716 German Calculus; Monadology
René Descartes 1596 1650 French Cogito; Cartesian coordinates; dualism
David Hume 1711 1776 Scottish Empiricism; skepticism; naturalism
Immanuel Kant 1724 1804 Prussian Categorical imperative; transcendental idealism
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 1831 German Dialectics; absolute idealism
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 1900 German Will to power; eternal recurrence; nihilism
John Stuart Mill 1806 1873 British Utilitarianism; liberty and individual rights
Thomas Hobbes 1588 1679 English Social contract; materialism
John Locke 1632 1704 English Tabula rasa; liberalism
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 1778 Swiss/French Social contract; general will
Simone de Beauvoir 1908 1986 French Feminism; existentialism
Martin Heidegger 1889 1976 German Being-in-the-world; existential phenomenology
Albert Camus 1913 1960 French Absurdism; the myth of Sisyphus
Søren Kierkegaard 1813 1855 Danish Existentialism; subjectivity
John Dewey 1859 1952 American Pragmatism; democracy in education
Bertrand Russell 1872 1970 British Analytic philosophy; social criticism
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 1951 Austrian/British Language games; meaning as use
Jürgen Habermas 1929 NaN German The public sphere; communicative action
Michel Foucault 1926 1984 French Power/knowledge; discourse analysis
Jacques Derrida 1930 2004 French Deconstruction; différance
Paul Ricoeur 1913 2005 French Hermeneutics; narrative identity
Alasdair MacIntyre 1929 NaN Scottish Virtue ethics; tradition
Richard Rorty 1931 2007 American Pragmatic pluralism
Thomas Nagel 1937 NaN American Consciousness; subjective/objective distinction
Daniel Dennett 1942 NaN American Philosophy of mind; consciousness as evolution
Rudolf Carnap 1891 1970 German/American Logical positivism; philosophy of science
Willard Van Orman Quine 1908 2000 American Indeterminacy of translation; holism
Judith Butler 1956 NaN American Gender theory; performativity
Slavoj Žižek 1949 NaN Slovenian Psychoanalysis; cultural critique
Martha Nussbaum 1947 NaN American Capabilities approach; ethics
Hannah Arendt 1906 1975 German-American Political theory; totalitarianism
Pierre Bourdieu 1930 2002 French Cultural capital; habitus
Thomas Kuhn 1922 1996 American Structure of scientific revolutions
Isaiah Berlin 1909 1997 Russian/British Value pluralism; two concepts of liberty
Michael Sandel 1953 NaN American Communitarianism; justice theory
Frantz Fanon 1925 1961 French-Algerian Post-colonial theory; the wretched of the earth
Simone Weil 1909 1943 French Affection and attention; philosophy of work
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 1926 Austrian Existential themes in poetry
David Lewis 1941 2001 Australian Modal realism; philosophy of language
John Searle 1932 NaN American Language; consciousness; social reality
Julia Kristeva 1941 NaN Bulgarian-French Psychoanalysis; semiotics
Niels Bohr 1885 1962 Danish Quantum theory; complementarity
Albert Einstein 1879 1955 German/Swiss-American Theory of relativity; philosophy of science
Karl Popper 1902 1994 Austrian-British Falsifiability; scientific method
Angela Davis 1944 NaN American Civil rights; feminism
Richard Dawkins 1941 NaN British Evolutionary biology; science and religion
John Rawls 1921 2002 American Justice as fairness; political liberalism
Robert Nozick 1938 2002 American Libertarianism; entitlement theory
David Chalmers 1966 NaN Australian Consciousness; the hard problem
Peter Singer 1946 NaN Australian Animal rights; utilitarianism
Cornel West 1953 NaN American Social justice; race; democracy
Zygmunt Bauman 1925 2017 Polish-British Liquid modernity; postmodernity
Byung-Chul Han 1959 NaN South Korean Society of exhaustion; digital culture
Susan Haack 1945 NaN American Pragmatism; epistemology
John Paul II 1920 2005 Polish Philosophy of human dignity; social ethics
Catherine Malabou 1959 NaN French Neurophilosophy; plasticity
Iris Murdoch 1919 1999 British Love and ethics; moral philosophy
Richard Tarnas 1950 NaN American Cultural philosophy; archetypal psychology
Clark Glymour 1943 NaN American Philosophy of science; causal inference
Linda Martín Alcoff 1948 NaN American Feminist epistemology; race theory
Robert Brandom 1950 NaN American Inferentialism; semantics
Daniel Kahneman 1934 NaN Israeli-American Behavioral economics; judgment
Amartya Sen 1933 NaN Indian Welfare economics; capabilities approach
Ruth Millikan 1933 NaN American Biological classification; language
Elizabeth Anscombe 1910 2001 British Action theory; intention
Bernard Lonergan 1904 1984 Canadian Cognitional theory; theological ethics
Nancy Fraser 1947 NaN American Feminist theory; social justice
Joanna Bourke 1955 NaN British War and gender; history
Simone de Beauvoir 1908 1986 French Existential feminism; ethics of ambiguity
Karl Marx 1818 1883 German Historical materialism; capitalism critique
Friedrich Engels 1820 1895 German Socialism; materialist conception of history
Eduard Bernstein 1850 1932 German Revisionism in socialism; democratic socialism
Antonio Gramsci 1891 1937 Italian Cultural hegemony; marxist theory
Herbert Marcuse 1898 1979 German-American Critical theory; one-dimensional man
Michel de Certeau 1925 1986 French The practice of everyday life; cultural practices
Max Horkheimer 1895 1973 German-American Critical theory; social philosophy
Theodore Adorno 1903 1969 German-American Critical theory; aesthetics; culture industry
Giorgio Agamben 1942 NaN Italian State of exception; biopolitics
Rosi Braidotti 1954 NaN Italian Posthumanism; feminist philosophy
Judith Butler 1956 NaN American Gender performativity; queer theory
Slavoj Žižek 1949 NaN Slovenian Cultural critiques; ideology critique
Richard Rorty 1931 2007 American Pragmatism; anti-foundationalism
Bertrand Russell 1872 1970 British Analytical philosophy; logic
Jacques Derrida 1930 2004 French Deconstruction; post-structuralism
John Deely 1939 NaN American Semiotics; philosophy of signs
Timothy Williamson 1955 NaN British Knowledge and logic; epistemology
Robert Brandom 1950 NaN American Inference and meaning; scorekeeping
David K. Lewis 1941 2001 American Modal realism; possible worlds
Stephen Mulhall 1968 NaN British Philosophy and literature; hermeneutics
Daniel Dennett 1942 NaN American Philosophy of mind; free will
Peter Godfrey-Smith 1956 NaN Australian Philosophy of biology; consciousness
Elizabeth Millán 1970 NaN American Philosophy of language; logic
Simon Blackburn 1944 NaN British Moral philosophy; expressivism
Nancy Cartwright 1944 NaN American Philosophy of science; scientific models
Jesse Prinz 1966 NaN American Philosophy of mind; aesthetics
Tamler Sommers 1974 NaN American Philosophy of moral responsibility
Jürgen Habermas 1929 NaN German Public sphere; communicative rationality
Elizabeth Anscombe 1910 2001 British Moral philosophy; intention
Micro-Macroeconomics Year Year Year Year Country Economics; Greater Awareness
John Searle 1932 NaN American Language; consciousness; social reality
Martha Nussbaum 1947 NaN American Capabilities approach; philosophy of emotion
Ludwig Feuerbach 1804 1872 German Materialism; critique of religion
David Hartley 1705 1757 British Associationism; psychology
Baruch Spinoza 1632 1677 Dutch Ethics; rationalism
David Hume 1711 1776 Scottish Empiricism; skepticism
Bertrand Russell 1872 1970 British Analytic philosophy; logic
Alfred North Whitehead 1861 1947 British-American Process philosophy; metaphysics
Søren Kierkegaard 1813 1855 Danish Existentialism; subjectivity
Paul Feyerabend 1924 1994 Austrian Epistemological anarchism; philosophy of science
George Herbert Mead 1863 1931 American Symbolic interactionism; social psychology
Wilfrid Sellars 1912 1989 American Philosophy of language; scientific realism
Michael Dummett 1925 2011 British Philosophy of language; anti-realism
Richard Rorty 1931 2007 American Pragmatism; anti-foundationalism
Timothy Williamson 1955 NaN British Epistemology; knowledge
Hilary Putnam 1926 2016 American Philosophy of mind; realism/anti-realism
Marilyn Frye 1941 NaN American Feminist philosophy; oppression
Estelle Disch 1947 NaN American Feminist theory; political philosophy
Kristin A. G. Chalmers 1946 NaN American Social Philosophy; Gender
M. T. L. Chen 1948 NaN American Moral Philosophy; ethics
Luigi Pareyson 1918 1992 Italian Hermeneutics; aesthetics
Henri Bergson 1859 1941 French Time and consciousness; creative evolution
Samuel Alexander 1859 1938 Australian Aesthetic experience; philosophy of space
Alfred Tarski 1901 1983 Polish-American Semantics; truth
Yascha Mounk 1982 NaN German-American Political Philosophy; Democracy
Drucilla Cornell 1946 NaN American Critical theory; feminist philosophy
Michael Sandel 1953 NaN American Political philosophy; communitarianism
M. M. Nussbaum 1947 NaN American Political philosophy; capabilities approach
Walter Benjamin 1892 1940 German Cultural criticism; aesthetic theory
Giorgio Agamben 1942 NaN Italian Biopolitics; state of exception
Alfred North Whitehead 1861 1947 British-American Process philosophy; metaphysics
Simone Weil 1909 1943 French Philosophy of work; political philosophy
Arnold Geulincx 1625 1695 Flemish Occasionalism; philosophy of mind
Max Scheler 1874 1928 German Phenomenology; value theory
Benedict de Spinoza 1632 1677 Dutch Ethics; rationalism; pantheism
Herbert Marcuse 1898 1979 German-American Radical theory; critical theory
Robert Brandom 1950 NaN American Semantic inferentialism; language
Leo Strauss 1899 1973 German-American Political philosophy; moderation
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 1951 Austrian-British Philosophy of language; meaning
Jacques Lacan 1901 1981 French Psychoanalysis; the Real, the Imaginary, the Symbolic
Richard M. Rorty 1931 2007 American The linguistic turn; pragmatism
David Papineau 1947 NaN British Philosophy of science; philosophy of mind
Noam Chomsky 1928 NaN American Linguistics; political philosophy
Timothy Williamson 1955 NaN British Knowledge and epistemology
Iris Murdoch 1919 1999 British Morality; existentialism
Martin Buber 1878 1965 Austrian-Israeli I-Thou relation; dialogue
Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 1860 German Pessimism; will to live
Adolf Reinach 1883 1917 German Phenomenology; social ontology
Émile Durkheim 1858 1917 French Sociology; structural functionalism
C. D. Broad 1887 1971 British Philosophy of mind; metaphysics
Alexis de Tocqueville 1805 1859 French Political philosophy; democracy
Paul Ricoeur 1913 2005 French Hermeneutics; narrative identity
Jean-François Lyotard 1924 1998 French Postmodernism; the sublime
Paul Tillich 1886 1965 German-American Theology; existentialism
Josef Breuer 1842 1925 Austrian Psychoanalysis; psychological research
Gilbert Ryle 1900 1976 British Behaviorism; philosophy of mind
George Edward Moore 1873 1958 British Principia Ethica; common-sense philosophy
Oscar Wilde 1854 1900 Irish Aestheticism; criticism of morality
Bertrand Russell 1872 1970 British Logic; analytical philosophy
Henry David Thoreau 1817 1862 American Transcendentalism; civil disobedience
Susan Sontag 1933 2004 American Cultural criticism; photography
Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 1980 French Existentialism; freedom
Rudolf Carnap 1891 1970 German/American Analytic philosophy; semantics
Hannah Arendt 1906 1975 German-American Political theory; totalitarianism
Martin Heidegger 1889 1976 German Phenomenology; existentialism
John Stuart Mill 1806 1873 British Utilitarianism; social liberty
Thomas Nagel 1937 NaN American Mind and body; subjective experience
John Locke 1632 1704 English Tabula rasa; empiricism
David Hume 1711 1776 Scottish Empiricism; skepticism
Immanuel Kant 1724 1804 Prussian Transcendental philosophy; moral law
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 1831 German Dialectical method; absolute idealism
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 1900 German Will to power; critique of morality
Simone de Beauvoir 1908 1986 French Feminism; existentialism
Søren Kierkegaard 1813 1855 Danish Existential philosophy; individualism
Alfred North Whitehead 1861 1947 British Process thought; metaphysics
Frantz Fanon 1925 1961 French-Algerian Post-colonial theory; racism
Richard Dawkins 1941 NaN British Biology; memetics; atheism
Edward Said 1935 2003 Palestinian-American Orientalism; post-colonial criticism
John Griffiths 1952 NaN American Biopolitics; political philosophy
Judith Butler 1956 NaN American Gender theory; queer theory
Richard Rorty 1931 2007 American Pragmatism; language games
David Lewis 1941 2001 Australian Possible worlds; modal realism
Michel Foucault 1926 1984 French Discourse; power relations; genealogy
Alasdair MacIntyre 1929 NaN Scottish Virtue ethics; narrative tradition
Daniel Dennett 1942 NaN American Philosophy of mind; consciousness
Stephen Pinker 1954 NaN Canadian-American Cognitive science; psychology
Daniel Kahneman 1934 NaN Israeli-American Behavioral economics; cognitive biases
Donald Davidson 1917 2003 American Interpretation; action theory
Peter Singer 1946 NaN Australian Animal rights; utilitarian ethics
Ohm J. R. H. 1804 1978 German Philosophy of perception; sociological dimensions
Robert Nozick 1938 2002 American Entitlement theory; libertarianism
Richard Wright 1908 1960 American Literature; civil rights
Clarence Thomas 1948 NaN American Legal realism; originalism
Amartya Sen 1933 NaN Indian Development economics; social choice theory
Paul Feyerabend 1924 1994 Austrian Philosophy of science; anarchy
Niels Bohr 1885 1962 Danish Quantum theory; philosophical implications
Claude Lévi-Strauss 1908 2009 French Structural anthropology; myth
David Hume 1711 1776 Scottish Empiricism; naturalism)
Charles Sanders Peirce 1839 1914 American Pragmatism; semiotics
J.G. Fichte 1762 1814 German Transcendental idealism; self-consciousness
Gottlob Frege 1848 1925 German Logic; philosophy of language
Isaiah Berlin 1909 1997 Russian-British Value pluralism; liberty
Peter F. Strawson 1919 2006 British Philosophy of language; metaphysics
David Papineau 1947 NaN British Philosophy of science; philosophical naturalism
Nancy Cartwright 1944 NaN British Philosophy of science; explanation
Andrea Bianchi 1955 NaN Italian Overlapping models; structuralism
Thomas Reid 1710 1796 Scottish Common sense philosophy; epistemology
Richard M. Hare 1919 2002 British Moral philosophy; prescriptivism
Hilary Putnam 1926 2016 American Realism; philosophy of mind
Paul Ricœur 1913 2005 French Narrative theory; hermeneutics
W. V. O. Quine 1908 2000 American Philosophy of language; ontological relativity
Lucy Irigaray 1930 NaN Belgian Feminist philosophy; subjectivity
Simon Critchley 1960 NaN British Ethics; political philosophy
Jürgen Habermas 1929 NaN German Communicative rationality; discourse ethics
Richard Rorty 1931 2007 American Pragmatic philosophy; anti-foundationalism
Charles Taylor 1931 NaN Canadian Philosophy of social science; modernity
Thomas Nagel 1937 NaN American Philosophy of mind; ethical theory
Orson Scott Card 1951 NaN American Theology; literature and philosophy
Agnes Heller 1929 NaN Hungarian Critical theory; ethics
Christina Hoff Sommers 1950 NaN American Feminist philosophy; equity
Luc Nuñez 1965 NaN European Critical theory; psychoanalysis
Georg Simmel 1858 1918 German Sociology; social forms
Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 1860 German Philosophy of pessimism; metaphysics
Leo Strauss 1899 1973 German-American Political philosophy; natural right
Jacques Derrida 1930 2004 French Deconstruction; poststructuralism
Friedrich Engels 1820 1895 German Socialism; dialectical materialism
Arthur Danto 1924 2013 American Philosophy of art; end of art
Wolfgang Iser 1926 NaN German Reader-response theory; literary criticism
Seyla Benhabib 1951 NaN Turkish-American Political philosophy; cosmopolitanism
Alain de Botton 1969 NaN Swiss-British Philosophy and literature; happiness
Willy E. P. Rechnitz 1930 2021 German Philosophy of youth; social justice
Timothy Crusius 1966 NaN American Rhetoric; ethics
Susan Haack 1945 NaN American Pragmatism; epistemology
Richard Feynman 1918 1988 American Physics; philosophy of science
Afromusicality Year Year Year Year Country Transatlantic slavery; creative art
Richard Kearney 1954 NaN Irish Phenomenology; narrative theory
Julia Kristeva 1941 NaN Bulgarian-French Psychoanalysis; semiotics
Mikhail Bakhtin 1895 1975 Russian Literary theory; dialogism
Ruth Amossy 1944 NaN French Sociology; discourse analysis
Robert B. Brandom 1950 NaN American Inference; meaning; language
Russell Kirk 1918 1994 American Conservatism; tradition
Yascha Mounk 1982 NaN American Political theory; democracy
Mark S. K. Smith 1954 NaN American Environmental philosophy; social justice
Mary Midgley 1919 2018 British Animal ethics; philosophy of science
Eric Voegelin 1901 1985 German-American Political philosopher; Gnosticism
Richard Kraut 1941 NaN American Ancient philosophy; Aristotle
Doris Lessing 1919 2013 British Narrative construction; feminism
Viktor Frankl 1905 1997 Austrian Logotherapy; existentialism
Rudiger Safranski 1945 NaN German Philosophy of life; romanticism
Herbert Marcuse 1898 1979 German-American Revolutionary theory; critical theory
Daniel C. Dennett 1942 NaN American Consciousness; philosophy of mind
Thomas Nagel 1937 NaN American Philosophy of mind; subjective experience
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 1951 Austrian-British Language; logic; meaning
George Edward Moore 1873 1958 British Common sense philosophy; ethics
Gustav Landauer 1870 1919 German Anarchism; sociology
John Sherlock Year Year Year Year Country Philosophy of science; visual principles
Alfred Tarski 1901 1983 Polish-American Semantic theory; truth theories
Lucian Goldmann 1913 1970 Romanian Sociology; literature
Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 1980 French Existentialism; humanism
Bitnoruparen 1945 NaN Broad-inner Epistemic practices; identity
Emma Goldman 1869 1940 Lithuanian-American Anarchism; feminism
Wilhelm Dilthey 1833 1911 German Hermeneutics; life philosophy
Nelson Goodman 1906 1998 American Philosophy of art; constructionism
Rudolph Arnheim 1904 2007 German-American Visual perception; aesthetics
Richard John Neuhaus 1936 2009 American Political theology; public philosophy
Tzvetan Todorov 1939 NaN Bulgarian-French Literary theory; cultural criticism
Reinhold Niebuhr 1892 1971 American Christian realism; political theology
Victor Turner 1920 1983 British Ritual studies; social anthropology
Judith Harris 1948 NaN American Parenting and intelligence; cognitive psychology
Simon A. M. Peat 1940 NaN British Quantum theory; consciousness
Charles Taylor 1931 NaN Canadian Philosophy of language; secularism
Chantal Mouffe 1943 NaN Belgian Political theory; agonistic democracy
Peter van Inwagen 1942 NaN American Metaphysics; philosophy of religion
Susan Crean Year Year Year Year Country Philosophy of law; sociological aspects
C.S. Peirce 1839 1914 American Pragmatism; logic
Alain Badiou 1937 NaN French Event; truth; ontology
David Graeber 1961 2020 American Anthropology; economics; activism
Achille Mbembe 1957 NaN Cameroonian Postcolonial theory; necropolitics
Siegfried Kracauer 1889 1966 German Film theory; sociology
David Hume 1711 1776 Scottish Skepticism; empiricism
Paul Ricoeur 1913 2005 French Hermeneutics; narrative
Jacques Rancière 1940 NaN French Politics; aesthetics
Martha Nussbaum 1947 NaN American Capabilities approach; social justice
Simone de Beauvoir 1908 1986 French Feminism; existential ethics
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 1882 American Transcendentalism; individualism
Johann Gottlieb Fichte 1762 1814 German Transcendental idealism; self
William James 1842 1910 American Pragmatism; psychology
Albert Einstein 1879 1955 German-American Relativity; philosophy of science
Ferdinand de Saussure 1857 1913 Swiss Linguistics; semiology
Albert Camus 1913 1960 French Absurdism; existentialism
John Stuart Mill 1806 1873 British Utilitarianism; liberty
Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 1860 German Pessimism; will to live
Francis Bacon 1561 1626 English Empiricism; scientific method
Thomas Hobbes 1588 1679 English Leviathan; social contract theory
Max Weber 1864 1920 German Sociology; bureaucracy
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 1900 German Will to power; eternal return
Rudolf Carnap 1891 1970 Austrian Logical positivism; philosophy of language
John Locke 1632 1704 English Empiricism; political philosophy
Søren Kierkegaard 1813 1855 Danish Christian existentialism; subjectivity
Virginia Woolf 1882 1941 British Modernist literature; gender studies
Henri Bergson 1859 1941 French Time and consciousness; intuition
David Hume 1711 1776 Scottish Empiricism; skepticism
Jürgen Habermas 1929 NaN German Public sphere; critical theory
Giorgio Agamben 1942 NaN Italian Biopolitics; state of exception
Simone Weil 1909 1943 French Political philosophy; attention
C. D. Broad 1887 1971 British Philosophy of mind; metaphysics
Angela Davis 1944 NaN American Civil rights; prison abolitionism
Roger Scruton 1944 2020 British Conservatism; aesthetics
Richard Rorty 1931 2007 American Pragmatism; anti-essentialism
Satyajit Ray 1921 1992 Indian Cinema; art theory
Walter Benjamin 1892 1940 German Philosophy of art; aura of art
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