• 
  Adam Smith
  Adam Smith (baptised 16 June 1723 – died 17 July 1790 ) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of political economics. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The latter, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics. Smith is widely cited as the father of modern economics and capitalism.
  http://wn.com/Adam_Smith
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  Al-Kindi
  () (c. 801–873 CE), also known to the West by the Latinized version of his name Alkindus, was an Arab Iraqi polymath: an Islamic philosopher, scientist, astrologer, astronomer, cosmologist, chemist, logician, mathematician, musician, physician, physicist, psychologist, and meteorologist. Al-Kindi was the first of the Muslim Peripatetic philosophers, and is known for his efforts to introduce Greek and Hellenistic philosophy to the Arab world, and as a pioneer in chemistry, medicine, music theory, physics, psychology,the philosophy of science, and is also known for being one of the fathers of cryptography.
  http://wn.com/Al-Kindi
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  Albertus Magnus
  Saint Albertus Magnus, O.P. (1193/1206 – November 15, 1280), also known as Saint Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne, was a Dominican friar and bishop who achieved fame for his comprehensive knowledge of and advocacy for the peaceful coexistence of science and religion. Those such as James A. Weisheipl and Joachim R. Söder have referred to him as the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages, an opinion supported by contemporaries such as Roger Bacon. He was the first among medieval scholars to apply Aristotle's philosophy to Christian thought. The Catholic Church honors him as a Doctor of the Church, one of only 33 persons with that honor.
  http://wn.com/Albertus_Magnus
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  Alexander the Great
  Alexander III of Macedon (20/21 July 356 – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great (, Mégas Aléxandros), was a Greek king of Macedon. He is the most celebrated member of the Argead Dynasty and the creator of one of the largest empires in ancient history. 
  http://wn.com/Alexander_the_Great
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  Alfred Tarski
  Alfred Tarski (January 14, 1901 – October 26, 1983) was a Polish logician and mathematician. Educated at the University of Warsaw and a member of the Lwow-Warsaw School of Logic and the Warsaw School of Mathematics and philosophy, he emigrated to the USA in 1939, and taught and carried out research in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1942 until his death.
  http://wn.com/Alfred_Tarski
• Anthony Kenny
  Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny FBA (born 16 March 1931 in Liverpool) is an English philosopher whose interests lie in the philosophy of mind, ancient and scholastic philosophy, the philosophy of Wittgenstein and the philosophy of religion. With Peter Geach, he has made a significant contribution to Analytical Thomism, a movement whose aim is to present the thought of St Thomas Aquinas in the style of modern philosophy by clearing away the trappings and obscurities of traditional Thomism. He is one of the executors of Wittgenstein's literary estate. He is a former President of the British Academy and current President of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
  http://wn.com/Anthony_Kenny
• 
  Aristotle
  Aristotle (, Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics.
  http://wn.com/Aristotle
• Arthur Danto
  Arthur Coleman Danto (born 1924) is an American art critic, and professor of philosophy. He is best known as the influential, long-time art critic for the Nation and for his work in philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of history, though he has contributed significantly to a number of fields. His interests span thought, feeling, philosophy of art, theories of representation, philosophical psychology, Hegel's aesthetics, and the philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Arthur Schopenhauer.
  http://wn.com/Arthur_Danto
• 
  Arthur Schopenhauer
  Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the fundamental question of whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world.
  http://wn.com/Arthur_Schopenhauer
• 
  Auguste Comte
  Auguste Comte (19 January 1798 – 5 September 1857) was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism. He may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term.
  http://wn.com/Auguste_Comte
• Augustine
  http://wn.com/Augustine
• 
  Augustine of Hippo
  : For other uses, see Augustine, Augustinus and Saint Augustine.
  http://wn.com/Augustine_of_Hippo
• Aurobindo
  http://wn.com/Aurobindo
• 
  Averroes
  '''Abū 'l-Walīd Muḥammad bin Aḥmad bin Rushd (), better known just as Ibn Rushd (), and in European literature as Averroes''' () (1126 – December 10, 1198), was an Andalusian Muslim polymath; a master of Aristotelian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, Islamic theology, Maliki law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, politics, Arabic music theory, and the sciences of medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics and celestial mechanics. He was born in Córdoba, Al Andalus, modern-day Spain, and died in Marrakech, modern-day Morocco. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism. He has been described by some as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe and "one of the spiritual fathers of Europe," although other scholars oppose such claims.
  http://wn.com/Averroes
• 
  Avicenna
  , known as Abū Alī Sīnā () or, more commonly, Ibn Sīnā or Pour Sina, but most commonly known in English by his Latinized name Avicenna (, Avitzianós), (c. 980 - 1037) was a polymath of PersianA) "Avicenna", in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Concise Online Version, 2006 ([http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9011433/Avicenna]); B) D. Gutas, "Avicenna", in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Version 2006, ([http://www.iranica.com/articles/avicenna-xi LINK]); excerpt: "That he should have written poems in Persian, his native and everyday language, is probable" C) Ibn Sina ("Avicenna") Encyclopedia of Islam. 2nd edition. Edited by P. Berman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Henrichs. Brill 2009. Accessed through Brill online: www.encislam.brill.nl (2009) Quote: "He was born in 370/980 in Afshana, his mother's home, near Bukhara. His native language was Persian." D) Charles Lindholm,"The Islamic Middle East: Tradition and Change", Wiley-Blackwell, 2002. (2nd edition) " excerpt from pg 277: "Iranian Platonic philosopher". E) Fayz, M. Getz. "Avicenna" in Sandra Clayton-Emmerson (2005), Key Figures in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia (Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages). Routledge. pg 54: "The Persian philosopher, poet, and physician Ibn Sina (Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abdullah ibn Sina) is known in the west as Avicenna. He was born in Bukhara and died in Hamada, Persia". F) Joyce Moss, " Middle Eastern literatures and their times", Volume 6 of World Literature and Its Times: Profiles of Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them. Thomas Gale, 2004. Excerpt: "One of the key figures whose views came under attack was the Persian philosopher and scientist Ibn Sina(also known as Avicenna; 980-1037)"" G) David Edward Cooper, Jitendranath Mohanty, Ernest Sosa, "Epistemology: the classic readings", Wiley-Blackwell, 1999. pg 98:"by the Persian philosopher Ibn Sina (Avicenna) in the eleventh century." origin and the foremost physician and philosopher of his time. He was also an astronomer, chemist, geologist, Hafiz, Islamic psychologist, Islamic scholar, Islamic theologian, logician, paleontologist, mathematician, Maktab teacher, physicist, poet, and scientist.
  http://wn.com/Avicenna
• 
  Baruch Spinoza
  Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza ( Baruch Shpinoza, , ) (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death. Today, he is considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. By virtue of his magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes mind–body dualism, Spinoza is considered to be one of Western philosophy's most important philosophers. Philosopher and historian Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said of all modern philosophers, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all." Spinoza attended the Keter Torah yeshiva headed by Rabbi Shaul Levi Morteira, and maintained a connection with Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, whose home was a center for Jewish scholars in Amsterdam.
  http://wn.com/Baruch_Spinoza
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  Bertrand Russell
  Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, socialist, pacifist, and social critic. He spent most of his life in England; he was born in Wales where he also died, aged 97.
  http://wn.com/Bertrand_Russell
• 
  Blaise Pascal
  Blaise Pascal (; June 19, 1623, Clermont-Ferrand – August 19, 1662, Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a Tax Collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
  http://wn.com/Blaise_Pascal
• 
  Boethius
  Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, commonly called Boethius (ca. 480–524 or 525) was a Christian philosopher of the early 6th century. He was born in Rome to an ancient and important family which included emperors Petronius Maximus and Olybrius and many consuls. His father, Flavius Manlius Boethius, was consul in 487 after Odoacer deposed the last Western Roman Emperor. Boethius, of the noble Anicius lineage, entered public life at a young age and was already a senator by the age of 25.
  http://wn.com/Boethius
• 
  Bonaventure
  Bonaventure (; 1221 – 15 July 1274), born John of Fidanza (), was an Italian medieval scholastic theologian and philosopher, the seventh Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor. He was a Cardinal Bishop of Albano. He was canonized on 14 April 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV and declared a Doctor of the Church in the year 1588 by Pope Sixtus V. He is known as the "Seraphic Doctor" (). Many writings believed in the Middle Ages to be his are now collected under the name Pseudo-Bonaventura.
  http://wn.com/Bonaventure
• Bruce Kuklick
  Bruce Kuklick (born March 3, 1941 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American historian. He currently serves as the Nichols Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in diplomatic and intellectual history of the United States, as well as the history of philosophy. He has written several books on these subjects, most recently Black Philosopher, White Academy: The Career of William Fontaine, which was described as "a biography of Fontaine is as good a story as that life itself."
  http://wn.com/Bruce_Kuklick
• 
  Buddhism
  Buddhism (Pali/Sanskrit: बौद्ध धर्म Buddha Dharma) is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha (Pāli/Sanskrit "the awakened one"). The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by adherents as an awakened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end suffering (or dukkha), achieve nirvana, and escape what is seen as a cycle of suffering and rebirth.
  http://wn.com/Buddhism
• 
  Carl von Clausewitz
  Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz (; July 1, 1780 – November 16, 1831) was a Prussian soldier and German military theorist who stressed the moral and political aspects of war. His most notable work, Vom Kriege (On War), was unfinished at his death.
  http://wn.com/Carl_von_Clausewitz
• Chinese civilization
  #REDIRECTChina
  http://wn.com/Chinese_civilization
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  Cicero
  Marcus Tullius Cicero (; Classical Latin: ; January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC; sometimes anglicized as "Tully"), was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.
  http://wn.com/Cicero
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  Claude Lévi-Strauss
  Claude Lévi-Strauss (; (28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called the "father of modern anthropology".
  http://wn.com/Claude_Lévi-Strauss
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  Confucius
  Confucius (, or ), literally "Master Kong", (traditionally September 28, 551 BC – 479 BC) was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period.
  http://wn.com/Confucius
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  Constantine I
  Flavius Valerius Aurelius ConstantinusIn Latin Constantine is the first Christian emperor. Constantine's official imperial title was IMPERATOR CAESAR FLAVIVS CONSTANTINVS PIVS FELIX INVICTVS AVGVSTVS, Imperator Caesar Flavius Constantine Augustus, the pious, the fortunate, the undefeated. After 312, he added MAXIMVS ("the greatest"), and after 325 replaced ("undefeated") with VICTOR, as invictus reminded of Sol Invictus, the Sun God. (c. 27 February 272 – 22 May 337), commonly known as Constantine I, Constantine the Great, or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Best known for being the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine reversed the persecutions of his predecessor, Diocletian, and issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of Christians throughout the empire.
  http://wn.com/Constantine_I
• 
  Daniel Dennett
  Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942 in Boston) is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He graduated from Harvard with a B.A in philosophy, then after completing his D.Phil at the University of Oxford. He is currently the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and a University Professor at Tufts University. Dennett is a noted atheist and secularist, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, as well as a prominent advocate of the Brights movement.
  http://wn.com/Daniel_Dennett
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  David Hume
  David Hume (7 May 1711 [26 April O.S.] – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher and historian, regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.
  http://wn.com/David_Hume
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  David Kellogg Lewis
  David Kellogg Lewis (September 28, 1941 – October 14, 2001) was a 20th-century American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton from 1970 until his death. He is also closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than thirty years. He has made ground-breaking contributions in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical logic. He is probably best known for his controversial modal realist stance: that there exist infinitely many concretely existing and causally isolated possible worlds, of which ours is just one, which are used in the analysis of necessity and possibility.
  http://wn.com/David_Kellogg_Lewis
• Derek Parfit
  Derek Parfit (born December 11, 1942) is a British philosopher who specializes in problems of personal identity, rationality and ethics, and the relations between them. His 1984 book, Reasons and Persons (described by Alan Ryan in The Sunday Times as "something close to a work of genius") has been very influential. He has worked at Oxford for the whole of his academic career, and is presently a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is also a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at New York University, Harvard University, and Rutgers University. Between 1965-66 he was Harkness Fellow at Columbia University and Harvard University [http://as.nyu.edu/object/aboutas.globalprofessor.DerekParfit].
  http://wn.com/Derek_Parfit
• Descartes
  http://wn.com/Descartes
• Diogenes Laertius
  http://wn.com/Diogenes_Laertius
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  Duns Scotus
  Blessed John (Johannes) Duns Scotus, O.F.M. (c. 1265 – 8 November 1308) was one of the more important theologians and philosophers of the High Middle Ages. He was nicknamed Doctor Subtilis for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought.
  http://wn.com/Duns_Scotus
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  Edmund Burke
  Edmund Burke PC (12 January [NS] 1729 9 July 1797) was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after relocating to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his support of the cause of the American Revolutionaries, and for his later opposition to the French Revolution. The latter led to his becoming the leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig party, which he dubbed the "Old Whigs", in opposition to the pro-French-Revolution "New Whigs," led by Charles James Fox. Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals in the nineteenth century and since the twentieth century he has generally been viewed as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism, as well as a representative of classical liberalism.
  http://wn.com/Edmund_Burke
• Edmund Husserl
  Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; April 8, 1859, Prostějov, Moravia, Austrian Empire – April 26, 1938, Freiburg, Germany) was a mathematician and philosopher who is deemed the founder of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, while at the same time he elaborated critiques of psychologism and historicism.
  http://wn.com/Edmund_Husserl
• Erasmus
  http://wn.com/Erasmus
• F. H. Bradley
  Francis Herbert Bradley, OM, (30 January 1846 – 18 September 1924) was a British idealist philosopher.
  http://wn.com/F_H_Bradley
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  Francis Bacon
  Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount Saint Alban, KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist and author. He famously died of pneumonia contracted while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method and pioneer in the scientific revolution.
  http://wn.com/Francis_Bacon
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  Francisco Sanches
  Francisco Sanches (c. 1550 – 1623) was a Portuguese philosopher and physician of Sephardi Jewish origin.
  http://wn.com/Francisco_Sanches
• Frederick Copleston
  Frederick Charles Copleston, SJ, CBE (10 April 1907, Taunton, Somerset, England – 3 February 1994, London, England) was a Jesuit priest and historian of philosophy.
  http://wn.com/Frederick_Copleston
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  Friedrich Engels
  Friedrich Engels (; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of communist theory, alongside Karl Marx. Together they produced The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Engels also edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital after Marx's death.
  http://wn.com/Friedrich_Engels
• 
  Friedrich Nietzsche
  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; in English , ) (October 15, 1844 August 25, 1900) was a 19th-century German philosopher and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism.
  http://wn.com/Friedrich_Nietzsche
• G.E. Moore
  http://wn.com/GE_Moore
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  Galileo Galilei
  Galileo Galilei (; 15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy," the "father of modern physics," the "father of science," and "the Father of Modern Science." Stephen Hawking says, "Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science."
  http://wn.com/Galileo_Galilei
• 
  George Berkeley
  George Berkeley ( ) (12 March 1685 14 January 1753), also known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne), was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others). This theory contends that individuals can only know directly sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as "matter". The theory also contends that ideas are dependent upon being perceived by minds for their very existence, a belief that became immortalized in the dictum, "esse est percipi" ("to be is to be perceived"). He published his chief philosophical work A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710.
  http://wn.com/George_Berkeley
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  George Boole
  George Boole () (2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was an
  http://wn.com/George_Boole
• Gersonides
  Levi ben Gershon, better known by his Latinised name as Gersonides or the abbreviation of first letters as RaLBaG (1288–1344), philosopher, Talmudist, mathematician, astronomer/astrologer. He was born at Bagnols in Languedoc, France. According to Abraham Zacuto and others, he was the son of Gerson ben Solomon Catalan.
  http://wn.com/Gersonides
• Giacomo Zabarella
  http://wn.com/Giacomo_Zabarella
• Gilbert of Poitiers
  http://wn.com/Gilbert_of_Poitiers
• Gilbert Ryle
  Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900, Brighton – 6 October 1976, Oxford), was a British philosopher, and a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers that shared Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "the ghost in the machine". Some of his ideas in the philosophy of mind have been referred to as "behaviourist" (not to be confused with the psychological behaviourism of B. F. Skinner and John B. Watson). Ryle's best known book is The Concept of Mind (1949), in which he writes that the "general trend of this book will undoubtedly, and harmlessly, be stigmatised as 'behaviourist'." Ryle, having engaged in detailed study of the key works of Bernard Bolzano, Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, Husserl, and Heidegger, himself suggested instead that the book "could be described as a sustained essay in phenomenology, if you are at home with that label."
  http://wn.com/Gilbert_Ryle
• Gilles Deleuze
  Gilles Deleuze (), (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher of the late 20th century. From the early 1960s until his death, Deleuze wrote many influential works on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular books were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), both co-written with Félix Guattari.
  http://wn.com/Gilles_Deleuze
• 
  Giordano Bruno
  Giordano Bruno (1548 – February 17, 1600), born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, who is best known as a proponent of the infinity of the universe. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in identifying the Sun as just one of an infinite number of independently moving heavenly bodies: he is the first European man to have conceptualized the universe as a continuum where the stars we see at night are identical in nature to the Sun. He was burned at the stake by authorities in 1600 after the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy. After his death he gained considerable fame; in the 19th and early 20th centuries, commentators focusing on his astronomical beliefs regarded him as a martyr for free thought and modern scientific ideas. Recent assessments suggest that his ideas about the universe played a smaller role in his trial than his pantheist beliefs, which differed from the interpretations and scope of God held by Catholicism. In addition to his cosmological writings, Bruno also wrote extensive works on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles. More recent assessments, beginning with the pioneering work of Frances Yates, suggest that Bruno was deeply influenced by the astronomical facts of the universe inherited from Arab astrology, Neoplatonism and Renaissance Hermeticism. Other recent studies of Bruno have focused on his qualitative approach to mathematics and his application of the spatial paradigms of geometry to language.
  http://wn.com/Giordano_Bruno
• 
  Gottfried Leibniz
  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (sometimes von Leibniz) ( (July 1, 1646 - November 14, 1716) was a German mathematician and philosopher. He wrote primarily in Latin and French.
  http://wn.com/Gottfried_Leibniz
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  Gottlob Frege
  Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German mathematician who became a logician and philosopher. He was one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. As a philosopher, he is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on the philosophy of language and mathematics. Although he was mainly ignored by the intellectual world when he published his writings, it was Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) and later Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) who helped introduce his work to later generations of logicians and philosophers.
  http://wn.com/Gottlob_Frege
• Hegel
  http://wn.com/Hegel
• Henry Sidgwick
  Henry Sidgwick (May 31, 1838–August 28, 1900) was an English utilitarian philosopher. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the Metaphysical Society, and promoted the higher education of women. His work in economics has also had a lasting influence.
  http://wn.com/Henry_Sidgwick
• 
  Heraclitus
  Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ancient Greek: — ; c. 535–c. 475 BCE) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. From the lonely life he led, and still more from the riddling nature of his philosophy and his contempt for humankind in general, he was called "The Obscure," and the "Weeping Philosopher."
  http://wn.com/Heraclitus
• 
  Hilary Putnam
  Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31, 1926) is an American philosopher who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. He is known for his willingness to apply an equal degree of scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others, subjecting each position to rigorous analysis until he exposes its flaws. As a result, he has acquired a reputation for frequently changing his own position. Putnam is currently Cogan University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University.
  http://wn.com/Hilary_Putnam
• 
  Hugo Grotius
  Hugo Grotius (10 April 1583 – 28 August 1645), also known as Huig de Groot or Hugo de Groot, worked as a jurist in the Dutch Republic. With Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili he laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law. He was also a philosopher, theologian, Christian apologist, playwright, and poet.
  http://wn.com/Hugo_Grotius
• Ibn al-Haytham
  http://wn.com/Ibn_al-Haytham
• 
  Ibn Khaldun
  Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun (full name, , , Berber name: Ben Xeldun; May 27, 1332 AD/732 AH – March 19, 1406 AD/808 AH) was a North African polymath — an astronomer, economist, historian, Islamic jurist, Islamic lawyer, Islamic scholar, Islamic theologian, hafiz, mathematician, military strategist, nutritionist, philosopher, social scientist and statesman—born in North Africa in present-day Tunisia. He is considered a forerunner of several social scientific disciplines: demography, cultural history, historiography, the philosophy of history, and sociology. He is also considered one of the forerunners of modern economics, alongside the earlier Indian scholar Chanakya. Ibn Khaldun is considered by many to be the father of a number of these disciplines, and of social sciences in general, for anticipating many elements of these disciplines centuries before they were founded in the West. He is best known for his Muqaddimah (known as Prolegomenon in English), the first volume of his book on universal history, Kitab al-Ibar. Ibn Khaldun's ideas were not absorbed by his society, nor were they carried forward by its future generations.
  http://wn.com/Ibn_Khaldun
• Ibn Rushd
  http://wn.com/Ibn_Rushd
• Ibn Taimiyyah
  http://wn.com/Ibn_Taimiyyah
• 
  Immanuel Kant
  Immanuel Kant () (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg. Kant was the last influential philosopher of modern Europe in the classic sequence of the theory of knowledge during the Enlightenment beginning with thinkers John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.
  http://wn.com/Immanuel_Kant
• 
  Isaac Newton
  Sir Isaac Newton FRS (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727 ) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian who is considered by many scholars and members of the general public to be one of the most influential people in human history. His 1687 publication of the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (usually called the Principia) is considered to be among the most influential books in the history of science, laying the groundwork for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the Scientific Revolution.
  http://wn.com/Isaac_Newton
• J. M. E. McTaggart
  John McTaggart (3 September 1866 – 18 January, 1925) was an idealist metaphysician. For most of his life McTaggart was a fellow and lecturer in philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was an exponent of the philosophy of Hegel and among the most notable of the British idealists.
  http://wn.com/J_M_E_McTaggart
• J.L. Austin
  http://wn.com/JL_Austin
• Jacques Derrida
  Jacques Derrida () (15 July 1930 – 8 October 2004) was a French philosopher born in Algeria. He developed the critical technique known as deconstruction, and his work has been associated both with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy. His prolific output of more than 40 published books, together with essays and public speaking, has had a significant impact upon the humanities, particularly on literary theory and continental philosophy. His best known assertion with regard to his methodology is that "there is no outside-the-text."
  http://wn.com/Jacques_Derrida
• Jacques Lacan
  Jacques Marie Émile Lacan () (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis, philosophy, and literary theory. Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the post-structuralist philosophers. His interdisciplinary work is Freudian, featuring the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, identification, and language as subjective perception. His ideas have had a significant impact on critical theory, literary theory, twentieth-century French philosophy, sociology, feminist theory and clinical psychoanalysis (though not on clinical psychology).
  http://wn.com/Jacques_Lacan
• 
  Jacques-Louis David
  Jacques-Louis David (30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) was a highly influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, heightened feeling chiming with the moral climate of the final years of the ancien régime.
  http://wn.com/Jacques-Louis_David
• Jean Bodin
  Jean Bodin (1530–1596), born in Angers, was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement of Paris and professor of law in Toulouse. He is best known for his theory of sovereignty (see Divine Right of Kings).
  http://wn.com/Jean_Bodin
• Jean d'Alembert
  http://wn.com/Jean_d'Alembert
• 
  Jean-Paul Sartre
  Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, existentialism, and Marxism, and his work continues to influence fields such as Marxist philosophy, sociology, and literary studies. Sartre was also noted for his long relationship with the author and social theorist, Simone de Beauvoir. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused the honour.
  http://wn.com/Jean-Paul_Sartre
• 
  Jeremy Bentham
  Jeremy Bentham ( or ; 15 February 1748 – 6 June 1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism and the ethical treatment of animals, and the idea of the panopticon.
  http://wn.com/Jeremy_Bentham
• 
  John Dewey
  John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism and of functional psychology. He was a major representative of the progressive and progressive populist philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the USA.
  http://wn.com/John_Dewey
• John Lachs
  John Lachs is the Centennial Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, where he has taught since 1967. Lachs received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1961. His primary focus is on American philosophy (he has written a book and several articles on George Santayana) and German idealism.
  http://wn.com/John_Lachs
• 
  John Locke
  John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704), widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.
  http://wn.com/John_Locke
• John Martin Fischer
  John Martin Fischer is currently a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California Riverside.
  http://wn.com/John_Martin_Fischer
• John of St. Thomas
  John of St. Thomas, (family name João Poinsot or Johannes Poinsot, since 1980s in American texts also John Poinsot), theologian, born at Lisbon, 9 June 1589; died at Fraga, Spain, 17 June 1644.
  http://wn.com/John_of_St_Thomas
• John Rawls
  John Bordley Rawls (February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard. His magnum opus, A Theory of Justice (1971), is now regarded as "one of the primary texts in political philosophy." His work in political philosophy, dubbed Rawlsianism, takes as its starting point the argument that "most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position." Rawls employs a number of thought experiments—including the famous veil of ignorance—to determine what constitutes a fair agreement in which "everyone is impartially situated as equals," in order to determine principles of social justice. He is one of the major thinkers in the tradition of liberal political philosophy.
  http://wn.com/John_Rawls
• John Searle
  John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932 in Denver, Colorado) is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Searle began his college education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and subsequently became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University where he earned an undergraduate degree and a doctorate in philosophy and ethics. Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and social philosophy, he began teaching at Berkeley in 1959, where, among his many distinctions, he was the first tenured professor to join the Free Speech Movement. He received the Jean Nicod Prize in 2000, and the National Humanities Medal in 2004.
  http://wn.com/John_Searle
• 
  John Stuart Mill
  John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873) was a British philosopher and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. Hoping to remedy the problems found in an inductive approach to science, such as confirmation bias, he clearly set forth the premises of falsification as the key component in the scientific method. Mill was also a Member of Parliament and an important figure in liberal political philosophy.
  http://wn.com/John_Stuart_Mill
• Kant
  http://wn.com/Kant
• 
  Karl Jaspers
  Karl Theodor Jaspers (February 23, 1883 – February 26, 1969) was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system. He was often viewed as a major exponent of existentialism in Germany, though he did not accept this label.
  http://wn.com/Karl_Jaspers
• 
  Karl Marx
  Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist, and revolutionary, whose ideas played a significant role in the development of modern communism and socialism. Marx summarized his approach in the first line of chapter one of The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
  http://wn.com/Karl_Marx
• Kwame Anthony Appiah
  Kwame Anthony Appiah (born 1954 in London) is a Ghanaian philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist whose interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history. He is currently the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at the Princeton University.
  http://wn.com/Kwame_Anthony_Appiah
• Leibniz
  http://wn.com/Leibniz
• 
  Lev Shestov
  Lev Isaakovich Shestov (), born Yehuda Leyb Schwarzmann (), was a Ukrainian/Russian existentialist philosopher. Born in Kiev (Russian Empire) on , he emigrated to France in 1921, fleeing from the aftermath of the October Revolution. He lived in Paris until his death on November 19, 1938.
  http://wn.com/Lev_Shestov
• 
  Luciano Floridi
  Luciano Floridi (Laurea, Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, MPhil. and PhD University of Warwick, MA University of Oxford) currently holds the Research Chair in philosophy of information and the UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics, both at the University of Hertfordshire, Department of Philosophy. He is also Fellow by Special Election of St Cross College, Oxford University, Senior Member of the Faculty of Philosophy and [http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/people/Luciano.Floridi/ Research Associate and Fellow in Information Policy] at OUCL (the Department of Computer Science), University of Oxford. He is best known for his work on two areas of philosophical research: the philosophy of information and information ethics.
  http://wn.com/Luciano_Floridi
• 
  Ludwig Wittgenstein
  Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who held the professorship of philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947.
  http://wn.com/Ludwig_Wittgenstein
• Mahatma Gandhi
  http://wn.com/Mahatma_Gandhi
• 
  Maimonides
  Moses Maimonides, also known as Rambam, was the preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the greatest Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. He was born in Córdoba, Spain on Passover Eve, 1135, and died in Egypt on 20th Tevet, December 12, 1204. He was as a rabbi, physician and philosopher in Morocco and Egypt.
  http://wn.com/Maimonides
• Manicheism
  http://wn.com/Manicheism
• Marsilio Ficino
  Marsilio Ficino (Latin name: Marsilius Ficinus) (October 19, 1433 – October 1, 1499) was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance, an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism who was in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin. His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's school, had enormous influence on the direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European philosophy.
  http://wn.com/Marsilio_Ficino
• 
  Martin Buber
  Martin Buber (; February 8, 1878 – June 13, 1965) was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship.
  http://wn.com/Martin_Buber
• 
  Martin Heidegger
  Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976; ) was an influential German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being." His best-known book, Being and Time, is considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century. Heidegger has been influential beyond philosophy, in literature, psychology, and artificial intelligence.
  http://wn.com/Martin_Heidegger
• Mazdakism
  http://wn.com/Mazdakism
• Michael Bratman
  Michael E Bratman (born 25 July 1945) is Durfee Professor in the School of Humanities & Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. His interests include philosophy of action and moral philosophy. His work in those areas led him to the Belief-Desire-Intention model that is used in many areas, including artificial intelligence, today.
  http://wn.com/Michael_Bratman
• Michael Dummett
  Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett FBA D.Litt (born 1925) is a leading British philosopher. He has both written on the history of analytic philosophy, and made original contributions to the subject, particularly in the areas of philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, philosophy of language and metaphysics. He also devised the Quota Borda system of proportional voting, based on the Borda count, and has written scholarly works on tarot. Other interests have been immigration law and English grammar and usage. In 1944 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, and remains a practising Catholic.
  http://wn.com/Michael_Dummett
• 
  Michel de Montaigne
  Michel Eyquem de Montaigne () (February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592) is one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography—and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as "Attempts") contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, including René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, Eric Hoffer, Isaac Asimov, and perhaps William Shakespeare (see section "Related Writers and Influence" below).
  http://wn.com/Michel_de_Montaigne
• Michel Foucault
  Michel Foucault (), born Paul-Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984), was a French philosopher, sociologist, and historian. He held a chair at the prestigious Collège de France with the title "History of Systems of Thought," and also taught at the University at Buffalo and the University of California, Berkeley.
  http://wn.com/Michel_Foucault
• Montaigne
  http://wn.com/Montaigne
• Montesquieu
  http://wn.com/Montesquieu
• Nelson Goodman
  Henry Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906, Somerville, Massachusetts – 25 November 1998, Needham, Massachusetts) was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism and aesthetics.
  http://wn.com/Nelson_Goodman
• 
  Niccolò Machiavelli
  Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian philosopher and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, musician, and a playwright, but foremost, he was a civil servant of the Florentine Republic. In June of 1498, after the ouster and execution of Girolamo Savonarola, the Great Council elected Machiavelli as Secretary to the Second of the Republic of Florence.
  http://wn.com/Niccolò_Machiavelli
• Nicholas Berdyaev
  http://wn.com/Nicholas_Berdyaev
• Nicholas Copernicus
  http://wn.com/Nicholas_Copernicus
• 
  Nicholas of Cusa
  Nicholas of Kues (1401 – August 11, 1464), also referred to as Nicolaus Cusanus and Nicholas of Cusa, was a cardinal of the Catholic Church from Germany (Holy Roman Empire), a philosopher, theologian, jurist, mathematician, and an astronomer. He is widely considered one of the great geniuses and polymaths of the 15th century. He is today recognized for significant spiritual, scientific and political contributions in European history, notable examples of which include his mystical or spiritual writings on 'learned ignorance' (and mathematical ideas expressed in related essays), as well as his participation in power struggles between Rome and the German states of the Holy Roman Empire.
  http://wn.com/Nicholas_of_Cusa
• Nicolas of Cusa
  http://wn.com/Nicolas_of_Cusa
• 
  Parmenides
  Parmenides of Elea (Greek: ; fl. early 5th century BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In The Way of Truth (a part of the poem), he explains how reality is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, and unchanging. In The Way of Opinion, he explains the world of appearances, which is false and deceitful. These thoughts strongly influenced Plato, and through him, the whole of Western philosophy.
  http://wn.com/Parmenides
• 
  Peter Abelard
  Peter Abelard (Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard) (1079 – April 21, 1142) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician. The story of his affair with and love for Héloïse has become legendary. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary describes him as "the keenest thinker and boldest theologian of the 12th Century".
  http://wn.com/Peter_Abelard
• Peter van Inwagen
  Peter van Inwagen (born September 21, 1942, United States) is an American analytic philosopher and the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He previously taught at Syracuse University and earned his PhD from the University of Rochester under the direction of Richard Taylor and Keith Lehrer. Van Inwagen is one of the leading figures in contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of action.
  http://wn.com/Peter_van_Inwagen
• 
  Petrarch
  Francesco Petrarca (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374), known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism". In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio and, especially, Dante Alighieri. This would be later endorsed by the Accademia della Crusca. His sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. Petrarch was also known for being one of the first people to refer to the Dark Ages.
  http://wn.com/Petrarch
• Philippa Foot
  Philippa Ruth Foot (née Bosanquet; October 3, 1920 – October 3, 2010) was a British philosopher, most notable for her works in ethics. She was one of the founders of contemporary virtue ethics. Her work, especially in her later career, marked a significant change in view from her work in the 1950s and 1960s, and may be seen as an attempt to modernize Aristotelian ethical theory, to show that it is adaptable to a contemporary world view, and thus, that it could compete with such popular theories as modern deontological and utilitarian ethics. Some of her work was crucial in the re-emergence of normative ethics within analytic philosophy, especially her critique of consequentialism. A familiar example is the continuing discussion of an example of hers referred to as the trolley problem. Foot's approach was influenced by the later work of Wittgenstein, although she rarely dealt explicitly with materials treated by him.
  http://wn.com/Philippa_Foot
• 
  Pierre Bayle
  Pierre Bayle (18 November 1647 – 28 December 1706) was a French philosopher and writer best known for his seminal work the Historical and Critical Dictionary, published beginning in 1695.
  http://wn.com/Pierre_Bayle
• 
  Pierre Gassendi
  Pierre Gassendi (January 22, 1592 – October 24, 1655) was a French philosopher, priest, scientist, astronomer, and mathematician. With a church position in south-east France, he also spent much time in Paris, where he was a leader of a group of free-thinking intellectuals. He was also an active observational scientist, publishing the first data on the transit of Mercury in 1631. The lunar crater Gassendi is named after him.
  http://wn.com/Pierre_Gassendi
• Pietro Pomponazzi
  Pietro Pomponazzi (16 September 1462 – 18 May 1525) was an Italian philosopher. He is sometimes known by his Latin name, Petrus Pomponatius.
  http://wn.com/Pietro_Pomponazzi
• Plato
  :For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation) and Platon (disambiguation).
  http://wn.com/Plato
• 
  Pyrrho
  Pyrrho (ca. 360 BC - ca. 270 BC), a Greek philosopher of classical antiquity, is credited as being the first Skeptic philosopher, and the inspiration for the school known as Pyrrhonism founded by Aenesidemus in the 1st century BC.
  http://wn.com/Pyrrho
• 
  Pythagoras
  Pythagoras of Samos (, O Pythagoras o Samios, "Pythagoras the Samian", or simply ; c. 570-c. 495 BC) was an Ionian Greek philosopher and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of our information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, thus very little reliable information is known about him. He was born on the island of Samos, and may have travelled widely in his youth, visiting Egypt and other places seeking knowledge. Around 530 BC, he moved to Croton, a Greek colony in southern Italy, and there set up a religious sect. His followers pursued the religious rites and practices developed by Pythagoras, and studied his philosophical theories. The society took an active role in the politics of Croton, but this eventually led to their downfall. The Pythagorean meeting-places were burned, and Pythagoras was forced to flee the city. He is said to have ended his days in Metapontum.
  http://wn.com/Pythagoras
• Raffaello Sanzio
  http://wn.com/Raffaello_Sanzio
• Rene Descartes
  http://wn.com/Rene_Descartes
• 
  Richard Rorty
  Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. His complex intellectual background gave him a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the analytic tradition in philosophy he would later famously reject. The philosophical program he developed included a rejection of a representationalist account of knowledge, a concept he referred to as a "mirror of nature," which he saw as a holdover from Platonism and pervasive throughout the history of philosophy. In response to this tradition, which he saw embodied by analytic philosophy, Rorty developed a novel form of pragmatism in which scientific and philosophical methods are merely contingent "vocabularies" which are abandoned or adopted over time according to social conventions and usefulness. Abandoning the representationalist account of knowledge, Rorty believed, would lead to a state of mind he referred to as "ironism", in which people are completely aware of the contingency of their placement in history and of their vocabulary. For Rorty, this brand of philosophy is always tied to the notion of "social hope," that without the ideas of representation and other concepts standing in the way between the mind and the world, human society would be more free. Much of his work explicates what a "postmetaphysical" culture that has abandoned representationalist epistemology would look like, incorporating a pragmatist naturalism that treats science as a tool towards liberalism. His best known book is Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979).
  http://wn.com/Richard_Rorty
• Richard Tarnas
  Richard Theodore Tarnas, Jr. (born February 21, 1950) is a philosopher and cultural historian known for his 1991 book The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View and Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, published in 2006. Tarnas is professor of philosophy and psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and is the founding director of its graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness.
  http://wn.com/Richard_Tarnas
• Robert Nozick
  Robert Nozick (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971). His other work involved decision theory and epistemology.
  http://wn.com/Robert_Nozick
• 
  Roger Bacon
  Roger Bacon, O.F.M. (c. 1214–1294), also known as Doctor Mirabilis (Latin: "wonderful teacher"), was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on empirical methods. He is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method inspired by the works of Plato and Aristotle.
  http://wn.com/Roger_Bacon
• Roger Scruton
  Roger Vernon Scruton (born 27 February 1944) is an English philosopher, writer, and composer. He is the author of a number of books on philosophy, aesthetics, and animal rights, including Art and Imagination (1974), Kant (1983), Animal Rights and Wrongs (1996), England: an Elegy (2000), and A Political Philosophy: Arguments For Conservatism (2006). He has also written several novels and two operas.
  http://wn.com/Roger_Scruton
• Rosalind Hursthouse
  Rosalind Hursthouse is a moral philosopher noted for her work on virtue ethics. Hursthouse is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Formerly, she has taught at the Open University in the United Kingdom, at the University of California at Los Angeles in the United States, and elsewhere. She received the M.A. degree from Auckland and she received the D.Phil. from Oxford University, having studied with Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot. She is a friend of Jeffrey Masson.
  http://wn.com/Rosalind_Hursthouse
• 
  Saul Kripke
  Saul Aaron Kripke (born November 13, 1940) is an American philosopher and logician. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton and teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center. Since the 1960s Kripke has been a central figure in a number of fields related to mathematical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, and set theory. Much of his work remains unpublished or exists only as tape-recordings and privately circulated manuscripts (see "Unpublished Manuscripts and Online Lectures" below). Kripke was the recipient of the 2001 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. A recent poll conducted among philosophers ranked Kripke among the top ten most important philosophers of the past 200 years.
  http://wn.com/Saul_Kripke
• Scott Soames
  Scott Soames (born 1946) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. He specializes in the philosophy of language and the history of analytic philosophy. He is well known for defending and expanding on the program in the philosophy of language started by Saul Kripke as well as being a major critic of two-dimensionalist theories of meaning.
  http://wn.com/Scott_Soames
• 
  Sigmund Freud
  Sigmund Freud (), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychiatry. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression, and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient, technically referred to as an "analysand", and a psychoanalyst. Freud is also renowned for his redefinition of sexual desire as the primary motivational energy of human life, as well as for his therapeutic techniques, including the use of free association, his theory of transference in the therapeutic relationship, and the interpretation of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. He was an early neurological researcher into cerebral palsy, and a prolific essayist, drawing on psychoanalysis to contribute to the history, interpretation and critique of culture.
  http://wn.com/Sigmund_Freud
• Simone de Beauvoir
  : "La Beauvoir" redirects here; also see: Beauvoir (disambiguation).
  http://wn.com/Simone_de_Beauvoir
• 
  Socrates
  Socrates (Greek: , , Sōkrátēs; c. 469 BC–399 BC, in English ) was a Classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Many would claim that Plato's dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity.
  http://wn.com/Socrates
• Spinoza
  http://wn.com/Spinoza
• 
  Sun Tzu
  Sun Wu (), style name Changqing (長卿), better known as Sun Tzu or Sunzi (; pronounced ), was an ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher who is traditionally believed and most likely to have authored The Art of War, an influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy. Sun Tzu has had a significant impact on Chinese and Asian history and culture, both as an author of The Art of War and through legend. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Sun Tzu's The Art of War grew in popularity and saw practical use in Western society, and his work has continued to influence both Asian and Western culture and politics.
  http://wn.com/Sun_Tzu
• Susan Haack
  Susan Haack (born 1945, England) is an English professor of philosophy and law at the University of Miami in the United States. She has written on logic, the philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics. Her pragmatism follows that of Charles Sanders Peirce.
  http://wn.com/Susan_Haack
• 
  Søren Kierkegaard
  Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( or ; ) (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a deeply religious Danish Theologian who took an interest in the new culture developing in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Age of Reason had replaced the age of faith established by the Holy Roman Empire. Kierkegaard devoted his life to the affirmation of the Lutheran faith against Reason and all forms of speculation in the realm of Christianity. In 1842 he heard every philosopher say, "Everything must be doubted," so he began doubting everything until he heard the philosphers say, "One must not waste time on doubting, but must just begin straight away on philosophy." He had been brought up to believe that "even an ordinary person endeavors to do what he says, though it may happen that he does something else through ignorance, because he does not understand himself. Yet this cannot happen with the philosopher." Four years later he wrote, "it should immediately be borne in mind that the issue is not about the truth of Christianity but about the individual’s relation to Christianity, consequently not about the indifferent individual’s systematic eagerness to arrange the truths of Christianity in paragraphs but rather about the concern of the infinitely interested individual with regard to his own relation to such a doctrine".
  http://wn.com/Søren_Kierkegaard
• T. H. Green
  http://wn.com/T_H_Green
• 
  Thales
  Thales of Miletus (; , Thalēs; 624 BC – c. 546 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition. According to Bertrand Russell, "Western philosophy begins with Thales." Thales attempted to explain natural phenomena without reference to mythology and was tremendously influential in this respect. Almost all of the other pre-Socratic philosophers follow him in attempting to provide an explanation of ultimate substance, change, and the existence of the world—without reference to mythology. Those philosophers were also influential, and eventually Thales' rejection of mythological explanations became an essential idea for the scientific revolution. He was also the first to define general principles and set forth hypotheses, and as a result has been dubbed the "Father of Science".
  http://wn.com/Thales
• 
  Thomas Hobbes
  Thomas Hobbes (5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679), in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.
  http://wn.com/Thomas_Hobbes
• 
  Thomas More
  Sir Thomas More (; February 7, 1478July 6, 1535), also Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important counsellor to Henry VIII of England and for three years toward the end of his life he was Lord Chancellor. He is also recognized as a saint within the Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion. He was an opponent of the Protestant Reformation and of Martin Luther and William Tyndale.
  http://wn.com/Thomas_More
• 
  Thomas Nagel
  Thomas Nagel (born July 4, 1937 in Belgrade, in present-day Serbia) is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics. He is well-known for his critique of reductionist accounts of the mind in his essay "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), and for his contributions to deontological and liberal moral and political theory in The Possibility of Altruism (1970) and subsequent writings.
  http://wn.com/Thomas_Nagel
• Thomas Reid
  Thomas Reid (7 May (26 April O.S.) 1710 – 7 October 1796), Scottish philosopher, and a contemporary of David Hume, was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. The early part of his life was spent in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he created the'' 'Wise Club' ''(a literary-philosophical association) and graduated from the University of Aberdeen. He was given a professorship at King's College, Aberdeen in 1752, where he wrote An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (published in 1764). Shortly afterward he was given the prestigious Professorship of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow when he was called to replace Adam Smith. He resigned from this position in 1781.
  http://wn.com/Thomas_Reid
• Timothy Williamson
  Timothy Williamson (born Uppsala, Sweden, 6 August 1955) is a distinguished British philosopher whose main research interests are in philosophical logic, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics.
  http://wn.com/Timothy_Williamson
• W. V. O. Quine
  http://wn.com/W_V_O_Quine
• W.V.O. Quine
  http://wn.com/WVO_Quine
• 
  William James
  :This article is about the American psychologist and philosopher. For other people named William James see William James (disambiguation)
  http://wn.com/William_James
• 
  William of Ockham
  William of Ockham (also Occam, Hockham, or any of several other spellings, ) (c. 1288 – c. 1348) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the fourteenth century. Although he is commonly known for Occam's razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, William of Ockham also produced significant works on logic, physics, and theology. In the Church of England, his day of commemoration is 10 April.
  http://wn.com/William_of_Ockham
• Wing-tsit Chan
  Professor Wing-tsit Chan (陈荣捷)(August 18, 1901 - August 12, 1994) was one of the world's leading scholars of Chinese philosophy and religion, active in the United States.
  http://wn.com/Wing-tsit_Chan
• Zarathustra
  http://wn.com/Zarathustra
• Zeno of Elea
  Zeno of Elea (, ) (ca. 490 BC? – ca. 430 BC?) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of southern Italy and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best known for his paradoxes, which Bertrand Russell has described as "immeasurably subtle and profound".
  http://wn.com/Zeno_of_Elea

• Chinese civilization
  #REDIRECTChina
  http://wn.com/Chinese_civilization
• Persia
  http://wn.com/Persia
• 
  United States
  The United States of America (also referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Caribbean and Pacific.
  http://wn.com/United_States

• A.C. Grayling
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• Michael Bratman
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• moral realism
• morality
• music
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• Nastika
• Nelson Goodman
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• Neoplatonists
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• Nicholas Berdyaev
• Nicholas Copernicus
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• Nicolas Malebranche
• Nicolas of Cusa
• Nicole Oresme
• noble savage
• nominalism
• normative ethics
• number
• On Denoting
• On the Soul
• ontological argument
• ontology
• ousia
• Parmenides
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• Peter Abelard
• Peter van Inwagen
• Petrarch
• Philippa Foot
• philosopher-king
• philosophical logic
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• Pyrrho
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• Steven Nadler
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• Thales
• The Art of War
• The Book of Healing
• the good life
• The New York Times
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• theology
• theory of forms
• third man argument
• Thomas Aquinas
• Thomas Hobbes
• Thomas More
• Thomas Nagel
• Thomas Reid
• Thomism
• thought experiment
• Timothy Williamson
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• Vedic period
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• W. V. O. Quine
• W.D. Ross
• W.V.O. Quine
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• William James
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• Yin-Yang
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Philosopher

Releases by album:

Thoughts |

Album releases

Thoughts (Released 2004)

• Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber
• Awakening Senses
• Beyond Darkness
• Elysia
• What Dwells Beyond
• Wounds
• Nephren Kah
• 47° 9′ S, 126° 43′ W
• Dreamside
• World in Rapture
• I Am Providence