The School of Athens by Rafael - closeup
Auguste Comte

Auguste Comte

Who Is Auguste Comte? Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte (19 January 1798 – 5 September 1857) was a French philosopher and writer who formulated the doctrine of positivism. He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. Comte is also seen as...

Plaque of Maimonides at Rambam Medical Center, Haifa

Maimonides

Maimonides Moses ben Maimon (מֹשֶׁה בֶּן־מַיְמוּן‬, Mōšeh ben-Maymūn; موسى بن ميمون‎, Mūsā bin Maymūn), commonly known as Maimonides (Maïmōnídēs; Moses Maimonides), and also referred to by the acronym Rambam (רמב״ם‬, for Rabbeinu Mōšeh bēn Maimun, “Our Rabbi Moses, son of Maimon”), was a medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and...

Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius

Who Is Marcus Aurelius? Marcus Aurelius (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus; 26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors, and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace...

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer

Who Is Arthur Schopenhauer? Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), wherein he characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind and insatiable metaphysical will. Proceeding from the transcendental...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Who Is Jean-Jacques Rousseau? Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic and educational thought. His Discourse...

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas

Who Is Thomas Aquinas? Saint Thomas Aquinas OP (Tommaso d’Aquino, lit. “Thomas of Aquino”; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. He is an immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism, within which he is also known as the Doctor Angelicus and the Doctor Communis. The name Aquinas...

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

Who Is Jean-Paul Sartre? Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century...

John Dewey

John Dewey

Who Is 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. He is regarded as one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century....

Bust of Ibn Khaldoun in the entrance of the Kasbah of Bejaia, Algeria

Ibn Khaldun

Who Is Ibn Khaldun? Ibn Khaldun (أبو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي‎, Abū Zayd ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Khaldūn al-Ḥaḍramī; 27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406) was a leading Arab historiographer and historian. He is widely considered as a forerunner of the modern disciplines of historiography,...

Album folio fragment with scholar in a garden. Attributed to Muhammad Ali 1610-15. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Ibn Tufail

Who Is Ibn Tufail? Ibn Tufail (c. 1105 – 1185) (أبو بكر محمد بن عبد الملك بن محمد بن طفيل القيسي الأندلسي, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi; Abubacer Aben Tofail; Abubekar or Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail) was an Arab Andalusian Muslim polymath: a writer, novelist, Islamic philosopher,...

Illustration of the story of Hippocrates refusing the presents of the Achaemenid Emperor Artaxerxes, who was asking for his services. Painted by Girodet.

Hippocrates

Who Is Hippocrates? Hippocrates of Kos (Hippokrátēs ho Kṓos; c. 460 – c. 370 BC), also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician of the Age of Pericles (Classical Greece), who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is often referred to as the “Father...

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Who Is Leo Tolstoy? Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Лев Николаевич Толстой, tr. Lev Nikoláyevich Tolstóy; 9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. He received multiple nominations for Nobel Prize in Literature...

Photo by Elliott & Fry, c.1860s

Thomas Carlyle

Who Is Thomas Carlyle? Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881) was a Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, translator, historian, mathematician, and teacher. Considered one of the most important social commentators of his time, he presented many lectures during his lifetime with certain acclaim in the Victorian era. One...

Zarathushtra or Zoroaster

Zarathushtra, Mani, And The Cathars

Zarathushtra, Mani, And The Cathars This article covers philosophers Zarathushtra, Mani, and The Cathars. The word that wounds is this: When a man speaks a word for the sake of the killing of a man or the killing of beasts or the killing of trees and the “Cross of Light,”...

Portrait of the Zoroastrian prophet Zarathustra

Zoroaster

Who is Zoroaster? Zoroaster also known as Zarathustra (Zarathushtra Spitama or Ashu Zarathushtra, زرتشت‎) was an ancient Iranian spiritual leader who founded what is now known as Zoroastrianism. His teachings challenged the existing traditions of the Indo-Iranian religion and inaugurated a movement that eventually became the dominant religion in Ancient Persia. He was...

Sir Francis Bacon, "Knowledge is Power"

Francis Bacon

Who Is Francis Bacon? Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban, PCQC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. His works are credited with developing the scientific method and remained influential through the scientific revolution. Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. His...

Mencius

Mencius

Who Is Mencius? Mencius or Mengzi (372–289 BC or 385–303 or 302BC) was a Chinese Confucian philosopher who has often been described as the “second Sage“, that is after only Confucius himself. Living during the Warring States period, he is said to have spent much of his life travelling around China offering...

Al-Tafsir al-Kabir li Imam al-Fakhr al-Razi

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi

Who Is Fakhr al-Din al-Razi? Fakhr al-Din al-Razi or Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī or Fakhruddin Razi (فخر الدين رازي‎) was an Iranian Sunni Muslim theologian and philosopher He was born in 1149 in Rey (in modern-day Iran), and died in 1209 in Herat (in modern-day Afghanistan). He also wrote on medicine, physics,...

An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris

Blaise Pascal

Who Is Blaise Pascal? Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian. 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...

Albert Camus

Albert Camus

Who Is Albert Camus? Albert Camus (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44 in 1957, the second youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel. Camus...