The Great Philosophers' Ideas List

Elder wisdom, Thinkers, and Creators Since Antiquity

Some say there’s nothing new under the sun. Maybe we don’t need to go that far — but we should definitely appreciate the voluminous contributions of the ancient thinkers and great philosophers of antiquity, who figured out a dizzying array of complicated concepts long before the modern era.

We have much to learn from our ancestral teachers. Here’s a place to start — which shall grow over time as the knowledge is passed down yet again, age unto age. Things that stand the test of time are valuable, no matter what the currency of the day.

The Great Philosophers

Name	Known for	Born	Died	Where lived	Influenced
St. Thomas Aquinas	Summa Theologiae	1225	1274	Italy
Anaxagoras	Early Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who moved forward ideas about the nature of existence	c. 500 BC	c. 428 BC	Greece, Persia	Diogenes, Plutarch
Hannah Arendt	A politically progressive Jewish philosopher, Arendt fled the Nazi regime for America, where she wrote the foundational text on the political psychology of authoritarianism, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951)	1906	1975	Germany, America
Aristotle	Student of Plato and founder of the Lyceum, he is widely known for his Socratic Method of questioning as a basis for philosophical discussion	384 BC	322 BC	Greece	The Enlightenment, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante
Marcus Aurelius	Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher who advocated for cultivating an ethos of impermanence and doing one's duty.	121	180	Roman Empire
Avicenna	Persian polymath, father of early medicine, and a key figure during the Islamic Golden Age	980	1037	Persia
Francis Bacon	declaring that human intellect and reason are means of discovering the truth: "Knowledge is power“	1561	1626	England
Roger Bacon	Most celebrated European scientist of the Middle Ages.	1220	1292	England
Pierre Bourdieu	The French sociologist's work focuses on how upper social classes preserve their social privileges through generations despite the persistent myth of social mobility in post-industrial liberal societies	1930	2002	France
Jeremy Bentham	father of Utilitarianism	1748	1832	England
Daniel Bernoulli	Swiss mathematician widely credited for pioneering the field of statistics	1700	1782	Switzerland
Jacob Bernoulli		1655	1705	Switzerland
Jean Boudin	French political philosopher known for his theory of sovereignty	1530	1596	France
Louis Braille	French educator and inventor of the Braille system of reading and writing for the blind	1809	1852	France
Brunelleschi	Italian architect, sculptor, and designer	1377	1446	Italy
Joseph Campbell	Literature professor most known for his work in world mythologies, and the widely observed narrative of the archetypal hero	1904	1987	White Plains, NY	George Lucas and Star Wars
Andrew Carnegie	Gilded Age tycoon who made a fortune leading the steel industry in the late 19th century, becoming one of the richest Americans in history	1835	1919	Scotland, America
Cicero	Roman statesman, orator, philosopher, scholar, lawyer, and skeptic who championed a return to republican government during the dictatorship of Julius Caesar.	106 BC	43 BC	Rome	John Locke, David Hume, Motesquieu, Edmund Burke
Marquis de Condorcet	French philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist who played a key role in transforming European society from feudalism to modern secular democracy.	1743	1794	France	Thomas Jefferson
Confucius	Confucianism -- a system of ethics and morals to guide "right" behavior	551 BC	479 BC	China
Marie Curie	Chemist and physicist whose work on radioactivity earned her a Nobel Prize -- the first woman ever to win the award.	1867	1934	Poland, France
Leonardo da Vinci	The Italian polymath, painter, engineer, inventor, scientist et al was a giant of the Renaissance. He is often credited as being the greatest painter in th history of art.	1452	1519	Italy
Charles Darwin	English naturalist most famous for the knowledge of evolution	1809	1882	England
Democritus	basic theory of the atom: a fundamental building block unit of all things that itself is not divisible (although later we would discover even smaller particles, the atom is still essentially the most basic building block)	460 BC	371 BC	Greece
René Descartes	cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am	1596	1650	France
Alexis de Tocqueville	French diplomat, philosopher, historian, and aristocrat best known for his two volume Democracy in America (1835 & 1840), now considered one of the earliest works of sociology.	1805	1859	France
Diogenes	The most famous of the Cynics, a school of philosophy founded in Athens c. 400 BC, advocating the pursuit of happiness through avoiding the unnecessary temptations of material goods	412 BC	323 BC	Greece	Zeno
Emilé Durkheim	anomie — concept of lack of a shared moral order. Normlessness.	1858	1917	France
Albert Einstein	Known for his theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, Einstein is widely agreed to be one of the greatest physicist of all time.	1879	1955	Germany, America
Ralph Waldo Emerson	Writer, philosopher, poet, and abolitionist who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century and became a key figure in the American romantic movement	1803	1882	America	Henry David Thoreau
Empedocles	Greek philosopher best known for his cosmogonic theory of the four classical elements.	494 BC	434 BC	Greece
Epicurus	Greek philosopher and founder of the highly influential school of philosophy bearing his name, Epicureanism	341 BC	270 BC	Greece	John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx
Erasmus	A Dutch philosopher and Catholic theologian, Erasmus is acknowledged as one of the greatest minds of the northern Renaissance	1466	1536	Netherlands
Euclid	Greek mathematician and founder of geometry	c. 325 BC	c. 270 BC	Alexandria, Egypt
Michael Faraday	Hugely influential English scientist who made numerous contributions to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry	1791	1867	England
Enrico Fermi	Italian physicist who emigrated to America with his Jewish wife in 1938 and worked on the Manhattan Project, creating the world's first nuclear reactor and becoming dubbed the "architect of the atomic bomb."	1901	1954	Italy, America
Michel Foucault	Widely influential philosopher, literary critic, historian, and activist best known for his theories on the relationship between power and knowledge.	1926	1984	France
Sigmund Freud	Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis	1856	1939	Austria, UK
John Kenneth Galbraith	Concept of countervailing power — that collective worker power is needed to balance against growing corporatism in the economy	1908	2006	Canada, America
Galen	Greek physician, surgeon, and philosopher credited with developing the fields of anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, neurology, and logic	130	200	Greece, Rome
Galileo	The Italian polymath is considered the father of modern science, making groundbreaking contributions to the fields of modern physics, observational astronomy, and the scientific method itself.	1564	1642	Italy
Siddharta Gautama	The Buddha; achieving enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in India	563 BC	483 BC	India
Ghiberti	Sculptor most famous for his creation of the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistry	1378	1455	Italy
Johann Gutenberg	Invented the printing press, democratizing the dissemination of information for the first time.	1394	1468	Germany
Jürgen Habermas	German philosopher and member of the Frankfurt School, his work addresses public opinion and the public sphere through the lens of critical theory	1929		Germany
Friedrich Hegel	One of the most important figures in German idealism and a founding figure in Western philosophy	1770	1831	Germany
Martin Heidigger	German philosopher and member of the Nazi Party	1889	1976	Germany
Heraclitus	posited that change or flow is the most basic character of nature; that the world is characterized by opposites; and that God or "logos" is the essence of nature's constant flux and source of all things	535 BC	475 BC	Greece
Herodotus	first historian; first journalist; first foreign correspondent	480 BC	425 BC	Greece
Hippocrates	Greek physician who is considered the Father of Medicine and known for the Hippocratic oath still in use today	c. 460 BC	c. 370 BC	Greece
Thomas Hobbes	English philosopher and founder of modern political philosophy	1588	1679	England
Homer	Ancient Greek poet and author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey	c. 750 BC		Greece
David Hume	Key Enlightenment philosopher who championed empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism	1711	1776	Scotland
William James	The father of American psychology	1842	1910	America
Thomas Jefferson	Founding Father and third president of the U.S., Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence	1743	1826	America
Carl Jung	Founder of analytical psychology	1875	1961	Switzerland
Immanuel Kant	A central Enlightenment thinker who made contributions to epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics among other fields.	1724	1804	Prussia
John Maynard Keynes	English economist whose ideas profoundly changed the field of macroeconomics and economic policy, now known as Keynesian economics	1883	1946	England
Søren Kierkegaard	Danish poet and polymath regarded as the first existentialist philosopher	1813	1855	Denmark
Thomas Kuhn	Philosopher of science known for his theory of scientific paradigms and paradigm shifts	1922	1996	America
Lao Tzu	the Dao de Ching and philosophy of Daoism	6th c. BC	6th c. BC	China
Lamark	A botanist, naturalist, and taxonomist, the French academic was an early proponent of the idea of evolution	1744	1829	France
Gottfried Liebniz	The German polymath is a key figure in the history of philosophy and mathematics both	1646	1716	Prussia
Vladimir Lenin	Fomented the Russian Revolution of 1917 that overthrew the tsarist regime	1870	1924	Russia	Joseph Stalin
Carolus Linnaeus	The father of modern taxonomy and inventor of binomial nomenclature for the modern system of naming organisms	1707	1778	Sweden
John Locke	philosophy of liberty and natural rights	1632	1704	England
Martin Luther	Kicked off the Protestant Reformation when he broke with the Catholic Church over the practice of indulgences	1483	1546	Germany
James Madison	Founding Father and fourth president of the U.S., Madison is known as the father of the Constitution and the author of the Bill of Rights, as well as a co-author of the Federalist Papers with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay	1751	1836	America
Karl Marx	His political theories were so revolutionary he lived in exile much of his life, with his works The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital exerting enormous influence on subsequent intellectual thought and world history	1818	1883	Germany, England
John Stuart Mill	A key thinker in the pantheon of classical liberalism, Mill contributed to political theory, political economy, and social theory among others	1806	1873	England
Mozi	An ethical philosophy advocating the caring for everyone equally	470 BC	391 BC	China	Legalism
Mohammad	Arab social and political leader who founded the religion of Islam	570	632	Mecca
Isaac Newton	One of the greatest scientists of all time, Newton discovered gravity and the laws of motion among much else	1642	1727	England
Friedrich Nietzsche	Key figure in modern intellectual history	1844	1900	Germany
Alfred Nobel	Inventor and philanthropist who gave his fortune to establish the Nobel Prize	1833	1896	Sweden
Georgia O'Keeffe	Painter known as the Mother of American modernism	1887	1986	America
Thomas Paine	Political theorist and revolutionary whose pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis helped persuade the colonists to declare independence from Great Britain	1737	1809	Britain; America
Parmenides	early Rationalist; believed our perceptions are an illusion shielding us from true reality, which is only discernable via human reason	515 BC	445 BC	Greece	Plato
Louis Pasteur	A French chemist and microbiologist who discovered vaccination and pasteurization, Pasteur is considered the father of bacteriology and the father of microbiology	1822	1895	France
Petrarch	Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters helped spark the Italian Renaissance in the 14th century	1304	1374	Italy
Philo of Alexandria	Philosopher and theologist who entwined Jewish exegesis and Stoic philosophy	c. 20 BC	c. 50 AD	Alexandria, Egypt
Plato	Platonic Forms	427 BC	347 BC	Greece	Aristotle
Pliny the Elder	Author, naturalist, and navy commander who wrote encyclopedic works on natural philosophy	23	79	Rome
Marco Polo	The first European to create a detailed history of his voyage to Asia via the Silk Road, including China, Japan, Persia, India, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.	1254	1324	Italy
Neil Postman	The professor and cultural critic warned against the ill effects of tchnology and is best known for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)	1931	2003	America
Protagoras	Father of relativism; coined the phrase "man is the measure of all things"	490 BC	420 BC	Greece
Pythagoras	The Pythagorean theorem	570 BC	495 BC	Greece	Parmenides
François Rabelais	A writer, physician, Greek scholar, Renaissance thinker, Rabelais is infamous for his satirical and bawdy humor	1483	1553	France
John Rawls	Moral and political philosopher known for the thought experiment known as the "veil of ignorance," in which participants make decisions about the society they will live in without knowing a priori which class or social position they themselves would occupy.	1921	2002	American
Jean-Jacques Rousseau	Political philosopher whose concept of the Social Contract inspired the French and American Revolutions, and underpins all modern liberal democracies	1712	1778	France	The Enlightenment, French Revolution
Jean-Paul Sartre	A key thinker in the philosophy of existentialism	1905	1980	France
Arthur Schopenhauer	The German philosopher was one of the first in the west to embrace Indian philosophy, including asceticism, self-denial, and the concept of worldly illusion. He influenced many other important thinkers and creators of the 19th and 20th centuries	1788	1860	Poland	Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, Richard Wagner, Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler
Joseph Schumpeter	An Austrian emigree to the US, Schumpeter taught at Harvard and popularized the economic term "creative destruction"	1883	1950	Hungary, United States
Seneca	Rhetoric teacher and Stoic philosopher	55 BC	37 AD	Roman Empire
Adam Smith	This Scottish philosopher was a pioneer of political economy, and is widely regarded as the father of economics and the father of capitalism.	1723	1790	Scotland	David Hume
Socrates	Widely considered a founder of philosophy; the dialectic method, among much else	469 BC	399 BC	Greece	Plato
Spinoza	An early Enlightenment thinker inspired by Descartes to go on to lead the Dutch Golden Age	1632	1677	The Netherlands
Nicholas Nassim Taleb	The author, mathematical statistician, and former options trader has written several influential books on probability, uncertainty, and randomness.	1960		Lebanon, America
Thales	Posited water as being the basic material of the cosmos	624 BC	546 BC	Miletus, Greece
Theocritus	Creator of ancient Greek pastoral poetry	c. 300 BC	c. 260 BC	Greece
Thucydides	Athenian historian and general who wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War about the conflict between Sparta and Athens	460 BC	400 BC	Greece
Edward Tufte	Professor of computer science at Yale and a pioneer in the field of data visualization	1942		America
Virgil	Regarded as one of Rome's greatest poets, Virgil penned the Aeneid, the national epic of ancient Rome	70 BC	19 BC	Rome	Dante and the Divine Comedy
Vitruvius	Roman author, architect, and army engineer known for his significant contributions to architecture and design	c. 80 BC	c. 15 BC	Rome	The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci
Voltaire	Key figure in the Enlightenment, Voltaire was famous for his criticism of the Catholic Church and advocacy of civil liberties including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the separation of church and state	1694	1778	France	Jean-Jacques Rousseau
James Watson	Credited with discovering the double helix structure of the DNA molecule	1928		America
Max Weber	German historian and political economist widely regarded as one of the most important theorists of modern Western society	1864	1920	Germany	Critical theory, the Frankfurt School
Ludwig Wittgenstein	Considered one of the greatest modern philosophers, Wittgenstein made significant contributions to the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind.	1889	1951	Austria, England
Zeno	Founder of the Stoic school of philosophy in 4th c. BCE Greece and Parmenides's most famous student.	c. 495 BC	c. 430 BC	Greece	Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes

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