Top Ten Favorite Philosophers of All Time

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history. He is best known for his concepts such as the will to power, the Übermensch, and the declaration... read more

Nietzsche's relativistic philosophy of "perspectivism" is another manifestation of collectivism. Another Utopian fantasy of man's ability to perfect man. It has its ostensible diametric opposition in Ayn Rand's "objectivism," which, as with all ideologies that deny any authority above man, is deeply flawed and hardly "objective." Nietzsche and Rand each is a minefield set in a morass.

Nietzsche's literature is at the top of the leaderboard. Sublime.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, born on June 21, 1905 and died on April 15, 1980, was a French philosopher, playwright, and novelist. He was one of the leading figures in existentialist thought and a major voice in 20th-century literature and political activism. Sartre declined the Nobel Prize in Literature... read more

Michel Foucault

Simone de Beauvoir

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet, known by his pen name Voltaire, was born on November 21, 1694, and died on May 30, 1778. He was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher who became famous for his sharp wit, his criticism of the Catholic Church, and his strong support for civil liberties such... read more

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher of the Enlightenment era. Known for his work on political philosophy and education, his writings, including The Social Contract and Emile, advocate for a society based on democratic consensus and the moral autonomy of individuals.... read more

Marquis de Sade

Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, was a French writer, libertine, political activist, and nobleman best known for his provocative and libertine novels. Born on June 2, 1740, in Paris, France, he became notorious for his erotic and often controversial works, which explored themes of extreme... read more

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant. 22 April 1724-12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central figures of the Enlightenment.

Born in Konigsberg (then part of East Prussia, now Kaliningrad, Russia), Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics... read more

Confucius

Confucius was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher during the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. He is considered the founder of Confucianism, a philosophical and ethical system based on his teachings. Confucius believed he was fulfilling the Will of Ti'en (Heaven or God)... read more

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Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, commonly known as Virgil or Vergil (October 15, 70 BC - September 21, 19 BC), was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is best known for writing the Aeneid, an epic poem that has been influential in Western literature. His other works include the Eclogues and... read more

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Hannah Arendt

Socrates

Socrates, who lived from approximately 470 to 399 BCE, was a classical Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. He is also regarded as the first moral philosopher in the Western ethical tradition. Although he wrote no works himself, his ideas are known through the dialogues... read more

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece. He was a student of Plato and later became the tutor of Alexander the Great. Aristotle's writings covered a wide range of subjects, including physics, biology, metaphysics... read more

Gave Western civilization a rational argument, a logical need, for a Creator.

"Quality is not an act, it is a habit."

Georges Bataille

Buddha

Gautama Buddha, also known as Siddhartha Gautama, Shakyamuni Buddha, or simply the Buddha, was an Indian ascetic and sage whose teachings laid the foundation for Buddhism. Born in the 6th or 5th century BCE in present-day Nepal, he attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree after years of meditation... read more

Plato

Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, one of the earliest institutions of higher learning in the Western world. He was a student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle. His works, written in the form of dialogues, have had a lasting influence on Western... read more

Gilles Deleuze

Groundbreaking, anarchic, and surreal anti-capitalist academic who paved the way for the internet age, coining the concept of a "virtual world" in 1967, as well as laying much of the groundwork for modern-day neurodiversity and alternative education movements in his works with anti-authoritarian communist psychoanalyst Felix Guattari.

William James

William James was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. He is regarded as a founding figure in both psychology and philosophy in the United States. James was instrumental in the development of pragmatism and made significant contributions through his work The... read more

Henry David Thoreau

Soren Kierkegaard

Karl Marx

Karl Marx (5 May 1818-14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, critic of political economy, economist, historian, political theorist, journalist, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto, co-written with Friedrich Engels, and the three-volume Das... read more

Martin Luther

Martin Luther was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk, and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation.

He's best known for his Ninety-five Theses, which he is traditionally said to have nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church in 1517, challenging the Catholic... read more

Thomas Aquinas

Theologian and philosopher who wrote: "To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."

St. Augustine

Reinhold Niebuhr

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (June 21, 1892 - June 1, 1971) was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Niebuhr was a prominent public intellectual in the United States during the mid-20th... read more