Top Ten Favorite Philosophers of All Time

The Top Ten
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.

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 (June 21, 1905 – April 15, 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, political activist, biographer, and literary critic.
Michel Foucault
Simone de Beauvoir
Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation... read more
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a significant philosopher of the Enlightenment era. Known for his work on political philosophy and education, his writings, such as 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 Königsberg (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 of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. He is the founder of the religion with the same name as him. Confucius believed he was doing the Will of Ti'en (God or 'Heaven') by preaching ethics.

The Newcomers

? Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil (October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC), was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period.
? Peter Kropotkin
The Contenders
Aristotle Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece.

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

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

Georges Bataille
Socrates Socrates was a classical Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and as being the first moral philosopher, of the Western ethical tradition of thought.
Buddha Gautama Buddha, also known as Siddhārtha Gautama, Shakyamuni Buddha, or simply the Buddha, after the title of Buddha, was an ascetic and sage, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded.
Plato Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.
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
Henry David Thoreau
Thomas Aquinas

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

Soren Kierkegaard
Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx ( 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, critic of political economy, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the four-volume Das Kapital... read more
Martin Luther Martin Luther was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Jiddu Krishnamurti
St. Augustine
8Load More
PSearch List