Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German mathematician and philosopher. Short Biography: Independently of, but concurrently with, Newton he developed calculus. In his...

Ferdinand Lassalle

Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864) was a German socialist. Short Biography: He was imprisoned for his part in the Revolution of 1848, during which he met Marx, and in 1863 founded...

Peter Kropotkin

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin, Prince Kropotkin (1842-1921) was a Russian anarchist. Short Biography: Imprisoned for revolutionary activities in 1874, he escaped to the UK in 1876...

Soren Kierkegaard

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a Danish philosopher, considered to be the founder of existentialism. Short Biography: He disagreed with Hegel, arguing that no system...

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher, who believed that knowledge is not merely an aggregate of sense impressions, but is dependent on the conceptual apparatus of the...

William James

William James (1842-1910) was an American psychologist and philosopher, brother of the novelist Henry James. Short Biography: He turned from medicine to psychology and taught...

Muhammad Iqbal

Muhammad Iqbal (1875-1938) was a Islamic poet and thinker. Short Biography: His literary works, in Urdu and Persian, were mostly verse in tile classical style, suitable for public...

Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich (1926-2002) was an American radical philosopher and activist, born in Austria. Short Biography: His works, which include Deschooling Society (1971), Towards a History...

Edmund Husserl

Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husseri (1859-1938) was a German philospher, regarded as the founder of phenomenoloy, a philosophy concentrating on what is consciously experienced. Short...

John Huss

John Huss (c. 1373-1415) was a Bohemian church reformer, rector of Prague University from 1402, who was excommunicated for attacks on ecclesiastical abuses. Short Bioghraphy: He...

David Hume

David Hume (1711-1776) was a Scottish philosopher. Short Biography: A Treatise of Human Nature in 1740 is a central text of British empiricism. Hume denies the possibility of...

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was a English political philosopher, and the first thinker since Aristotle to attempt to develop a comprehensive theory of nature, including human behaviour....

Johann Gottfried Herder

Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) was a German poet, critic, and philosopher. Short Biography: Herder's critical writings indicated his intuitive rather than reasoning trend...

Claude Adrien Helvetius

Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771) was a French philosopher. In De I'Esprit (1758) he argued that self-interest, however disguised, is the mainspring of all human action that since...

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher. Short Biography: In Being and Time (1927), he used the methods of Husserl's phenomenology to explore the structures of...

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher, who conceived of consciousness and the external object as forming a unity, in which neither factor can exist independentiy...

Thomas Hill Green

Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882) attempted to show the limitations of Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, and advocated the study of Kant and Hegel. Short Biography: His chief...

Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian Marxist, who attempted to unify social theory and political practice. Short Biography: He helped to found the Italian Communist party...

William Godwin

William Godwin (1756-1836) was a English philosopher, novelist, and father of Mary Shelley. Short Biography: His Enquiry concerning Political Justice 1793 advocated an anarchic...

Avicenna

Ibn Sou (979-1037) was an Arabian philosopher and physician, who studied the Koran, philosophy, and the science of his day. Short Biography: His Canon Medicinae was a standard...

Plato

Plato (real name Aristocles) was born in May or December, 428 or 427 BC in an aristocratic family, in Athens or on Egina Island. He was a famous ancient Greek philosopher. Biography...

Galen

Galen AD (c. 130 - c. 200) was a Greek physician ideas dominated Western medicine for almost 1,500 years. Short Biography: Born at Pergamum in Asia Minor, he personally attended...

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) was a German philosopher. Short Biography: In Truth and Method written in 1960, he argued that "understanding" is fundamental to human existence...

Gottlob Frege

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) was an German philosopher. Short Biography: The founder of modem mathematical logic, he published Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik / The Foundations of...