Philosophers

All Eras
All Schools

Derek Parfit

1942 – 2017
Contemporary

Derek Parfit was a British philosopher whose work on personal identity, ethics, and the foundations of morality is widely regarded as among the most important …

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

1942 – ?
Contemporary

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an Indian-American literary theorist, philosopher, and postcolonial critic whose work has been foundational to postcolonial studies, subaltern studies, and transnational feminism. …

Paulin Hountondji

1942 – 2024
Contemporary

Paulin J. Hountondji was a Beninese philosopher whose 'African Philosophy: Myth and Reality' (1976) launched one of the most consequential and controversial debates in the …

Chantal Mouffe

1943 – ?

Chantal Mouffe is a Belgian political philosopher whose agonistic theory of democracy, developed in collaboration with Ernesto Laclau and subsequently independently, constitutes one of the …

Donna Haraway

1944 – ?
Contemporary

Donna Haraway is an American philosopher of science, feminist theorist, and cultural critic whose 'Cyborg Manifesto' and subsequent work on multispecies entanglements have been foundational …

Henry Odera Oruka

1944 – 1995

Henry Odera Oruka was a Kenyan philosopher who developed the 'sage philosophy' project — a systematic effort to identify and document individual, critical, argumentative philosophical …

Peter Singer

1946 – ?
Contemporary

Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher whose utilitarian approach to ethics has made him one of the most influential — and controversial — living …

Martha Nussbaum

1947 – ?
Contemporary

Martha Nussbaum is an American philosopher whose capabilities approach to justice, development, and human dignity has had a transformative impact on political philosophy, international development …

Bruno Latour

1947 – 2022
Contemporary

Bruno Latour was a French philosopher, anthropologist of science, and social theorist whose actor-network theory (ANT) and critique of the nature-culture divide transformed the sociology …

Olavo de Carvalho

1947 – 2022
Contemporary

Olavo de Carvalho was a Brazilian conservative philosopher, polemicist, and cultural critic whose influence on Brazilian right-wing thought in the 2000s and 2010s was decisive, …

Slavoj Žižek

1949 – ?
Contemporary

Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural critic, and psychoanalytic theorist whose prolific and deliberately provocative work synthesizes Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegelian dialectics, and Marxist political …

Charles Mills

1951 – 2021

Charles W. Mills was a Jamaican-American political philosopher whose 'The Racial Contract' (1997) is one of the most important works of political philosophy produced in …

bell hooks

1952 – 2021
Contemporary

bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins) was an American cultural critic, feminist theorist, and public intellectual whose work pioneered the integration of race, gender, and class …

Cornel West

1953 – ?
Contemporary

Cornel West is an American philosopher, political activist, and public intellectual whose work synthesizes the prophetic tradition of the Black church, American pragmatism, and Marxist …

Kwame Anthony Appiah

1954 – ?
Contemporary

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a Ghanaian-British-American philosopher whose work on cosmopolitanism, identity, race, and honor has made him one of the leading public philosophers of …

Mário Sérgio Cortella

1954 – ?

Mário Sérgio Cortella is a Brazilian philosopher, educator, and public intellectual whose work has made rigorous philosophical thinking about ethics, the meaning of work, and …

Silvio Meira

1954 – ?

Silvio Meira is a Brazilian technologist-thinker and innovation theorist whose work has shaped the philosophy of digital transformation and technology-driven social change in Brazil and …

Wendy Brown

1955 – ?

Wendy Brown is an American political theorist whose work constitutes one of the most rigorous and comprehensive philosophical analyses of neoliberalism's transformative effects on democratic …

Judith Butler

1956 – ?
Contemporary

Judith Butler is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose concept of gender performativity revolutionized feminist theory, queer theory, and the broader understanding of identity. …

Achille Mbembe

1957 – ?
Contemporary

Achille Mbembe is a Cameroonian philosopher and political theorist whose concepts of necropolitics — the sovereign power to dictate who may live and who must …

Byung-Chul Han

1959 – ?
Contemporary

Byung-Chul Han is a Korean-born, German-based philosopher and cultural theorist whose incisive analyses of contemporary society — the burnout society, the transparency society, the palliative …

Luiz Felipe Pondé

1959 – ?

Luiz Felipe Pondé is a Brazilian philosopher and public intellectual whose work articulates a philosophical pessimism grounded in the tradition of Blaise Pascal, Arthur Schopenhauer, …

Viviane Mosé

1964 – ?

Viviane Mosé is a Brazilian philosopher, poet, and psychoanalyst whose work stands at the intersection of Nietzsche scholarship, philosophy of language, psychoanalytic theory, and philosophical …

Clóvis de Barros Filho

1966 – ?

Clóvis de Barros Filho is a Brazilian philosopher, communication theorist, and public intellectual whose work combines scholarly engagement with Spinozist ethics and Stoic philosophy with …

244 philosophers

Compare:
Compare