Philosophers

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Vicente Ferreira da Silva

1916 – 1963
Contemporary

Brazilian existentialist and mythologist philosopher who creatively adapted Heideggerian ontology to the Brazilian cultural context. He developed an original philosophy of mythology that sought to …

Donald Davidson

1917 – 2003
Contemporary

Donald Davidson was an American analytic philosopher whose work in the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and action theory established some of the most …

Louis Althusser

1918 – 1990
Contemporary

Louis Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher whose structuralist reinterpretation of Marx profoundly influenced political theory, literary criticism, and the social sciences. His concepts of …

Iris Murdoch

1919 – 1999
Contemporary

Iris Murdoch was a British philosopher and novelist whose work in moral philosophy challenged the dominant analytical and existentialist approaches by emphasizing the moral significance …

Elizabeth Anscombe

1919 – 2001

G.E.M. Anscombe was one of the most formidable analytic philosophers of the twentieth century, whose landmark work 'Intention' (1957) essentially founded the modern philosophical theory …

Philippa Foot

1920 – 2010
Contemporary

Philippa Foot was a British philosopher whose work on virtue ethics, moral naturalism, and the famous trolley problem made her one of the most important …

John Rawls

1921 – 2002
Contemporary

John Rawls was an American political philosopher whose A Theory of Justice (1971) is widely regarded as the most important work of political philosophy in …

Paulo Freire

1921 – 1997
Contemporary

Paulo Freire was a Brazilian philosopher and educator whose *Pedagogy of the Oppressed* (1968) transformed education into a site of political and existential liberation, opposing …

Thomas Kuhn

1922 – 1996
Contemporary

Thomas Kuhn was an American philosopher and historian of science whose The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) fundamentally changed the understanding of how science develops. …

Rodolfo Kusch

1922 – 1979
Contemporary

Rodolfo Kusch was an Argentine philosopher, anthropologist, and playwright whose immersive engagement with Andean and Amazonian indigenous thought produced a radical challenge to the European …

Jean-François Lyotard

1924 – 1998
Contemporary

Jean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher best known for his analysis of the postmodern condition, in which he diagnosed the collapse of grand narratives (metanarratives) …

Frantz Fanon

1925 – 1961
Contemporary

Frantz Fanon was a Martinican-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary whose analyses of colonialism, racism, and decolonization made him one of the most important political thinkers …

Gilles Deleuze

1925 – 1995
Contemporary

Gilles Deleuze was a French philosopher whose radically original metaphysics of difference, becoming, and multiplicity challenged the Western philosophical tradition's privileging of identity and representation. …

Michel Foucault

1926 – 1984
Contemporary

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and historian of ideas whose analyses of power, knowledge, and subjectivity transformed the humanities and social sciences. Through detailed …

Hilary Putnam

1926 – 2016
Contemporary

Hilary Putnam was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist whose contributions to the philosophy of language, mind, mathematics, and science make him one of …

Leszek Kołakowski

1927 – 2009

Leszek Kołakowski was a Polish philosopher who, beginning as a Communist intellectual within the Polish United Workers' Party, underwent a sustained and searching intellectual journey …

Noam Chomsky

1928 – ?
Contemporary

Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political activist whose theory of generative grammar revolutionized the study of language and mind. His …

Jürgen Habermas

1929 – ?
Contemporary

Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher and social theorist whose theory of communicative action and discourse ethics represent the most ambitious attempt to reconstruct the …

Bernard Williams

1929 – 2003
Contemporary

Bernard Williams was a British philosopher widely regarded as one of the most brilliant and original moral philosophers of the twentieth century. His critiques of …

Alasdair MacIntyre

1929 – ?
Contemporary

Alasdair MacIntyre is a Scottish-American philosopher whose *After Virtue* issued one of the most powerful challenges to modern moral philosophy in the twentieth century. Drawing …

Jean Baudrillard

1929 – 2007
Contemporary

Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, and cultural theorist whose analyses of simulation, hyperreality, and the implosion of meaning in consumer societies made him …

Jacques Derrida

1930 – 2004
Contemporary

Jacques Derrida was a French-Algerian philosopher who founded deconstruction, a method of reading and philosophical analysis that reveals the internal contradictions, hidden assumptions, and undecidable …

Michel Serres

1930 – 2019
Contemporary

Michel Serres was a French philosopher and historian of science whose eclectic, poetic, and interdisciplinary work explored the connections between science, culture, nature, and the …

Luce Irigaray

1930 – ?
Contemporary

Luce Irigaray is a Belgian-born French feminist philosopher, psychoanalyst, and linguist whose work on sexual difference has been one of the most important and controversial …

244 philosophers

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