Philosophers

1694-1778 Voltaire Pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet, one of the greatest of all French writers, he continues to be held in worldwide repute as a courageous crusader against tyranny, bigotry, and cruelty. His critical capacity, wit, and satire vigorously propagated an ideal of progress to which people of many nations have remained responsive. His works and […]

1710-1796 Reid, Thomas Scottish philosopher who rejected the skeptical Empiricism of David Hume in favor of a “philosophy of common sense,” later espoused by the Scottish School.

1711-1776 Hume, David Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. For many philosophers and historians his importance lies in the fact that Immanuel Kant conceived his critical philosophy in direct reaction to Hume. Hume was one of the influences that led Auguste Comte, the 19th-century French mathematician and

1712-1778 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose treatises and novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and the Romantic generation.

1724-1804 Kant, Immanuel German philosopher whose comprehensive and systematic work in epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics greatly influenced all subsequent philosophy, especially the various schools of Kantianism and idealism. The Kantian movement comprises a loose assemblage of rather diverse philosophies that share Kant’s concern with exploring the nature, and especially the limits, of human knowledge in

1729-1797 Burke, Edmund British statesman, parliamentary orator, and political thinker prominent in public life from 1765 to about 1795 and important in the history of political theory. He championed conservatism in opposition to Jacobinism in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

1770-1831 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich German philosopher who developed a dialectical scheme that emphasized the progress of history and of ideas from thesis to antithesis to a synthesis. Hegel was the last of the great philosophical system builders. His work, following Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Friedrich Schelling, thus marks the pinnacle of classical

1809-1882 Darwin, Charles English naturalist whose scientific theory of evolution by natural selection became the foundation of modern evolutionary studies.

1818-1883 Marx, Karl German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1883). His political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic and political history.

1798-1857 Comte, Auguste French philosopher known as the founder of sociology and of positivism. Comte gave the science of sociology its name and established the new subject in a systematic fashion.