You can also click on the profile link for each philosopher to see where they rank in specific philosophy subdisciplines, such as logic, ethics, and metaphysics. Other information provided below includes a condensed Wikipedia bio for each philosopher, their Key Contributions to the discipline, and Selected Works. Most of the names below will be familiar, though you might find a few surprises. What follows is a list, in order, of the most influential philosophers who ever lived. Back to Top The Most Influential Philosophers of All Time With this limitation acknowledged, we bring you. This denotes a clear evolution in an academic field that, for all of its insight and illumination, also has a deep-seated history of Eurocentrism.įor a look at the philosophers with the greatest influence on the field today, check out: Happily, when one distills a more current period of history in the philosophy discipline, one can see just how much the field of thought has evolved today, such that a meaningful number of women, people of color, and people of non-European origin are represented. This is not an endorsement of those prejudices-merely a faithful reporting on a subject which is inherently reflective of those prejudices. Moreover, our rankings are limited to those thinkers whose work has enjoyed extensive translation in the English-speaking world.īecause our influence rankings measure the raw permeation of citations, writing, and ideas originating with each of these thinkers, the rigid prejudices that have persisted throughout history are also reflected on our list. Across the vast majority of the 3000 years represented here, social, racial, and gender inequality have been very real and very consequential realities. Rather, this is a direct reflection of the enormous scope of time accounted for in our ranking. This is not because we have overlooked these thinkers, nor because their contributions don’t warrant inclusion in such a list. Also limited in appearance are the brilliant thinkers from Arabic or African antiquity, from Eastern traditions of thought, or from more recent centuries where the greatest minds were set to work on advancing civil rights. Absent are the great women who have altered the course of human history by way of their ideas and actions. What follows is a list composed entirely of men, most of them European, descendent from European ancestry, or famous for proliferating European ideas. We concede from the outset that this ranking list reflects a problem, not specifically with our algorithm, but with the human history of influence. Accordingly, our ranking of the 25 Most Influential Philosophers of All Time uses the time parameters of 1000 BC to 2000 CE. This, therefore, seems an appropriate starting point for the period under investigation. For instance, it is said that Greek thinker Pythagoras coined the term philosophy in the 6th Century BC. Influence can also be measured within a specific set of time parameters. The InfluenceRanking engine measures the influence of a given person in a given discipline, as well as in important related subdisciplines. It performs this calculation by drawing from Wikipedia/data, Crossref, and an ever-growing body of data reflecting academic achievement and merit. The InfluenceRanking engine calculates a numerical influence score for people, institutions, and disciplinary programs.

The Most Influential Philosophers of All Time.This is a bird’s eye view of philosophy, an overview from the very top, but by no means a comprehensive nor probing dive into any one area. What follows is a list of the The 25 Most Influential Philosophers of all time based on the period of history between 1000 BCE and 2000 CE. But based on our findings, this is the top tier of thinkers, those who paved the way for all which came after, who laid the foundation for so much of what we hold to be true, who in essence created the field of study we call philosophy. And ideas expressed just by those included here fill untold volumes of writing. The number of individuals who have impacted the course of human history through their insight, intuition, and intellect is far too great to quantify. And yet, this is by no means a comprehensive discussion. The list here is a portal to the history of human thought, a window into everything and nothing all at once.

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