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Religious Affiliation of
History's Greatest Philosophers
The following list of "great philosophers" is taken directly from Living Biographies of Great Philosophers by Henry Thomas and Dana Lee Thomas, Garden City, New York: Garden City Books (1959), one volume in the Thomas's classic Living Biographies series.
Adherents.com has no position about whether or not these are really history's greatest or most influential philosophers. We simply thought it would be interesting to present a generally respected list of philosophers, along with the "religious affiliation" of each -- to whatever extent such a concept can be applied to these individuals. Obviously the belief systems of each of these philosphers extend beyond traditionally defined denominational parameters. "Religious affiliations" listed below include traditions the philosophers were raised in as well as philosophies they founded or grew into. This list does not summarize the philosophy of these individuals. This list represents the perspective of Henry and Dana Lee Thomas, who are historians and biographers.
Other Living Biographies Books by Henry and Dana Lee Thomas are about: Great Scientists; Great Composers; Great Poets; Great Painters; Religious Leaders; Famous Novelists; Famous Women.
Related Pages:
- Spiritual/Religious Biographies - Religious Affiliation of Famous People
- Famous Adherents - lists of famous adherents of dozens of different religious groups
| Name | Date | Birthplace | Affiliation | Some Works Written |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Socrates | 470- 399 B.C | Athens, Greece | Greek philosophy, precursor of Platonism (he led what was considered a dangerous cult in his time, and he was put to death for his teachings, which are today called "ancient Greek philosophy") | Developer of the Socratic Method |
| Plato | 427 - 347 B.C. | Athens, Greece | Greek philosophy / Platonism | Republic; Symposium; Phaedrus; Phaedo; Apology of Socrates; Crito; Sophist; Ion; Meno; Laws |
| Aristotle | 384 - 322 B.C. | Stagira, Macedonia | Greek philosophy / Platonism / Deist / Aristotelian philosophy | Dialogues; On Monarchy; Alexander; The Customs of Barbarians; Natural History; Organon, or The Instrument of Correct Thinking; On the Soul; Logic; Rhetoric; Eudemian Ethics; Physics; Metaphysics; Politics; Poetics |
| Epicurus | 342 - 270 B.C. | Samos, Ionia, Greece | Greek philosophy / Platonism / Epicureanism | To Herodotus, dealing with physics; To Menoecus, dealing with ethics and theology; To Pythocles, on meteorology |
| Marcus Aurelius | 121-180 | Roman Empire | Pagan / Cynicism / Stoicism / Christian | Meditations |
| Saint Thomas Aquinas | 1225-1274 | Roccasecca, Naples, Italy | Catholic | Summa Theologica; Summa Contra Gentilres; Disputed Questions; On Divine Names; On the Book of Causes |
| Francis Bacon | 1561-1626 | London, England | Anglican | New Atlantis; The Wisdom of the Ancients; Colors of Good and Evil; Sacred Meditations; Confession of Faith; Things Thought and Things Seen; History of Life and Death |
| Rene Descartes | 1596-1650 | La Haye, Touraine, France | Catholic | The Search after Truth; Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason; Meditatios on the First Philosophy; Principles of Philosophy; The World; Geometry; Treatise on Man; Dioptric |
| Baruch de Spinoza | 1632-1677 | Amsterdam, Netherlands | Judaism; later pantheism/deism | Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well Being; Treatise on Religion and Politics; Metaphysical Thoughts; The Calculation of Chances; Ethics |
| John Locke | 1632-1704 | Wrington, Somersetshire, England | raised as a Puritan (Anglican); later general liberal Protestant Christian | The Reasonableness of Christianity; Letters on Toleration; Two Treatises on Government; Essay Concerning the Human Understanding; Thoughts on Education |
| Voltaire | 1694-1778 | Paris, France | Jansenist; Deist | Henriade; Oedipe; Brutus; Zaire; Mahomet; Irene; Littlebig; Letters on the English; Candide; The World As It Goes; Zadig |
| David Hume | 1711-1776 | Edinburgh, Scotland | Church of Scotland (Presbyterian); deist | Treatise of Human Nature; Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion; Four Dissertations: The Natural History of Religion, of the Passions, Of Tragedy, Of the Standard of Taste; Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals |
| Immanuel Kant | 1724-1804 | Konigsberg, East Prussia (Kaliningrad) | Lutheran; Pietist | The Critique of Pure Reason; The Critique of Practical Reason; The Critique of Judgment; Metaphysic of Nature; Metaphysic of Ethics; Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason |
| Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel | 1770-1831 | Stuttgart, Germany | Lutheran | Science of Logic; Phenomenology of Spirit; Aesthetics; Philosophy of Religion; Philosophy of Art; Philosophy of Mind; Philosophy of Right; Philosophy of History; History of Philosophy; Encyclopedia of Philosophical Science; Life of Jesus |
| Arthur Schopenhauer | 1788-1860 | Gdansk, Poland | philosophically atheist and anti-rationalist; among religions, preferred Hindu mysticism | The World As Will and Idea; On the Fourfold Root of Sufficient Reason; On the Will in Nature; The Art of Controversy; The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics |
| Ralph Waldo Emerson | 1803-1882 | Boston, MA | Unitarian minister; left and developed "Transcendentalism" | The American Scholar; English Traits; Nature; Essays; Representative Man; The Conduct of Life; Letters and Social Aims; The Oversoul; The Natural History of the Intellect; Duty; Truth; Beauty and Manners; Literary Ethics; Journals; Poems; Many Days and Other Pieces |
| Herbert Spencer | 1820-1903 | Derby, Derbyshire, England | atheist; "scientific philosophy" | Principles of Sociology; Principles of Ethics; The Theory of Population; The Universal Postulate; Man versus the State; First Principles |
| Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche | 1844-1900 | Rocken, Saxony, Germany | raised Lutheran (father was a pastor); later pagan-atheist-Nietzscheist | The Birth of Tragedy; Human All Too Human; The Dawn of Day; The Joyful Wisdom; Thus Spake Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals; Schopenhauer as Educator; The Will to Power; The Twilight of the Idols; Antichrist; Ecce Homo (autobiography) |
| William James | 1842-1910 | New York City, New York | raised by a free-thinking mystic; pluralistic | The Principles of Psychology; Human Immortality; The Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy; Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals; The Varieties of Religious Experience; A Pluralistic Universe; The Meaning of Truth; Essays in Radical Empiricism; Some Problems in Philosophy |
| Henri Bergson | 1859-1941 | Paris, France | born Jewish; skeptic and atheist while young; later idealist and believer in Elan Vital | Creative Evolution; Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Mind-Energy; Laughter and Metaphysics; The Perception of Change; The Meaning of the War (of 1914) |
| George Santayana | 1863-1952 | Madrid, Spain | devout Platonist-Catholic-Atheist | Lucifer, a Theological Tragedy; The Sense of Beauty; Interpretations of Poetry and Religion; The Life of Reason, in five volumes: Reason in Common Sense, Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, Reason in Science; Three Philosophical Poets; Winds of Doctrine; Egotism in German Philosophy; Skepticism and Animal Faith; Platonism and the Spiritual Life; The Realms of Being; The Last Puritan; The Realm of Truth; The Realm of Spirit; Persons and Places; The Middle Span |
World's Greatest Philosophers
(Steven A. DeVore and Richard Linford, InteliQuest Learning Systems; URL: http://www.4iq.com/people1.htm#list)
- Socrates
- Plato
- Aristotle
- Francis Bacon
- Rene Descartes
- John Locke
- Voltaire
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
- Adam Smith
- Immanuel Kant
- Karl Marx
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Other categories in the DeVore/Linford Series are: Explorers, Scientists, Inventors, Writers, Painters, Composers, and Leaders.
Related Links
- Adherents.com's History's Great Religious Leaders
- Major World Philosophers - longer, alphabetical list of philosophers and brief summaries, by BrainBank.
- Websites Concerned with Great Philosophers - link directory by the Gustavus Adolphus College (Minnesota) Philosophy Department.
- One Stop Philosophers - Famous philosophers and discussions about them.
- Yahoo's Philosophers weblinks
- L. Ron Hubbard as philosopher
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Web page created 28 September 1999. Updated 8 April 2007.