August 2025

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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Ludwig Wittgenstein (born April 26, 1889, Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now in Austria]—died April 29, 1951, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England) was an Austrian-born British philosopher, regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Wittgenstein’s two major works, Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (1921; Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922) and Philosophische Untersuchungen (published posthumously in 1953; Philosophical Investigations), have inspired a […]

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Mortimer J. Adler

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Mortimer J. Adler (born December 28, 1902, New York, New York, U.S.—died June 28, 2001, San Mateo, California) was an American philosopher, educator, editor, and advocate of adult and general education by study of the great writings of the Western world. While still in public school, Adler was taken on as a copyboy by the

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Bronson Alcott

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Bronson Alcott (born Nov. 29, 1799, Wolcott, Conn., U.S.—died March 4, 1888, Concord, Mass.) was an American philosopher, teacher, reformer, and member of the New England Transcendentalist group. The self-educated son of a poor farmer, Alcott traveled in the South as a peddler before establishing a series of schools for children. His educational theories owed

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Kwame Anthony Appiah

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Kwame Anthony Appiah (born May 8, 1954, London, England) is a British-born American philosopher, novelist, and scholar of African and African American studies, best known for his contributions to political philosophy, moral psychology, and the philosophy of culture. Appiah was the son of Joseph Appiah, a Ghanaian-born barrister, and Peggy Cripps, daughter of the British

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Hannah Arendt

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Hannah Arendt (born October 14, 1906, Hannover, Germany—died December 4, 1975, New York, New York, U.S.) was a German-born American political scientist and philosopher known for her critical writing on Jewish affairs and her study of totalitarianism. Arendt grew up in Hannover, Germany, and in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). Beginning in 1924 she studied

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James Mark Baldwin

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James Mark Baldwin (born Jan. 12, 1861, Columbia, S.C., U.S.—died Nov. 8, 1934, Paris) was a philosopher and theoretical psychologist who exerted influence on American psychology during its formative period in the 1890s. Concerned with the relation of Darwinian evolution to psychology, he favoured the study of individual differences, stressed the importance of theory for

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Max Black

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Max Black (born Feb. 24, 1909, Baku, Russian Empire [now in Azerbaijan]—died Aug. 27, 1988, Ithaca, N.Y., U.S.) was an American Analytical philosopher who was concerned with the nature of clarity and meaning in language. Black studied at the Universities of Cambridge (B.A., 1930), Göttingen (1930–31), and London (Ph.D., 1939). He immigrated to the United

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Allan Bloom

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Allan Bloom (born Sept. 14, 1930, Indianapolis, Ind., U.S.—died Oct. 7, 1992, Chicago, Ill.) was an American philosopher and writer best remembered for his provocative best-seller The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (1987). He was also known for his scholarly volumes of

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Edgar Sheffield Brightman

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Edgar Sheffield Brightman (born Sept. 20, 1884, Holbrook, Mass., U.S.—died Feb. 25, 1953, Newton Center, Mass.) was a U.S. philosopher, educator at Wesleyan University and Boston University, and former director of the National Council on Religion in Higher Education. He was noted for his empirical argument for theism based on idealism and consciousness. His writings

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Albert Brisbane

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Albert Brisbane (born Aug. 22, 1809, Batavia, N.Y., U.S.—died May 1, 1890, Richmond, Va.) was a social reformer who introduced and popularized Fourierism in the United States. Brisbane, the son of wealthy landowners, received his education primarily at the hands of private tutors. At the age of eighteen, he went to Europe in order to

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