Also known as: Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī, Alfarabius, Alpharabius, Avennasar, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṭarkhān ibn Awzalagh al-Fārābī, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṭarkhān ibn Uzalagh al-Fārābī al-Fārābī (born c. 878, Turkistan—died c. 950, Damascus?) was a Muslim philosopher, one of the preeminent thinkers of medieval Islam. He was regarded in the medieval Islamic world as the […]
Fakhr ad-Dīn ar-Rāzī (born 1149, Rayy, Iran—died 1209, near Herāt, Khwārezm) was a Muslim theologian and scholar, author of one of the most authoritative commentaries on the Qurʾān in the history of Islām. His aggressiveness and vengefulness created many enemies and involved him in numerous intrigues. His intellectual brilliance, however, was universally acclaimed and attested
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Averroës (born 1126, Córdoba [Spain]—died 1198, Marrakech, Almohad empire [now in Morocco]) was an influential Islamic religious philosopher who integrated Islamic traditions with ancient Greek thought. At the request of the Almohad caliph Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf, he produced a series of summaries and commentaries on most of Aristotle’s works (1169–95) and on Plato’s Republic, which
Also known as: Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn al-Sāyigh al-Tujībī al-Andalusī al-Saraqustī, Ibn Bājjah Avempace (born c. 1095, Zaragoza, Spain—died 1138/39, Fès, Morocco) was the earliest known representative in Spain of the Arabic Aristotelian–Neoplatonic philosophical tradition (see Arabic philosophy) and forerunner of the polymath scholar Ibn Ṭufayl and of the philosopher Averroës. Avempace’s chief
Mary Whiton Calkins (born March 30, 1863, Hartford, Conn., U.S.—died Feb. 26, 1930, Newton, Mass.) was a philosopher, psychologist, and educator, and the first American woman to attain distinction in these fields of study. Calkins grew up mainly in Buffalo, New York, and moved with her family to Newton, Massachusetts, in 1880. She graduated from
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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 (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
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
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 (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