philopeople

John Stuart Mill (born May 20, 1806, London, England—died May 8, 1873, Avignon, France) was an English philosopher, economist, and exponent of utilitarianism. He was prominent as a publicist in the reforming age of the 19th century, and remains of lasting interest as a logician and an ethical theorist. Early life and careerThe eldest son […]

St. Augustine (born November 13, 354, Tagaste, Numidia [now Souk Ahras, Algeria]—died August 28, 430, Hippo Regius [now Annaba, Algeria]; feast day August 28) was the bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430, one of the Latin Fathers of the Church, and perhaps the most significant Christian thinker after St. Paul. Augustine’s adaptation of classical

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (born June 28, 1712, Geneva, Switzerland—died July 2, 1778, Ermenonville, France) was a Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose treatises and novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and the Romantic generation. Rousseau was the least academic of modern philosophers and in many ways was the most influential. His thought marked

Voltaire (born November 21, 1694, Paris, France—died May 30, 1778, Paris) was one of the greatest of all French writers. Although only a few of his works are still read, he continues to be held in worldwide repute as a courageous crusader against tyranny, bigotry, and cruelty. Through its critical capacity, wit, and satire, Voltaire’s

Haribhadra (flourished 8th century) was a noncanonical author of treatises on the Indian religion Jainism, known for his authoritative works in Sanskrit and Prakrit on Jain doctrine and ethics. Scholars are still uncertain of the extent to which he should be differentiated from a 6th-century Jain author of the same name. Haribhadra was born into

Han Feizi (born c. 280, China—died 233 bce, China) was the greatest of China’s Legalist philosophers. His essays on autocratic government so impressed Qin Shi Huang that the future emperor adopted their principles after seizing power in 221 bce. The Hanfeizi, the book named after him, comprises a synthesis of legal theories up to his

John Scott Haldane (born May 3, 1860, Edinburgh, Scot.—died March 14/15, 1936, Oxford, Oxfordshire, Eng.) was a British physiologist and philosopher chiefly noted for his work on the physiology of respiration. Haldane developed several procedures for studying the physiology of breathing and the physiology of the blood and for the analysis of gases consumed or

Pierre-Félix Guattari (born April 30, 1930, Colombe, France—died August 29, 1992, near Blois) was a French psychiatrist and philosopher and a leader of the antipsychiatry movement of the 1960s and ’70s, which challenged established thought in psychoanalysis, philosophy, and sociology. Trained as a psychoanalyst, Guattari worked during the 1950s at La Borde, a clinic near

Dong Zhongshu (born c. 179, Guangchuan, China—died c. 104 bce, China) was a scholar instrumental in establishing Confucianism in 136 bce as the state cult of China and as the basis of official political philosophy—a position it was to hold for 2,000 years. As a philosopher, Dong merged the Confucian and Yinyang schools of thought.