- Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 - October 18, 1973), was a German-born Jewish-American political philosopher who specialized in the study of classical political philosophy. He spent most of his career as a Political Science Professor at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of devoted students and published fifteen books. - Karl Heinrich Marx
There are few economists who have become both so reviled, and admired as Marx. Indeed some would even question whether Marx deserves to be called an economist; others would prefer terms like 'bungling and failed revolutionary'. However, there are certainly few economists who read so widely and wrote so much as Marx. Whether you love or loathe Marx, we cannot deny his writings had profound influence on the twentieth century. What Did Marx Believe? - John Locke
John Locke was an English philosopher. Locke is considered the first of the British Empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory. His ideas had enormous influence on the development of epistemology and political philosophy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and contributors to liberal theory. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, … - John Rawls
John Rawls (February 21, 1921 - November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University and author of "A Theory of Justice" (1971), "Political Liberalism", "Justice as Fairness: A Restatement", and "The Law of Peoples". He is widely considered one of the most important English-language political philosophers of the 20th century, … - Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes (5 April 1588 - 4 December 1679) was an English philosopher, whose famous 1651 book "Leviathan" established the agenda for nearly all subsequent Western political philosophy. Although Hobbes is today best remembered for his work on political philosophy, he contributed to a diverse array of fields, including history, geometry, theology, ethics, general philosophy, and what would now be called political science. - Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German Jewish political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she always refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular". She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact that "men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world." - John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill, (20 May 1806 - 8 May 1873) British philosopher, political economist and Member of Parliament, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century. He was an advocate of utilitarianism, the ethical theory that was systemized by his godfather, Jeremy Bentham, but adapted to German romanticism. It is usually suggested that Mill is an advocate of negative liberty. However, this has been contested by many academics, notably Dr. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (June 28, 1712 - July 2, 1778) was a Genevan philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism. Rousseau also made important contributions to music both as a theorist and as a composer. - Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin, OM (June 6 1909 – November 5 1997), was a political philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the 20th century. Born in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire, he was the first Jew to be elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. From 1957 to 1967, he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford. - Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand (March 6 1982), born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, was a Russian-born American novelist and philosopher, best known for creating a philosophy she named "Objectivism" and for writing the novels "We the Living," "The Fountainhead," "Atlas Shrugged" and the novella "Anthem." Her influential and controversial ideas have attracted both enthusiastic admiration and scathing denunciation. <br - Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his "Democracy in America" (appearing in two volumes: 1835 and 1840) and "The Old Regime and the Revolution" (1856). In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on both the individual and the state in western societies. - Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham - June 6, 1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He was a political radical and a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law. He is best known as an early advocate of utilitarianism and animal rights who influenced the development of liberalism. Bentham was one of the most influential utilitarians, partially through his writings but particularly through his students all around the world. - Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick was an American philosopher and Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University. Nozick, schooled at Columbia, Oxford and Princeton, was a prominent American political philosopher in the 1970s and 1980s. He did additional but less influential work in such subjects as decision theory and epistemology. His "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (1974) was a libertarian answer to John Rawls' "A Theory of Justice", published in 1971. - Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian political philosopher, musician, poet, and romantic comedic playwright. He is a figure of the Italian Renaissance and a central figure of its political component, most widely known for his treatises on realist political theory ("The Prince") on the one hand and republicanism ("Discourses on Livy") on the other. - Friedrich A. Hayek
At the London School of Economics, Hayek was instrumental in furthering its then-novel "continental" bent and he was highly influential on his junior colleagues (such as John Hicks ) and students (which included Abba Lerner and Nicholas Kaldor ). However, following the appearance of the General Theory by John Maynard Keynes in 1936, Abba Lerner and Nicholas Kaldor , like the rest of the economics profession, were drawn away from Hayek's orbit. - Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA, (July 28, 1902 - September 17, 1994), was an Austrian-born British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is counted among the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. - Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 - June 25, 1984) was a French philosopher and historian. He held a chair at the Collège de France, giving it the title "History of Systems of Thought," and taught at the University of California, Berkeley. Michel Foucault is best known for his critical studies of various social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as his work on the history of sexuality. - Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German social scientist and philosopher, who developed communist theory alongside his better-known collaborator, Karl Marx, co-authoring "The Communist Manifesto" (1848). Engels also edited the second and third volumes of "Das Kapital" after Marx's death. - Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt (July 11 1888 - April 7 1985) was a German jurist, political theorist, and professor of law. Schmitt was born the son of a small businessman in Plettenberg, Westphalia on July 11 1888; he studied political science and law in Berlin, Munich and Strasbourg and took his graduation and state exams in the then-German Strasbourg in 1915. He became professor at the University of Berlin in 1933, the same year that he entered the Nazi party (NSDAP). - Ronald Dworkin
Ronald Dworkin, QC, FBA (born 1931) is an American legal philosopher, and currently professor of Jurisprudence at University College London and the New York University School of Law. He is known for his contributions to legal philosophy and political philosophy. His theory of "law as integrity" is one of the leading contemporary views of the nature of law. - Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, and philosopher who is best known for "Walden", a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, "Civil Disobedience", an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. - Plato
Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC), whose original name was Aristocles, was an ancient Greek philosopher, the second of the great trio of ancient Greeks -succeeding Socrates and preceding Aristotle- who between them laid the philosophical foundations of Western culture. Plato was also a mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world. - Eric Voegelin
Eric Voegelin, born Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin, (January 3, 1901 - January 19, 1985) was a political philosopher. He was born in Cologne, Germany, and educated in political science at the University of Vienna, where he was advised on his dissertation by Hans Kelsen and Othmar Spann. He became a teacher and then an associate professor of political science at the Faculty of Law. In 1938 he fled with his wife from Nazi Germany, emigrating to the United States, … - Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher and sociologist in the tradition of critical theory and American pragmatism. He is best known for his work on the concept of the public sphere, which he has based in his theory of communicative action. His work has focused on the foundations of social theory and epistemology, the analysis of advanced capitalistic societies and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, … - William Godwin
William Godwin (3 March 1756 - 7 April 1836) was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and one of the first modern proponents of minarchist philosophy. Godwin is most famous for two books that he published within the space of a year: "An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice", an attack on political institutions, and "Things as They Are: The Adventures of Caleb Williams", … - Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on diverse subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry (including theater), biology and zoology, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, and ethics. Along with Socrates and Plato, Aristotle was one of the most influential of the ancient Greek philosophers. They transformed Presocratic Greek philosophy into the foundations of Western philosophy as we know it. - Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and was also greatly inspired by the Marxism of Bertolt Brecht and Jewish mysticism as presented by Gershom Scholem. As a sociological and cultural critic, Benjamin combined ideas of historical materialism, German idealism, … - Samuel Adams
Samuel Adams was an American statesman, politician, writer and political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Adams was instrumental in garnering the support of the colonies for rebellion against Great Britain, eventually resulting in the American Revolution, and was also one of the key architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped American political culture. - Jean Bodin
Jean Bodin (1530-1596) was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement (not to be confused with the English "Parliament") of Paris and professor of Law in Toulouse. He is best known for his theory of sovereignty. Bodin lived during the Reformation, writing against the background of religious and civil conflict-particularly that, in his native France, between the (Calvinist) Huguenots and the state-supported Catholic Church. - Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben is an Italian philosopher who teaches at the Università IUAV di Venezia. He also teaches at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and previously taught at the University of Macerata in Italy. He also has held visiting appointments at several American universities and at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. He became famous for his investigations on the concepts of a "state of exception" and "homo sacer". - Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser (October 16, 1918 – October 23, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. He was a lifelong member and sometimes strong critic of the French Communist Party. His arguments and theses were set against the threats that he saw attacking the theoretical foundations of the communist project. - Hugo Grotius
Hugo Grotius (Huig de Groot, or Hugo de Groot; Delft, 10 April 1583 - Rostock, 28 August 1645) worked as a jurist in the Dutch Republic and laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law. He was also a philosopher, Christian apologist, playwright, and poet. - Iris Marion Young
Iris Marion Young (2 January, 1949 - 1 August, 2006) was Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and affiliated with the Center for Gender Studies and the Human Rights program. Her research covered contemporary political theory, feminist social theory, and normative analysis of public policy. Young's books include "Justice and the Politics of Difference" (1990), … - Joseph Raz
Joseph Raz (born 1939) is an influential legal, moral and political philosopher. He is one of the most prominent living advocates of legal positivism. He has spent most of his career as Professor of Philosophy of Law and a Fellow of Balliol College at Oxford University, and simultaneously as Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School. Several of Raz's students have become important legal and moral philosophers. - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, in the region of Württemberg in southwestern Germany. Together with Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Hegel is considered one of the representatives of German idealism. Hegel influenced writers of widely varying positions, including both his admirers (Bauer, Marx, Bradley, Sartre, Küng), and his detractors (Schelling, Kierkegaard, … - David Miller
David Miller (born 8 March 1946) is a prominent British political theorist. He received his BA from the University of Cambridge and his BPhil and DPhil from the University of Oxford. He is currently Official Fellow and Professor in Social and Political Theory at Nuffield College. Previous works include "Social Justice", "On Nationality" and "Citizenship and National Identity". Miller is known for his support of a modest form of nationalism. - Simone Weil
Simone Weil (February 3, 1909 - August 24, 1943) was a French philosopher and mystic. - Philip Pettit
Philip Noel Pettit (b. 1945) is an Irish philosopher, political theorist and criminologist. Born in Ballygar, County Galway, he was educated at Garbally College, the National University of Ireland, Maynooth and Queen's University, Belfast. Pettit was for many years Professorial Fellow in Social and Political Theory at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. - Joseph Cropsey
Joseph Cropsey (New York City, August 27, 1919) is an american political philosopher and professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he has also been associate director of the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy. Cropsey has been a disciple of Leo Strauss and this experience led him to move from his original academic field, which was economic thought, to a much more theoretical approach to political thought, … - Henry George
Henry George (September 2, 1839 - October 29, 1897) was an American political economist and the most influential proponent of the "Single Tax" on land. He was the author of "Progress and Poverty", written in 1879.
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