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Liev Chestov Lev Shestov — pen name of Yeguda Lev Shvartsman (Kiev, 5 February 1866 — Paris, 19 November 1938) — was a Russian philosopher who became one of the most radical voices in the critique of European philosophical rationalism. Born into a Jewish family in Kiev, he studied Law and Mathematics in Moscow before devoting himself entirely to philosophy. After the Bolshevik Revolution he emigrated, and in 1922 he was appointed lecturer in Russian philosophy at the University of Paris, a position he held until his death. It was during this productive exile that his most original ideas matured and he produced his defining work. ...

Louis Althusser Louis Althusser (16 October 1918, Birmendreïs, French Algeria — 22 October 1990, La Verrière) was a French Marxist philosopher, the leading name of structural Marxism. A professor at the École Normale Supérieure on rue d’Ulm for decades, he trained and influenced an entire generation (Foucault, Derrida, Jacques Rancière, Étienne Balibar, Alain Badiou). A member of the French Communist Party from 1948, he devoted himself to a rigorous, “scientific” rereading of Marx against the humanist and historicist readings then dominant. His life was marked by severe mental illness: in 1980, during a psychotic episode, he killed his wife, Hélène Rytmann, and was declared unfit to stand trial. ...

Luce Irigaray (born 3 May 1930 in Belgium) is a Belgian-French philosopher, linguist, and psychoanalyst, one of the leading voices of so-called difference feminism. Holding doctorates in linguistics and in philosophy, she belonged to the Lacanian circle until the publication of her thesis, Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), whose radical critique of psychoanalysis cost her expulsion from Jacques Lacan’s École freudienne de Paris and her teaching post at the University of Vincennes. ...

Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) Roman poet and philosopher, author of De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), the greatest philosophical poem of Antiquity. He systematized in Latin verse the physics and ethics of Epicurus, becoming the primary source for our knowledge of ancient Epicureanism. He defended atomism as an explanation of the universe, the mortality of the soul, and liberation from the fear of gods and death through rational understanding of nature. ...

Ludwig Feuerbach German philosopher; dissident disciple of Hegel. His materialist and anthropological critique of religion was the fundamental link between Hegelian idealism and Marx’s historical materialism. He inverted Hegel by dissolving theology into anthropology: the real subject of philosophy is not the Spirit, but sensible man. Feuerbach first studied theology before turning to philosophy and attending Hegel’s lectures in Berlin. He gradually broke with his master: his academic career was blocked by heterodox writings on immortality, and he ended up living apart from the universities, writing from private life. It was in this context that he published his most famous work, devoted to the essence of Christianity, which had an immediate impact on a whole generation of young German intellectuals and made him the central figure of what came to be called Left Hegelianism. The starting point of his thought is a methodical operation he himself describes as an inversion: where idealist speculation makes thought, the Spirit, or God the subject and concrete man the mere predicate, Feuerbach proposes to reverse the roles and recognise in sensible, corporeal, finite man the true subject of which those concepts are projected predicates. ...

Ludwig Wittgenstein Born in Vienna in 1889, into one of the wealthiest and most cultured families of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ludwig Wittgenstein began by studying aeronautical engineering, but reflection on the foundations of mathematics led him to logic and from there to Cambridge, to study with Bertrand Russell. His biography is as singular as his thought: he fought in the First World War, gave away his inherited fortune, worked as a village schoolteacher, a gardener, and even an architect, before returning to academic philosophy. He is the most influential figure in twentieth-century analytic philosophy — and, very rarely, the author of two distinct and equally decisive philosophies, both centered on language. ...

Machiavelli Born in Florence in 1469, Niccolò Machiavelli lived through the height and the crisis of the Italian Renaissance republics. For fourteen years he served as secretary of the Second Chancery of the Florentine Republic, on diplomatic missions that brought him before kings, popes, and the formidable Cesare Borgia — a direct experience of power that would mark all his thought. When the Medici returned in 1512, he was dismissed, imprisoned, and tortured on suspicion of conspiracy. It was then, in rural exile, that he wrote The Prince (1513). He is regarded as the founder of modern political science. ...

Maimonides Moses ben Maimon — known by the acronym Rambam and, in the Latin West, as Maimonides — was born in Córdoba, in Al-Andalus, around 1138, and is the greatest Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages. Fleeing Almohad persecution, his family wandered through North Africa before settling in Egypt, where Maimonides became a court physician and the spiritual leader of the Jewish community of Cairo. He was at once a jurist, a Talmudist, a physician, and a philosopher, and died in 1204. ...

Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius Antoninus ruled Rome from 161 to 180 CE and is remembered as the last of the “Five Good Emperors” and as the most celebrated example of the ancient ideal of the philosopher-king. Adopted into the line of succession by Antoninus Pius, he received a careful education and turned early to Stoicism, above all through reading Epictetus, to whom he had been introduced by his teacher Junius Rusticus. His reign, far from peaceful, was beset by wars on the Danube frontier, by revolts, and by the devastating Antonine Plague — circumstances in which his philosophy proved less a doctrine than a discipline of inner survival. ...

María Lugones María Lugones (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 26 January 1944 — 14 July 2020, Syracuse, New York) was an Argentine-American philosopher and activist, Professor of Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies at Binghamton University. Her intellectual path weaves together political philosophy, feminist theory, and Latin American decolonial thought in a genuinely singular way: rather than applying Eurocentric categories to the experience of women of the Global South, Lugones set out to refound those categories from what colonization destroyed and what the resistance of the colonized preserved. Her work brings together the women-of-color feminism of North America — especially that of Gloria Anzaldúa — with the decolonial critique of Aníbal Quijano, producing a theory in which race and gender are not separate variables that add up, but dimensions fused within a single structure of colonial power. ...

Marilena Chaui Marilena de Souza Chaui (born 1941 in São Paulo) is one of Brazil’s most influential living philosophers and professor emerita at the University of São Paulo, where she trained and spent her entire teaching career. Her work brings together a deep command of Spinoza’s philosophy and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology with a critical, politically engaged reflection on Brazilian society. A staunch defender of the public university and a leftist intellectual, Chaui has also become a major public figure without ever relinquishing academic rigour. Her textbook Convite à Filosofia (1994) is among the most widely read introductions to philosophy in Brazil, and her reading of Spinoza, consolidated in A Nervura do Real, is an internationally recognised contribution to scholarship on the Dutch philosopher. ...

Mário Ferreira dos Santos Mário Ferreira dos Santos was the most prolific Brazilian philosopher of the 20th century, author of more than fifty works seeking to build a comprehensive philosophical system — known as Concrete Philosophy — synthesising the classical Western tradition (especially Pythagoreanism, Aristotle, and Scholasticism) with original contributions in ontology, mathematics, symbolism, and theory of knowledge. Key Concepts Concrete Philosophy: The name Ferreira dos Santos gave to his systematic project. It stands opposed both to the abstract logicism of the analytic tradition and to existentialist subjectivism. The “concrete” is reality considered in the fullness of its determinations — neither raw empirical data nor pure abstraction, but the dialectical synthesis of both. ...

Marsilio Ficino Italian philosopher and Catholic priest. Leader of the Platonic Academy of Florence under the patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici. He translated the entire works of Plato into Latin for the first time, as well as the Corpus Hermeticum and Plotinus. Born in Figline Valdarno, Tuscany, in 1433, Ficino came of age in an environment shaped by the extraordinary cultural patronage of the Medici family. When Cosimo de’ Medici decided to establish a Platonic Academy modeled on antiquity, he entrusted its direction to Ficino and charged him with the monumental task of rendering Plato’s dialogues into Latin — a corpus virtually inaccessible to the medieval West — alongside the Neoplatonic writings of Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus, and the recently rediscovered Corpus Hermeticum. This translation project, carried out between the 1460s and the 1490s, was decisive in reintroducing Platonic philosophy into European intellectual debate after centuries of Aristotelian dominance. ...

Martha Nussbaum American philosopher, professor at the University of Chicago. One of the most influential contemporary thinkers, she works at the intersection of ethics, political philosophy, law, and literature. Trained in the Aristotelian tradition, she developed with Amartya Sen the capabilities approach as an alternative to utilitarianism and contractualism in theories of justice. She argues that emotions have cognitive content and are essential for ethical judgment. Key Concepts Capabilities approach: justice is not measured by GDP or aggregate utility, but by the real capabilities each person has to be and do — to live, to have health, to think, to participate politically, etc.; a list of 10 central capabilities as a minimum threshold of human dignity The fragility of goodness: the good life depends on external conditions (luck, relationships, body) that escape our control — against Stoic and Platonic self-sufficiency; vulnerability is constitutive of moral excellence Emotions and reason: emotions are not irrational impulses but evaluative judgments (appraisals) — fear, compassion, indignation contain cognitive assessments of what matters; ethics without emotions is blind Cosmopolitan justice: obligations of justice do not stop at national borders — duties to all of humanity, inspired by the Stoics and Kant Humanistic education: the humanities (philosophy, literature, arts) are indispensable for forming democratic citizens capable of empathic imagination and critical thought Animal capabilities: extends the capabilities approach to include the rights of non-human animals Influenced by Aristotle — virtue ethics, phronesis, the good human life John Rawls — justice as fairness (but critiques the limits of contractualism) Amartya Sen — development as freedom; capabilities approach Kant — cosmopolitanism and dignity Stoics — ancient cosmopolitanism Influenced Human development theory (UN Human Development Index) Philosophy of law and human rights Contemporary animal ethics Philosophy of education Works The Fragility of Goodness (1986); The Therapy of Desire (1994); Cultivating Humanity (1997); Women and Human Development (2000); Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (2001); Frontiers of Justice (2006); Creating Capabilities (2011); The Monarchy of Fear (2018). ...

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger was born in Meßkirch, in southern Germany, in 1889, into a modest Catholic family, and came to philosophy by way of theology. Assistant and later successor to Husserl at Freiburg, he published Being and Time in 1927, the work that established him as one of the most influential — and most controversial — philosophers of the twentieth century. The controversy is inseparable from his biography: in 1933 he assumed the rectorate of Freiburg and joined the Nazi party, a commitment he never publicly renounced and which the Black Notebooks, published decades later, revealed to be shot through with antisemitism. The moral and philosophical weight of this engagement remains an open debate. ...

Martin Luther German Augustinian theologian; initiator of the Protestant Reformation. The 95 Theses (1517) against papal indulgences triggered a rupture that transformed Europe religiously, politically, and intellectually. Key Concepts Justification by faith alone (sola fide): man is not saved by works, merits, or sacraments — only by faith in Christ; against the soteriology of merit in the Catholic Church Sola Scriptura: the Bible is the sole religious authority; tradition and papal decrees have no equivalent authority. He translated the Bible into German — founding modern literary German Priesthood of all believers: all baptized Christians are priests — dissolves the clerical hierarchy as necessary mediation between God and the faithful Two kingdoms (Zwei-Reiche-Lehre): the spiritual kingdom (governed by the Gospel) and the temporal kingdom (governed by law and the sword) — clear separation that influenced political secularization Christian freedom (On the Freedom of a Christian, 1520): “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all things and subject to no one. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all things and subject to everyone” — paradox of inner freedom with service to one’s neighbor Against free will (On the Bondage of the Will, 1525): against Erasmus — human will is enslaved by sin; only irresistible divine grace can liberate; predestination Influenced by Saint Augustine — grace, original sin, predestination Saint Paul — justification by faith (Romans, Galatians) William of Ockham — nominalism and critique of scholastic metaphysics Erasmus — textual humanism (but breaks with him) Influenced Calvin — reformed reformation and absolute predestination Kant — moral autonomy (secularization of Lutheran individual conscience) Kierkegaard — radical and individual faith against the institution Secularization and European political modernity Hegel — Reformation as a moment of Spirit in history Works 95 Theses (1517); On the Freedom of a Christian (1520); On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520); On the Bondage of the Will (1525); Large and Small Catechisms (1529); Bible in German (NT: 1522; complete: 1534). ...

Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate for women’s rights, whose A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is considered one of the founding texts of modern philosophical feminism. A contemporary of the American and French revolutions, Wollstonecraft applied Enlightenment principles of reason and equality to relations between the sexes, challenging the division between public and private spheres that excluded women from full citizenship. Key Concepts Rational Equality (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792): Her central argument — women and men share the same rational nature. If reason is the foundation of dignity and rights, as the Enlightenment thinkers hold, then women have the same entitlement to political and educational rights as men. The exclusion of women from the rational sphere is inconsistent with the very principles of the Enlightenment. ...

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Born in 1908 in France, Maurice Merleau-Ponty trained at the École Normale Supérieure alongside Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, with whom he would found the review Les Temps Modernes before a political break. In 1952 he became the youngest holder of the chair of philosophy at the Collège de France. He died suddenly in 1961, leaving his last work unfinished. He is the great phenomenologist of the body. ...

Max Horkheimer Born in Stuttgart in 1895, Max Horkheimer was the organizing soul of the Frankfurt School: in 1930 he took over the directorship of the Institute for Social Research and gathered around him thinkers such as Adorno, Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin. A Jew and a Marxist, he went into exile in the United States during Nazism and, after the war, returned to Frankfurt, where he served as rector. He died in 1973. ...

McTaggart John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart was born in London on 3 September 1866 and spent virtually his entire career as a fellow and lecturer in philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge; he retired in 1923 and died in London on 18 January 1925. Shaped by the British Idealism of the late nineteenth century — alongside Francis Herbert Bradley and decisively influenced by Hegel — McTaggart developed a systematic and strikingly original metaphysics that sets itself apart from Bradley’s absolute monism on one side and the emergent naturalism that would come to dominate twentieth-century philosophy on the other. His magnum opus, The Nature of Existence (2 vols., 1921–1927), stands as one of the last grand metaphysical systems in the English-speaking philosophical tradition, built with a logical rigour that bears comparison to Hegel’s Science of Logic. In the philosophy of time, his distinction between the A-series and the B-series — published in the article “The Unreality of Time” (Mind, 1908) — became the obligatory starting point for every subsequent debate on the ontology of time. ...