List of metaphysicians
Encyclopedia
This is a list of metaphysicians, philosophers
who specialize in metaphysics
. See also Lists of philosophers.
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
who specialize in metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
. See also Lists of philosophers.
Classic and influential Metaphysicians
- ParmenidesParmenidesParmenides of Elea was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides...
- HeraclitusHeraclitusHeraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
- PlatoPlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
- AristotleAristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
- Thomas AquinasThomas AquinasThomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
- René DescartesRené DescartesRené Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
- Baruch SpinozaBaruch SpinozaBaruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
- Gottfried LeibnizGottfried LeibnizGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....
- George BerkeleyGeorge BerkeleyGeorge Berkeley , also known as Bishop Berkeley , was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism"...
- Immanuel KantImmanuel KantImmanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
- Georg W. F. Hegel
- Arthur SchopenhauerArthur SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
- Bertrand RussellBertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
- Alfred North WhiteheadAlfred North WhiteheadAlfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
- Henri BergsonHenri BergsonHenri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
- Willard V. O. Quine
- Gilles DeleuzeGilles DeleuzeGilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
- David K. Lewis
- David Malet ArmstrongDavid Malet ArmstrongDavid Malet Armstrong , often D. M. Armstrong, is an Australian philosopher. He is well-known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functionalist theory of the mind, an externalist epistemology, and a necessitarian conception of the...
Other
- Charles François d'Abra de Raconis
- Robert Merrihew Adams
- William AlstonWilliam AlstonWilliam Payne Alston was an American philosopher. He made influential contributions to the philosophy of language, epistemology and Christian philosophy. He earned his Ph.D...
- Paul BenacerrafPaul BenacerrafPaul Joseph Salomon Benacerraf is an American philosopher working in the field of the philosophy of mathematics who has been teaching at Princeton University since he joined the faculty in 1960. He was appointed Stuart Professor of Philosophy in 1974, and recently retired as the James S....
- Brian LeftowBrian LeftowBrian Leftow is the Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oriel College, Oxford, succeeding Richard Swinburne, who retired in 2002. Leftow's research interests include metaphysics, medieval philosophy, and philosophical theology. He is a graduate of Grove City College,...
- C. D. Broad
- Arda DenkelArda Denkel-Life and work:Arda Denkel was a Turkish philosopher. He studied at the University of Oxford and, under Peter Strawson, wrote his D. Phil...
- Michael DevittMichael DevittMichael Devitt is an Australian philosopher currently teaching at the City University of New York in New York City. His primary interests include philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology...
- Kit FineKit FineKit Fine is Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at New York University. He previously taught for several years at UCLA...
- Peter GlassenPeter GlassenPeter Glassen was a professor of philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1949 until his death in 1986. He was previously a member of the psychology department at the University of Saskatchewan. He developed a considerable reputation as an analytic moral philosopher on the basis of a number...
- John HawthorneJohn HawthorneJohn Hawthorne is the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University, though he continues to teach on a visiting basis at Princeton University...
- Shadworth HodgsonShadworth HodgsonShadworth Hollway Hodgson was an English philosopher.He worked independently, without academic affiliation. He was acknowledged by William James as a forerunner of Pragmatism, although he viewed his work as a completion of Kant's project...
- Peter van InwagenPeter van InwagenPeter van Inwagen is an American analytic philosopher and the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He previously taught at Syracuse University and earned his PhD from the University of Rochester under the direction of Richard Taylor and Keith Lehrer...
- David KolbDavid KolbDavid Kolb is a well-known philosopher and the Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Bates College in Maine.Kolb received a B.A. from Fordham University in 1963 and an M.A. in 1965. He later received a M.Phil. from Yale University in 1970 and a Ph. D. in 1972...
- Saul KripkeSaul KripkeSaul Aaron Kripke is an American philosopher and logician. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton and teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center...
- William LycanWilliam LycanWilliam G. Lycan is a noted American philosopher teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,where he is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor. He won the Class of 2001 Outstanding Faculty Award and a Distinguished Teaching Award for Post-Baccalaureate Instruction in...
- Trenton MerricksTrenton MerricksTrenton Merricks is a philosopher at the University of Virginia. His main fields are metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of religion. He is perhaps most famous for his account of nihilism , according to which, chairs and trees and things like that do not exist...
- Terence ParsonsTerence ParsonsTerence Parsons is an American contemporary philosopher of the analytic tradition. Parsons is also a Professor at UCLA in its Department of Philosophy....
- Alvin PlantingaAlvin PlantingaAlvin Carl Plantinga is an American analytic philosopher and the emeritus John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is known for his work in philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics, and Christian apologetics...
- Graham PriestGraham PriestGraham Priest is Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as a regular visitor at St. Andrews University. Priest is a fellow in residence at Ormond College. He was educated at the University...
- Hilary PutnamHilary PutnamHilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...
- Ayn RandAyn RandAyn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
- Jay RosenbergJay RosenbergJay Frank Rosenberg was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was a student of Wilfrid Sellars and established his reputation with ten books and over 80 articles in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of language, and the history of philosophy...
- Nathan SalmonNathan SalmonNathan U. Salmon is an American philosopher in the analytic tradition, specializing in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of logic.- Biography :...
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
- Frithjof SchuonFrithjof SchuonFrithjof Schuon, was a native of Switzerland born to German parents in Basel, Switzerland. He is known as a philosopher, metaphysician and author of numerous books on religion and spirituality....
- Gilbert SimondonGilbert SimondonGilbert Simondon was a French philosopher best known for his theory of individuation, a major source of inspiration for Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler.- Career :...
- Wolfgang SmithWolfgang SmithWolfgang Smith is a mathematician, physicist, philosopher of science, metaphysician, Roman Catholic and member of the Traditionalist School...
- Robert StalnakerRobert StalnakerRobert C. Stalnaker is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2007, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University on the topic of Our Knowledge of the Internal World...
- P. F. StrawsonP. F. StrawsonSir Peter Frederick Strawson FBA was an English philosopher. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1968 to 1987. Before that he was appointed as a college lecturer at University College, Oxford in 1947 and became a tutorial fellow the...
- Judith Jarvis ThomsonJudith Jarvis ThomsonJudith Jarvis Thomson is an American moral philosopher and metaphysician, best known for her use of thought experiments to make philosophical points.- Career :...
- Peter UngerPeter UngerPeter K. Unger is a contemporary American philosopher and professor at New York University. His main interests lie in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. He attended Swarthmore College at the same time as David Lewis, earning a B.A. in philosophy in 1962,...
- David WigginsDavid WigginsDavid Wiggins is a British moral philosopher, metaphysician, and philosophical logician working especially on identity and issues in meta-ethics. His 2006 book, Ethics. Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality defends a position he calls "moral objectivism".- Life :Wiggins read philosophy...
- Damon YoungDamon YoungDamon Young is a philosopher, author and commentator. He is an Honourary Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne.-Work:Damon Young is an Australian philosopher, writer and commentator....
- Dean ZimmermanDean ZimmermanDean Zimmerman is an American professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. He specializes in metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. He earned his PhD in philosophy from Brown University, and has taught at the University of Notre Dame and Syracuse University...