Public Personas

#181

Zhuangzi (Zhuang Zhou)

c. 369–c. 286 BCE · Chinese Daoist philosopher; principal author of the "Zhuangzi" (Inner Chapters)

The butterfly dream and the carefree wandering — Daoist skepticism and the relativization of every fixed perspective

40% taoism 20% pyrrhonism 15% relativism 15% absurdism 10% buddhism +2

#182

John Archibald Wheeler

1911–2008 · American theoretical physicist; coiner of "black hole," "wormhole," and the "it from bit" doctrine

"It from bit" — information as the ultimate physical substrate, prior to matter and energy

40% dataism-information-ontology 20% quantum-realism 15% multiverse-theory 15% simulation-theory 10% panpsychism +2

#183

Desmond Tutu

1931–2021 · South African Anglican archbishop; anti-apartheid leader; Nobel Peace laureate 1984; chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1996–2003

Ubuntu and prophetic Christianity — "I am because we are," translated into the moral architecture of post-apartheid reconciliation

35% ubuntu-african-communal-ontology 25% liberation-theology 15% evangelical-protestantism 15% christian-personalism 10% animism-relational-indigenous +2

#184

Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa

1357–1419 · Tibetan Buddhist philosopher and monastic reformer; founder of the Gelug school

Madhyamaka–Prāsaṅgika rigor — the precise philosophical formulation of emptiness, with monastic-scholastic training as the bedrock of awakening

40% tibetan-vajrayana-buddhism 25% buddhism 15% yogacara 10% analytic-metaphysics -10% advaita-vedanta +2

#185

C. D. Broad

1887–1971 · British philosopher; Knightbridge Professor at Cambridge; author of "Scientific Thought" and "The Mind and its Place in Nature"

The specious present and the growing-block universe — careful philosophical analysis between A-theory and B-theory

30% presentism 25% analytic-metaphysics 15% dualism 10% panpsychism -15% eternalism +2

#186

J. M. E. McTaggart

1866–1925 · British idealist philosopher; Cambridge fellow; author of "The Nature of Existence" and the celebrated 1908 argument for the unreality of time

The unreality of time — the A-series / B-series distinction that founded analytic philosophy of time

25% eternalism 25% idealism 20% analytic-metaphysics -15% presentism 10% process-philosophy +2

#187

Bruno Latour

1947–2022 · French sociologist and philosopher; founder of actor-network theory; principal twentieth-century philosopher of science studies

Actor-network theory — non-humans as actors; "we have never been modern"

25% object-oriented-ontology 20% postmodernism 15% animism-relational-indigenous 20% constructivism 10% process-philosophy +2

#188

Jaron Lanier

1960– · American computer scientist; virtual-reality pioneer; cultural critic of digital technology

VR pioneer turned digital humanist — virtual realism with serious skepticism about platform-corporation extraction

35% virtual-realism -15% transhumanism-posthumanism -15% dataism-information-ontology 15% critical-realism 10% christian-personalism +2

#189

Terence McKenna

1946–2000 · American ethnobotanist and psychedelic philosopher; "stoned ape" theorist

Logos through the mushroom — psychedelics as the engines of human cultural evolution and the bridge to the transcendent other

40% psychedelic-entheogenic 20% animism-relational-indigenous 15% transhumanism-posthumanism 15% hermeticism 10% naturalism +2

#190

Sun Ra (Herman Poole Blount)

1914–1993 · American jazz composer, bandleader, philosopher-poet; principal twentieth-century figure of afrofuturism

Space is the place — Black liberation as cosmic departure into the future on the wings of the Arkestra

40% afrofuturism 15% african-traditional-religion-yoruba-ifa 10% transcendentalism 15% liberation-theology 10% transhumanism-posthumanism +2

#191

Brigham Young

1801–1877 · American religious leader; second president of the LDS Church (1847–1877); founder of Salt Lake City

The Lion of the Lord — institutional builder who carried Joseph Smith's revelations into the kingdom-in-the-wilderness

35% lds-latter-day-saint 15% evangelical-protestantism 10% transhumanism-posthumanism -10% liberation-theology -15% reformed-calvinist-theology +2

#192

Guru Gobind Singh

1666–1708 · Tenth and final human Guru of the Sikh tradition; founder of the Khalsa (1699)

Saint-soldier — the Khalsa as the embodied community of disciplined sovereignty under divine command

35% sikhism 10% islamic-philosophy-falsafa 15% liberation-theology -10% evangelical-protestantism -10% advaita-vedanta +2

#193

Raghavendra Swami

1595–1671 · South Indian Dvaita Vedanta philosopher and saint; head of the Madhva matha at Mantralayam

Madhva's heir — rigorous philosophical commentary on Dvaita theism and the saint-tradition of bhakti devotion

35% dvaita-vedanta -20% advaita-vedanta 10% catholic-thomistic 15% dualism 15% realism +2

#194

Gottlob Frege

1848–1925 · German mathematician and philosopher; founder of modern symbolic logic and analytic philosophy of language

Begriffsschrift — the logical-language reform that founded analytic philosophy

35% analytic-metaphysics 25% platonism-classical 20% logical-positivism -20% idealism 15% rationalism +2

⚔ in 2 debates

#195

Kurt Gödel

1906–1978 · Austrian-American mathematical logician; member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton

The incompleteness theorems and ontological Platonism — mathematical truth that outruns formal proof

35% platonism-classical 20% analytic-metaphysics 25% rationalism -15% logical-positivism 10% catholic-thomistic 15% eternalism +3

#196

Alan Turing

1912–1954 · British mathematician and computer scientist; founder of theoretical computer science; codebreaker at Bletchley Park

The Turing machine and the imitation game — computation as the foundation of mind and the substrate of information

30% dataism-information-ontology 20% analytic-metaphysics 20% transhumanism-posthumanism 20% naturalism 15% simulation-theory +2

#197

Saul Kripke

1940–2022 · American philosopher; principal twentieth-century theorist of necessity, naming, and modal metaphysics

Rigid designators and the necessity of identity — modal metaphysics reconstructed against the descriptivist tradition

35% analytic-metaphysics 20% platonism-classical 15% rationalism 15% critical-realism 10% multiverse-theory +2

#198

Derek Parfit

1942–2017 · British philosopher; All Souls College Oxford; principal twentieth-century theorist of personal identity and reasons

Reasons and Persons — personal identity is not what matters; ethics is what we have most reason to do

30% analytic-metaphysics 20% kantian-transcendental-idealism 10% pragmatism 15% buddhism 15% naturalism +2

#199

David Lewis

1941–2001 · American philosopher; Princeton; principal twentieth-century theorist of modal realism, counterfactuals, and analytic systematic metaphysics

Modal realism — all possible worlds are real worlds, no less real than the actual one

30% multiverse-theory 35% analytic-metaphysics 20% naturalism 15% platonism-classical 15% eternalism +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#200

Nāgārjuna

c. 150 – c. 250 CE · Indian Buddhist philosopher; founder of the Madhyamaka school; principal philosopher of śūnyatā (emptiness)

All dharmas are empty — the dialectical reductio of every position whatsoever to dependent origination

35% buddhism 25% tibetan-vajrayana-buddhism 15% pyrrhonism 15% process-philosophy -10% yogacara -15% advaita-vedanta +3

#201

Wang Yangming

1472–1529 · Chinese Neo-Confucian philosopher; founder of the Xinxue (Mind-Learning) school

Liangzhi (innate knowledge of the good) — the unity of knowledge and action against Zhu Xi's gradualism

35% confucianism 25% idealism 15% buddhism 15% pragmatism 10% taoism +2

#202

Mencius (Mengzi)

372–289 BCE · Chinese philosopher; second great Confucian after Confucius; principal theorist of innate human goodness

The four sprouts — human nature is innately good; benevolent government cultivates what is naturally there

35% confucianism 10% christian-personalism 10% taoism 10% pragmatism 10% liberation-theology +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#203

Nishida Kitarō

1870–1945 · Japanese philosopher; founder of the Kyoto School; first chair of philosophy at Kyoto Imperial University

Pure experience and the logic of basho (place) — Zen Buddhist categories systematized in dialogue with Western philosophy

25% buddhism 20% phenomenology 15% process-philosophy 15% idealism 10% shintoism +2

#204

Sri Aurobindo

1872–1950 · Indian nationalist, yogi, and philosopher; principal theorist of integral yoga and supramental evolution

Integral yoga and supramental descent — modern Indian philosophy of evolutionary ascent toward divine consciousness

25% advaita-vedanta 20% process-philosophy 20% transhumanism-posthumanism 10% liberation-theology +1

#205

Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi)

1571–1636 · Persian Islamic philosopher; principal synthesizer of Avicennian falsafa, Suhrawardi's Illuminationism, and Sufi mysticism

The transcendent theosophy (al-Hikmat al-Muta'aliya) — the primacy of existence (asalat al-wujud) and substantial motion

35% islamic-philosophy-falsafa 25% sufism-wahdat-al-wujud 20% process-philosophy 15% occasionalism 15% catholic-thomistic +2

#206

Achille Mbembe

1957– · Cameroonian historian and political theorist; principal contemporary theorist of necropolitics and African postcolonialism

Necropolitics — the contemporary political condition as sovereignty over death; African postcolonial critique against the conscious-Western imperial subject

25% postmodernism 15% liberation-theology 15% dialectical-materialism 10% animism-relational-indigenous -10% evangelical-protestantism +2

#207

Vladimir Solovyov

1853–1900 · Russian Orthodox philosopher; principal founder of modern Russian religious philosophy

Godmanhood and Sophia — the cosmic-historical project of divine-human unity in Eastern Christian register

30% eastern-orthodox-christianity 15% catholic-thomistic 15% christian-personalism 10% kabbalah-lurianic 15% neo-platonism +2

#208

Nikolai Berdyaev

1874–1948 · Russian Orthodox philosopher; principal twentieth-century Russian Christian existentialist

Freedom is the deepest reality — primordial uncreated freedom prior to being, the meaning of personality, the destiny of the creative act

35% christian-existentialism 25% eastern-orthodox-christianity 25% christian-personalism -20% dialectical-materialism 10% kabbalah-lurianic +2

#209

Vine Deloria Jr.

1933–2005 · Standing Rock Sioux scholar; principal twentieth-century Native American philosopher; author of "God Is Red"

Indigenous metaphysics against the Western evolutionary-historicist conceit — "we are the people, this is the place, this is the moment"

35% animism-relational-indigenous -20% evangelical-protestantism 20% deep-ecology 10% ubuntu-african-communal-ontology -15% naturalism +2

#210

Democritus of Abdera

c. 460–c. 370 BCE · Greek pre-Socratic philosopher; co-founder of classical atomism with Leucippus

Atoms and the void — only atoms in the void are real; everything else is convention

30% naturalism 30% epicureanism 20% determinism 15% multiverse-theory -25% platonism-classical 10% pyrrhonism +3

⚔ in 1 debate

#211

G. E. M. Anscombe (Elizabeth Anscombe)

1919–2001 · British philosopher; Catholic Wittgensteinian; Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge; literary executor of Wittgenstein

Intention and "Modern Moral Philosophy" — the recovery of virtue ethics and the action-theoretic foundations of moral psychology

30% catholic-thomistic 25% analytic-metaphysics 15% christian-personalism -10% pragmatism -10% liberation-theology -15% logical-positivism +3

⚔ in 1 debate

#212

Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)

1891–1942 · German Jewish-Catholic philosopher; phenomenologist; Carmelite nun; martyred at Auschwitz; canonized 1998

Phenomenology of empathy and finite-and-eternal being — Husserlian method oriented toward Thomistic metaphysics

30% christian-personalism 25% phenomenology 20% catholic-thomistic 15% christian-existentialism 10% jewish-philosophy-maimonidean +2

#213

Martha Nussbaum

1947– · American philosopher; Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor at Chicago; principal contemporary neo-Aristotelian and theorist of capabilities approach

Capabilities, emotions, and the fragility of goodness — Aristotelian virtue ethics in dialogue with contemporary feminism and development economics

25% platonism-classical 15% pragmatism 10% liberal-theology 15% stoicism 10% epicureanism +2

#214

Peter Singer

1946– · Australian philosopher; Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton; principal contemporary utilitarian and animal-liberation theorist

Animal Liberation and effective altruism — preference utilitarianism applied with maximum consistency, comfort be damned

25% naturalism 20% pragmatism 15% analytic-metaphysics 10% buddhism 10% epicureanism -25% catholic-thomistic +3

#215

Samuel Clarke

1675–1729 · English clergyman, Newtonian theologian, philosopher

Newton's philosophical voice — substantival space-time, divine voluntarism, and the rational defence of Christianity

30% analytic-metaphysics 25% catholic-thomistic 25% realism 20% rationalism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#216

Niels Bohr

1885–1962 · Danish physicist; principal architect of quantum mechanics

Complementarity, the measurement cut, and the unfinished business of quantum reality

40% quantum-realism 20% logical-positivism 15% phenomenology 15% naturalism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#217

Frederick Copleston

1907–1994 · English Jesuit philosopher; historian of philosophy

The cleanest 20th-century Catholic-Thomistic engagement with analytic atheism

50% catholic-thomistic 20% hylomorphism 15% realism 15% rationalism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#218

Pelagius

c. 360–c. 418 · British monk and ascetic; theologian of moral capacity

Human moral power retained after the Fall — and condemned for saying so

30% rationalism 20% catholic-thomistic 20% naturalism 15% pragmatism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#219

John Bramhall

1594–1663 · Anglican bishop; Arminian theologian; opponent of Hobbes

Libertarian free will against Hobbesian necessity, defended in exile and from the episcopate

30% catholic-thomistic 25% hylomorphism 25% rationalism 20% realism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#220

Robert Hooke

1635–1703 · English natural philosopher; Curator of Experiments at the Royal Society

Microscopist, mechanical philosopher, and the Newtonian era's frustrated near-genius

35% empiricism 25% naturalism 20% realism 20% pragmatism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#221

Willard Van Orman Quine

1908–2000 · American analytic philosopher; naturalised epistemologist

No first philosophy: epistemology, ontology, and semantics naturalised into one continuous web

40% naturalism 25% pragmatism 20% analytic-metaphysics 15% structuralism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#222

Noam Chomsky

1928– · American linguist, cognitive scientist, political theorist

Innate language faculty, principled naturalism, anarcho-syndicalist political vision

30% naturalism 30% rationalism 20% structuralism 20% realism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#223

Siger of Brabant

c. 1240–c. 1282 · Latin Averroist; Parisian arts master

Aristotelian philosophy followed wherever it leads — including against Christian doctrine

30% analytic-metaphysics 30% islamic-philosophy-falsafa 25% rationalism 15% hylomorphism +1

⚔ in 2 debates

#224

Robert Bellarmine

1542–1621 · Jesuit cardinal; Counter-Reformation theologian; Inquisitor

The intellectual conscience of the Counter-Reformation papacy

50% catholic-thomistic 20% hylomorphism 20% realism 10% rationalism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#225

Gaunilo of Marmoutiers

fl. 11th c. (d. before 1083) · Benedictine monk; critic of Anselm

"On behalf of the fool" — the first sustained refutation of the ontological argument

30% catholic-thomistic 25% empiricism 25% analytic-metaphysics 20% pyrrhonism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#226

Hans-Georg Gadamer

1900–2002 · German philosopher of hermeneutics

Tradition, fusion of horizons, the rehabilitation of prejudice as a condition of understanding

35% phenomenology 20% postmodernism 20% platonism-classical 15% process-philosophy +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#227

Richard Wagner

1813–1883 · German composer; theorist of the total artwork

Music-drama, the Gesamtkunstwerk, and a half-philosophical, half-mythical aesthetic of cultural renewal

30% idealism 20% process-philosophy 20% platonism-classical 15% nihilism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#228

Xunzi

c. 310–235 BC · Late Warring States Confucian philosopher

Human nature is evil; goodness is the achievement of ritual and learning

50% confucianism 25% naturalism 15% pragmatism 10% realism +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#229

Adi Śaṅkara

c. 700–750 (traditional: 788–820) · Founding systematiser of Advaita Vedānta

Brahman alone is real, the world is appearance, the self is Brahman

60% advaita-vedanta 20% idealism 10% neo-platonism 10% platonism-classical +1

⚔ in 2 debates

#230

Maṇḍana Miśra

c. 8th c. (fl. c. 800) · Mīmāṃsā scholar; pre-Advaita Vedāntin

Ritual action and the reality of the world, with non-dualism arrived at by inference

25% dvaita-vedanta 25% realism 20% pragmatism 20% advaita-vedanta 10% rationalism +2

⚔ in 2 debates

#231

Ernst Cassirer

1874–1945 · German philosopher of symbolic forms; neo-Kantian

Mathematics, science, language, myth, art, religion — each a symbolic form disclosing objective spirit

45% kantian-transcendental-idealism 25% structuralism 15% rationalism 15% process-philosophy +1

⚔ in 1 debate

#232

Karl Popper

1902–1994 · Austrian-British philosopher of science; critical rationalist

Falsifiability, bold conjectures, and the open society

30% analytic-metaphysics 25% naturalism 20% pragmatism 15% logical-positivism 10% critical-realism +2

⚔ in 3 debates

#233

Theodor Adorno

1903–1969 · Frankfurt School critical theorist; aesthetic philosopher

Negative dialectic, the culture industry, and the totality of late-capitalist deformation

35% dialectical-materialism 20% critical-realism 20% postmodernism 15% structuralism 10% process-philosophy +2

⚔ in 2 debates

#234

John Searle

1932– · American philosopher of mind, language, and social ontology

Speech acts, the Chinese Room, biological naturalism, and the construction of social reality

35% analytic-metaphysics 25% naturalism 20% realism 10% structuralism 10% pragmatism +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#235

Jacques Derrida

1930–2004 · French philosopher of deconstruction

Différance, the absent centre, and the deconstruction of metaphysical oppositions

40% postmodernism 25% phenomenology 15% process-philosophy 10% structuralism 10% existentialism +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#236

William Whewell

1794–1866 · English polymath; philosopher and historian of science

Colligation of facts, consilience of inductions, and the active mind in scientific discovery

35% kantian-transcendental-idealism 25% analytic-metaphysics 20% realism 15% rationalism 5% structuralism +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#237

Edward Stillingfleet

1635–1699 · Anglican bishop; theologian and controversialist

A latitudinarian defender of orthodoxy who pressed Locke hard on substance and the Trinity

25% catholic-thomistic 25% reformed-calvinist-theology 20% hylomorphism 20% realism 10% rationalism +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#238

Mozi

c. 470–391 BC · Founder of Mohism; classical Chinese consequentialist

Impartial caring, anti-ritualism, and the first systematic consequentialist ethics in world philosophy

30% naturalism 25% pragmatism 20% liberation-theology 15% confucianism 10% taoism +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#239

Michael Servetus

1511–1553 · Spanish physician, theologian, anti-Trinitarian

Anti-Trinitarian biblicism, pioneering pulmonary circulation, and burnt at the stake in Calvin's Geneva

30% rationalism 25% naturalism 15% reformed-calvinist-theology 15% lutheranism 15% liberation-theology +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#240

Robert Stalnaker

1940– · American philosopher of language, logic, and mind

Possible-worlds semantics for conditionals, propositions, and pragmatic context

40% analytic-metaphysics 25% pragmatism 15% naturalism 15% realism 5% structuralism +2

⚔ in 1 debate