BibbyPhilosophy

People worth arguing with

Philosopher Compendium

Meet the person behind the position: the question they enter, the move they make and the trouble it causes.

Five ways into the collection

Begin with a question, not a marble bust.

These shelves are deliberate starting points. A thinker may sit on more than one because arguments rarely respect filing systems.

Knowledge

What can we know?

René Descartes

George Berkeley

Ethics

How should we live?

Immanuel Kant

John Stuart Mill

Peter Singer

Justice

What do we owe one another?

Robert Nozick

Martha Nussbaum

Simone de Beauvoir

Mind

What makes a mind or person?

René Descartes

George Berkeley

Agency

How free are we?

Simone de Beauvoir

Friedrich Nietzsche

Diogenes of Sinope

Complete collection · 67 thinkers

A–Z philosopher library

Search a name or idea, then narrow by subject, course or era. Each profile begins with the move worth arguing about.

1919–2001 · Twentieth-century philosophyG. E. M. AnscombeAnscombe rebuilds moral philosophy from a careful account of intentional action, refusing to treat intention as a private item hidden behind behaviour.AgencyEthicsMind

c. 1225–1274 · Medieval philosophyAquinasAquinas joins Aristotelian explanation with Christian theology, arguing that reason can identify natural ends, moral principles and routes towards a first cause.EthicsKnowledgeAgencyJustice

1906–1975 · Twentieth-century philosophyHannah ArendtArendt treats politics as the fragile space where plural people appear to one another through speech and action, creating a common world no one controls alone.JusticeAgencyEthics

384–322 BCE · Ancient Greek philosophyAristotleAristotle asks how living things flourish and treats good judgement as a skill formed through practice, character and attention to particulars.EthicsAgency

354–430 · Late antique philosophyAugustineAugustine explains evil as a corruption of good produced by disordered willing, not as a rival substance created by God.EthicsAgencyMind

1908–1986 · 20th-century philosophySimone de BeauvoirBeauvoir places freedom inside concrete situations, asking how people become subjects while social structures assign roles, limits and meanings in advance.AgencyJusticeEthics

1738–1794 · Enlightenment philosophyCesare BeccariaBeccaria measures punishment by public necessity, demanding clear laws, proportionate penalties and the abolition of torture and unnecessary death.JusticeEthicsAgency

1892–1940 · Twentieth-century philosophyWalter BenjaminBenjamin reads culture as a field of historical pressure, asking how technologies, objects and fragments alter perception and disclose lives that official progress stories leave behind.KnowledgeJusticeAgency

1748–1832 · Modern philosophyJeremy BenthamBentham subjects laws and punishments to a public test: do they reduce suffering and increase wellbeing, or merely preserve inherited authority?EthicsJustice

1685–1753 · Early modern philosophyGeorge BerkeleyBerkeley argues that material substance adds nothing intelligible to the ideas we perceive, recasting ordinary objects as mind-dependent without calling them imaginary.KnowledgeMind

1909–1997 · Twentieth-century philosophyIsaiah BerlinBerlin argues that genuine human values can conflict without one master principle resolving every loss, making liberty and political restraint permanently important.JusticeAgencyEthics

1913–1960 · Twentieth-century philosophyCamusCamus begins from the clash between our demand for meaning and the world's silence, then asks how to live without denial or surrender.EthicsAgency

1966– · Contemporary philosophyChalmersChalmers separates explaining what a cognitive system does from explaining why any of it is accompanied by felt experience.MindKnowledge

551–479 BCE · Classical Chinese philosophyConfuciusConfucius treats ethical life as cultivated relationship: humane character becomes visible through ritual, learning and fitting conduct with others.EthicsAgencyJustice

1596–1650 · Early modern philosophyRené DescartesDescartes turns doubt into a method, dismantling inherited confidence in search of foundations that can survive the strongest challenge.KnowledgeMind

c. 404–323 BCE · Ancient Greek philosophyDiogenes of SinopeDiogenes makes philosophy answer to a way of living, using simplicity and provocation to expose artificial needs and respectable pretence.EthicsAgencyJustice

1868–1963 · Modern and contemporary philosophyW. E. B. Du BoisDu Bois makes racial domination visible as a structure of knowledge and selfhood, dividing how a person sees themselves from how a hostile society makes them appear.JusticeKnowledgeMindAgency

1618–1680 · Early modern philosophyElisabeth of BohemiaElisabeth forces Cartesian dualism to explain contact: how can an unextended thinking substance move an extended body?MindAgencyEthics

341–270 BCE · Hellenistic philosophyEpicurusEpicurus makes pleasure the good but strips it of extravagance, locating happiness in freedom from bodily pain, mental disturbance and needless fear.EthicsAgencyKnowledge

1925–1961 · Twentieth-century philosophyFrantz FanonFanon analyses colonialism as a system that occupies land, language, embodiment and self-understanding, making liberation both political and psychological.JusticeMindAgency

1920–2010 · Contemporary philosophyFootFoot reconnects moral judgement with the evaluation of living things, while using sharply structured cases to test intention, duty and harm.EthicsAgency

1926–1984 · Twentieth-century philosophyMichel FoucaultFoucault traces how institutions and expert practices produce the categories through which people are observed, normalised and invited to understand themselves.JusticeKnowledgeAgencyMind

1929–2023 · Contemporary philosophyFrankfurtFrankfurt asks whether freedom lies less in alternative possibilities than in which desires an agent identifies with and makes effective.AgencyEthicsMind

1966– · Contemporary philosophyFrickerFricker shows that injustice can damage a person specifically as a knower, shaping who receives credibility and which experiences can be understood.KnowledgeJusticeEthics

1938–2024 · Contemporary philosophyGoldmanGoldman shifts epistemic attention from what a believer can inspect internally to whether the process producing a belief reliably connects it with truth.KnowledgeAgency

1770–1831 · German idealismHegelHegel treats freedom and reason as achievements that emerge through conflict, recognition and historically developing forms of social life.AgencyMindJusticeKnowledge

1889–1976 · Twentieth-century philosophyHeideggerHeidegger redirects philosophy from cataloguing beings to the question of what it means for anything to be intelligible at all.MindAgencyKnowledge

1922–2012 · Contemporary philosophyJohn HickHick reframes a world containing difficulty as an environment for freely developed persons, then extends his philosophy towards plural responses to an ineffable Real.EthicsKnowledgeAgency

1588–1679 · Early modern philosophyHobbesHobbes grounds political authority in the need to escape insecurity, asking what power must exist before promises and cooperation can reliably hold.JusticeAgencyMind

1952–2021 · Contemporary philosophybell hookshooks places race, class and gender inside one analysis of domination, while treating education and love as demanding practices capable of transforming it.JusticeEthicsAgencyKnowledge

1711–1776 · Early modern philosophyDavid HumeHume asks human reason to account for its habits, showing how causation, self and morality depend on practices that argument alone cannot manufacture.KnowledgeEthicsAgency

c. 130–c. 202 · Early Christian thoughtIrenaeusIrenaeus presents creation as good but unfinished, with human beings capable of growing from immaturity towards likeness to God.EthicsAgency

1724–1804 · Modern philosophyImmanuel KantKant asks what rational agents must demand of themselves, treating persons as law-makers who may never be reduced to convenient instruments.EthicsKnowledgeJustice

1813–1855 · Nineteenth-century philosophySoren KierkegaardKierkegaard resists living by abstraction, asking how a particular person becomes responsible for commitments no system can make on their behalf.AgencyEthicsMind

1632–1704 · Early modern philosophyJohn LockeLocke connects knowledge to experience, political authority to consent and personal identity to continuity of consciousness.KnowledgeMindJustice

1917–1981 · Twentieth-century philosophyMackieMackie argues that ordinary moral claims purport to report objective requirements, but that no such requirements exist.EthicsKnowledge

1818–1883 · Nineteenth-century social and political philosophyKarl MarxMarx explains capitalism as a historically specific social order whose ordinary exchanges conceal relations of labour, power and exploitation that people can collectively transform.JusticeAgencyKnowledgeEthics

1919–2018 · Contemporary philosophyMary MidgleyMidgley dismantles one-story pictures of human nature, arguing that people are social animals whose motives cannot be reduced to selfish genes, pure reason or isolated choice.EthicsMindAgencyKnowledge

1806–1873 · Modern philosophyJohn Stuart MillMill defends individuality, open argument and a richer utilitarianism in which the quality of human flourishing matters alongside quantity.EthicsJusticeAgency

1919–1999 · Twentieth-century philosophyIris MurdochMurdoch relocates moral work inside attention: becoming better involves learning to see other people and reality without the ego's consoling distortions.EthicsMindAgency

1937– · Contemporary philosophyNagelNagel makes the first-person point of view philosophically unavoidable, asking what an objective account leaves out when there is something it is like to be a subject.MindKnowledgeEthics

1844–1900 · Modern philosophyFriedrich NietzscheNietzsche asks what forms of life created our values and whether inherited moral certainty conceals fear, resentment or exhaustion.EthicsAgency

1938–2002 · Contemporary philosophyRobert NozickNozick argues that justice concerns how holdings were acquired and transferred, not whether the final distribution matches a preferred social pattern.JusticeAgency

1947– · Contemporary philosophyMartha NussbaumNussbaum asks what people are actually able to do and be, shifting justice from equal resources on paper to the real conditions of a dignified life.JusticeEthics

1743–1805 · Modern philosophyWilliam PaleyPaley argues that intricate functional organisation in living things points beyond unguided accident towards intelligent design.KnowledgeEthics

1942–2017 · Contemporary philosophyParfitParfit argues that personal identity may matter less than the psychological relations that connect lives across time.MindEthicsAgencyJustice

1932– · Contemporary philosophyAlvin PlantingaPlantinga argues that rational belief need not always rest on argument and that the logical problem of evil fails if free creatures might go wrong in every feasible world.KnowledgeEthicsAgency

c. 427–347 BCE · Ancient Greek philosophyPlatoPlato turns philosophy into a sustained argument about knowledge, justice, reality and the education of desire.KnowledgeEthicsJustice

1926–2016 · Contemporary philosophyPutnamPutnam repeatedly tests whether mind, meaning and truth can be confined inside an individual, using machines, Twin Earth and sceptical scenarios to force the question.MindKnowledge

1921–2002 · Contemporary philosophyJohn RawlsRawls asks which principles people would choose for society if nobody could tailor the rules to their own social advantage.JusticeEthics

1712–1778 · Enlightenment philosophyJean-Jacques RousseauRousseau asks how social dependence transforms natural self-concern into rivalry, then seeks a political order in which obedience can remain compatible with freedom.JusticeAgencyEthics

1872–1970 · Modern analytic philosophyBertrand RussellRussell treats clarity as philosophical work: separate the claims, expose their logical relations and discover whether the original problem survives.KnowledgeAgency

1900–1976 · Twentieth-century philosophyRyleRyle argues that the mind is not a ghostly object hidden inside the body, but is revealed in the organisation of intelligent conduct and capacities.MindKnowledgeAgency

1905–1980 · Twentieth-century philosophySartreSartre treats human beings as unfinished projects: we become what we are through choices made in situations we did not choose.AgencyMindEthics

1932– · Contemporary philosophySearleSearle insists that manipulating symbols by rules is not yet understanding them, and that minds are biological phenomena with genuine intentional content.MindAgencyKnowledge

1946– · Contemporary philosophyPeter SingerSinger presses impartial concern into everyday life, asking whether distance, species and ordinary spending habits are morally relevant differences.EthicsJustice

1920–2012 · Twentieth-century philosophySmartSmart proposes that sensations are brain processes described in another vocabulary, removing the need for a second mental substance or dangling properties.MindEthicsKnowledge

c. 470–399 BCE · Ancient Greek philosophySocratesSocrates makes examination a way of life, testing confident claims until speakers can see what they know, what they assume and how they should live.EthicsKnowledgeAgency

1942–2007 · Contemporary philosophyRobert C. SolomonSolomon treats emotions as intelligent, evaluative ways of engaging with the world rather than forces that simply happen to a passive self.MindEthicsAgency

1940– · Contemporary philosophyErnest SosaSosa models knowledge as successful intellectual performance: a belief counts well when it is true because it was competently formed.KnowledgeAgency

1632–1677 · Early modern philosophySpinozaSpinoza places mind and body within one necessary natural order, redefining freedom as active understanding rather than escape from causation.AgencyMindEthicsKnowledge

1934– · Contemporary philosophyRichard SwinburneSwinburne builds a cumulative probabilistic case for God, arguing that one simple personal explanation can make a wide range of features of the world more likely.KnowledgeMindEthics

1912–1954 · Twentieth-century philosophy and computingTuringTuring replaces the foggy demand to define machine thinking with operational tests of what machines can compute and how convincingly they can converse.MindKnowledgeAgency

1889–1951 · Twentieth-century philosophyWittgensteinWittgenstein asks how language gets its grip, repeatedly turning philosophical puzzles back towards the practices in which words have a use.KnowledgeMind

1952– · Contemporary philosophyWolfWolf locates meaning where subjective attraction meets objective worth: a life must be engaged, but not every engaging project is worth loving.EthicsAgency

1759–1797 · Enlightenment philosophyMary WollstonecraftWollstonecraft turns Enlightenment claims about reason and freedom against a society that educates women for dependence and then mistakes the result for nature.JusticeAgencyEthics

4th century BCE · Classical Chinese philosophyZhuangziThe Zhuangzi uses story, humour and transformation to loosen distinctions that have become too rigid for skilful life.KnowledgeMindAgency

A name is useful when it leads back to an argument.