How many philosophers are there

In his major book Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgement Gibbard has argued for the significance of the role that feelings play in our development and understanding of moral norms. In his view, if we perceive someone's actions as rational, then we are endorsing the actions, and so, accepting them and the norms that they represent and enforce. Feelings like acceptance, guilt, and resentment, then, significantly affect our sense of moral norms.

Ethical statements cannot be objective, and so, neither are neither true nor false. Web resource: Allan Gibbard's Home Page. Susan Haack received her Ph. Haack's work can be primarily described as pragmatic philosophy, and she has written on logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of law, philosophy of science, feminism, and literature.

Much of her later work has been concerned with defending science and scientific inquiry against skepticism and faulty epistemologies, with religious doctrine being a primary obstacle. Web resource: Susan Haack's Home Page. After some disagreements, Habermas finished his education studying political science at the University of Marburg under notable Marxist Wolfgang Abendroth. Habermas would also teach at the Frankfurt school, retiring in Habermas works in the traditions of critical theory and pragmatism, and has been very influential to philosophy and sociology.

Habermas has placed a great deal of emphasis on the power of rational discourse. In what is perhaps his most important work, Theory of Communicative Action , Habermas expressed criticism of modern society for the development of the welfare state, corporate capitalism, and its demand for mass consumption.

Habermas argued that with the development of modern industrial society since the start of the 19th century, democracy shifted from being participatory to representative, and the body of the public lost its voice in the democratic discourse, as public life became rationalized and quantified. With some controversy, Habermas has called for the need to shift from representative democracy to a deliberative one, in which discourse is made equal again among citizens and government.

John Haldane. John Haldane studied art before pursuing philosophy, earning a B. Haldane is currently a University Professor at the University of St. Andrews, holds the title of J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Haldane is not just a notable analytical philosopher, but is recognizable in the mainstream; he has published articles in art magazines, and contributed to numerous television programs.

Haldane is a catholic, he and is a papal advisor to the Vatican. Haldane is most notable for his work on Thomas Aquinas. Analytical Thomism seeks to merge the ideas of contemporary analytical philosophy with the ideas of 13th century thinker and saint Thomas Aquinas. Through his work, Haldane has been influential in developing a space for Catholic philosophy in the modern analytical landscape. Web resource: John Haldane's Home Page. Graham Harman received his Ph.

Harman's work has primarily focused on metaphysics and ontology, and he has been influential as a key figure in speculative realism and the development of object oriented ontology.

Harman's goal in philosophy has been to reject anthropocentric philosophical views in favor of a metaphysical realist approach. In his view, everything is an object human, animal, rock, city, etc. Harman's philosophy is primarily concerned with understanding objects in the world as things-in-themselves, without allusion to anthropocentric qualities of being.

Web resource: Graham Harman's Home Page. John Hawthorne earned his Ph. Hawthorne's work primarily focuses on metaphysics and epistemology, and his most influential book on the subjects is Metaphysical Essays However, Hawthorne grants that this is separate from whether the subject can be said to have knowledge, which depends on the subject's own context.

Web resource: John Hawthorne's Home Page. Heil's work combines metaphysics with philosophy of mind, using each realm as a way of understanding the other. In his book The Universe as we Find It , Heil considers how our notions of causation and truth making contribute to our ontological understanding of the world, and pursues the application of this ontology to contemporary philosophical problems.

Heil is most influential as an educator in philosophy. Web resource: John Heil's Home Page. Ingvar Johansson earned his Ph. Johansson primarily works in the area of ontology, and is an epistemological fallibilist. In his book Ontological Investigations: An Inquiry into the Categories of Nature, Man, and Society Johansson has worked toward developing a modern realist version of Aristotle's theory of categories, in order to update Aristotle's ontology and for the theory to be made compatible with modern science.

More recently, Johannson has been focused on applied ontology in the area of medical information science, working with the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science at Saarland University.

Web resource: Ingvar Johansson's Home Page. Korean American philosopher Jaegwon Kim earned his Ph. His research is focused in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaphysics, and he has been influential in his work on mental causation,the mind-body problem, and supervenience. Kim is known for rejecting Cartesian metaphysics, though he does argue for a kind of dualism.

Though he has argued both for and against a physicalist and non-physicalist account of mental states, Kim's current dualism, he admits, is more on the side of physicalism. He holds that while some mental states intentional mental states, such as beliefs and desires can be reduced to physical sources in the brain, other mental states, phenomenal mental states, such as sensations cannot be reduced to physical sources, and are epiphenomenal. Web resource: Jaegwon Kim's Home Page. Christine Korsgaard received her Ph.

Korsgaard is primarily interested in moral philosophy and how it relates to metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of identity, and issues of normativity.

Best known for her defense of Kantian moral philosophy in The Sources of Normativity , Korsgaard sought to justify, not just explain, the notion that people have moral obligations to one another.

To do this, she surveyed several major arguments about moral obligation, all of which call for the necessity of normative entities in determining moral obligation, finding that Immanuel Kant and contemporary Kantians offer the strongest approach to the justification of moral obligation. Korsgaard argues that the normativity of moral obligation is self-imposed, and is justified through our establishing a kind of self-authority through our autonomy.

If we take anything to be of value, then, in Korsgaard's view, we have to acknowledge that we have moral obligations, implied through us finding value in those things, which we must maintain in order to be consistent with our autonomy, the source of our moral obligation. Korsgaard has been influential in defending and reestablishing the significance of the Kantian approach in contemporary moral philosophy.

Web resource: Christine Korsgaard's Home Page. Saul Kripke was considered a prodigy as a child and, while still just a sophomore at Harvard, he taught a course in logic at MIT.

In he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard with a B. Strongly embedded in the Analytic tradition, Kripke's major contributions in philosophy are in the areas of logic specifically modal logic , philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, set theory, and philosophy of mind. Naming and Necessity , is perhaps his most significant work, based on transcriptions of his lectures at Princeton in In it, Kripke challenges and overturns Immanuel Kant's theory on truth in propositions, arguing that some propositions are only knowable a posteriori , but are necessarily true, while others are knowable a priori , but are only contingently true.

Through this notion, along with others, Kripke was able to turn the conventional understanding of truth, propositions, and logic on its head, significantly contributing to the decline of ordinary language philosophy, and the public understanding of the function of philosophy in the 20th century.

Web resource: Saul Kripke's Home Page. Macintyre's most work has been most influential in moral and political philosophy, but it also incorporates history of philosophy and theology. Arguing from history, Macintyre's work is largely concerned with accounting for the decline of morality and moral rationality in society since the Enlightenment, and reclaiming the philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as a potential solution to what he sees as society's current ills.

This makes him an Aritstotelian-Thomist. Macintyre is most well known for his influential book After Virtue , which explores the above-mentioned ideas. The book represents a shift in his philosophical approach, as prior to that point he had primarily been a Marxist. In the book, Macintyre develops his critique of modern liberal capitalism and the society it has produced, arguing that because there is an absence of any coherent moral code, the sense of purpose and community has been lost for most people in modern society.

Macintyre argues for a return to purpose and community through a return to virtue ethics. Web resource: Alasdair Macintyre's Home Page. John McDermott received his Ph. McDermott's work is primarily focused on the philosophy of culture, specifically American literature and philosophy, having written, compiled, or contributed to books on William James, Josiah Royce, and John Dewey, as well as being a former President of the William James Society.

McDermott is most notable for, and has been most influential in exploring and advancing the ideas of James and Dewey in relation to American culture, as well as his examination of American culture through philosophy.

John McDowell is currently University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and though he has a lengthy bibliography covering metaphysics, epistemology, ancient philosophy, and meta-ethics, he is best known for his influential work in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. His work has been significantly influenced by Wilfrid Sellars and Ludwig Wittgenstein, evident not just in his approach to philosophy of language, but to philosophy as a whole, understanding his own work as a type of philosophical quietism.

Here, then, are the highlights that struck me as most interesting. Beginning with gender: 3. Most of these women were Pythagoreans, Platonists, or Epicureans, and a good number were associated with Stoicism. His most prominent works described the parameters of effective rulership, in which he seems to advocate for leadership by any means which retain power, including deceit, murder, and oppression.

A German-born economist, political theorist, and philosopher, Karl Marx wrote some of the most revolutionary philosophical content ever produced. Indeed, so pertinent was his writing to the human condition during his lifetime, he was exiled from his native country. This event would, however, also make it possible for his most important ideas to find a popular audience. Together, they devised an assessment of class, society, and power dynamics that revealed deep inequalities, and exposed the economic prerogatives for state-sponsored violence, oppression, and war.

Marx predicted that the inequalities and violence inherent in capitalism would ultimately lead to its collapse. From its ashes would rise a new socialist system, a classless society where all participants as opposed to just wealthy private owners have access to the means for production. The philosophy underlying Marxism, and his revolutionary fervor, would ripple throughout the world, ultimately transforming entire spheres of thought in places like Soviet Russia, Eastern Europe, and Red China.

In many ways, Karl Marx presided over a philosophical revolution that continues in the present day in myriad forms of communism, socialism, socialized democracy, and grassroots political organization. British economist, public servant, and philosopher John Stuart Mill is considered a linchpin of modern social and political theory. He contributed a critical body of work to the school of thought called liberalism, an ideology founding on the extension of individual liberties and economic freedoms.

As such, Mill himself advocated strongly for the preserving of individual rights and called for limitations to the power and authority of the state over the individual. Mill was also a proponent of utilitarianism, which holds that the best action is one that maximizes utility, or stated more simply, one that provide the greatest benefit to all.

For his own part, as a member of Parliament, Mill became the first office-holding Briton to advocate for the right of women to vote. Friedrich Nietzsche was a poet, cultural critic, and philosopher, as well as possessor of among the most gifted minds in human history.

Writing on an enormous breadth of subjects, from history, religion and science to art, culture and the tragedies of Greek and Roman Antiquity, Nietzsche wrote with savage wit and a love of irony. He used these forces to pen deconstructive examinations of truth, Christian morality, and the impact of social constructs on our formulation of moral values.

This idea in particular would remain an important component of the existentialist and surrealist movements that followed. Greek philosopher and teacher Plato did nothing less than found the first institution of higher learning in the Western World, establishing the Academy of Athens and cementing his own status as the most important figure in the development of western philosophical tradition.

As the pupil of Socrates and the mentor to Aristotle, Plato is the connecting figure in what might be termed the great triumvirate of Greek thought in both philosophy and science. Often, in his dialogues, he employed his mentor Socrates as the vessel for his own thoughts and ideas. While he was not the first individual to partake of the activity of philosophy, he was perhaps the first to truly define what it meant, to articulate its purpose, and to reveal how it could be applied with scientific rigor.

This orientation provided a newly concreted framework for considering questions of ethics, politics, knowledge, and theology. Rousseau was a writer, philosopher, and — unique among entrants on this list — a composer of operas and classical compositions.

Born in Geneva, then a city-state in the Swiss Confederacy, Rousseau would be one of the most consequential thinkers of the Enlightenment era.

His ideas on human morality, inequality, and most importantly, on the right to rule, would have an enormous and definable impact not just on thinking in Europe, but on the actual power dynamics within Western Civilization. Indeed, his most important works would identify personal property as the root to inequality and would refute the premise that monarchies are divinely appointed to rule. Rousseau proposed the earth-shattering idea that only the people have a true right to rule.

These ideas fomented the French Revolution, and more broadly, helped bring an end to a centuries-old entanglement between Church, Crown, and Country.

It seems that women in a philosophy debate are in a lose-lose situation. Or they behave in a way that will attract less opprobrium, but then they are judged negatively on their philosophical ability. What to do? On the one hand, we need to try to change the stereotype.

We can do this by creating gender-balanced reading lists for our courses, by ensuring that there is a gender balance in the rostrum of speakers at our conferences , in our seminar series, and on the boards and committees of our journals and learned societies.

We also need to mitigate the effects of unconscious bias by anonymising where possible, whether it is in undergraduate grading or in hiring procedures, and by training all staff in the known ways of reducing bias. Male philosophers must become more involved. If the burden of combating the under-representation of women in philosophy is borne disproportionately by women, this will deprive them more than is fair of the time they have to devote to their research and teaching, which is how philosophers build their careers.

Men must be equal partners in combating the problem. Women in academia, generally speaking, are up against the usual pressures — keeping families together and looking after students. Many tend to find their voice later in life than men. Finding the right words and the right milieu within which to express our philosophical thoughts is a difficult task. Much of mainstream philosophy is tame and taming, precisely because it is engaged in reproducing privilege.

Feminism and anti-racism are only superficially incorporated within the language of cultural politics. Few think that anything needs to be done to undo the effects of continuing implicit gender or racial biases within the curriculum, in hiring practices or in the progression of teaching staff. My recent interdisciplinary and collaborative study for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, UK, entitled Caste in Britain , which outlines the implications of making caste as an aspect of race in the Equality Act , uses philosophical tools, without naming any philosophical theories.