american people Famous Philosophers from the United States

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Albert Einstein Died at 76 (1879-1955) Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist. Einstein's work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. He developed the general theory of relativity, one of the ...more

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Bruce Lee Died at 33 (1940-1973) Bruce Lee was a Hong Kong American martial artist, Hong Kong action film actor, martial arts instructor, philosopher, filmmaker, and the founder of Jeet Kune Do. Lee was the son of Cantonese ...more

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Thomas Jefferson Died at 83 (1743-1826) Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third President of the United States. He was a spokesman for democracy, and ...more

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Noam Chomsky age 89 Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator, social justice activist, and anarcho-syndicalist advocate. Sometimes described as ...more

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Ayn Rand Died at 77 (1905-1982) Ayn 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 ...more

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Ralph Waldo Emerson Died at 79 (1803-1882) Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient ...more

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Sun Yat-sen Died at 59 (1866-1925) Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese revolutionary, first president and founding father of the Republic of China, and medical practitioner. As the foremost pioneer of the Republic of China, Sun is referred ...more

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W.E.B. Du Bois Died at 95 (1868-1963) William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, ...more

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Ludwig Wittgenstein Died at 62 (1889-1951) Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From ...more

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Henry David Thoreau Died at 45 (1817-1862) Henry David Thoreau was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, sage writer and philosopher. He is best known for his book Walden, a ...more

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John Dewey Died at 93 (1859-1952) John Dewey, FAA was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey is one of the primary figures ...more

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Will Rogers Died at 56 (1879-1935) William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers was a Native American cowboy, vaudeville performer, humorist, social commentator and motion picture actor. He was one of the world's most famous stars ...more

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Cornel West age 64 Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, academic, activist, author, public intellectual, and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The son of a Baptist minister, West ...more

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John Cage Died at 80 (1912-1992) John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage ...more

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Sam Harris age 50 Samuel B. "Sam" Harris is an American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, and the co-founder and chief executive of Project Reason, a non-profit that promotes science and secularism. ...more

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George Santayana Died at 89 (1863-1952) Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known as George Santayana, was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Santayana was raised and educated in the United ...more

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Alain LeRoy Locke Died at 68 (1886-1954) Alain Leroy Locke was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. Distinguished as the first African American Rhodes Scholar in 1907, Locke was the philosophical architect ...more

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Robert Anton Wilson Died at 75 (1932-2007) Robert Anton Wilson was an American author, novelist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized as an Episkopos, Pope, and saint ...more

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Daniel Dennett age 76 Daniel Clement Dennett III is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, ...more

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Walt Whitman Died at 73 (1819-1892) Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his ...more

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Angela Davis age 74 Angela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party USA, ...more

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Kurt Gödel Died at 72 (1906-1978) Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian, and later American, logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians ...more

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John Rawls Died at 81 (1921-2002) John Bordley Rawls was an American moral and political philosopher. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University and the Fulbright Fellowship at Christ Church, ...more

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Mary Daly Died at 82 (1928-2010) Mary Daly was an American radical feminist philosopher, academic, and theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at Jesuit-run Boston College for ...more

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Hannah Arendt Died at 69 (1906-1975) Johanna "Hannah" Arendt was a German-born political theorist. Though often described as a philosopher, she rejected that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with ...more

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Gary L. Francione age 63 Gary Lawrence Francione is an American legal scholar. He is the Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law & Philosophy at Rutgers School of Law–Newark. ...more

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William James Died at 68 (1842-1910) William James was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, James was one of the leading ...more

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Martin Duberman age 87 Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, biographer, playwright, and gay rights activist. He is Professor of History Emeritus at the Graduate School of the City University of New York and ...more

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David Bohm Died at 75 (1917-1992) David Joseph Bohm FRS was an American scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century and who contributed innovative and unorthodox ...more

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Allan Bloom Died at 62 (1930-1992) Allan David Bloom was an American philosopher, classicist, and academician. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon and Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at ...more

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Arthur Danto Died at 89 (1924-2013) Arthur Coleman Danto was an American art critic and philosopher. He is best known for having been influential, long-time art critic for The Nation and for his work in philosophical aesthetics ...more

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Kwame Anthony Appiah age 63 Kwame Anthony Appiah is a British philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist whose interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual ...more

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John Searle age 85 John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of ...more

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Paul Tillich Died at 79 (1886-1965) Paul Johannes Tillich was a German American Christian existentialist philosopher and theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Among ...more

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Russell Kirk Died at 76 (1918-1994) Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 ...more

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Jonathan Edwards Died at 55 (1703-1758) Jonathan Edwards was a Protestant preacher, philosopher, and theologian. Edwards "is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian," and one ...more

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Hilary Putnam age 91 Hilary 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, ...more

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Khalil Gibran Died at 48 (1883-1931) Khalil Gibran was a Lebanese-American artist, poet, and writer of the New York Pen League. Born in the town of Bsharri in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Empire, as a young man he ...more

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Thomas Samuel Kuhn Died at 74 (1922-1996) Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American physicist, historian, and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and ...more

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Leo Strauss Died at 74 (1899-1973) Leo Strauss was a German-American political philosopher and classicist who specialized in classical political philosophy. He was born in Germany to Jewish parents and later emigrated from ...more

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Michael Walzer age 83 Michael Walzer is a prominent American political philosopher and public intellectual. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he is co-editor of ...more

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Solomon Feferman age 89 Solomon Feferman is an American philosopher and mathematician with works in mathematical logic. He was born in New York City, New York, and received his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of ...more

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Rudolf Carnap Died at 79 (1891-1970) Rudolf Carnap was a German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical

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Steven Best age 62 Steven Best is an American animal rights advocate, author, and associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso. A writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education described ...more

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Arthur M. Young Died at 90 (1905-1995) Arthur Middleton Young was an American inventor, helicopter pioneer, cosmologist, philosopher, astrologer and author. Young was the designer of Bell Helicopter's first helicopter, the Model 30, ...more

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Abraham Joshua Heschel Died at 65 (1907-1972) Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the ...more

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Ananda Coomaraswamy Died at 70 (1877-1947) Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was a Ceylonese Tamil philosopher and metaphysician, as well as a pioneering historian and philosopher of Indian art, particularly art history and symbolism, and an ...more

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Molefi Kete Asante age 75 Molefi Kete Asante is an African-American professor. He is a leading figure in the fields of African-American Studies, African Studies and Communication Studies. He is currently Professor in the ...more

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Christopher Bobonich age 58 Christopher Bobonich is an American philosopher and a leading scholar of ancient philosophy, especially known for his work on Plato's Laws. He is currently Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of ...more

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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Died at 94 (1841-1935) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932, and as Acting Chief Justice of the United States ...more