A philosopher who sharply reexamined morality, weakness, the will to power, and self-overcoming.
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An analytic thinker who ranged across logic, liberalism, peace, and the pursuit of happiness.
The founder of the Confucian tradition, who prized ritual, humaneness, learning, and responsibility within the community.
A modern Japanese writer who moved between ruin, shame, self-justification, and a desperate longing for human connection.
A thinker who argued for independence and self-respect, practical learning, and the design of the modern individual and society.
A philosopher who used the method of questioning to loosen assumptions and kept asking how to live well.
The fountainhead of Daoist thought, who taught the Way, non-action, and the strength of yielding.
A political thinker who examined totalitarianism, the public realm, action, and responsibility.
The founder of Buddhism, who taught suffering, attachment, dependent origination, and the middle way.
A systematic philosopher who emphasized virtue, purpose, habit, and the mean.
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Classics in ethics and intellectual history
A central figure of ancient philosophy who gave systematic shape to the Forms, the soul, the just city, and education.
A philosopher who understood pleasure as tranquility and the absence of fear, and taught a simple, sufficient happiness.
A Christian thinker who probed deeply into the will, love, sin, and time.
A philosopher who founded methodical doubt and the modern thinking subject.
A rationalist philosopher who reasoned about emotion, freedom, and necessity in a geometric key.
An empiricist philosopher who put his weight on experience, habit, feeling, and a good-humored skepticism.
A central figure of modern ethics who reasoned about duty, freedom, dignity, and the test of universalizability.
The founder of utilitarianism, who raised the banner of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
A thinker who prized liberty, utilitarianism, and the development of individual character.
A thinker who reasoned about natural rights, property, experience, and government by consent.
A political philosopher who reasoned about fear, covenant, order, and the Leviathan.
A thinker who shook the modern age with his writing on nature, freedom, the social contract, and education.
A political philosopher who proposed justice as fairness, the veil of ignorance, and the difference principle.
A thinker who placed the face of the other, responsibility, and ethics as first philosophy.
A thinker and writer who examined existentialism, freedom, gender, and the making of the Other.
A monk and thinker who bound together esoteric Buddhism, language, the body, and a cosmic practice.
A monk who profoundly changed Japanese Buddhism through Other Power, the primacy of the wicked, and faith.
A Zen monk who built an original thought around single-minded sitting, the unity of practice and realization, and time.
A thinker who articulated an ethics of sensibility through mono no aware, classical scholarship, and national learning (kokugaku).
A thinker who joined resolve, learning, and action, and strongly shaped the young men of the late Edo period.
A philosopher of the Kyoto School who explored pure experience, place, and the relation of self and world.
A philosopher who grasped human existence from relationship, through betweenness, climate, and ethics.
A thinker who sharply analyzed the history of political thought, subjecthood, and the system of irresponsibility.
A thinker who, through folklore studies, unearthed the wisdom and memory of nameless ordinary people.
A Daoist thinker who taught the equality of all things, free and easy wandering, and the relativity of language and value.
A Confucian who taught that human nature is good, upheld humaneness and righteousness, and put the people first in politics.
A Confucian thinker who held that human nature is bad and stressed ritual and learning as the means to correct it.
A Legalist thinker who prized law, technique, and positional power, and looked coldly at human self-interest.
A practical thinker who taught impartial care, opposition to aggressive war, and frugality.
The great synthesizer of Neo-Confucianism, who systematized principle and material force, the investigation of things, and self-cultivation.
The central figure of the Yangming school, who taught that mind is principle and that knowing and doing are one.
A master strategist who prized winning without fighting, and the roles of information, terrain, and momentum.
A major Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker who developed emptiness (śūnyatā), the Middle Way, and the doctrine of the two truths.
A philosopher who systematized non-dualism (Advaita Vedānta) and taught the identity of the true self and Brahman.
A philosopher who taught qualified non-dualism (Viśiṣṭādvaita) and prized loving devotion to a personal God.
The thinker behind the Arthashastra, who set out statecraft, economics, and the strategy of diplomacy.
A political leader and thinker who practiced nonviolence, civil disobedience, and a holding-fast to truth.
A poet and thinker who prized poetry, education, and a universal humanity.
A thinker and statesman who pursued the critique of caste, constitutional law, and social justice.
A giant of Islamic philosophy who unified medicine, metaphysics, and the theory of the intellect.
A thinker who ranged across doubt, faith, the critique of philosophy, and mysticism (Sufism).
A philosopher who commented on Aristotle and argued for the harmony of reason and revelation.
A thinker who analyzed the sociology of history, group solidarity (asabiyya), and the rise and fall of civilizations.
A Sufi poet who spoke of self-transformation through love, mystery, and verse.
A philosopher who conceived political philosophy, the theory of the intellect, and the virtuous city.
The philosopher-emperor and Stoic who wrote of duty, self-command, and a life lived in accord with nature.
The father of the essay, who asked 'What do I know?' and never stopped observing himself.
A political thinker who dissected the reality of power, fortune, and prowess with cold clarity.
A philosopher of pessimism and hard insight who described a blind will and the endless recurrence of suffering.
A forerunner of existential thought who gazed into anxiety, despair, and the leap of faith.