Statistics for The 100 Greatest Philosophers

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The average score is 22 of 100

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Interest / Branch	Nationality	Main Contribution(s)	Philosopher	% Correct
Metaphysics	Greek	Founded the Academy; helped people recognise what it means to be virtuous	Plato	93%
Biology	Greek	Invented the field of formal logic	Aristotle	88%
Epistemology	Greek	His technique for arguing a point; and interest in ethics	Socrates	86%
Mathematics	Greek	Theorem related to right-angled triangles	Pythagoras	85%
Ethics	Chinese	Wanted to make education broadly available	Confucius	79%
Political Philosophy	German	Founded communism	Karl Marx	68%
Aesthetics	German	"God is dead"	Friedrich Nietzsche	66%
Aesthetics	German	Taught that without human freedom, moral responsibility would be impossible	Immanuel Kant	62%
Epistemology	French	Invented analytical geometry, and made skepticism an essential part of the scientific method	René Descartes	56%
Epistemology	English	Known as the 'father of liberalism'	John Locke	47%
Epistemology	British	Conceived of philosophy as the experimental science of human nature	David Hume	45%
Neo-Confucianism	Chinese	Stated that the difference between good and evil is intuitive knowledge, and not rational.	Wang Yangming	44%
Political Philosophy	Genevan	Formulated of social contract theory, which hugely influenced the French Revolution	Jean-Jacques Rousseau	43%
Epistemology	French	His system of existentialism, describing humans' freedom and responsibilities	Jean-Paul Sartre	43%
Political Philosophy	Italian	Argued that people in power should use deception, force, and manipulation to achieve their ends	Niccolò Machiavelli	43%
Neo-Confucianism	Chinese	Contributed greatly to Chinese philosophy and fundamentally reshaped the Chinese worldview	Zhu Xi	43%
Epistemology	German	Developed a dialectical scheme that emphasized the progress of history	Georg Hegel	40%
Epistemology	Danish	The first existential philosopher; criticised organised religion	Søren Kierkegaard	40%
Logic	American	His naturalistic, empiricist, and behaviourist philosophical outlook	Willard Van Orman Quine	39%
Ethics	Roman	His 'Meditations' on Stoic philosophy	Marcus Aurelius	38%
Political Philosophy	English	Justified wide-ranging government powers on the basis that citizens consented to them	Thomas Hobbes	37%
Political Philosophy	British	Believed that economic theory and philosophy should play a role in politics	John Stuart Mill	34%
Christian Theology	Roman	Adapted Classical thought to Christian teaching and created a powerful theological system	Augustine of Hippo	33%
Epistemology	Dutch	Solved the mind-body dilemma by maintaining that God and Nature are one	Baruch Spinoza	32%
Logic	Greek	Founded the Stoic school of philosophy	Zeno of Citium	32%
Metaphysics	Greek	His ingenious paradoxes related to the concepts of continuity and infinity	Zeno of Elea	32%
Political Philosophy	French	Pioneering figure of contemporary philosophical feminism	Simone de Beauvoir	31%
Natural Philosophy	English	Thought to be the father of empiricism; contributed to the development of the scientific method	Francis Bacon	29%
Asceticism	Greek	Advocated complete truthfulness at all times, developed cynicism	Diogenes	28%
Metaphysics	German	Reinvigorated phenomenology; contributed to new movements such as postmodernism	Martin Heidegger	28%
Logic	British	Championing logicism; and refining predictable calculus	Bertrand Russell	27%
Aesthetics	German	Developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the ideas of German idealism.	Arthur Schopenhauer	26%
Metaphysics	Austrian	He developed a metaphysical dualism that distinguishes radically between mind	Ludwig Wittgenstein	26%
Metaphysics	Greek	Taught that the basic constituents of the world are atoms	Epicurus	24%
Christian Theology	Italian	Primarily known for his five proofs of God's existence	Thomas Aquinas	24%
Political Philosophy	British	Founded modern utilitarianism	Jeremy Bentham	23%
History	French	Traced the development of Western civilization	Michel Foucault	23%
Political Philosophy	French	Promoted the separation of state powers: executive, legislative and judicial	Montesquieu	23%
Metaphysics	Greek	The formulation of an atomic theory of the universe	Democritus	22%
Mathematics	German	Proposed that the universe is made of an infinite number of simple substances known as 'monads'	Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz	21%
Philosophy of Language	American	Aimed to understand the tools and means through which children acquire language	Noam Chomsky	21%
Metaphysics	Greek	Said that fire forms the basic material principle of the universe	Heracleitus	20%
Epistemology	French	Developing a form of semiotic analysis known as 'deconstruction'	Jacques Derrida	18%
Medicine	Arab	Invented an instrument for observing the coordinates of a star	Avicenna	16%
Epistemology	British	Led the turn from idealism and became known for advocating common-sense concepts	G.E. Moore	16%
Metaphysics	Irish	Founded idealism, the doctrine that there is not a material world	George Berkeley	16%
Rationality	Austrian	His rejection of the inductive method in the empirical sciences	Karl Popper	16%
Ontology	German	Established the school of phenomenology	Edmund Husserl	14%
Political Philosophy	American	His "justice as fairness" recommends equal basic liberties to eliminate inequality	John Rawls	14%
Islamic Theology	Sephardic Jewish	Argued that Torah contained philosophical wisdom and that its complete understanding is philosophical	Moses Maimonides	13%
Ontology	Greek	Invented the method of reasoned proof for assertions	Parmenides	13%
Pragmatism	American	Known for greatly advancing the movement of pragmatism in philosophy	William James	13%
Epistemology	French	One of the founders of sociology, and believed that it could unite all sciences	Auguste Comte	12%
Islamic Theology	Andalusian	Influenced educational matters and promote harmony between philosophy and religion.	Averroës	12%
Political Philosophy	German	Studied the tradition of philosophic thought from the vantage point of its self-conscious conclusion	Hannah Arendt	12%
Epistemology	American	Leading proponent of pragmatism, one that favoured a more naturalistic approach	John Dewey	12%
Social Theory	German	Argued that technological transformations had morphed the public sphere for the better	Jürgeb Habermas	11%
Ethics	Australian	Teaches the application of morality to practical problems based on philosophical thinking	Peter Singer	11%
Platonism	Roman	Developed a spiritual cosmology involving three elements: the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul	Plotinus	11%
Philosophy of Science	American	Argued that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts"	Thomas S. Kuhn	11%
Natural Philosophy	English	Challenged scholasticism and the papacy, contributing to the end of the medieval period	William of Ockham	11%
Christian Theology	Italian	Known for discovering the “ontological argument;” and in theology for his doctrine of the atonement.	Anselm of Canterbury	10%
Sociology	German	Argued that a capitalist society was a mass, consumer society	Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno	10%
Mathematics	German	Founded analytic philosophy; gave rise to the linguistic turn in philosophy	Gottlob Frege	7%
Metaphysics	French	His theory of “duration,” which he understands to be the ultimate and irreducible reality	Henri Bergson	7%
Biology	British	Developed and applied evolutionary theory to philosophy	Herbert Spencer	7%
Mathematics	Roman	Was the leader of the Neoplatonist school of philosophy in Alexandria	Hypatia	7%
Metaphysics	Scottish	Contributed to the development of a metaphysical system that was compatible with Christianity	John Duns Scotus	7%
Ethics	Chinese	Advocated light taxes, free trade and conservation of natural resources	Mencius	7%
Epistemology	Greek	Founded skepticism	Pyrrho	7%
Political Philosophy	American	His rigorous defense of libertarianism	Robert Nozick	7%
Epistemology	Roman	Said that all things tend to the good, and also that things are by nature like what they desire	Boethius	6%
Metaphysics	American	His foundational work in the metaphysics of modality	David Kellogg Lewis	6%
Epistemology	Italian	Invented the philosophy of history	Giambattista Vico	6%
Islamic Theology	Andalusian	Said that by self manifestation, one acquires divine knowledge: "the primordial spirit of Muhammad"	Ibn al-'Arabī	6%
Jewish Theology	German	Combined Judaism with the rationalism of the Enlightenment	Moses Mendelssohn	6%
Logic	French	Championed the use of reason in matters of faith; and his systematic treatment of religious doctrines	Peter Abelard	6%
Philosophy of Language	American	Blended expertise in philosophy and comparative literature into a perspective called 'neopragmatism'	Richard Rorty	6%
Metaphysics	British	Argued that reality consists of processes rather than material objects	Alfred North Whitehead	5%
Islamic Theology	Persian	Developed of a systematic view of Sufism and its integration and acceptance in mainstream Islam	Al-Ghazālī	5%
Islamic Theology	Arab	Wrote books detailing on geometry, logic, physics and medicine	Al-Kindī	5%
Ethics	British	Revivified moral philosophy; and pioneered the current debates on personal identity and the self	Bernard Williams	5%
Jewish Theology	Roman	Used philosophy to defend and justify religious teachings	Philo	5%
Logic	American	Undermined the conventional assumption that all and only necessary propositions are a priori	Saul Kripke	5%
Daoism	Chinese	Promoted and developed Daoist thought	Zhuang Zhou	5%
Epistemology	British	Promoting logical positivism	A.J. Ayer	4%
Metaphysics	(Asian)	Contributed heavily to the fields of logic, mathematics, music, psychology, sociology and medicine	Al-Fārābī	4%
Ontology	Austrian	His thesis of dialogical existence	Martin Buber	4%
Logic	German	Made significant contributions to philosophy of science, philosophy of language and probability	Rudolf Carnap	4%
Epistemology	Greek	Stated that the ultimate goal of philosophical research is to achieve tranquility, or a state of ataraxia	Sextus Empiricus	4%
History	Italian	Developed a theory of circularity among “moments” of the four aspects of spirit, which history captured	Benedetto Croce	3%
Buddhism	Indian	Articulated the doctrine of emptiness, founded the Madhyamika (“Middle Way”) school	Nagarjuna	3%
Anthropology	German	His philosophy of life that perceived man in his historical contingency	Wilhelm Dilthey	3%
Hinduism	Indian	Reforming the Vedanta tradition of Hinduism, making it one of India's most important "spiritual traditions"	Adi Shankara	2%
Metaphysics	Japanese	Taught that the “Non-self ” is the ultimate reality where all subject–object cleavage is overcome	Kitarō Nishida	2%
Political Philosophy	French	Advocated economic freedom, religious toleration and legal and educational reform	Nicolas de Condorcet	2%
Hinduism	Indian	Developed the intellectual basis for the practice of bhakti (devotional worship) in three commentaries	Rāmānuja	2%
Buddhism	Japanese	Taught that Pure Land Buddhism was the most efficacious path in the present age of mappō	Shinran	2%
Neoplatonism	Andalusian	Developed the doctrine that all things are comprised of matter and form	Solomon ibn Gabirol	2%
Philosophy of Mind	American	Developed critical realism	Wilfrid Sellars	2%