Curated category
20th-century American philosophers
- Steven CrowellSteven Crowell taught at Rice University for nearly four decades. He began his tenure there in 1983 and remained until 2022.
- Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis on the 11th of November 1922. He descended from a long line of German Americans whose family fortune rested on the…
- Bruce Leethe 27th of November 1940 marked the arrival of Lee Jun-fan in San Francisco. His parents traveled to California for an international opera tour when he was…
- John CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was born on the 5th of September 1912 at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. His father, John Milton Cage Sr., worked as an…
- Philip K. DickPhilip Kindred Dick was born on the 16th of December 1928 in Chicago, Illinois. He arrived six weeks prematurely alongside his twin sister Jane Charlotte…
- Herbert MarcuseHerbert Marcuse was born on the 19th of July 1898 in Berlin. His family belonged to the German upper-middle class and identified as Jewish.
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky was born on the 7th of December 1928 in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Ashkenazi Jewish…
- William JamesWilliam James entered the world on the 11th of January 1842 at the Astor House in New York City. His father Henry James Sr held an independently wealthy…
- Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap was born on the 18th of May 1891 in Wuppertal, Germany. His father rose from being a poor ribbon-weaver to own a ribbon-making factory.
- Lewis GordonLewis Ricardo Gordon was born on the 12th of May 1962. He began his higher education journey at Lehman College, CUNY, graduating in 1984 with a Bachelor of…
- Paul TillichPaul Johannes Tillich was born on the 20th of August 1886, in the small village of Starzeddel. This location lay within the Province of Brandenburg, then…
- William Barrett (philosopher)William Christopher Barrett entered the City College of New York at fifteen years old. This precocious start marked a life dedicated to ideas from an early…
- Ludwig von MisesLudwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was born on the 29th of September 1881 in Lemberg. This city now bears the name Lviv and sits within Ukraine today.
- W. E. B. Du BoisWilliam Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on the 23rd of February 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. His mother Mary Silvina Burghardt came from a…
- Jerry FodorJerry Alan Fodor was born in New York City on the 22nd of April 1935. He grew up in a Jewish household and pursued his undergraduate studies at Columbia…
- George SorosOn the 12th of August 1930, György Schwartz was born in Budapest to a prosperous non-observant Jewish family. His father Tivadar worked as a lawyer and…
- B. F. SkinnerBurrhus Frederic Skinner was born on the 20th of March 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. His father William Skinner worked as a lawyer while his mother…
- Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)Walter Arnold Kaufmann was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, on the 1st of July 1921. He grew up as a Lutheran child in a city that would soon become…
- Hilary PutnamHilary Whitehall Putnam arrived in the world on the 31st of July 1926, within a hospital in Chicago, Illinois. His father Samuel worked as a scholar of…
- Hubert DreyfusHubert Lederer Dreyfus entered the world on the 15th of October 1929 in Terre Haute, Indiana. His parents were Stanley S. and Irene (Lederer) Dreyfus.
- Edward FredkinEdward Fredkin was born on the 2nd of October 1934 to Russian-Jewish immigrants in Los Angeles. His mother worked as a concert pianist but never performed…
- Kurt GödelKurt Friedrich Gödel, born on the 28th of April 1906 in Brünn, Austria-Hungary, died in Princeton Hospital on the 14th of January 1978, weighing so little…
- Angela DavisAngela Yvonne Davis was born on the 26th of January 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama. Her family lived in the "Dynamite Hill" neighborhood during the 1950s.
- Cornel WestCornel Ronald West was born on the 2nd of June 1953, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He grew up in Sacramento, California, where his mother Irene Rayshell Bias worked as…
- I. J. GoodIsadore Jacob Gudak entered the world on the 9th of December 1916 in London. His parents were Polish Jewish immigrants who ran a successful jewellery shop.
- Lewis MumfordLewis Mumford was born on the 19th of October 1895 in Flushing, Queens. He grew up in a household that valued education and culture.
- George SteinerFrancis George Steiner was born on the 23rd of April 1929 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. His right arm withered from birth yet his mother insisted he use…