Curated playlist
Jewish philosophers
- Karl MarxKarl Marx left an estate valued at just 250 pounds when he died in 1883. He died stateless in London at 64.
- Lev VygotskyLev Vygotsky's work was banned in the Soviet Union after he died at 37. His ideas on learning still spread worldwide.
- Baruch SpinozaBaruch Spinoza was expelled from his Jewish community at twenty-three, and it still refuses him back.
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died in 2009, and for four days the world did not know.
- Edmund HusserlA Franciscan priest smuggled approximately 40,000 pages of Edmund Husserl's notes out of Nazi Germany.
- Martin BuberDo you meet another person as a full human being, or as an object? Martin Buber's I and Thou asks this.
- Ludwig von MisesNazi troops raided Ludwig von Mises's Vienna apartment and took his papers. He was already in Geneva.
- Walter BenjaminWalter Benjamin reached the Catalan border town of Portbou on the 25th of September 1940, a German-Jewish philosopher and critic with almost nothing published that the wider world had noticed. He had crossed the French-Spanish frontier…
- Theodor W. AdornoTheodor W. Adorno opened his first lecture of the summer semester in 1969 by inviting students to ask questions whenever they arose. A student wrote on the blackboard: "If Adorno is left in peace, capitalism will never cease." Three women…
- Georg SimmelMax Weber and Edmund Husserl backed Georg Simmel, yet he got no full professor's chair until age 56.
- Viktor FranklViktor Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning in nine days. He had lost his first manuscript at Auschwitz.
- Hannah ArendtHannah Arendt's name is printed on journals, schools, scholarly prizes, humanitarian prizes, think-tanks and street signs. It also appears on stamps and monuments. She was born Johanna Arendt, and she grew into one of the most influential…
- Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein, the Austro-British philosopher, published only one book of philosophy during his lifetime, and it ran to just 75 pages. He was born in Vienna on the 26th of April 1889 and died on the 29th of April 1951. Nearly…
- Hans JonasHans Jonas walked back into Germany as a British Army soldier. The Jewish philosopher had fled the country in 1933.
- Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)At eleven, Walter Kaufmann converted from Lutheranism to Judaism. He later learned all four grandparents were Jewish.
- Rosa LuxemburgRosa Luxemburg was killed in 1919 under a socialist government.
- Erich FrommErich Fromm argued that falling in love is not love at all. His 1956 book The Art of Loving became a bestseller.
- Niels BohrNiels Bohr passed out in the bomb bay of a British plane over Norway. His flying helmet was too small for him to wear.
- Semyon FrankOn the 29th of September 1922, some 160 prominent Russian intellectuals and their families boarded a ship at Petrograd. Among them was the philosopher Semyon Frank. The Soviet authorities called it an expulsion, and they made the…
- Karl PopperSir Karl Raimund Popper was born in Vienna on the 28th of July 1902 and died on the 17th of September 1994. In between, he built a philosophy of science on an odd idea. The strongest theories, he argued, are the ones most exposed to being…
- A. J. AyerA. J. Ayer once told Mike Tyson to talk like a rational man. The philosopher stepped in at a 1987 party.
- Lev ShestovLev Shestov's dissertation was rejected, which blocked him from becoming a doctor of law.
- Jean WahlPhilosopher Jean Wahl escaped the Drancy internment camp and crossed the Atlantic.
- Judea PearlJudea Pearl gave computers a way to reason when facts are incomplete.
- George SteinerGeorge Steiner was born Francis George Steiner on the 23rd of April 1929. He was a literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator, and he is described as both French and American. Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature…
- Eric GutkindEinstein told philosopher Eric Gutkind the Bible was "a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends."
- Peter SingerPeter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher who holds the title of Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Fellow philosopher Helga Kuhse judged him almost certainly the best-known and most widely read of…