Curated category
Ontologists
- VoltaireFrançois-Marie Arouet was born in Paris on the 21st of November 1694. He entered the world as the youngest child of a minor treasury official and a woman…
- Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant was born on the 22nd of April 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia. His father Johann Georg worked as a harness maker from Memel while his mother Anna…
- AristotleAristotle was born in 384 BC in the city of Stagira, located about 55 kilometers east of modern-day Thessaloniki. His father Nicomachus served as the…
- Martin HeideggerMartin Heidegger was born on the 26th of September 1889 in rural Meßkirch, Baden. His father worked as the sexton of the village church and raised him within…
- Denis DiderotDenis Diderot was born on the 5th of October 1713 in the city of Langres. His father Didier worked as a cutler and his mother Angélique Vigneron supported…
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre was born on the 21st of June 1905 in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre and Anne-Marie Schweitzer.
- AvicennaIn the village of Afshana near Bukhara, a child named Avicenna was born in 980. His father served as an administrator for the Samanid Empire.
- René DescartesRené Descartes entered the world on the 31st of March 1596 in La Haye en Touraine, France. His mother Jeanne Brochard died just days after his birth while…
- Leo TolstoyCount Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy entered the world at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate located southwest of Tula and south of Moscow.
- Karl MarxKarl Marx entered the world on the 5th of May 1818 at Brückengasse 664 in Trier, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. His father Heinrich Marx worked as a…
- 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…
- Baruch SpinozaOn the 24th of November 1632, a boy named Baruch Espinoza was born into a house on the Houtgracht canal. This street sat on an artificial island called the…
- 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.
- Francis BaconFrancis Bacon was born on the 22nd of January 1561 at York House near Strand in London. He entered Trinity College at the University of Cambridge on the 5th…
- MenciusMeng Ke arrived in the state of Zou during a time when China was fracturing into warring factions. His father Meng Ji died while the boy was still very…
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss was born on the 28th of November 1908 in Brussels. His parents were French Jews who had moved there for his father's work as a portrait…
- Edmund HusserlEdmund Husserl was born on the 8th of April 1859 in Proßnitz, a town in the Margraviate of Moravia within the Austrian Empire.
- AverroesMuhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd entered the world on the 14th of April 1126 in the city of Córdoba. His family held a position of immense public…
- 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…
- NagarjunaIndia in the first and second centuries CE was politically divided into various states, including the Kushan Empire and the Satavahana Kingdom.
- Adi ShankaraReliable information on Adi Shankara's actual life is scant, and the historical influence of his works on Hindu intellectual thought has been questioned.
- Kurt GödelKurt Friedrich Gödel was born on the 28th of April 1906 in Brünn, Austria-Hungary. He entered a world where his father Rudolf managed a major textile firm…
- Gabriel MarcelGabriel Honoré Marcel entered the world on the 7th of December 1889 in Paris, France. His mother Laure Meyer was Jewish and died when he was very young.
- José Ortega y GassetJosé Ortega y Gasset was born on the 9th of May 1883 in Madrid. His father directed the newspaper El Imparcial, which belonged to his mother Dolores Gasset's…
- Michel WeberMichel Weber was born in 1963. He began his academic journey studying applied economics at the Saint-Louis University in Brussels.