Curated playlist
Philosophers of history
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell was a pen name, chosen from a shortlist in 1932. He was born Eric Arthur Blair in British India.
- AristotleOnly around a third of Aristotle's original writings survive, and none was meant to be published.
- Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden by hiding in an underground meat locker.
- Pope John Paul IIPope John Paul II visited the man who shot him in 1981 and called him a brother.
- Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy spent his last hours on a train, preaching non-violence to strangers.
- Karl MarxKarl Marx left an estate valued at just 250 pounds when he died in 1883. He died stateless in London at 64.
- Ezra PoundEzra Pound cut T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land by about half. Eliot called the edits proof of Pound's critical genius.
- Philip K. DickPhilip K. Dick died four months before Blade Runner opened. He never saw the film that made his name famous.
- Baruch SpinozaBaruch Spinoza was expelled from his Jewish community at twenty-three, and it still refuses him back.
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky wrote his first article at age 10, about the fall of Barcelona.
- John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill was reading Greek at age three. His father was deliberately raising a genius.
- William JamesWilliam James argued we do not run from a bear because we are afraid. We are afraid because we run.
- Francis BaconFrancis Bacon may have died after stuffing a hen with snow. He wanted to test if cold could preserve meat like salt.
- AverroesIn 1169, a caliph asked the philosopher Averroes if the heavens had a beginning.
- Mikhail BakuninKarl Marx had the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin expelled from the First International in 1872.
- Geoffrey EltonGeoffrey Elton argued that Thomas Cromwell, more than Henry VIII, drove a revolution in English government.
- Ibn KhaldunIn 1400, the historian Ibn Khaldun was lowered by ropes over Damascus's wall to meet the conqueror Timur.
- Karl JaspersKarl Jaspers hid in Heidelberg through the Nazi years because his wife was Jewish.
- Alexandre KojèveAlexandre Kojève wrote a 900-page manuscript for Stalin. Whether it ever reached Moscow remains unknown.
- Mulla SadraMulla Sadra turned down governing Fars to live as a hermit. He was the only child of a wealthy ruler.
- José Ortega y GassetJosé Ortega y Gasset answered Descartes with "I live therefore I think." He put lived experience before abstract reason.
- James BurnhamJames Burnham's 1941 book The Managerial Revolution helped inspire Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.