Curated category
Philosophers of sexuality
- Voltaire"This is no time to make new enemies." Those words are attributed to Voltaire on his deathbed, when a priest urged him to renounce Satan.
- AristotleAncient Greek scholars gave Aristotle a name reserved for one man: among medieval Muslim scholars he was "The First Teacher", and to Christians like Thomas…
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheOn the 13th of October 1806, Napoleon's army poured into Weimar, and the least disciplined of the French soldiers, the so-called spoon guards, broke into the…
- Denis DiderotDenis Diderot was born on the 5th of October 1713 in Langres, Champagne, the son of a cutler named Didier Diderot. He died on the 31st of July 1784, having…
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, and he refused it. He said a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an…
- Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault was born on the 15th of October 1926 in Poitiers, France, into a family where a surgeon father expected his son to follow in his footsteps.
- Philip K. DickPhilip K. Dick died on the 2nd of March 1982, in a Santa Ana hospital, having never seen the film that would make his name famous.
- John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill was reading Greek at the age of three. By eight he had worked through Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, the whole of Herodotus, and six…
- Simone de BeauvoirSimone de Beauvoir did not consider herself a philosopher, and at the time of her death in 1986 the world did not call her one either.
- Georges BatailleGeorges Bataille was born on the 10th of September 1897 in Billom, a small town in the Auvergne region of France, and by the time he died on the 8th of July…
- Jacques LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan, born on the 13th of April 1901 in Paris, became the most controversial psychoanalyst since Freud.
- Wilhelm ReichWilhelm Reich was born on the 24th of March 1897 in Dobzau, Galicia, a corner of Austria-Hungary that is now part of Ukraine, and he died on the 3rd of…