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Theorists on Western civilization

  • 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…
  • George OrwellEric Arthur Blair arrived in the world on the 25th of June 1903 within a house in Motihari, Bengal Presidency. His family belonged to what he called the…
  • Johann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von Goethe was born on the 28th of August 1749 in a large house on Großer Hirschgraben in Frankfurt. His father, Johann Caspar Goethe, had…
  • 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…
  • 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…
  • Victor HugoVictor-Marie Hugo was born on the 26th of February 1802 in Besançon, a city in eastern France. His father Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo served as a general…
  • Karl MarxOn the 14th of March 1883, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, Friedrich Engels left Karl Marx alone in his armchair for scarcely two minutes.
  • Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was born on the 30th of October 1885 in a two-story clapboard house in Hailey, Idaho Territory.
  • 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…
  • John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill was born on the 20th of May 1806 at 13 Rodney Street in Pentonville, London. His father James Mill, a Scottish philosopher and historian…
  • Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard was born on the 3rd of December 1930 in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. His father Paul Godard worked as a Swiss physician while his mother…
  • Friedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels was born on the 28th of November 1820 in Barmen, Prussia. He grew up in a house surrounded by factories and workers' tenements within the…
  • 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…
  • Max WeberMaximilian Carl Emil Weber entered the world on the 21st of April 1864 in Erfurt, Province of Saxony. His family moved to Charlottenburg three years later.
  • Mikhail BakuninMikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was born on the 30th of August 1814 into Russian nobility. His family owned the Priamukhino estate in the Tver region, which…
  • Yuval Noah HarariYuval Noah Harari was born in 1976 and raised in Kiryat Ata, Israel. He grew up in a secular Jewish family with parents named Shlomo and Pnina Harari.
  • David AttenboroughDavid Frederick Attenborough was born on the 8th of May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex. He grew up in College House on the campus of University College…
  • Edward GibbonEdward Gibbon was born on the 8th of May 1737 in the town of Putney, Surrey. He entered the world as a sickly infant who described himself later as "a puny…
  • Victor Davis HansonVictor Davis Hanson was born on the 5th of September 1953 in Selma, California. He grew up working the family orchard and vineyard that had been in his…
  • Michel WeberMichel Weber was born in 1963. He began his academic journey studying applied economics at the Saint-Louis University in Brussels.