Curated category
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 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…
- 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.