A shortlist of the most influential philosophers alive.

Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou studied at the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and is a key figure in French philosophy and Marxist and Communist thought in the last half-century. He holds the title of the René Descartes Chair and Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School, is the former Chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, and a founder of the faculty of Philosophy at the Université de Paris VIII, along with such major names as Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard. Badiou, who has always been known for being politically active and outspoken, was involved in militant leftist groups as a young man, such as the Union des Communistes de France Marxiste-Léniniste, and is a founding member of the Unified Socialist Party in France. Badiou’s work combines mathematics, political theory, and ontology, to focus on issues of truth, being, and subject. Having studied under Louis Althusser, Badiou’s philosophical approach has been influenced by Althusserian Marxism, and the psychoanalysis of Jacque Lacan. His most famous work is Being and Event (1988), which presents a shift away from these initial influences, establishes and brings together many of his key ideas.

Jurgen Habermas

Born in 1929, Jurgen Habermas. The most prominent philosopher, and also public intellectual, of Germany and perhaps the whole of Europe, Habermas’s corpus of work is extensive and comprehensive, combining philosophers as disparate as Austin and Derrida, or Gadamer and Putnam. He is an adherent of the glorious Critical theory of the erstwhile Frankfurt school whose main attitude is, well, critical of the current socio-political human condition. Hence, his daring criticisms of such colossal figures like the Enlightenment folk, Marx, or Foucault. His major work, “The Theory of Communicative Action”, is a brilliant attempt to settle questions of meaning, language, and an optimal moral framework for communication.

Martha Nussbaum

In a field severely dominated by men, even more so than hardcore sciences, Martha Nussbaum compensates for this in two ways. Born in 1947, in New York, she is now a professor at the University of Chicago, she is a passionate and fervent advocate of women’s rights and her views on feminism are elaborate, bold, and always fruitfully controversial. Her open confrontation with another feminist philosopher of a different school of thought, Judith Butler, in the later 90s made history and, in the end, promoted the feminist cause to new heights. Moreover, the sheer volume of her output makes her one of the most laborious and productive philosophers in ethics and political science, with significant work on animal rights, emotions, and gay rights.

Gianni Vattimo

Gianteresio Vattimo, also known as Gianni Vattimo (born January 4, 1936) is an internationally recognized Italian author, philosopher, and politician. Many of his works have been translated into English.

His philosophy can be characterized as postmodern with his emphasis on "pensiero debole" (weak thought). This requires that the foundational certainties of modernity with its emphasis on objective truth founded in a rational unitary subject be relinquished for a more multi-faceted conception closer to that of the arts.

Judith Butler

Judith Butler earned her Ph.D. from Yale in 1984, and currently holds the title of Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School. She is primarily known as a major proponent of gender theory and criticism, and her work has been influential to many areas of critical thought, both in and out of philosophy, including ethics, political philosophy, feminist theory, queer theory, and literary theory. Butler has seen influence and sparked controversy as a globally vocal advocate of LGBTQ rights and as a critic the politics and actions of Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

With many books published to her name, Butler is probably most famous for her 1990 work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Much of her work has been focused on developing the ideas of gender performativity and construction, which are significantly addressed in this text. Essentially, Butler argues that sex, gender, and sexuality are all culturally constructed normative frameworks, and as such, the individual uses their body in the performance of identifying with or against these norms. This book has been very influential in feminist and queer theory, as well as in political discourse of gender and identity issues.

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky may be the “father of modern linguistics,” and Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT, but his interests and influence extend into philosophy, cognitive science, history, logic, social criticism, and political activism. His work is widely cited (making him one of the most cited scholars in history), and he has encountered more than his fair share of controversy, both in academia, and in his public life. As a child, Chomsky took trips to New York City, where he found (and was encouraged to read) books that introduced him to ideas of resistance and anarchism. In 1945, at just 16 years old, Chomsky began his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, from where he would study linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, and eventually earn a Ph.D., before being appointed to Harvard University’s Society of Fellows.

Chomsky’s work in linguistics challenged the school of thought that dominated linguistics at the time, structural linguistics, and helped establish the field as a natural science, by approaching the study of linguistics through the lens of cognitive science, such as in his book Syntactic Structures (1957). In the process, Chomsky developed the ideas of universal grammar, transformational grammar, and generative grammar, giving rise to the “linguistics wars” with his critics. Besides generating academic controversy, Chomsky is well known for his political views and publications, which are anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-war, with his essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” (1967) being a prime example. For his political activism, Chomsky has been arrested multiple times, and was even on President Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List.”

Jean-Luc Nancy

Jean-Luc Nancy received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1973 from the Institut de Philosophie in Strasbourg, studying under Paul Ricouer. He eventually became a Professor at the University of Strasbourg, and, though he is now retired, continues to add publication credits to his already lengthy bibliography. His approach is associated with continental philosophy and deconstructionism, and his work is primarily focused in ontology and literary criticism. Much of his early work focused on commenting on and interpreting the work of [Book Image]other major thinkers, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, and Martin Heidegger, but he is best known for his writings that apply deconstructionist thought to issues of freedom, existence, and community. His most influential work, The Inoperative Community (1986) presents and explores this focus, arguing that much of society’s problems result from designing society around pre-conceived definitions of what society should be, and failing to understand it for how it actually is.

Michel Onfray

Michel Onfray is a French philosopher. Born to a family of Norman farmers, he graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy. He taught this subject to senior students at a technical high school in Caen between 1983 and 2002, before establishing what he and his supporters call the Université populaire de Caen, proclaiming its foundation on a free-of-charge basis, and the manifesto written by Onfray in 2004 (La communauté philosophique). However, the title 'Popular University' is misleading, although attractive, as this 'University' provides no services other than the occasional delivery of lectures - there is no register of students, no examination or assessment, and no diplomas. After all, 'ordinary' French University lectures are open to all, free of charge. Nor is the content of the Université populaire de Caen radical in French terms, it is in its way, a throwback to less democratic traditions of learning. Both in his writing and his lecturing, Onfray's approach is hierarchical, and elitist. He prefers to say though that his 'university' is committed to deliver high-level knowledge to the masses, as opposed to the more common approach of vulgarizing philosophic concepts through easy-to-read books such as "Philosophy for Well-being".

Onfray writes obscurely that there is no philosophy without psychoanalysis. Perhaps paradoxically, he proclaims himself as an adamant atheist (something more novel in France than elsewhere - indeed his book, 'Atheist Manifesto', was briefly in the 'bestsellers' list in France) and he considers religion to be indefensible. He instead regards himself as being part of the tradition of individualist anarchism, a tradition that he claims is at work throughout the entire history of philosophy and that he is seeking to revive amidst modern schools of philosophy that he feels are cynical and epicurean. His writings celebrate hedonism, reason and atheism.

He endorsed the French Revolutionary Communist League and its candidate for the French presidency, Olivier Besancenot in the 2002 election, although this is somewhat at odds with the libertarian socialism he advocates in his writings.[citation needed] In 2007, he endorsed José Bové - but eventually voted for Olivier Besancenot - , and conducted an interview with the future French President, who he declared was an 'ideological enemy' Nicolas Sarkozy for Philosophie Magazine.

Onfray himself attributes the birth of a philosophic communities such as the université populaire to the results of the French presidential election, 2002

Mario Bunge

Mario Augusto Bunge is an Argentine philosopher, philosopher of science and physicist mainly active in Canada.

Bunge began his studies at the National University of La Plata, graduating with a Ph.D. in physico-mathematical sciences in 1952. He was professor of theoretical physics and philosophy, 1956–1966, first at La Plata then at University of Buenos Aires. He was, until his recent retirement at age 90, the Frothingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at McGill University in Montreal, where he had been since 1966.

Mario Bunge has been distinguished with sixteen honorary doctorates and four honorary professorships by universities from both the Americas and Europe. Bunge is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1984– ) and of the Royal Society of Canada (1992– ). In 1982 he was awarded the Premio Príncipe de Asturias (Prince of Asturias Award), in 2009 the Guggenheim Fellowshipand in 2014 the Ludwig von Bertalanffy Award in Complexity Thinking

Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic.

He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).

Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist.

Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben, born 22 April 1942 is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and homo sacer. The concept of biopolitics (borrowed and adapted from Michel Foucault) informs many of his writings.

Agamben was close to the poets Giorgio Caproni and José Bergamín, and to the Italian novelist Elsa Morante, to whom he devoted the essays "The Celebration of the Hidden Treasure" (in The End of the Poem) and "Parody" (in Profanations). He has been a friend and collaborator to such eminent intellectuals as Pier Paolo Pasolini (in whose The Gospel According to St. Matthew he played the part of Philip), Italo Calvino (with whom he collaborated, for a short while, as advisor to the publishing house Einaudi and developed plans for a journal), Ingeborg Bachmann, Pierre Klossowski, Guy Debord, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Antonio Negri, Jean-François Lyotard and others.

His strongest influences include Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault. Agamben edited Benjamin's collected works in Italian translation until 1996, and called Benjamin's thought "the antidote that allowed me to survive Heidegger". In 1981, Agamben discovered several important lost manuscripts by Benjamin in the archives of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Benjamin had left these manuscripts to Georges Bataille when he fled Paris shortly before his death. The most relevant of these to Agamben's own later work were Benjamin's manuscripts for his theses On the Concept of History. Agamben has engaged since the nineties in a debate with the political writings of the German jurist Carl Schmitt, most extensively in the study State of Exception (2003). His recent writings also elaborate on the concepts of Michel Foucault, whom he calls "a scholar from whom I have learned a great deal in recent years".