Most Famous Indian Philosophers

Indian philosophy is one of the world's oldest continuously developed philosophical traditions, with foundational sources in the Vedas, Upanishads, and the early Buddhist and Jain canons. The classical six orthodox schools, or darshanas — Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa, and Vedanta — produced rigorous accounts of logic, epistemology, ontology, and the relation between self and world, while heterodox traditions developed their own competing systems of metaphysics and ethics. Major figures include the Buddha and Mahavira in the ancient period, Nagarjuna and Shankara in the classical, and Ramanuja and Madhva in the medieval. Modern Indian philosophy continued this trajectory with Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Tagore, Gandhi, and Radhakrishnan, who reformulated classical thought in dialogue with Western philosophy.

The Indian tradition treats philosophical inquiry as inseparable from moral and spiritual practice. The philosophers below include the founders and most influential expositors of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain philosophical schools.

Indian philosophers

Buddha c. 563 BC – c. 483 BC · Indian
Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha or Awakened One, was the founder of Buddhism, traditionally said to have lived in northern India in the fifth century BC. Born into the r...
Jiddu Krishnamurti 1895 – 1986 · Indian
Jiddu Krishnamurti was an Indian-born philosopher and spiritual teacher whose lectures, dialogues, and writings challenged organized religion and the very category of the guru. ...
Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948 · Indian
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, political leader, and philosopher who developed the doctrine and practice of satyagraha, nonviolent ci...
Nagarjuna c. 150 – c. 250 · Indian
Nagarjuna was a 2nd or 3rd-century AD Indian Mahayana Buddhist philosopher and the founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school, regarded as one of the most important philosop...
Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941 · Indian
Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian poet, philosopher, musician, and educator and the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born into a prominent Bengali fa...
Adi Shankara 788 – 820 · Indian
Adi Shankara was an Indian philosopher and theologian who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, the school of non-dualism. Working in a brief but extraordinarily product...
B. R. Ambedkar 1891 – 1956 · Indian
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was an Indian jurist, economist, social reformer, and the principal architect of the Indian Constitution. Born into the Mahar caste, he was the first Dali...
Patanjali c. 200 AD – c. 250 AD · Indian
Patanjali was the Indian sage to whom the Yoga Sutras, the foundational text of the Yoga school of Indian philosophy, are attributed. The Sutras present a concise and systematic...
Ramana Maharshi 1879 – 1950 · Indian
Ramana Maharshi was an Indian Hindu sage and one of the most influential teachers of Advaita Vedanta in the twentieth century. At sixteen he experienced a spontaneous identifica...
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan 1888 – 1975 · Indian
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was an Indian philosopher and statesman, the second President of independent India and one of the foremost twentieth-century interpreters of Indian phil...
Shantideva c. 685 AD – c. 763 AD · Indian
Shantideva was an Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher of the Madhyamaka school. According to tradition, he was a prince who renounced the throne to enter the great monastic uni...
Sri Aurobindo 1872 – 1950 · Indian
Sri Aurobindo was an Indian philosopher, yogi, poet, and anti-colonial revolutionary. After studies at Cambridge and early activism in the Bengali nationalist movement, he withd...
Swami Vivekananda 1863 – 1902 · Indian
Narendranath Datta, known as Swami Vivekananda, was an Indian Hindu monk and the principal disciple of the mystic Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. His address at the Parliament of the W...
Amartya Sen b. 1933 · Indian
Amartya Sen is an Indian philosopher and economist, Nobel laureate in economic sciences, and one of the most influential thinkers on famines, social choice, and the foundations ...
Bhartrihari c. 450 AD – c. 510 AD · Indian
Bhartrihari was an Indian Sanskrit grammarian and philosopher of language whose Vakyapadiya is one of the founding texts of Indian linguistic philosophy. Building on the grammat...
Jaimini c. 300 BC – c. 200 BC · Indian
Jaimini was an Indian philosopher and the founder of the Mimamsa school of orthodox Hindu philosophy, traditionally dated to the third century BC, whose Mimamsa Sutras establish...
Madhva 1199 – 1278 · Indian
Madhva was an Indian theologian and the founder of Dvaita, or dualistic Vedanta. Against Adi Shankara's non-dualism and Ramanuja's qualified non-dualism, he taught that there is...
Naropa 1016 – 1100 · Indian
Naropa was an eleventh-century Indian Buddhist tantric master, abbot of the great monastic university of Nalanda before he renounced his post in search of his teacher Tilopa, an...
Sri Ramakrishna 1836 – 1886 · Indian
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was a Bengali Hindu mystic and religious teacher and one of the most influential religious figures of nineteenth-century India. As the principal priest a...
Udayana c. 975 – c. 1050 · Indian
Udayana was an Indian philosopher of the eleventh century, the most important figure of the late Nyaya tradition before the rise of Navya-Nyaya, who systematized the union of Ny...
Vatsyayana c. 350 – c. 425 · Indian
Vatsyayana, also called Pakshilasvamin, was a fourth- or fifth-century Indian Nyaya philosopher, the author of the Nyaya-bhasya, the foundational commentary on the Nyaya Sutras ...
Raja Ram Mohan Roy 1772 – 1833 · Indian
Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a Bengali religious and social reformer and one of the founders of the Indian Renaissance of the nineteenth century. Educated in Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic...
Aryadeva c. 175 – c. 275 · Indian
Aryadeva was an Indian Buddhist Madhyamaka philosopher and the principal pupil of Nagarjuna, traditionally identified as a south Indian or Sinhalese monk who succeeded his teach...
Saraha c. 750 – c. 820 · Indian
Saraha was an early-medieval Indian Buddhist tantric master and poet, traditionally regarded as the founder of the Mahamudra tradition of song and the first of the eighty-four M...
Daya Krishna 1924 – 2007 · Indian
Daya Krishna was an Indian philosopher and the most influential figure in the post-independence Indian philosophical scene, professor of philosophy at the University of Rajastha...
Kanada c. 200 BC – c. 100 BC · Indian
Kanada was an Indian philosopher and the founder of the Vaiseshika school of orthodox Hindu philosophy, traditionally dated to the second or third century BC, whose Vaiseshika S...
Ramanuja 1017 – 1137 · Indian
Ramanuja was an Indian theologian and the most important exponent of Vishishtadvaita, or qualified non-dualism, in the Vedanta tradition. Against Adi Shankara's Advaita, he taug...
Buddhaghosa c. 400 – c. 470 · Indian
Buddhaghosa was a fifth-century Indian Theravada Buddhist philosopher who, having begun his life as a brahmin scholar of Vedic literature and converted to Buddhism, traveled to ...
Tilopa 988 – 1069 · Indian
Tilopa was an eleventh-century Bengali Buddhist tantric master, traditionally regarded as the founder of the Indian lineage of the Mahamudra teachings that, through his pupil Na...
Asanga c. 310 AD – c. 390 AD · Indian
Asanga was an Indian Buddhist philosopher and the co-founder, with his half-brother Vasubandhu, of the Yogacara or Consciousness-Only school of Mahayana philosophy. According to...
Dignaga c. 480 AD – c. 540 AD · Indian
Dignaga was an Indian Buddhist logician and epistemologist and the founder of the Buddhist tradition of logic and philosophy of knowledge. His Pramana-samuccaya, the Compendium ...
Bimal Krishna Matilal 1935 – 1991 · Indian
Bimal Krishna Matilal was an Indian philosopher and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at the University of Oxford, widely credited with putting classical Indian...
Abhinavagupta c. 950 – c. 1016 · Indian
Abhinavagupta was a Kashmiri philosopher, mystic, and aesthetician and the principal systematizer of the non-dual Trika tradition of Kashmir Shaivism. His encyclopedic Tantralok...
Akka Mahadevi c. 1130 – c. 1160 · Indian
Akka Mahadevi was a twelfth-century Kannada Bhakti poet and philosopher in the Lingayat tradition of southern India, one of the most striking female voices in classical South As...
Akshapada Gautama c. 200 BC – c. 150 BC · Indian
Akshapada Gautama is the traditional name of the author of the Nyaya Sutras, the foundational text of the Nyaya school of Indian philosophy and one of the six orthodox darshanas...
Asvaghosa c. 80 – c. 150 · Indian
Asvaghosa was an Indian Buddhist philosopher, poet, and dramatist of the first and second century AD, traditionally counted as one of the most important Sanskrit poets and as a ...
Bhaviveka c. 500 – c. 578 · Indian
Bhaviveka, also known as Bhavaviveka, was an Indian Buddhist Madhyamaka philosopher of the sixth century, traditionally counted, with Buddhapalita and Candrakirti, among the fou...
Buddhapalita c. 470 – c. 540 · Indian
Buddhapalita was an Indian Buddhist Madhyamaka philosopher of the late fifth and early sixth century, traditionally counted, with Bhaviveka and Candrakirti, as one of the three ...
Candrakirti c. 600 – c. 650 · Indian
Candrakirti was an Indian Buddhist philosopher of the seventh century and the most important Madhyamaka commentator of the consequentialist, or Prasangika, school. His Madhyamak...
Dharmakirti c. 600 AD – c. 660 AD · Indian
Dharmakirti was an Indian Buddhist philosopher who completed and transformed the logical and epistemological tradition founded by Dignaga. His seven treatises, including the Pra...
Gaudapada c. 500 – c. 600 · Indian
Gaudapada was an Indian philosopher of the early medieval period, traditionally regarded as the paramaguru, the teacher's teacher, of Adi Shankara, and the first systematic expo...
J. L. Mehta 1912 – 1988 · Indian
J. L. Mehta was an Indian philosopher and one of the most important interpreters of Heidegger and the Vedantic tradition in twentieth-century Indian thought. Trained in Banaras ...
Kumarila Bhatta c. 700 – c. 750 · Indian
Kumarila Bhatta was an Indian Sanskrit philosopher and the principal exponent of the Bhatta sub-school of Mimamsa, the Vedic school of ritual exegesis and epistemology. Working ...
Madhusudana Sarasvati c. 1540 – c. 1640 · Indian
Madhusudana Sarasvati was a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Indian Advaita Vedantin philosopher, traditionally regarded as one of the greatest Advaita systematists between Sa...
Vacaspati Misra c. 900 – c. 980 · Indian
Vacaspati Misra was an Indian philosopher of the tenth century and the most learned commentator of his age, a Maithila scholar who wrote authoritative commentaries on every majo...
Vasubandhu c. 316 AD – c. 396 AD · Indian
Vasubandhu was an Indian Buddhist philosopher, one of the most important systematic thinkers in the Mahayana tradition. He first composed the Abhidharmakosha, an encyclopedic tr...
Vasumitra c. 100 – c. 170 · Indian
Vasumitra was an Indian Buddhist abhidharma philosopher of the early second century AD, traditionally counted as one of the principal compilers of the Mahavibhasha, the great co...