1001Philosophers

Most Famous Medieval Philosophers

Medieval philosophy covers the long period between the close of antiquity and the early Renaissance, roughly the sixth through the fifteenth centuries. Within Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions, philosophers worked to integrate the inheritance of Plato and Aristotle with revealed religion, producing the most ambitious systems of theology and metaphysics the West has yet known. Major figures include Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Scotus, and Ockham. Medieval thought is often unfairly dismissed; its analyses of universals, the will, time, and the divine attributes set the agenda for early modern philosophy.

Medieval philosophers

  • Wonhyo 617 – 686 · Korean

    Wonhyo was a Korean Buddhist philosopher, monk, and one of the most important figures in the history of East Asian Buddhism. Famed in legend for an awakening attained when, in t...

  • Augustine of Hippo 354 – 430 · Roman

    Augustine of Hippo was a Roman-African theologian and philosopher whose work shaped Western Christianity and Latin philosophy for the next millennium. His Confessions, addressed...

  • Thomas Aquinas 1225 – 1274 · Italian

    Thomas Aquinas was a 13th-century Italian Dominican friar and philosopher, the most influential figure of medieval scholasticism. His Summa Theologica, left unfinished at his de...

  • Avicenna 980 – 1037 · Persian

    Avicenna, known in Arabic and Persian as Ibn Sina, was a Persian polymath of the Islamic Golden Age, regarded as one of the most influential philosophers and physicians of the m...

  • Boethius c. 480 – 524 · Roman

    Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was a 5th and 6th-century Roman senator, consul, and philosopher, one of the last representatives of classical learning in the Latin West and ...

  • Dogen 1200 – 1253 · Japanese

    Eihei Dogen was a 13th-century Japanese Zen Buddhist priest and philosopher, the founder of the Soto school of Zen in Japan. After studying in China and returning to Japan in 12...

  • Maimonides 1138 – 1204 · Sephardic Jewish

    Moses ben Maimon, known to the Latin West as Maimonides and to Jewish tradition by the acronym Rambam, was a medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher, physician, and Torah scholar ...

  • Rumi 1207 – 1273 · Persian

    Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi was a thirteenth-century Persian poet, jurist, and Sufi mystic, born in what is now Afghanistan and settling at Konya in Anatolia. After his transform...

  • 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...

  • Al-Ghazali 1058 – 1111 · Persian

    Abu Hamid al-Ghazali was an 11th and early 12th-century Persian Sunni Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and Sufi mystic, regarded as one of the most influential thinkers i...

  • Anselm of Canterbury 1033 – 1109 · Italian

    Anselm of Canterbury was an 11th and early 12th-century Italian-Norman Benedictine monk, philosopher, and theologian, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. H...

  • Averroes 1126 – 1198 · Andalusian

    Averroes, known in Arabic as Ibn Rushd, was a 12th-century Andalusian Arab philosopher, jurist, and physician of the Islamic Golden Age, the most influential medieval commentato...

  • Bernard of Clairvaux 1090 – 1153 · French

    Bernard of Clairvaux was a French Cistercian abbot, mystical theologian, and one of the most influential figures of the twelfth century. As founder of the abbey of Clairvaux and...

  • Bonaventure 1221 – 1274 · Italian

    Bonaventure was a 13th-century Italian Franciscan friar, theologian, philosopher, and Cardinal, regarded as one of the most important medieval Christian thinkers alongside his c...

  • Christine de Pizan 1364 – 1430 · Italian-French

    Christine de Pizan was a 14th and 15th-century Italian-French author and one of the earliest professional women writers in European history. Widowed in her mid-twenties, she sup...

  • Ibn Khaldun 1332 – 1406 · Tunisian

    Ibn Khaldun was a North African Arab historian and philosopher, born in Tunis to a family of Andalusian scholars. His Muqaddimah, the prolegomenon to a vast universal history, l...

  • Julian of Norwich 1343 – 1416 · English

    Julian of Norwich was an English anchoress and the author of the Revelations of Divine Love, the first surviving book in English written by a woman. At thirty she received a ser...

  • Meister Eckhart 1260 – 1328 · German

    Meister Eckhart was a German Dominican theologian, philosopher, and mystic. Trained in scholastic theology and twice the regent master at Paris, he is best known for his vernacu...

  • Peter Abelard 1079 – 1142 · French

    Peter Abelard was a French philosopher, logician, and theologian and one of the most original thinkers of the twelfth century. He made decisive contributions to the problem of u...

  • Petrarch 1304 – 1374 · Italian

    Francesco Petrarch was an Italian scholar, poet, and one of the founders of Renaissance humanism. His rediscovery of a lost cache of Cicero's letters at Verona helped to inaugur...

  • 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...

  • William of Ockham 1287 – 1347 · English

    William of Ockham was an English Franciscan friar, philosopher, and theologian, one of the most important figures of late medieval thought. He defended a thoroughgoing nominalis...

  • Al-Ashari 874 – 936 · Arab

    Abu al-Hasan Ali al-Ashari was an Arab Sunni theologian and the founder of the Ashari school of kalam, the dominant theological tradition of medieval Sunni Islam. After early ad...

  • Al-Biruni 973 – 1048 · Persian

    Abu Rayhan al-Biruni was a Persian polymath of the Islamic Golden Age, often counted among the greatest scientific minds in the history of the medieval world. He worked extensiv...

  • Al-Hallaj 858 – 922 · Persian

    Mansur al-Hallaj was a Persian Sufi mystic, preacher, and poet whose ecstatic utterances and public life made him one of the most controversial and revered figures of early Sufi...

  • Al-Mawardi 972 – 1058 · Arab

    Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Muhammad al-Mawardi was an Arab Islamic jurist of the Shafi'i school and the principal classical theorist of Sunni political thought. Born in Basra and trai...

  • Alcuin of York c. 735 – 804 · English

    Alcuin of York was an English Anglo-Saxon scholar, deacon, poet, and the principal intellectual adviser of the emperor Charlemagne. After many years as master of the cathedral s...

  • Atisha c. 980 – 1054 · Bengali-Tibetan

    Atisha Dipankara Shrijnana was a Bengali Buddhist philosopher and monk, abbot of the great Indian monastic university of Vikramashila, who, late in life, accepted an invitation ...

  • Bede c. 672 – 735 · English

    Bede, called the Venerable, was an English Benedictine monk, scholar, and the most learned writer of the early medieval West. From the age of seven he lived at the joint monaste...

  • Cassiodorus c. 485 – c. 585 · Roman

    Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator was a Roman senator, scholar, and statesman who served the Ostrogothic kings of Italy under Theodoric and his successors before retir...

  • Catherine of Genoa 1447 – 1510 · Italian

    Catherine of Genoa was an Italian mystic and philanthropist of the late fifteenth century. Married young to a difficult husband, she experienced a transformative conversion at t...

  • Cheng Yi 1033 – 1107 · Chinese

    Cheng Yi, with his elder brother Cheng Hao, was one of the founders of the Neo-Confucian School of Principle that would culminate in the synthesis of Zhu Xi. He served briefly a...

  • Gabriel Biel c. 1420 – 1495 · German

    Gabriel Biel was a German scholastic philosopher and theologian, sometimes called the last of the great medieval nominalists. After studies at Heidelberg, Erfurt, and Cologne an...

  • Henry Suso c. 1295 – 1366 · German

    Heinrich Seuse, known in English as Henry Suso, was a German Dominican mystic, preacher, and spiritual director and one of the principal figures of the Rhineland mystical tradit...

  • Henry of Ghent c. 1217 – 1293 · Flemish

    Henry of Ghent was a Flemish secular master of theology at Paris in the late thirteenth century and one of the most influential scholastics of the generation between Aquinas and...

  • Hildegard of Bingen 1098 – 1179 · German

    Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine abbess, polymath, and one of the most important religious figures of the twelfth century. From the age of three she experienced visi...

  • Honen 1133 – 1212 · Japanese

    Honen was a Japanese Buddhist monk and the founder of the Pure Land school of Japanese Buddhism. After decades of intensive study and practice on Mount Hiei, he came to the conv...

  • Hugh of Saint Victor c. 1096 – 1141 · German-French

    Hugh of Saint Victor was a German-born theologian and philosopher who taught at the abbey of Saint Victor in Paris and shaped the intellectual and contemplative life of the Vict...

  • Ibn Hazm 994 – 1064 · Andalusian

    Abu Muhammad Ali Ibn Hazm was an Andalusian polymath, jurist, theologian, philosopher, and poet, one of the foremost minds of medieval Islamic Spain. He served briefly as vizier...

  • Ibn Taymiyyah 1263 – 1328 · Arab

    Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah was a Sunni Muslim theologian, jurist, and reformer of Mamluk-era Syria and one of the most controversial and influential thinkers of medieval Is...

  • Ikkyu Sojun 1394 – 1481 · Japanese

    Ikkyu Sojun was a Japanese Zen master, poet, and calligrapher of the Muromachi period, abbot of the Daitoku-ji monastery in Kyoto, and the most idiosyncratic figure of medieval ...

  • Isaac Israeli c. 855 – c. 955 · Egyptian-Jewish

    Isaac ben Solomon Israeli was an Egyptian-born Jewish physician and philosopher, often counted as the first medieval Jewish Neoplatonist. He served as court physician to the ear...

  • Isidore of Seville c. 560 – 636 · Spanish

    Isidore of Seville was a Spanish bishop, encyclopedist, and the last of the Latin Fathers of the Church. Presiding over Visigothic Spain during the long transition from late ant...

  • Johannes Tauler c. 1300 – 1361 · German

    Johannes Tauler was a German Dominican preacher and mystic and one of the principal figures of the Rhineland mystical tradition along with Meister Eckhart and Henry Suso. After ...

  • John Climacus c. 579 – c. 649 · Byzantine

    John Climacus, also known as John of the Ladder, was a Byzantine Christian monk and philosopher of the late sixth and early seventh centuries, abbot of the monastery of Saint Ca...

  • John Pecham c. 1230 – 1292 · English

    John Pecham was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic theologian, and natural philosopher, and from 1279 archbishop of Canterbury. After studies at Paris and Oxford and a long...

  • John Scotus Eriugena 815 – 877 · Irish

    John Scotus Eriugena was an Irish theologian and Neoplatonist philosopher active at the court of the Carolingian king Charles the Bald. He produced the first Latin translation o...

  • John Wyclif c. 1320 – 1384 · English

    John Wyclif was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, and reformer, often called the morning star of the Reformation. Master of Balliol College and a doctor of theology...

  • John of Salisbury c. 1110 – 1180 · English

    John of Salisbury was an English humanist scholar, secretary to two archbishops of Canterbury including the martyred Thomas Becket, and finally bishop of Chartres. After studies...

  • Joseph Albo c. 1380 – 1444 · Spanish-Jewish

    Joseph Albo was a Spanish Jewish philosopher and the author of the Sefer ha-Ikkarim, the Book of Principles, the most widely read Jewish philosophical work in Iberia in the gene...

  • Kukai 774 – 835 · Japanese

    Kukai, posthumously known as Kobo Daishi, was a Japanese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, poet, and the founder of the esoteric Shingon school. After studies in China under the Tant...

  • Linji Yixuan c. 810 – 866 · Chinese

    Linji Yixuan was a Chinese Chan Buddhist master of the late Tang dynasty and the founder of the Linji school, the dominant Chan and later Zen lineage in China, Korea, and Japan....

  • 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...

  • Milarepa 1052 – 1135 · Tibetan

    Milarepa was a Tibetan Buddhist yogi, poet, and one of the most beloved figures in the history of Tibetan religion, the principal disciple of Marpa the Translator and the second...

  • 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...

  • Nicholas Oresme c. 1320 – 1382 · French

    Nicholas Oresme was a French scholastic philosopher, mathematician, economist, theologian, and bishop of Lisieux, and one of the most original thinkers of the fourteenth century...

  • Nicholas of Cusa 1401 – 1464 · German

    Nicholas of Cusa was a German cardinal, philosopher, and mathematician at the threshold between the medieval and Renaissance worlds. His treatise On Learned Ignorance argued tha...

  • Peter Damian 1007 – 1072 · Italian

    Peter Damian was an Italian Benedictine reformer, cardinal-bishop of Ostia, and one of the most vigorous voices of the eleventh-century reform of the Latin Church. After early s...

  • Photios I c. 810 – 893 · Byzantine

    Photios I, called the Great, was a Byzantine philosopher, theologian, and twice Patriarch of Constantinople, the most learned man of ninth-century Byzantium and one of the princ...

  • Robert Grosseteste c. 1175 – 1253 · English

    Robert Grosseteste was an English statesman, scholastic philosopher, theologian, and bishop of Lincoln. He served as the first chancellor of the University of Oxford and as the ...

  • Roger Bacon 1219 – 1292 · English

    Roger Bacon was an English Franciscan friar, philosopher, and early advocate of experimental method, sometimes called Doctor Mirabilis. Trained at Oxford and Paris, he produced ...

  • Simplicius c. 490 AD – c. 560 AD · Greek

    Simplicius of Cilicia was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher and the last great commentator on Aristotle in the Athenian tradition. After the closure of the Platonic Academy by Ju...

  • 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...

  • Eisai 1141 – 1215 · Japanese

    Myoan Eisai was a Japanese Buddhist monk who is credited with introducing the Rinzai school of Zen and the cultivation of green tea to Japan. After two study journeys to Song Ch...

  • Jinul 1158 – 1210 · Korean

    Jinul, called Bojo Guksa, was the most influential Korean Buddhist monk of the medieval period and the principal architect of the Jogye Order, which remains the central traditio...

  • Shao Yong 1011 – 1077 · Chinese

    Shao Yong was a Chinese Neo-Confucian philosopher of the Northern Song dynasty and one of the founding figures of the new Confucian metaphysics that would shape East Asian thoug...

  • Judah Halevi c. 1075 – 1141 · Andalusian-Jewish

    Judah Halevi was a Spanish Jewish philosopher, poet, and physician who lived in the Christian and Muslim courts of medieval Iberia. His philosophical dialogue The Kuzari, conduc...

  • Catherine of Siena 1347 – 1380 · Italian

    Catherine of Siena was an Italian Dominican tertiary, mystic, and political activist whose influence on the fourteenth-century Church was extraordinary for a woman of her time. ...

  • Ibn Arabi 1165 – 1240 · Andalusian

    Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi was an Andalusian Sufi philosopher, mystic, and poet, often called the Greatest Master. Born in Murcia, he traveled extensively through North Africa and t...

  • John of Damascus c. 675 – 749 · Syrian-Greek

    John of Damascus was an Arab Christian monk, theologian, and hymnographer, often counted as the last of the Greek Fathers. After serving for a time as a high official at the ear...

  • Lalla c. 1320 – c. 1392 · Kashmiri

    Lalla, also known as Lal Ded, was a fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic poet and philosopher in the Trika Shaivite tradition, and the founder of the philosophical and devotional ...

  • Ramon Llull 1232 – 1316 · Catalan

    Ramon Llull was a Catalan philosopher, theologian, mystic, and missionary, the first major author to write philosophical and literary works in the vernacular Catalan. After a wo...

  • 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...

  • Zhu Xi 1130 – 1200 · Chinese

    Zhu Xi was a Chinese philosopher and the most influential exponent of Neo-Confucianism. Drawing on the work of the eleventh-century masters, he synthesized a comprehensive metap...

  • Cheng Hao 1032 – 1085 · Chinese

    Cheng Hao, known as Cheng Mingdao, was a Chinese Neo-Confucian philosopher of the Northern Song dynasty, the elder brother of Cheng Yi and one of the founding figures of the Che...

  • Heloise c. 1100 – 1164 · French

    Heloise of Argenteuil was a 12th-century French nun, abbess, and philosopher, one of the most learned women of medieval Europe and an important early voice in the medieval Latin...

  • 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...

  • Adelard of Bath c. 1080 – c. 1152 · English

    Adelard of Bath was an English natural philosopher, mathematician, and translator and one of the principal channels by which Greek and Arabic scientific learning reached the Lat...

  • Ibn al-Haytham 965 – 1040 · Arab

    Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, known to the Latin West as Alhazen, was an Arab mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher and one of the greatest scientific minds of the medie...

  • Marpa Lotsawa 1012 – 1097 · Tibetan

    Marpa Lotsawa, called Chokyi Lodro, was an eleventh-century Tibetan Buddhist translator and tantric master, the principal pupil of the Indian Mahasiddha Naropa, and the founder ...

  • Padmasambhava c. 720 – c. 800 · Indian-Tibetan

    Padmasambhava, the Lotus-Born, was an eighth-century Buddhist tantric master from the kingdom of Uddiyana in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, who, according to Tibetan ...

  • Al-Razi 854 – 925 · Persian

    Abu Bakr al-Razi, known to the Latin West as Rhazes, was a Persian polymath, physician, alchemist, and philosopher, and one of the most original minds of the Islamic Golden Age....

  • 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 ...

  • Duns Scotus c. 1266 – 1308 · Scottish

    John Duns Scotus was a 13th and early 14th-century Scottish Franciscan friar, philosopher, and theologian, regarded as one of the most important medieval scholastic philosophers...

  • Fakhr al-Din al-Razi 1149 – 1209 · Persian

    Fakhr al-Din al-Razi was a Persian Sunni theologian, philosopher, and exegete of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries and one of the most prolific Islamic intellectua...

  • Nichiren 1222 – 1282 · Japanese

    Nichiren was a Japanese Buddhist priest of the Kamakura period and the founder of the school of Buddhism that bears his name. After decades of study across the major schools of ...

  • Shinran 1173 – 1263 · Japanese

    Shinran was a Japanese Buddhist monk and the founder of the Jodo Shinshu, or True Pure Land, school. A student of the earlier Pure Land master Honen, he was exiled with him duri...

  • Solomon ibn Gabirol c. 1021 – c. 1058 · Andalusian-Jewish

    Solomon ibn Gabirol was an Andalusian Jewish philosopher and Hebrew poet. His philosophical treatise, the Fountain of Life, written in Arabic, developed an emanationist Neoplato...

  • 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...

  • Al-Kindi 801 – 873 · Arab

    Abu Yusuf al-Kindi was an Arab philosopher, mathematician, and polymath, often called the father of Arab philosophy. Working at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad under the Abbasid ...

  • Bernard of Chartres c. 1080 – c. 1130 · French

    Bernard of Chartres was a French Latin Platonist of the early twelfth century, master and chancellor of the cathedral school of Chartres, and one of the most influential teacher...

  • Gemistus Pletho c. 1355 – 1452 · Byzantine

    George Gemistos, who took the name Plethon to recall his master Plato, was a late-Byzantine philosopher of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the most original Platonist of...

  • Ibn Bajja c. 1085 – 1138 · Andalusian

    Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Yahya Ibn Bajja, known to the Latin West as Avempace, was an Andalusian polymath, the first major Islamic philosopher of the Iberian peninsula after Ibn Ha...

  • Peter Lombard c. 1096 – 1160 · Italian

    Peter Lombard, known as the Master of the Sentences, was an Italian theologian and bishop of Paris, and the author of the most influential textbook of medieval scholastic theolo...

  • Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite c. 475 AD – c. 525 AD · Syrian

    Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is the conventional name given to an anonymous late-fifth or early-sixth-century Christian theologian who wrote in Greek under the persona of the...

  • Zhang Zai 1020 – 1077 · Chinese

    Zhang Zai was a Chinese Northern Song Confucian philosopher and one of the founding figures of the Neo-Confucian renaissance. With Zhou Dunyi and the Cheng brothers, he reshaped...

  • Al-Farabi 872 – 950 · Persian

    Abu Nasr al-Farabi was a Persian philosopher and one of the greatest figures of the Islamic Golden Age, known to later tradition as the Second Teacher, after Aristotle. He produ...

  • Joachim of Fiore c. 1135 – 1202 · Italian

    Joachim of Fiore was an Italian Cistercian abbot, biblical exegete, and one of the most influential apocalyptic thinkers of the Middle Ages. After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land ...

  • Lu Jiuyuan 1139 – 1193 · Chinese

    Lu Jiuyuan, also known as Lu Xiangshan, was a Chinese Neo-Confucian philosopher of the Southern Song dynasty and the principal rival of Zhu Xi, whose more rationalist program he...

  • Mechthild of Magdeburg c. 1207 – c. 1282 · German

    Mechthild of Magdeburg was a German beguine and Christian mystic and the author of The Flowing Light of the Godhead, the first major work of mystical theology written in Middle ...

  • Jean Gerson 1363 – 1429 · French

    Jean Charlier de Gerson was a French theologian, mystic, and chancellor of the University of Paris and one of the leading figures of the late medieval conciliar movement. He pla...

  • Maximus the Confessor 580 AD – 662 AD · Greek

    Maximus the Confessor was a seventh-century Greek Christian monk and theologian and one of the great architects of Eastern patristic thought. After service in the imperial court...

  • Thomas Bradwardine c. 1300 – 1349 · English

    Thomas Bradwardine was an English theologian, mathematician, and Archbishop of Canterbury, known to scholastic posterity as the Doctor Profundus. As one of the Oxford Calculator...

  • Tsongkhapa 1357 – 1419 · Tibetan

    Tsongkhapa Lobsang Drakpa was a Tibetan Buddhist philosopher, monk, and reformer, the founder of the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism, which would become the school of the Dalai...

  • Zhiyi 538 – 597 · Chinese

    Zhiyi was a Chinese Buddhist philosopher, monk, and the principal founder of the Tiantai school of Mahayana Buddhism, whose lectures at Mount Tiantai in southeastern China set o...

  • 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...

  • Aelred of Rievaulx 1110 – 1167 · English

    Aelred of Rievaulx was an English Cistercian abbot, theologian, and one of the most beloved spiritual writers of the twelfth century. After service at the Scottish royal court, ...

  • 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...

  • Al-Junayd of Baghdad c. 830 – 910 · Persian

    Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd of Baghdad was a Persian Sunni Muslim mystic and theologian and the principal founder of the school of sober Sufism that traces its lineage through him. T...

  • Alan of Lille c. 1128 – 1202 · French

    Alan of Lille was a French Cistercian theologian, preacher, and Latin poet of the twelfth-century renaissance, known to medieval readers as Doctor Universalis for the breadth of...

  • Alexander of Hales c. 1185 – 1245 · English

    Alexander of Hales was an English Franciscan theologian and the first holder of the Franciscan chair of theology at the University of Paris. After training in the arts and theol...

  • Ammonius Hermiae c. 440 AD – c. 520 AD · Greek

    Ammonius Hermiae was a Greek Alexandrian Neoplatonist philosopher and the principal teacher of Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy in the eastern Mediterranean in the late fift...

  • Avraham ibn Daud c. 1110 – c. 1180 · Andalusian-Jewish

    Avraham ibn Daud was a Spanish Jewish philosopher, physician, astronomer, and historian of the twelfth century, often counted as the first systematic Jewish Aristotelian. After ...

  • Bahya ibn Paquda c. 1050 – c. 1120 · Andalusian-Jewish

    Bahya ibn Paquda was an Andalusian Jewish philosopher and rabbinic judge whose Duties of the Heart, written in Judeo-Arabic in the late eleventh century, became the first major ...

  • Beatrijs of Nazareth 1200 – 1268 · Flemish

    Beatrijs of Nazareth was a thirteenth-century Cistercian nun, mystic, and philosopher of the Low Countries, prioress of the abbey of Our Lady of Nazareth near Lier in the southe...

  • Berengar of Tours c. 999 – 1088 · French

    Berengar of Tours was a French theologian, philosopher, and grammarian of the eleventh century, master of the cathedral school of Tours, and the principal early-medieval defende...

  • Bernard Silvestris c. 1085 – c. 1178 · French

    Bernard Silvestris was a Latin Platonist philosopher and poet of the twelfth-century Renaissance, master at the cathedral school of Tours, and one of the central figures of the ...

  • 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...

  • Boethius of Dacia c. 1240 – c. 1284 · Danish

    Boethius of Dacia was a Latin philosopher and master of arts at the University of Paris, one of the leading exponents of the Latin Averroist school of the Faculty of Arts in the...

  • 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...

  • Chalcidius c. 320 – c. 400 · Roman

    Chalcidius was a Latin philosopher and Christian thinker of late antiquity, whose Latin translation of the first part of Plato's Timaeus and his accompanying Commentary on the T...

  • 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...

  • Gersonides 1288 – 1344 · French-Jewish

    Levi ben Gershon, known by the Latinized name Gersonides, was a fourteenth-century Jewish philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and biblical exegete who lived in Provence. His...

  • Gilbert of Poitiers c. 1085 – 1154 · French

    Gilbert of Poitiers, also known as Gilbert de la Porree, was a French scholastic theologian and bishop of Poitiers and one of the most acute minds of the twelfth-century renaiss...

  • Hadewijch of Antwerp c. 1200 – c. 1260 · Flemish

    Hadewijch of Antwerp was a thirteenth-century Flemish Beguine mystic and philosopher, leader of a small community of beguines in the Low Countries, and the author of one of the ...

  • Hasdai Crescas c. 1340 – 1410 · Spanish-Jewish

    Hasdai ben Abraham Crescas was a Spanish Jewish philosopher and rabbinic leader of the late fourteenth century. After the catastrophes of 1391, in which his only son was killed ...

  • Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim c. 935 – c. 1002 · Saxon

    Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim was a tenth-century Saxon canoness, poet, and philosopher in the imperial abbey of Gandersheim, the first known dramatist of the post-classical Latin W...

  • Ibn Tufayl 1105 – 1185 · Andalusian

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  • Isaac Abravanel 1437 – 1508 · Portuguese-Jewish

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  • Jean Buridan c. 1300 – c. 1361 · French

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  • John Italos c. 1023 – c. 1090 · Byzantine

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  • John Philoponus c. 490 AD – c. 570 AD · Greek

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  • Kumarila Bhatta c. 700 – c. 750 · Indian

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  • Longchenpa 1308 – 1364 · Tibetan

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  • Lorenzo Valla 1407 – 1457 · Italian

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  • Macrina the Younger c. 327 – 379 · Cappadocian

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  • Marguerite Porete c. 1250 – 1310 · French

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  • Mark Eugenikos 1392 – 1444 · Byzantine

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  • Marsilius of Padua 1275 – 1342 · Italian

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  • Michael Psellos 1018 – 1078 · Byzantine

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  • Miskawayh 932 – 1030 · Persian

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  • Nasir al-Din al-Tusi 1201 – 1274 · Persian

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  • Nemesius of Emesa c. 350 – c. 420 · Syrian

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  • Nicholas of Autrecourt c. 1299 – c. 1369 · French

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  • Petrus Olivi 1248 – 1298 · French

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  • Pierre d'Ailly 1351 – 1420 · French

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  • Pope Gregory the Great 540 AD – 604 AD · Roman

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  • Richard of Saint Victor c. 1110 – 1173 · Scottish-French

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  • Rinchen Zangpo 958 – 1055 · Tibetan

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  • Robert Kilwardby c. 1215 – 1279 · English

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  • Saadia Gaon 882 – 942 · Egyptian-Jewish

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  • Saicho 767 – 822 · Japanese

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  • Sakya Pandita 1182 – 1251 · Tibetan

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  • Siger of Brabant c. 1240 – c. 1284 · Brabantian

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  • Suhrawardi 1154 – 1191 · Persian

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  • Theodore Metochites 1270 – 1332 · Byzantine

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  • Tran Nhan Tong 1258 – 1308 · Vietnamese

    Tran Nhan Tong was a Vietnamese Buddhist philosopher, poet, and emperor of the Tran dynasty, who, after leading the Dai Viet to victory over two Mongol invasions, abdicated the ...

  • Vacaspati Misra c. 900 – c. 980 · Indian

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  • Walter Burley c. 1275 – c. 1344 · English

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  • William of Auvergne c. 1180 – 1249 · French

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  • William of Conches c. 1090 – c. 1154 · French

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  • Zhou Dunyi 1017 – 1073 · Chinese

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  • Albert the Great c. 1200 – 1280 · German

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  • Uisang 625 – 702 · Korean

    Uisang was a Korean Buddhist philosopher and the founder of Korean Hwaeom (Avatamsaka) Buddhism. After studying under the Hwaeom master Zhiyan in Tang China alongside the great ...