Most Famous Jewish Philosophers

Jewish philosophy is the philosophical tradition that develops in dialogue with Jewish religious texts, law, and theology, from late antiquity through the present. Its medieval golden age, paralleling the Islamic philosophical tradition with which it was closely entwined, produced figures including Saadia Gaon, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Judah Halevi, Maimonides, and Gersonides. Major modern figures include Spinoza, who departed from traditional Judaism, as well as Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, and Hannah Arendt. The tradition has produced influential treatments of God, ethics, law, history, and the relation of reason to revelation. It continues today across the analytic, continental, and theological branches of philosophy.

Philosophers in this tradition

Hannah Arendt 1906 – 1975 · German-American
Hannah Arendt was a 20th-century German-American political theorist whose work shaped post-war thinking about totalitarianism, political action, and moral responsibility. The Or...
Baruch Spinoza 1632 – 1677 · Dutch
Baruch Spinoza was a 17th-century Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish descent, regarded as one of the leading rationalists of the early modern period. His major work, the Eth...
Martin Buber 1878 – 1965 · Austrian-Israeli
Martin Buber was a 20th-century Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher and one of the most influential figures of modern Jewish religious thought. His 1923 book Ich und Du, tr...
Philo of Alexandria 25 BC – 50 AD · Hellenistic Jewish
Philo of Alexandria was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who synthesized the Hebrew scriptures with Greek philosophical thought, especially Platonism and Stoicism. He developed ...
Emmanuel Levinas 1906 – 1995 · Lithuanian-French
Emmanuel Levinas was a 20th-century Lithuanian-born French Jewish philosopher of the phenomenological and ethical tradition, one of the most influential figures of late 20th-cen...
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...
Hermann Cohen 1842 – 1918 · German
Hermann Cohen was a German Jewish philosopher and the founder of the Marburg School of neo-Kantianism. Holding the chair of philosophy at Marburg for more than thirty years, he ...
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 ...
Yeshayahu Leibowitz 1903 – 1994 · Latvian-Israeli
Yeshayahu Leibowitz was a Latvian-Israeli philosopher, scientist, and Orthodox Jewish religious thinker, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in biochemistry, neurolo...
Abraham Joshua Heschel 1907 – 1972 · Polish-American
Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-born American Jewish philosopher, theologian, and rabbi, the descendant of a long line of Hasidic masters, professor at the Jewish Theologica...
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...
Joseph Soloveitchik 1903 – 1993 · Russian-American
Joseph Ber Soloveitchik was a Russian-born American Orthodox Jewish philosopher and rabbi, the long-time head of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva Univers...
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...
Gershom Scholem 1897 – 1982 · German-Israeli
Gerhard, later Gershom, Scholem was a German-Israeli philosopher, historian, and the founder of the academic study of Jewish mysticism. Born in Berlin and committed from his tee...
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...
Franz Rosenzweig 1886 – 1929 · German
Franz Rosenzweig was a German Jewish philosopher and one of the great figures of twentieth-century Jewish thought. After a near-conversion to Christianity, he returned to Judais...
Moses Mendelssohn 1729 – 1786 · German
Moses Mendelssohn was a German-Jewish philosopher and the central figure of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment. Largely self-taught, he became a leading representative of th...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
Isaac Abarbanel 1437 – 1508 · Spanish-Portuguese
Isaac Abarbanel was a Spanish-Portuguese Jewish philosopher, statesman, and biblical commentator of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, who served as treasurer to ...
Isaac Abravanel 1437 – 1508 · Portuguese-Jewish
Don Isaac ben Judah Abravanel was a Portuguese Jewish philosopher, biblical exegete, and statesman whose life spanned the upheavals of the Iberian Jewish communities at the end ...
Israel Salanter 1810 – 1883 · Lithuanian
Rabbi Israel Salanter, born Israel Lipkin in Lithuania, was the founder of the Mussar movement, a nineteenth-century Lithuanian Jewish ethical-philosophical movement that sought...
Mordecai Kaplan 1881 – 1983 · Lithuanian-American
Mordecai Kaplan was a Lithuanian-born American Jewish philosopher and rabbi, long associated with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the founder of Reconstructionis...
Saadia Gaon 882 – 942 · Egyptian-Jewish
Saadia ben Joseph al-Fayyumi, known as Saadia Gaon, was an Egyptian-born Jewish philosopher, exegete, and head of the Babylonian academy of Sura. He produced the first systemati...
Salomon Maimon 1753 – 1800 · Polish-German
Salomon Maimon was a Polish-born Jewish philosopher of the German Enlightenment, born in Lithuania to a poor Hasidic family, who escaped his early circumstances to become one of...