List of political philosophers

See also: List of social and political philosophers

This is a list of political philosophers, including some who may be better known for their work in other areas of philosophy. Note, however, that the list is for people who are principally philosophers. The philosophers are listed in order by year of birth to show rough direction of influences and of development of political thought. See also, Political philosophy.

Ancient, medieval and early modern

• Hammurabi (died c. 1750 BCE)
• Confucius (551–479 BCE)
• Socrates (470–399 BCE)
• Mozi (470–390 BCE)
• Xenophon (427–355 BCE)
• Plato (427–347 BCE)
• Diogenes of Sinope (412–323 BCE)
• Aeschines (389–314 BCE)
• Aristotle (384–322 BCE)
• Mencius (372–289 BCE)
• Chanakya (350–283 BCE)
• Xun Zi (310–237 BCE)
• Thiruvalluvar (c. 200 BCE–c. 30 BCE)
• Han Feizi (?–233 BCE)
• Cicero (106–43 BCE)
• Pliny the Younger (63–113 CE)
• Saint Augustine (354–430 CE)
• Muhammad al-Shaybani (749–805)
• Al-Farabi (870–950)
• Ghazali (1058–1111)
• Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (1126–1198)
• Al-Mawardi (972–1058)
• Maimonides (1135–1204)
• St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)
• Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328)
• Marsilius of Padua (1270–1342)
• William of Ockham (1285–1349)
• Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406)
• Christine de Pizan (1363–1434)
• Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)
• Martin Luther (1483–1546)
• Thomas Muntzer (1490–1525)
• John Calvin (1509–1564)
• Richard Hooker (1554–1600)

Modern (born pre-19th century)

• Jean Bodin (1530–1596)
• Farkas Kovacsóczy (1540–1594)
• Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
• Hugo Grotius (1583–1645)
• Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
• Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676)
• James Harrington (1611–1677)
• John Locke (1632–1704)
• Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)
• Montesquieu (1689–1755)
• François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) (1694–1778)
• Shah Waliullah (1703–1763)
• Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792)
• David Hume (1711–1776)
• Frederick the Great (Frederick II) (1712–1786)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1788)
• Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
• William Blackstone (1723–1780)
• Adam Smith (1723–1790)
• Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
• Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
• Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
• Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
• James Madison (1751–1836)
• William Godwin (1756–1836)
• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
• Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825)
• Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834)
• Benjamin Constant (1767–1830)
• Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831)
• David Ricardo (1772–1823)
• Charles Fourier (1772–1837)
• James Mill (1773–1836)
• Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)
• Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
• Auguste Comte (1798–1857)

Born in 19th century

• Rifa' al-Tahtawi (1801–1873)
• Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804–1872)
• Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
• Max Stirner (1806–1856)
• John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
• Simion Bărnuțiu (1808–1864)
• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865)
• Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)
• Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
• Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
• Karl Marx (1818–1883)
• Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1818–1898)
• Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)
• Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
• Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882)
• William Graham Sumner (1840–1910)
• Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921)
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
• Georges Sorel (1847–1922)
• Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932)
• Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857–1929)
• John Dewey (1859–1952)
• Max Weber (1864–1920)
• Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925)
• Benedetto Croce (1866–1952)
• Mohandas Karam Chand Gandhi (1869–1948)
• Rosa Luxemburg (1870–1919)
• Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)
• Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944)
• Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938)
• Muhammad Asad (1900–1992)
• Pantaleo Carabellese (1877–1948)
• Martin Buber (1878–1965)
• Otto Bauer (1881–1938)
• Georg Lukács (1885–1971)
• Sergio Panunzio (1886–1944)
• Karl Polányi (1886–1964)
• Carl Schmitt (1888–1985)
• Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)
• Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)
• Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
• Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977)
• Max Horkheimer (1895–1973)
• Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957)
• Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
• Leo Strauss (1899–1973)
• Alfred Sohn-Rethel (1899–1990)
• Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992)
• Bhimrao Ambedkar(1891–1956)
• Julius Evola (1898–1974)

Born in 20th century

• Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
• Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990)
• Karl Popper (1902–1994)
• Theodor Adorno (1903–1969)
• Ayn Rand (1905–1982)
• Raymond Aron (1905–1983)
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)
• Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
• Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966)
• Simone Weil (1909–1943)
• Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997)
• Norberto Bobbio (1909–2004)
• Albert Camus (1913–1960)
• Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
• Fazlur Rahman Malik (1919–1988)
• Louis Althusser (1918–1990)
• Murray Bookchin (1921–2006)
• John Rawls (1921–2002)
• Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997)
• Sheldon S. Wolin (1922–)
• Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)
• Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995)
• Murray Rothbard (1926–1995)
• Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
• Judith Shklar (1928–1992)
• Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007)
• Jürgen Habermas (1929–)
• Bernard Williams (1929–2003)
• Félix Guattari (1930–1992)
• Ronald Dworkin (1931–2013)
• Charles Taylor (1931–)
• Guy Debord (1931–1994)
• Harvey C. Mansfield (1932–)
• Antonio Negri (1933–)
• Fredric Jameson (1934–)
• Wendell Berry (1934–)
• Michael Walzer (1935–)
• Thomas Nagel (1937–)
• William E. Connolly (1938–)
• Robert Nozick (1938–2002)
• Douglas W. Rae (1939–)
• Takis Fotopoulos (1940–)
• Jacques Rancière (1940–)
• Joxe Azurmendi (1941–)
• Étienne Balibar (1942–)
• Lorenzo Peña (1944–)
• Giacomo Marramao (1946–)
• James Tully (1946–)
• Slavoj Žižek (1947–)
• Judith Butler (1956–)
• Rae Helen Langton (1961–)