PHILOSOPHER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does philosopher mean? 

• PHILOSOPHER (noun)
  The noun PHILOSOPHER has 2 senses:

1. a specialist in philosophy

2. a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity

  Familiarity information: PHILOSOPHER used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PHILOSOPHER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A specialist in philosophy

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("philosopher" is a kind of...):

bookman; scholar; scholarly person; student (a learned person (especially in the humanities); someone who by long study has gained mastery in one or more disciplines)

Domain category:

philosophy (the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "philosopher"):

nativist (a philosopher who subscribes to nativism)

Cynic (a member of a group of ancient Greek philosophers who advocated the doctrine that virtue is the only good and that the essence of virtue is self-control)

eclectic; eclecticist (someone who selects according to the eclectic method)

empiricist (a philosopher who subscribes to empiricism)

epistemologist (a specialist in epistemology)

aesthetician; esthetician (a philosopher who specializes in the nature of beauty)

ethician; ethicist (a philosopher who specializes in ethics)

existential philosopher; existentialist; existentialist philosopher (a philosopher who emphasizes freedom of choice and personal responsibility but who regards human existence in a hostile universe as unexplainable)

gymnosophist (member of a Hindu sect practicing gymnosophy (especially nudism))

libertarian (someone who believes the doctrine of free will)

mechanist (a philosopher who subscribes to the doctrine of mechanism)

moralist (a philosopher who specializes in morals and moral problems)

naturalist (an advocate of the doctrine that the world can be understood in scientific terms)

necessitarian (someone who does not believe the doctrine of free will)

nominalist (a philosopher who has adopted the doctrine of nominalism)

pluralist (a philosopher who believes that no single explanation can account for all the phenomena of nature)

pre-Socratic (any philosopher who lived before Socrates)

realist (a philosopher who believes that universals are real and exist independently of anyone thinking of them)

Scholastic (a Scholastic philosopher or theologian)

Sophist (any of a group of Greek philosophers and teachers in the 5th century BC who speculated on a wide range of subjects)

Stoic (a member of the ancient Greek school of philosophy founded by Zeno)

transcendentalist (advocate of transcendentalism)

yogi (one who practices yoga and has achieved a high level of spiritual insight)

Karl Popper; Popper; Sir Karl Raimund Popper (British philosopher (born in Austria) who argued that scientific theories can never be proved to be true, but are tested by attempts to falsify them (1902-1994))

Instance hyponyms:

Abelard; Peter Abelard; Pierre Abelard (French philosopher and theologian; lover of Heloise (1079-1142))

Anaxagoras (a presocratic Athenian philosopher who maintained that everything is composed of very small particles that were arranged by some eternal intelligence (500-428 BC))

Anaximander (a presocratic Greek philosopher and student of Thales who believed the universal substance to be infinity rather than something resembling ordinary objects (611-547 BC))

Anaximenes (a presocratic Greek philosopher and associate of Anaximander who believed that all things are made of air in different degrees of density (6th century BC))

Arendt; Hannah Arendt (United States historian and political philosopher (born in Germany) (1906-1975))

Aristotle (one of the greatest of the ancient Athenian philosophers; pupil of Plato; teacher of Alexander the Great (384-322 BC))

Abul-Walid Mohammed ibn-Ahmad Ibn-Mohammed ibn-Roshd; Averroes; ibn-Roshd (Arabian philosopher born in Spain; wrote detailed commentaries on Aristotle that were admired by the Schoolmen (1126-1198))

Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina; Avicenna; ibn-Sina (Persian physician and influential philosopher; his interpretation of Aristotle influenced St. Thomas Aquinas; writings on medicine were important for almost 500 years (980-1037))

1st Baron Verulam; Bacon; Baron Verulam; Francis Bacon; Sir Francis Bacon; Viscount St. Albans (English statesman and philosopher; precursor of British empiricism; advocated inductive reasoning (1561-1626))

Bentham; Jeremy Bentham (English philosopher and jurist; founder of utilitarianism (1748-1831))

Bergson; Henri Bergson; Henri Louis Bergson (French philosopher who proposed elan vital as the cause of evolution and development (1859-1941))

Berkeley; Bishop Berkeley; George Berkeley (Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop who opposed the materialism of Thomas Hobbes (1685-1753))

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius; Boethius (a Roman who was an early Christian philosopher and statesman who was executed for treason; Boethius had a decisive influence on medieval logic (circa 480-524))

Bruno; Giordano Bruno (Italian philosopher who used Copernican principles to develop a pantheistic monistic philosophy; condemned for heresy by the Inquisition and burned at the stake (1548-1600))

Buber; Martin Buber (Israeli religious philosopher (born in Austria); as a Zionist he promoted understanding between Jews and Arabs; his writings affected Christian thinkers as well as Jews (1878-1965))

Cassirer; Ernst Cassirer (German philosopher concerned with concept formation in the human mind and with symbolic forms in human culture generally (1874-1945))

Cleanthes (ancient Greek philosopher who succeeded Zeno of Citium as the leader of the Stoic school (300-232 BC))

Auguste Comte; Comte; Isidore Auguste Marie Francois Comte (French philosopher remembered as the founder of positivism; he also established sociology as a systematic field of study)

Condorcet; Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat; Marquis de Condorcet (French mathematician and philosopher (1743-1794))

Confucius; K'ung Futzu; Kong the Master; Kongfuze (Chinese philosopher whose ideas and sayings were collected after his death and became the basis of a philosophical doctrine known a Confucianism (circa 551-478 BC))

Democritus (Greek philosopher who developed an atomistic theory of matter (460-370 BC))

Derrida; Jacques Derrida (French philosopher and critic (born in Algeria); exponent of deconstructionism (1930-2004))

Descartes; Rene Descartes (French philosopher and mathematician; developed dualistic theory of mind and matter; introduced the use of coordinates to locate a point in two or three dimensions (1596-1650))

Dewey; John Dewey (United States pragmatic philosopher who advocated progressive education (1859-1952))

Denis Diderot; Diderot (French philosopher who was a leading figure of the Enlightenment in France; principal editor of an encyclopedia that disseminated the scientific and philosophical knowledge of the time (1713-1784))

baron d'Holbach; d'Holbach; Dietrich; Paul-Henri Thiry; Paul Heinrich Dietrich; Thiry (French philosopher (born in Germany) famous as being one of the first self-described atheists in Europe)

Diogenes (an ancient Greek philosopher and Cynic who rejected social conventions (circa 400-325 BC))

Empedocles (Greek philosopher who taught that all matter is composed of particles of fire and water and air and earth (fifth century BC))

Epictetus (Greek philosopher who was a Stoic (circa 50-130))

Epicurus (Greek philosopher who believed that the world is a random combination of atoms and that pleasure is the highest good (341-270 BC))

Ernst Heinrich Haeckel; Haeckel (German biologist and philosopher; advocated Darwinism and formulated the theory of recapitulation; was an exponent of materialistic monism (1834-1919))

David Hartley; Hartley (English philosopher who introduced the theory of the association of ideas (1705-1757))

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; Hegel (German philosopher whose three stage process of dialectical reasoning was adopted by Karl Marx (1770-1831))

Heraclitus (a presocratic Greek philosopher who said that fire is the origin of all things and that permanence is an illusion as all things are in perpetual flux (circa 500 BC))

Herbart; Johann Friedrich Herbart (German philosopher (1776-1841))

Herder; Johann Gottfried von Herder (German philosopher who advocated intuition over reason (1744-1803))

Hobbes; Thomas Hobbes (English materialist and political philosopher who advocated absolute sovereignty as the only kind of government that could resolve problems caused by the selfishness of human beings (1588-1679))

David Hume; Hume (Scottish philosopher skeptical philosophy restricted human knowledge to that which can be perceived by the senses (1711-1776))

Edmund Husserl; Husserl (German philosopher who developed phenomenology (1859-1938))

Hypatia (Greek philosopher and astronomer; she invented the astrolabe (370-415))

James; William James (United States pragmatic philosopher and psychologist (1842-1910))

Immanuel Kant; Kant (influential German idealist philosopher (1724-1804))

Kierkegaard; Soren Aabye Kierkegaard; Soren Kierkegaard (Danish philosopher who is generally considered. along with Nietzsche, to be a founder of existentialism (1813-1855))

Lao-tse; Lao-tzu; Lao-zi (Chinese philosopher regarded as the founder of Taoism (6th century BC))

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; Leibnitz; Leibniz (German philosopher and mathematician who thought of the universe as consisting of independent monads and who devised a system of the calculus independent of Newton (1646-1716))

John Locke; Locke (English empiricist philosopher who believed that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience (1632-1704))

Lucretius; Titus Lucretius Carus (Roman philosopher and poet; in a long didactic poem he tried to provide a scientific explanation of the universe (96-55 BC))

Lully; Ramon Lully; Raymond Lully (Spanish philosopher (1235-1315))

Ernst Mach; Mach (Austrian physicist and philosopher who introduced the Mach number and who founded logical positivism (1838-1916))

Machiavelli; Niccolo Machiavelli (a statesman of Florence who advocated a strong central government (1469-1527))

Maimonides; Moses Maimonides; Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon (Spanish philosopher considered the greatest Jewish scholar of the Middle Ages who codified Jewish law in the Talmud (1135-1204))

Malebranche; Nicolas de Malebranche (French philosopher (1638-1715))

Herbert Marcuse; Marcuse (United States political philosopher (born in Germany) concerned about the dehumanizing effects of capitalism and modern technology (1898-1979))

Karl Marx; Marx (founder of modern communism; wrote the Communist Manifesto with Engels in 1848; wrote Das Kapital in 1867 (1818-1883))

George Herbert Mead; Mead (United States philosopher of pragmatism (1863-1931))

John Mill; John Stuart Mill; Mill (English philosopher and economist remembered for his interpretations of empiricism and utilitarianism (1806-1873))

James Mill; Mill (Scottish philosopher who expounded Bentham's utilitarianism; father of John Stuart Mill (1773-1836))

Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu; Charles Louis de Secondat; Montesquieu (French political philosopher who advocated the separation of executive and legislative and judicial powers (1689-1755))

G. E. Moore; George Edward Moore; Moore (English philosopher (1873-1958))

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche; Nietzsche (influential German philosopher remembered for his concept of the superman and for his rejection of Christian values; considered, along with Kierkegaard, to be a founder of existentialism (1844-1900))

Occam; Ockham; William of Occam; William of Ockham (English scholastic philosopher and assumed author of Occam's Razor (1285-1349))

Origen (Greek philosopher and theologian who reinterpreted Christian doctrine through the philosophy of Neoplatonism; his work was later condemned as unorthodox (185-254))

Jose Ortega y Gasset; Ortega y Gasset (Spanish philosopher who advocated leadership by an intellectual elite (1883-1955))

Parmenides (a presocratic Greek philosopher born in Italy; held the metaphysical view that being is the basic substance and ultimate reality of which all things are composed; said that motion and change are sensory illusions (5th century BC))

Blaise Pascal; Pascal (French mathematician and philosopher and Jansenist; invented an adding machine; contributed (with Fermat) to the theory of probability (1623-1662))

Charles Peirce; Charles Sanders Peirce; Peirce (United States philosopher and logician; pioneer of pragmatism (1839-1914))

Perry; Ralph Barton Perry (United States philosopher (1876-1957))

Plato (ancient Athenian philosopher; pupil of Socrates; teacher of Aristotle (428-347 BC))

Plotinus (Roman philosopher (born in Egypt) who was the leading representative of Neoplatonism (205-270))

Pythagoras (Greek philosopher and mathematician who proved the Pythagorean theorem; considered to be the first true mathematician (circa 580-500 BC))

Quine; W. V. Quine; Willard Van Orman Quine (United States philosopher and logician who championed an empirical view of knowledge that depended on language (1908-2001))

Radhakrishnan; Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan; Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Indian philosopher and statesman who introduced Indian philosophy to the West (1888-1975))

Reid; Thomas Reid (Scottish philosopher of common sense who opposed the ideas of David Hume (1710-1796))

Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Rousseau (French philosopher and writer born in Switzerland; believed that the natural goodness of man was warped by society; ideas influenced the French Revolution (1712-1778))

Bertrand Arthur William Russell; Bertrand Russell; Earl Russell; Russell (English philosopher and mathematician who collaborated with Whitehead (1872-1970))

Arthur Schopenhauer; Schopenhauer (German pessimist philosopher (1788-1860))

Albert Schweitzer; Schweitzer (French philosopher and physician and organist who spent most of his life as a medical missionary in Gabon (1875-1965))

Lucius Annaeus Seneca; Seneca (Roman statesman and philosopher who was an advisor to Nero; his nine extant tragedies are modeled on Greek tragedies (circa 4 BC - 65 AD))

Socrates (ancient Athenian philosopher; teacher of Plato and Xenophon (470-399 BC))

Herbert Spencer; Spencer (English philosopher and sociologist who applied the theory of natural selection to human societies (1820-1903))

Oswald Spengler; Spengler (German philosopher who argued that cultures grow and decay in cycles (1880-1936))

Baruch de Spinoza; Benedict de Spinoza; de Spinoza; Spinoza (Dutch philosopher who espoused a pantheistic system (1632-1677))

Rudolf Steiner; Steiner (Austrian philosopher who founded anthroposophy (1861-1925))

Dugald Stewart; Stewart (Scottish philosopher and follower of Thomas Reid (1753-1828))

Rabindranath Tagore; Sir Rabindranath Tagore; Tagore (Indian writer and philosopher whose poetry (based on traditional Hindu themes) pioneered the use of colloquial Bengali (1861-1941))

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; Teilhard de Chardin (French paleontologist and philosopher (1881-1955))

Thales; Thales of Miletus (a presocratic Greek philosopher and astronomer (who predicted an eclipse in 585 BC) who was said by Aristotle to be the founder of physical science; he held that all things originated in water (624-546 BC))

Theophrastus (Greek philosopher who was a student of Aristotle and who succeeded Aristotle as the leader of the Peripatetics (371-287 BC))

Simone Weil; Weil (French philosopher (1909-1943))

Alfred North Whitehead; Whitehead (English philosopher and mathematician who collaborated with Bertrand Russell (1861-1947))

Bernard Arthur Owen Williams; Sir Bernard Williams; Williams (English philosopher credited with reviving the field of moral philosophy (1929-2003))

Ludwig Josef Johan Wittgenstein; Ludwig Wittgenstein; Wittgenstein (British philosopher born in Austria; a major influence on logic and logical positivism (1889-1951))

Xenophanes (Greek philosopher (560-478 BC))

Zeno; Zeno of Citium (ancient Greek philosopher who founded the Stoic school (circa 335-263 BC))

Zeno; Zeno of Elea (ancient Greek philosopher who formulated paradoxes that defended the belief that motion and change are illusory (circa 495-430 BC))

Derivation:

philosophic (of or relating to philosophy or philosophers)

philosophy (the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("philosopher" is a kind of...):

individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)

Derivation:

philosophic; philosophical (characterized by the attitude of a philosopher; meeting trouble with level-headed detachment)

philosophy (a belief (or system of beliefs) accepted as authoritative by some group or school)

philosophy (any personal belief about how to live or how to deal with a situation)

philosophy (the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics)

 Context examples 

He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Psychologists and philosophers have long suggested that simulation is the mechanism by which humans understand each other’s minds.

(‘Mindreading’ neurons simulate decisions of social partners, University of Cambridge)

He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day; and he has, I believe, an absolutely open mind.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It was the knot of wordy socialists and working-class philosophers that held forth in the City Hall Park on warm afternoons that was responsible for the great discovery.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The most learned philosopher knew little more.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The only account he could give of it was, that my aunt had said to him, the day before yesterday, “Now, Dick, are you really and truly the philosopher I take you for?”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Wolf Larsen, evidently, had sifted the great philosopher’s teachings, rejecting and selecting according to his needs and desires.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Mr. Bhaer soon joined her, looking rather out of his element, and presently several of the philosophers, each mounted on his hobby, came ambling up to hold an intellectual tournament in the recess.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

With the brow of a philosopher above and the jaw of a sensualist below, the man must have started with great capacities for good or for evil.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)