Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (April 8, 1859 ? April 26, 1938) was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic. Not limited to empiricism, but believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, he worked on a method of phenomenological reduction by which a subject may come to know directly an essence.
Although born into a Jewish family, Husserl was baptized as a Lutheran in 1886. He studied mathematics under Karl Weierstrass and Leo Königsberger, and philosophy under Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. Husserl himself taught philosophy as a Privatdozent at Halle from 1887, then as professor, first at Göttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg from 1916 until he retired in 1928. Thereafter he gave two notable lectures: at Paris in 1929, and at Prague in 1935. The notorious 1933 race laws of the Nazi regime took away his academic standing and privileges. Following an illness, he died at Freiburg in 1938.
Sigmund Freud (born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 ? 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist who became known as the founding father of psychoanalysis.
フリードリヒ・ヴィルヘルム・ニーチェ（独: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche、1844年10月15日 - 1900年8月25日）は、ドイツの哲学者・古典文献学者。随所にアフォリズムを用いた、巧みな散文的表現による哲学の試みには文学的価値も認められる。
『道徳の系譜』（どうとくのけいふ、Zur Genealogie der Moral）??副題：「一つの論駁書」（"Eine Streitschrift"）??はドイツの哲学者フリードリヒ・ニーチェの著作であり、先に公にされた『善悪の彼岸』の中で略述されたいくつかの新しい見解について詳論するという意図のもとに、1887年に執筆され、公刊された。ニーチェの著作の中では、最も直接的な叙述がなされており、形式や文体の面でアフォリズム的な要素が最も少ないことから、ニーチェ研究者からは、確固たる明敏さと力強さをそなえた作品であり、ニーチェの代表作であるとみなされている。
序言と三つの論文（Abhandlung）から成り、これら一連の論述を通して、道徳的諸概念の発展に関わる挿話を追っていくことによって、「道徳上の先入見」??とりわけキリスト教の道徳??を転覆することを目指す。
Karl Heinrich Marx ( 5 May 1818 ? 14 March 1883) was a Prussian-German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the establishment of the social sciences and the development of the socialist movement. He is also considered one of the greatest economists in history. He published numerous books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Capital (1867?1894). He worked closely with his friend and fellow revolutionary socialist, Friedrich Engels.
Simone Weil (3 February 1909 ? 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist.
Weil's whole life was marked by an exceptional compassion for the suffering of others; at the age of six, for instance, she refused to eat sugar after she heard that soldiers fighting in the First World War had to go without. She died from tuberculosis during the Second World War, possibly exacerbated by malnutrition after refusing to eat more than the minimal rations that she believed were available to soldiers at the time.
After completing her education, Weil became a professor. She taught intermittently throughout the 1930s, taking several breaks due to poor health and to devote herself to political activism, work that would see her assisting in the trade union movement, taking the side of the left in the Spanish Civil War, and spending more than a year working as a labourer so she could better understand the working class.
Unusually among twentieth century left-leaning intellectuals, she became more religious and inclined towards mysticism as her life progressed. Weil wrote throughout her life, though most of her writings did not attract much attention until after her death. In the 1950s and 1960s, her work became famous on continental Europe and throughout the English speaking world. Her fame began to decline in the late sixties, and she is now rarely taught at universities. Yet her thought has continued to be the subject of extensive scholarship across a wide range of fields; a meta study from the University of Calgary found that between 1995 and 2012, over 2500 new scholarly works had been published about her. While sometimes described as odd, humourless and irritating, she inspired great affection in many of those who knew her. Albert Camus described her as "the only great spirit of our times".
老子（ろうし）は、古代中国の哲学者であり、道教創案の中心人物。「老子」の呼び名は「偉大な人物」を意味する尊称と考えられている。書物『老子』（またの名を『老子道徳経』）を書いたとされるがその履歴については不明な部分が多く、実在が疑問視されたり、生きた時代について激しい議論が行われたりする。道教のほとんどの宗派にて老子は神格(en)として崇拝され、三清の一人である太上老君の神名を持つ。
中国の言い伝えによると、老子は紀元前6世紀の人物とされる。歴史家の評は様々で、彼は神話上の人物とする意見、複数の歴史上の人物を統合させたという説、在命時期を紀元前4世紀とし戦国時代の諸子百家と時期を同じくするという考えなど多様にある。
老子は中国文化の中心を為す人物のひとりで、貴族から平民まで彼の血筋を主張する者は多く李氏の多くが彼の末裔を称する。歴史上、彼は多くの反権威主義的な業績を残したと受け止められている。
Socrates ( 469 BC ? 399 BC) was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Many would claim that Plato's dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity.
Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who also lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions are asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand. It is Plato's Socrates that also made important and lasting contributions to the fields of epistemology and logic, and the influence of his ideas and approach remains strong in providing a foundation for much western philosophy that followed.
木田 元（1928年9月7日 - ）は、日本の哲学者。専攻は、現象学の研究。中央大学名誉教授。
モーリス・メルロー＝ポンティ等の現代西洋哲学の主要な著作を、平易な日本語に翻訳した。マルティン・ハイデッガー、エドムント・フッサールの研究でも知られる。
