Western and Muslim political thought, the two traditions tested in CSS/PMS/FPSC Political Science, Philosophy and Pakistan Affairs papers. Select a name for their type of thought, birth and death years, and a full profile.
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53 of 53 philosophers
| Philosopher | Born – Died | Tradition | Type | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Socrates | c. 470 BC – 399 BC | Western political thought | Philosopher of ethics (dialectical method) | Socratic method (dialectic questioning), "know thyself", teacher of Plato |
| Plato | 428 BC – 348 BC | Western political thought | Rationalist and Idealist | Theory of Forms, the philosopher-king, The Republic |
| Aristotle | 384 BC – 322 BC | Western political thought | Empirical rationalist and Realist | Classification of governments, Politics, father of political science |
| Al-Farabi | c. 872 – 950 | Muslim political thought | Muslim Peripatetic philosopher | Al-Madina al-Fadila (the Virtuous City), synthesis of Greek and Islamic philosophy |
| Al-Mawardi | 972 – 1058 | Muslim political thought | Muslim jurist (Political theorist) | Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya, theory of the Caliphate |
| Ibn Sina (Avicenna) | 980 – 1037 | Muslim political thought | Muslim Peripatetic philosopher-physician | The Canon of Medicine, The Book of Healing, Avicennism |
| Nizam-ul-Mulk Tusi | 1018 – 1092 | Muslim political thought | Statesman (Siyasatnama) | Siyasatnama (Book of Government), Seljuk vizier |
| Imam Al-Ghazali | 1058 – 1111 | Muslim political thought | Muslim theologian (Ash'ari) and Sufi | Ihya al-Ulum al-Din, Tahafut al-Falasifa (critique of the philosophers) |
| Ibn Rushd (Averroes) | 1126 – 1198 | Muslim political thought | Muslim rationalist philosopher | Reconciling reason and faith, Tahafut al-Tahafut, commentaries on Aristotle |
| Ibn Taymiyyah | 1263 – 1328 | Muslim political thought | Muslim jurist (Salafi reformer) | Al-Siyasa al-Shar'iyya, governance under Sharia |
| Ibn Khaldun | 1332 – 1406 | Muslim political thought | Historian-sociologist | Muqaddimah, the theory of Asabiyyah, father of sociology and historiography |
| Niccolò Machiavelli | 1469 – 1527 | Western political thought | Political realist | The Prince, political realism, the ends justify the means |
| Francis Bacon | 1561 – 1626 | Western political thought | Empiricist | Inductive method, Novum Organum, father of empiricism and the scientific method |
| Thomas Hobbes | 1588 – 1679 | Western political thought | Social contract theorist (absolutist) | Leviathan, social contract, state of nature |
| René Descartes | 1596 – 1650 | Western political thought | Rationalist | "Cogito ergo sum", father of modern philosophy, rationalism |
| Baruch Spinoza | 1632 – 1677 | Western political thought | Rationalist (Pantheist) | Pantheism, rationalism, Ethics |
| John Locke | 1632 – 1704 | Western political thought | Empiricist and Liberal | Natural rights, Two Treatises of Government, father of liberalism |
| George Berkeley | 1685 – 1753 | Western political thought | Empiricist (subjective Idealist) | Subjective idealism, "esse est percipi" |
| Montesquieu | 1689 – 1755 | Western political thought | Constitutionalist | Separation of powers, The Spirit of the Laws |
| Shah Waliullah | 1703 – 1762 | Muslim political thought | Islamic reformer | Islamic reformer, Hujjat Allah al-Baligha |
| David Hume | 1711 – 1776 | Western political thought | Empiricist (Skeptic) | Empiricism, skepticism, the problem of induction |
| Jean-Jacques Rousseau | 1712 – 1778 | Western political thought | Social contract theorist | The Social Contract, general will, "Man is born free" |
| Immanuel Kant | 1724 – 1804 | Western political thought | Transcendental idealist (Deontologist) | Categorical imperative, Perpetual Peace, transcendental idealism |
| Jeremy Bentham | 1748 – 1832 | Western political thought | Utilitarian | Founder of utilitarianism, greatest happiness principle |
| Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel | 1770 – 1831 | Western political thought | Idealist (Dialectical) | Dialectics, Philosophy of Right, the ethical state |
| Auguste Comte | 1798 – 1857 | Western political thought | Positivist (Structural Functionalist) | Father of sociology and positivism, the law of three stages |
| John Stuart Mill | 1806 – 1873 | Western political thought | Utilitarian (Liberal) | On Liberty, the harm principle, utilitarianism |
| Søren Kierkegaard | 1813 – 1855 | Western political thought | Existentialist (Religious) | Father of existentialism, Fear and Trembling, the leap of faith |
| Karl Marx | 1818 – 1883 | Western political thought | Dialectical and historical materialist | Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto, historical materialism |
| Herbert Spencer | 1820 – 1903 | Western political thought | Structural functionalist (Social Darwinist) | Organic analogy of society, social Darwinism, "survival of the fittest" |
| Jamaluddin Afghani | 1838 – 1897 | Muslim political thought | Pan-Islamist reformer | Pan-Islamism, anti-colonial reform movement |
| Charles Sanders Peirce | 1839 – 1914 | Western political thought | Pragmatist | Founder of pragmatism, semiotics |
| William James | 1842 – 1910 | Western political thought | Pragmatist | Pragmatism, The Principles of Psychology |
| Émile Durkheim | 1858 – 1917 | Western political thought | Structural functionalist | Social facts, social solidarity, Suicide: A Study in Sociology |
| Henri Bergson | 1859 – 1941 | Western political thought | Intuitionist | Intuitionism, élan vital, Creative Evolution |
| John Dewey | 1859 – 1952 | Western political thought | Pragmatist (Instrumentalist) | Pragmatism, instrumentalism, education reform |
| Max Weber | 1864 – 1920 | Western political thought | Interpretive sociologist (Symbolic Interactionist tradition) | Verstehen (interpretive understanding), bureaucracy, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism |
| Rashid Rida | 1865 – 1935 | Muslim political thought | Islamic modernist | Islamic modernism, the journal Al-Manar |
| Vladimir Lenin | 1870 – 1924 | Western political thought | Marxist–Leninist | Vanguard party, the Bolshevik Revolution, Imperialism |
| Allama Muhammad Iqbal | 1877 – 1938 | Muslim political thought | Poet-philosopher (Muslim modernist) | Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, the idea of Pakistan |
| Martin Heidegger | 1889 – 1976 | Western political thought | Existentialist / Phenomenologist | Existentialism and phenomenology, Being and Time |
| Antonio Gramsci | 1891 – 1937 | Western political thought | Marxist (Cultural theorist) | Cultural hegemony, Prison Notebooks |
| Mao Zedong | 1893 – 1976 | Western political thought | Marxist (Maoist) | Peasant revolution, On Contradiction, Chinese Communist Party |
| Talcott Parsons | 1902 – 1979 | Western political thought | Structural functionalist | AGIL scheme, structural functionalism, social systems theory |
| Karl Popper | 1902 – 1994 | Western political thought | Critical rationalist (Fallibilist) | The Open Society and Its Enemies, falsifiability |
| Jean-Paul Sartre | 1905 – 1980 | Western political thought | Existentialist (Atheist) | Existentialism, Being and Nothingness, "existence precedes essence" |
| John Rawls | 1921 – 2002 | Western political thought | Social contract theorist (Liberal) | A Theory of Justice, the veil of ignorance |
| Jean-François Lyotard | 1924 – 1998 | Western political thought | Postmodernist | Postmodernism, The Postmodern Condition |
| Michel Foucault | 1926 – 1984 | Western political thought | Postmodernist (Structuralist) | Power/knowledge, Discipline and Punish |
| Pierre Bourdieu | 1930 – 2002 | Western political thought | Sociologist (Structuralist) | Habitus, cultural and social capital, Distinction |
| Jacques Derrida | 1930 – 2004 | Western political thought | Postmodernist (Deconstructionist) | Deconstruction, Of Grammatology |
| Richard Rorty | 1931 – 2007 | Western political thought | Neo-pragmatist | Neo-pragmatism, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature |
| Francis Fukuyama | 1952 – — | Western political thought | Liberal political theorist | The End of History and the Last Man |