The Most Famous
PHILOSOPHERS from South Africa
This page contains a list of the greatest South African Philosophers. The pantheon dataset contains 1,267 Philosophers, 2 of which were born in South Africa. This makes South Africa the birth place of the 62nd most number of Philosophers behind Vietnam, and Bangladesh.
Top 2
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary South African Philosophers of all time. This list of famous South African Philosophers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography's online popularity.
1. John McDowell (b. 1942)
With an HPI of 54.94, John McDowell is the most famous South African Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages on wikipedia.
John Henry McDowell (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, ancient philosophy, nature, and meta-ethics, McDowell's most influential work has been in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. McDowell was one of three recipients of the 2010 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award, and is a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the British Academy. McDowell has, throughout his career, understood philosophy to be "therapeutic" and thereby to "leave everything as it is" (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations), which he understands to be a form of philosophical quietism (although he does not consider himself to be a "quietist"). The philosophical quietist believes that philosophy cannot make any explanatory comment about how, for example, thought and talk relate to the world but can, by offering re-descriptions of philosophically problematic cases, return the confused philosopher to a state of intellectual perspicacity. However, in defending this quietistic perspective McDowell has engaged with the work of leading contemporaries in such a way as to therapeutically dissolve what he takes to be philosophical error, while defending major positions and interpretations from major figures in philosophical history, and developing original and distinctive theses about language, mind and value. In each case, he has tried to resist the influence of what he regards as a scientistic, reductive form of philosophical naturalism that has become very commonplace in our historical moment, while nevertheless defending a form of "Aristotelian naturalism," bolstered by key insights from Hegel, Wittgenstein, and others.
2. David Benatar (b. 1966)
With an HPI of 53.38, David Benatar is the 2nd most famous South African Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.
David Benatar (; born 1966) is a South African philosopher, academic, and author. He is best known for his work in moral philosophy and for advancing the position of antinatalism, the view that coming into existence is a serious harm. He is the author of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (2006), in which he argues that procreation is always morally wrong because it imposes harm by bringing sentient beings into existence. Central to this view is his asymmetry argument, which holds that the absence of pain is good even if no one benefits from it, while the absence of pleasure is not bad unless someone is deprived of it. Benatar has also written on topics including death, ethics, human suffering, and gender discrimination. He is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Controversial Ideas.
People
Pantheon has 2 people classified as South African philosophers born between 1942 and 1966. Of these 2, 2 (100.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living South African philosophers include John McDowell, and David Benatar. As of April 2024, 2 new South African philosophers have been added to Pantheon including John McDowell, and David Benatar.
