The Most Famous
PHILOSOPHERS from Russia
This page contains a list of the greatest Russian Philosophers. The pantheon dataset contains 1,081 Philosophers, 28 of which were born in Russia. This makes Russia the birth place of the 12th most number of Philosophers behind Spain and Poland.
Top 10
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Russian Philosophers of all time. This list of famous Russian Philosophers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Russian Philosophers.
1. Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)
With an HPI of 90.76, Immanuel Kant is the most famous Russian Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 165 different languages on wikipedia.
Immanuel Kant (UK: , US: , German: [ɪˈmaːnu̯eːl ˈkant]; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher (a native of the Kingdom of Prussia) and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy. In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued space and time are mere "forms of intuition" that structure all experience and that the objects of experience are mere "appearances". The nature of things as they are in themselves is unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the philosophical doctrine of skepticism, he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), his most well-known work. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal to think of the objects of experience as conforming to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition and the categories of our understanding, so that we have a priori cognition of those objects. Kant believed that reason is the source of morality, and that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's religious views were deeply connected to his moral theory. Their exact nature, however, remains in dispute. He hoped that perpetual peace could be secured through an international federation of republican states and international cooperation. His cosmopolitan reputation, however, is called into question by his promulgation of scientific racism for much of his career, even though he changed those views in the last decade of his life.
2. Mikhail Bakunin (1814 - 1876)
With an HPI of 77.80, Mikhail Bakunin is the 2nd most famous Russian Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 90 different languages.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin ( bə-KOO-nin; 30 May 1814 – 1 July 1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist. He is among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major figure in the revolutionary socialist, social anarchist, and collectivist anarchist traditions. Bakunin's prestige as a revolutionary also made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, gaining substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe. Bakunin grew up in Pryamukhino, a family estate in Tver Governorate. From 1840, he studied in Moscow, then in Berlin hoping to enter academia. Later in Paris, he met Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who deeply influenced him. Bakunin's increasing radicalism ended hopes of a professorial career. He was expelled from France for opposing the Russian Empire's occupation of Poland. After participating in the 1848 Prague and 1849 Dresden uprisings, Bakunin was imprisoned, tried, sentenced to death, and extradited multiple times. Finally exiled to Siberia in 1857, he escaped via Japan to the United States and then to London, where he worked with Alexander Herzen on the journal Kolokol (The Bell). In 1863, Bakunin left to join the insurrection in Poland, but he failed to reach it and instead spent time in Switzerland and Italy. In 1868, Bakunin joined the International Workingmen's Association, leading the anarchist faction to rapidly grow in influence. The 1872 Hague Congress was dominated by a struggle between Bakunin and Marx, who was a key figure in the General Council of the International and argued for the use of the state to bring about socialism. In contrast, Bakunin and the anarchist faction argued for the replacement of the state by federations of self-governing workplaces and communes. Bakunin could not reach the Netherlands, and the anarchist faction lost the debate in his absence. Bakunin was expelled from the International for maintaining, in Marx's view, a secret organisation within the International, and founded the Anti-Authoritarian International in 1872. From 1870 until his death in 1876, Bakunin wrote his longer works such as Statism and Anarchy and God and the State, but he continued to directly participate in European worker and peasant movements. In 1870, he was involved in an insurrection in Lyon, France. Bakunin sought to take part in an anarchist insurrection in Bologna, Italy, but his declining health forced him to return to Switzerland in disguise. Bakunin is remembered as a major figure in the history of anarchism, an opponent of Marxism, especially of the dictatorship of the proletariat; and for his predictions that Marxist regimes would be one-party dictatorships ruling over the proletariat, not rule by the proletariat. His book God and the State has been widely translated and remains in print. Bakunin has had a significant influence on thinkers such as Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, Herbert Marcuse, E. P. Thompson, Neil Postman and A. S. Neill as well as syndicalist organizations such as the Wobblies, the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War and contemporary anarchists involved in the modern-day anti-globalization movement.
3. Mikhail Bakhtin (1895 - 1975)
With an HPI of 69.93, Mikhail Bakhtin is the 3rd most famous Russian Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 53 different languages.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin ( bukh-TEEN; Russian: Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin]; 16 November [O.S. 4 November] 1895 – 7 March 1975) was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language. His writings, on a variety of subjects, inspired scholars working in a number of different traditions (Marxism, semiotics, structuralism, religious criticism) and in disciplines as diverse as literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology. Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s.
4. Georgi Plekhanov (1856 - 1918)
With an HPI of 68.32, Georgi Plekhanov is the 4th most famous Russian Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 53 different languages.
Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov ( plih-KAH-nəf; Russian: Гео́ргий Валенти́нович Плеха́нов, IPA: [ɡʲɪˈorɡʲɪj vəlʲɪnʲˈtʲinəvʲɪtɕ plʲɪˈxanəf] (listen); 11 December [O.S. 29 November] 1856 – 30 May 1918) was a Russian revolutionary, philosopher and Marxist theoretician. He was a founder of the social-democratic movement in Russia and was one of the first Russians to identify himself as "Marxist". Facing political persecution, Plekhanov emigrated to Switzerland in 1880, where he continued in his political activity attempting to overthrow the Tsarist regime in Russia. Plekhanov is known as the "father of Russian Marxism". Born to a Tatar noble family of serf-owning landlords and minor government officials, Plekhanov grew up to reject his social class. As a student he became a Marxist. Although he supported the Bolshevik faction at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, Plekhanov soon rejected the idea of democratic centralism, and became one of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky's principal antagonists in the 1905 Saint Petersburg Soviet. During World War I, Plekhanov rallied to the cause of the Entente powers against Germany and he returned home to Russia following the 1917 February Revolution. Plekhanov was an opponent of the Bolshevik state which came to power in the autumn of 1917. He died the following year of tuberculosis in Finland. Despite his vigorous and outspoken opposition to Lenin's political party in 1917, Plekhanov was held in high esteem by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union following his death as a founding father of Russian Marxism and a philosophical thinker.
5. Vladimir Solovyov (1853 - 1900)
With an HPI of 65.59, Vladimir Solovyov is the 5th most famous Russian Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 46 different languages.
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (Russian: Влади́мир Серге́евич Соловьёв; also romanized as Soloviev; 28 January [O.S. 16 January] 1853 – 13 August [O.S. 31 July] 1900) was a Russian philosopher, theologian, poet, pamphleteer, and literary critic, who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century and in the spiritual renaissance of the early 20th century.
6. Alexandre Koyré (1892 - 1964)
With an HPI of 63.23, Alexandre Koyré is the 6th most famous Russian Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 31 different languages.
Alexandre Koyré (, French: [kwaʁe]; born Alexandr Vladimirovich (or Volfovich) Koyra (Russian: Александр Владимирович (Вольфович) Койра); 29 August 1892 – 28 April 1964), also anglicized as Alexander Koyre, was a French philosopher of Russian origin who wrote on the history and philosophy of science.
7. Alexandre Kojève (1902 - 1968)
With an HPI of 61.94, Alexandre Kojève is the 7th most famous Russian Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 32 different languages.
Alexandre Kojève ( koh-ZHEV, French: [alɛksɑ̃dʁ kɔʒɛv]; 28 April 1902 – 4 June 1968) was a Russian-born French philosopher and statesman whose philosophical seminars had an immense influence on 20th-century French philosophy, particularly via his integration of Hegelian concepts into twentieth-century continental philosophy. As a statesman in the French government, he was instrumental in the formation of the European Union.
8. Johann Georg Hamann (1730 - 1788)
With an HPI of 61.84, Johann Georg Hamann is the 8th most famous Russian Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.
Johann Georg Hamann (; German: [ˈhaːman]; 27 August 1730 – 21 June 1788) was a German Lutheran philosopher from Königsberg known as "the Wizard of the North" who was one of the leader figures of post-Kantian philosophy. His work was used by his student J. G. Herder as the main support of the Sturm und Drang movement, and is associated with the Counter-Enlightenment and Romanticism.He introduced Kant, also from Königsberg, to the works of both Hume – waking him from his "dogmatic slumber" – and Rousseau. Hamann was influenced by Hume, but he used his views to argue for rather than against Christianity.Goethe and Kierkegaard were among those who considered him to be the finest mind of his time. He was also a key influence on Hegel and Jacobi. Long before the linguistic turn, Hamann believed epistemology should be replaced by the philosophy of language.
9. Yuri Lotman (1922 - 1993)
With an HPI of 59.86, Yuri Lotman is the 9th most famous Russian Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 39 different languages.
Juri Lotman (Russian: Ю́рий Миха́йлович Ло́тман; 28 February 1922 – 28 October 1993) was a prominent Russian-Estonian literary scholar, semiotician, and historian of Russian culture, who worked at the University of Tartu. He was elected a member of the British Academy (1977), Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1987), Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1989) and Estonian Academy of Sciences (1990). He was a founder of the Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School. The number of his printed works exceeds 800 titles. His archive (which is now kept at the University of Tallinn and at the Tartu University Library) which includes his correspondence with a number of Russian and Western intellectuals, is immense.
10. Lev Gumilyov (1912 - 1992)
With an HPI of 59.44, Lev Gumilyov is the 10th most famous Russian Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 42 different languages.
Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev (also Gumilyov; Russian: Лев Никола́евич Гумилёв; 1 October 1912 – 15 June 1992) was a Soviet historian, ethnologist, anthropologist and translator. He had a reputation for his highly unorthodox theories of ethnogenesis and historiosophy. He was an exponent of Eurasianism.
Pantheon has 28 people classified as philosophers born between 1700 and 1947. Of these 28, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased philosophers include Immanuel Kant, Mikhail Bakunin, and Mikhail Bakhtin. As of April 2022, 3 new philosophers have been added to Pantheon including Alexander Men, Aleksei Losev, and Albert Razin.
Deceased Philosophers
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Immanuel Kant
1724 - 1804
HPI: 90.76
Mikhail Bakunin
1814 - 1876
HPI: 77.80
Mikhail Bakhtin
1895 - 1975
HPI: 69.93
Georgi Plekhanov
1856 - 1918
HPI: 68.32
Vladimir Solovyov
1853 - 1900
HPI: 65.59
Alexandre Koyré
1892 - 1964
HPI: 63.23
Alexandre Kojève
1902 - 1968
HPI: 61.94
Johann Georg Hamann
1730 - 1788
HPI: 61.84
Yuri Lotman
1922 - 1993
HPI: 59.86
Lev Gumilyov
1912 - 1992
HPI: 59.44
Sergei Bulgakov
1871 - 1944
HPI: 57.76
Ivan Ilyin
1883 - 1954
HPI: 57.68
Newly Added Philosophers (2022)
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Alexander Men
1935 - 1990
HPI: 49.88
Aleksei Losev
1893 - 1988
HPI: 47.77
Albert Razin
1940 - 2019
HPI: 45.11
Which Philosophers were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 25 most globally memorable Philosophers since 1700.
