The Most Famous

PHILOSOPHERS from Spain

This page contains a list of the greatest Spanish Philosophers. The pantheon dataset contains 1,267 Philosophers, 33 of which were born in Spain. This makes Spain the birth place of the 10th most number of Philosophers behind India, and China.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Spanish Philosophers of all time. This list of famous Spanish 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 Spanish Philosophers.

1. Seneca the Younger (-4 - 65)

With an HPI of 82.95, Seneca the Younger is the most famous Spanish Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 96 different languages on wikipedia.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger ( SEN-ik-ə; c. 4 BC – AD 65), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature. Seneca was born in Colonia Patricia Corduba in Hispania, and was trained in rhetoric and philosophy in Rome. His father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, and his nephew was the poet Lucan. In AD 41, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica under emperor Claudius, but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca became his advisor and, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, provided competent government for the first five years of Nero's reign. Seneca's influence over Nero declined with time, and in 65 Seneca was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, of which he was probably innocent. His stoic and calm suicide has become the subject of numerous paintings. As a writer, Seneca is known for his philosophical works, and for his plays, which are all tragedies. His prose works include 12 essays and 124 letters dealing with moral issues. These writings constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for ancient Stoicism. As a tragedian, he is best known for plays such as his Medea, Thyestes, and Phaedra. Seneca had an immense influence on later generations—during the Renaissance he was "a sage admired and venerated as an oracle of moral, even of Christian edification; a master of literary style and a model [for] dramatic art."

2. Averroes (1126 - 1198)

With an HPI of 82.73, Averroes is the 2nd most famous Spanish Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 107 different languages.

Ibn Rushd (Arabic: ابن رشد; full name in Arabic: أبو الوليد محمد بن أحمد بن رشد, romanized: Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Rushd; 14 April 1126 – 11 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes (English: ), was an Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. The author of more than 100 books and treatises, his philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the Western world as The Commentator and Father of Rationalism. Averroes was a strong proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and opposed the Neoplatonist tendencies of earlier Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He also defended the pursuit of philosophy against criticism by Ashari theologians such as Al-Ghazali. Averroes argued that philosophy was permissible in Islam and even compulsory among certain elites. He also argued scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy. In Islamic jurisprudence, he wrote the Bidāyat al-Mujtahid on the differences between Islamic schools of law and the principles that caused their differences. In medicine, he proposed a new theory of stroke, described the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease for the first time, and might have been the first to identify the retina as the part of the eye responsible for sensing light. His medical book Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb, translated into Latin and known as the Colliget, became a textbook in Europe for centuries. His legacy in the Islamic world was modest for geographical and intellectual reasons. In the West, Averroes was known for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were translated into Latin and Hebrew. The translations of his work reawakened western European interest in Aristotle and Greek thinkers, an area of study that had been widely abandoned after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. His thoughts generated controversies in Latin Christendom and triggered a philosophical movement called Averroism based on his writings. His unity of the intellect thesis, proposing that all humans share the same intellect, became one of the best-known and most controversial Averroist doctrines in the West. His works were condemned by the Catholic Church in 1270 and 1277. Although weakened by condemnations and sustained critique from Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism continued to attract followers up to the sixteenth century.

3. Ibn Arabi (1165 - 1240)

With an HPI of 77.05, Ibn Arabi is the 3rd most famous Spanish Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 70 different languages.

Ibn ʿArabī (Arabic: ابن عربي, ALA-LC: Ibn ʻArabī‎; full name: أبو عبد الله محـمـد بن عربي الطائي الحاتمي, Abū ʻAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʻArabī al-Ṭāʼī al-Ḥātimī; 1165–1240) was an Andalusi Arab scholar, mystic, poet, and philosopher, extremely influential within Islamic thought. Out of the 850 works attributed to him, some 700 are authentic while over 400 are still extant. His cosmological teachings became the dominant worldview in many parts of the Muslim world. His traditional titular is Muḥyiddīn (Arabic: محيي الدين; The Reviver of Religion). After he died, and specifically among practitioners of Sufism, he was renowned by the honorific title Shaykh al-Akbar (Arabic: الشيخ الأكبر). This, in turn, was the name from which the "Akbarian" school of Sufism derived its name, making him known as Doctor Maximus (The Greatest Teacher) in medieval Europe. Ibn ʿArabī is considered a saint by some scholars and Muslim communities. Ibn 'Arabi is known for being the first person to explicitly delineate the concept of "Wahdat ul-Wujud" ("Unity of Being"), a monist doctrine which claimed that all things in the universe are manifestations of a singular "reality". Ibn 'Arabi equated this "reality" with the entity he described as "the Absolute Being" ("al-wujud al-mutlaq").

4. Ramon Llull (1232 - 1316)

With an HPI of 72.27, Ramon Llull is the 4th most famous Spanish Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 59 different languages.

Ramon Llull (Catalan: [rəˈmoɲ ˈʎuʎ]; c. 1232 – possibly 25 March 1315/1316), was a philosopher, theologian, poet, missionary, Christian apologist and former knight from the Kingdom of Majorca. He invented a philosophical system known as the Art, conceived as a type of universal logic to prove the truth of Christian doctrine to interlocutors of all faiths and nationalities. The Art consists of a set of general principles and combinatorial operations. It is illustrated with diagrams. A prolific writer, he is also known for his literary works written in Catalan, which he composed to make his Art accessible to a wider audience. In addition to Catalan and Latin, he also probably wrote in Arabic (although no texts in Arabic survive). His books were translated into Occitan, French, and Castilian during his lifetime. Although his work did not enjoy huge success during his lifetime, he has had a rich and continuing reception. In the early modern period his name became associated with alchemical works. More recently he has been recognized as a precursor of the modern field of social choice theory, 450 years before Borda and Condorcet's investigations reopened the field. His ideas also prefigured the development of computation theory.

5. José Ortega y Gasset (1883 - 1955)

With an HPI of 69.23, José Ortega y Gasset is the 5th most famous Spanish Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 57 different languages.

José Ortega y Gasset (Spanish: [xoˈse oɾˈteɣaj ɣaˈset]; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism, and dictatorship. His philosophy has been characterized as a "philosophy of life" that "comprised a long-hidden beginning in a pragmatist metaphysics inspired by William James, and with a general method from a realist phenomenology imitating Edmund Husserl, which served both his proto-existentialism (prior to Martin Heidegger's) and his realist historicism, which has been compared to both Wilhelm Dilthey and Benedetto Croce."

6. Ibn Tufail (1110 - 1185)

With an HPI of 69.07, Ibn Tufail is the 6th most famous Spanish Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 44 different languages.

Ibn Ṭufayl (full Arabic name: أبو بكر محمد بن عبد الملك بن محمد بن طفيل القيسي الأندلسي ʾAbū Bakr Muḥammad bin ʿAbd al-Malik bin Muḥammad bin Ṭufayl al-Qaysiyy al-ʾAndalusiyy; Latinized form: Abubacer Aben Tofail; Anglicized form: Abubekar or Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail; c. 1105 – 1185) was an Arab Andalusian Muslim polymath: a writer, Islamic philosopher, Islamic theologian, physician, astronomer, and vizier. As a philosopher and novelist, he is most famous for writing the first philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (The Living Son of the Vigilant), considered a major work of Arabic literature emerging from Al-Andalus. As a physician, he was an early supporter of dissection and autopsy, which was expressed in his novel.

7. Baltasar Gracián (1601 - 1658)

With an HPI of 68.88, Baltasar Gracián is the 7th most famous Spanish Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 40 different languages.

Baltasar Gracián y Morales, S.J. (Spanish: [baltaˈsaɾ ɣɾaˈθjan]; 8 January 1601 – 6 December 1658), better known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit priest and Baroque prose writer and philosopher. He was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud (Aragón). His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

8. Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021 - 1058)

With an HPI of 68.55, Solomon ibn Gabirol is the 8th most famous Spanish Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 45 different languages.

Solomon ibn Gabirol or Solomon ben Judah (Hebrew: ר׳ שְׁלֹמֹה בֶּן יְהוּדָה אִבְּן גָּבִּירוֹל, romanized: Shlomo ben Yehuda ibn Gabirol, pronounced [ʃ(e)loˈmo ben jehuˈda ʔibn ɡabiˈʁol]; Arabic: أبو أيوب سليمان بن يحيى بن جبيرول, romanized: ’Abū ’Ayyūb Sulaymān bin Yaḥyá bin Jabīrūl, pronounced [ˈʔæbuː ʔæjˈjuːb sʊlæjˈmæːn bɪn ˈjæħjæː bɪn dʒæbiːˈruːl]) was an 11th-century Jewish poet and philosopher in the Neo-Platonic tradition in Al-Andalus. He published over a hundred poems, as well as works of biblical exegesis, philosophy, ethics: xxvii and satire.: xxv One source credits ibn Gabirol with creating a golem, possibly female, for household chores. In the 19th century it was discovered that medieval translators had Latinized Gabirol's name to Avicebron or Avencebrol and had translated his work on Jewish Neo-Platonic philosophy into a Latin form that had in the intervening centuries been highly regarded as a work of Islamic or Christian scholarship.: xxxii As such, ibn Gabirol is well known in the history of philosophy for the doctrine that all things, including soul and intellect, are composed of matter and form ("Universal Hylomorphism"), and for his emphasis on divine will.

9. Miguel de Unamuno (1864 - 1936)

With an HPI of 67.69, Miguel de Unamuno is the 9th most famous Spanish Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 61 different languages.

Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (Spanish: [miˈɣ̞el ð̞e̞ u.naˈmu.no i ˈxu.ɣ̞o]; 29 September 1864 – 31 December 1936) was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright, philosopher, professor of Greek and Classics, and later rector at the University of Salamanca. His major philosophical essay was The Tragic Sense of Life (1912), and his most famous novels were Abel Sánchez: The History of a Passion (1917), a modern exploration of the Cain and Abel story, and Mist (1914), which Literary Encyclopedia calls "the most acclaimed Spanish Modernist novel".

10. Abraham ibn Ezra (1089 - 1167)

With an HPI of 65.60, Abraham ibn Ezra is the 10th most famous Spanish Philosopher. His biography has been translated into 42 different languages.

Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra (Hebrew: ר׳ אַבְרָהָם בֶּן מֵאִיר אִבְּן עֶזְרָא, romanized: ʾAḇrāhām ben Mēʾīr ʾībən ʾEzrāʾ, often abbreviated as ראב"ע; Arabic: إبراهيم المجيد ابن عزرا Ibrāhim al-Mājid ibn Ezra; also known as Abenezra or simply Ibn Ezra, 1089 / 1092 – 27 January 1164 / 23 January 1167) was one of the most distinguished Jewish biblical commentators and philosophers of the Middle Ages. He was born in Tudela, Taifa of Zaragoza (present-day Navarre).

People

Pantheon has 35 people classified as Spanish philosophers born between 4 BC and 1947. Of these 35, 1 (2.86%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Spanish philosophers include Fernando Savater. The most famous deceased Spanish philosophers include Seneca the Younger, Averroes, and Ibn Arabi. As of April 2024, 2 new Spanish philosophers have been added to Pantheon including Francisco Sanches, and Jaime Balmes.