The philosophers listed below have had significant impact on ethical and moral philosophy, though for one reason or another I didn’t choose to rank them among the Top 20. (St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, has had enormous influence in moral philosophy, but his ideas largely followed from Aristotle.) Also note that these philosophers reigned mostly prior to 1950. For philosophers whose influence began later, see The Modern Debate (except for Rawls and Nozick, who are listed among the Top 20). Remember, this is just for reference, and the fact that I chose to list these philosophers here, instead of in the Top 20, is not meant to pass judgment on the them one way or another, other than to indicate, in my opinion, their greater or lesser relevance to the major points most frequently debated in rights discussions today. Nonetheless, anyone seriously interested in human rights philosophy should be familiar with the following names. (Additional suggestions are welcome, but I’d like to keep the list from becoming unwieldy.) Alphabetically: (birth/death dates in parentheses) (Note: These links will take you off site, typically to an outside biography. In order to return to this site, you will need to use your “back” button.) Augustine (354-430) Aquinas (1225-1274) Austin (1790-1859) Berkeley (1685-1753) Cicero (106-43 B.C.) Constant (1767-1830) de Las Casas (1484-1566) Descartes (1596-1650) Dewey (1859-1952) Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Gandhi (1869-1948) Grotius (1583-1645) Hegel (1770-1831) James (1842-1910) Machiavelli (1469-1527) Montesquieu (1689-1755) Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) Sidgwick (1838-1900) Solon (638-558 BC) Spinoza (1632-1677) Stirner (1806-1856) Thoreau (1817-1862) Weber (1864-1920)