The most influential philosophers

Ranked by who they shaped

Georg W. F. Hegel, Aristotle and Immanuel Kant lead the 279 thinkers on this map.

The ranking counts direct followers: how many thinkers on the map are documented as drawing on each one. Ties go to the thinker with more people downstream, anywhere along the 448 lines of influence. It ranks this map, a curated slice of the Western canon and its roots, and makes no claim about history as a whole.

The top 50

#	Thinker	Dates	Direct followers	Downstream	Wikipedia languages
1	Georg W. F. Hegel	1770–1831	16	67	140
2	Aristotle	384–322 BC	15	179	232
3	Immanuel Kant	1724–1804	15	102	182
4	Karl Marx	1818–1883	14	23	215
5	Avicenna	980–1037	9	151	160
6	Edmund Husserl	1859–1938	9	16	82
7	Plato	c. 428–348 BC	8	195	221
8	Augustine of Hippo	AD 354–430	8	147	164
9	John Locke	1632–1704	8	119	150
10	Martin Heidegger	1889–1976	8	11	117
11	René Descartes	1596–1650	7	131	182
12	Baruch Spinoza	1632–1677	7	109	122
13	Friedrich Nietzsche	1844–1900	7	17	177
14	Socrates	c. 470–399 BC	6	214	205
15	Zeno of Citium	c. 334–262 BC	6	163	68
16	Ludwig Wittgenstein	1889–1951	6	10	127
17	Pseudo-Dionysius	c. 5th–6th c.	5	122	35
18	Gottlob Frege	1848–1925	5	36	76
19	Ferdinand de Saussure	1857–1913	5	10	96
20	Vladimir Solovyov	1853–1900	5	5	49
21	Parmenides	c. 515–450 BC	4	203	85
22	Pythagoras	c. 570–495 BC	4	200	160
23	Michel de Montaigne	1533–1592	4	134	88
24	David Hume	1711–1776	4	108	111
25	Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz	1646–1716	4	107	157
26	Jean-Jacques Rousseau	1712–1778	4	106	162
27	F. W. J. Schelling	1775–1854	4	76	71
28	Søren Kierkegaard	1813–1855	4	24	115
29	Fyodor Dostoevsky	1821–1881	4	20	185
30	Bertrand Russell	1872–1970	4	18	127
31	Roman Jakobson	1896–1982	4	6	57
32	W. V. O. Quine	1908–2000	4	4	51
33	Averroes	1126–1198	3	139	111
34	Maimonides	1138–1204	3	138	86
35	Cicero	106–43 BC	3	137	133
36	Thomas Hobbes	1588–1679	3	115	112
37	Arthur Schopenhauer	1788–1860	3	30	111
38	Ludwig Feuerbach	1804–1872	3	25	75
39	John Stuart Mill	1806–1873	3	23	94
40	William James	1842–1910	3	13	88
41	Pyotr Chaadayev	1794–1856	3	11	29
42	Rudolf Carnap	1891–1970	3	6	57
43	Thales of Miletus	c. 624–546 BC	2	223	118
44	Empedocles	c. 494–434 BC	2	197	83
45	Protagoras	c. 490–420 BC	2	197	71
46	Diogenes of Sinope	c. 404–323 BC	2	166	84
47	Crates of Thebes	c. 365–285 BC	2	165	32
48	Plotinus	AD 204–270	2	158	79
49	Al-Kindi	c. 801–873	2	154	73
50	Seneca	c. 4 BC – AD 65	2	152	99

The most widely translated

A second measure of reach: how many language editions of Wikipedia carry an article on the thinker. It is the number that sets a card's rarity in the game.

Confucius 241 languages
Aristotle 232 languages
Plato 221 languages
Karl Marx 215 languages
Charles Darwin 210 languages
Socrates 205 languages
Leo Tolstoy 190 languages
Fyodor Dostoevsky 185 languages
René Descartes 182 languages
Immanuel Kant 182 languages

About the ranking

Who is the most influential philosopher?: On this map it is Georg W. F. Hegel, with 16 direct followers, ahead of Aristotle and Immanuel Kant.
How is influence measured?: By documented lines of influence, drawn from Wikipedia articles and the Wikidata “influenced by” property. A direct follower is a thinker with a line from the ranked one; downstream counts everyone reachable along those lines.
Where can I see the lines themselves?: On the influence map, or on each thinker's own page.