be postponed to the advantage of others."

Number 9

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 — 1980)

Some philosophers exist on an elitist plane where it takes a Ph.D. to understand what they're talking about. Sartre was different in that he wrote a series of works, most notably stage plays, such as No Exit , which were targeted at the general public. His main area of study was existentialism (he was one of the founders of the philosophy), as Being and Nothingness clearly indicates.

Sartre always wondered what the difference between being and being a human being is. Very close to the ideas proposed by Karl Marx, he believed that man is "condemned to be free" and that making free choices is a great responsibility. However, the experience of World War II taught him tobe more optimistic about the future of mankind.

Famed quote: "Hell is other people."

Number 8

Michel Foucault (1926 — 1984)

Like all great philosophers, Foucault didn't pretend to know all the answers. This Frenchman was an academic who constantly questioned the nature of things. With interests in human nature, he rejected common assumptions and chose instead to study how humans and science functioned in society, using history and sociology to reach his conclusions.

He believed that the concept of madness is purely an invention of the Age of Reason. In books like Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences , he theorized that there exist multiple reasons for anything that happens in life, in any given historical society. Moreover, one of his most famous hypotheses