Ernest Gellner's prolific writings were anchored in his early philosophical studies in Oxford, notably of Hume and Kant. As a social scientist he drew on Weber, Durkheim, and Malinowski, rejecting both the economic determinism of Marxism and all relativist, idealist currents. His models of nationalism, Islam, and civil society have been much debated, and he exercises a diffuse influence in historical sociology and social anthropology. Gellner's social philosophy of modernity has affinities to that of Popper and Hayek, but he is distinctive because he couples his insistence on the cognitive superiority of Western rationalist individualism with a deep appreciation of the diversity of human communities.