German philosophy German philosophy German philosophy, here taken to mean either (1) philosophy in the German language or (2) philosophy by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz through Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein to contemporary philosophers. Søren Kierkegaard (a Danish philosopher) is frequently included in surveys of German (or Germanic) philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was both a philosopher and a mathematician who wrote primarily in
Brian O'Shaughnessy (philosopher) Brian O'Shaughnessy (philosopher) Brian Joseph O'Shaughnessy (10 September 1925 – 7 July 2010) was an Australian philosopher of mind, who lived in London and taught at King's College London. He published influential papers on the nature of physical action and the will, at a time when this was quite unfashionable. He was born in Kew, a suburb of Melbourne in Australia, where his father was a doctor. He studied at Xavier College and then attended Melbourne University, firstly studying engineering before changing to philosophy. He graduated in 1950 and then went to England to continue his studies at Oxford University.