Deaths of philosophers

The documented history of philosophy is often said to begin with the notable death of Socrates. Since that time, there have been many other noteworthy deaths of philosophers.

List

• 495 BC – According to legend, Pythagoras was killed during an attack on the house of Milo led by Cylon of Croton, though this is highly contested.
• 479 BC – Confucius died of natural causes following the loss of his son and favorite disciples.
• 475 BC – Neanthes of Cyzicus reported that Heraclitus died covered in dung after failing to cure himself of dropsy.
• 458 BC – Zeno of Elea, according to Valerius Maximus, was tortured and killed by the tyrant Nearchus of Elea after biting off his ear.
• 435 BC – According to legend, Empedocles leapt to his death into the crater of Mount Etna.
• 420 BC – According to some reports, Protagoras died in a shipwreck.
• c. 400 BC – Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) died of food poisoning.
• 399 BC – Socrates, condemned to death for corrupting the young, drank hemlock amongst his friends, as described in Plato's Phaedo.
• 348 BC – Plato either died while being serenaded by a Thracian flute-playing girl, at a wedding feast, or in his sleep.
• 338 BC – According to legend, Isocrates starved himself to death.
• 323 BC – Accounts differ regarding the death of Diogenes of Sinope. He is alleged to have died from eating raw octopus, from being bitten by a dog, and from holding his breath. He left instructions for his corpse to be left outside the city walls as a feast for the animals and birds.
• 322 BC – Aristotle died of stomach disease.
• 320 BC – Ancient sources state that Nicocreon the tyrant had Anaxarchus pounded to death in a mortar with iron pestles; Anaxarchus is said to have made light of the punishment.
• 314 BC – Xenocrates tripped over a bronze pot, hit his head, and died.
• 270 BC – Epicurus died of kidney stones.
• 262 BC – Zeno of Citium tripped and broke his toe and then died from holding his breath.
• 212 BC – Archimedes was murdered by a Roman soldier during the Siege of Syracuse despite orders that he not be harmed.
• 207 BC – Chrysippus is said to have died of laughter after giving wine to his donkey and watching it attempt to eat figs.
• 52 BC – Lucretius is alleged to have killed himself after being driven mad by taking a love potion, although this is debated.
• 43 BC – Cicero was beheaded by two killers, allegedly sent by Mark Antony, while leaving his villa in Formiae.
• 65 AD – Paul the Apostle was beheaded on the orders of Nero.
• 65 AD – Seneca was forced to commit suicide after falling out with Nero.
• 100 AD – John the Apostle died of natural causes.
• 180 – Marcus Aurelius likely died of the Antonine Plague.
• 415 – Hypatia was lynched by a mob of Christians.
• 420 – St. Jerome died naturally in Bethlehem.
• 430 – Saint Augustine died in Hippo while the city was under siege by the Vandals.
• 526 – Boethius was strangled on the orders of the Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great.
• 1141 – Judah Halevi was killed on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
• 1180 – Abraham ibn Daud was martyred.
• 1204 – Maimonides died of exhaustion after extensive traveling.
• 1274 – Thomas Aquinas died of a traumatic brain injury while giving commentary on the Song of Songs.
• 1277 – Pope John XXI (usually identified with the logician Peter of Spain) was killed by the collapse of a roof.
• 1284 – Siger of Brabant was stabbed to death by his clerk.
• 1415 – Jan Hus was executed at the Council of Constance.
• 1487 – John Argyropoulos supposedly died after consuming too much watermelon.
• 1527 – Niccolò Machiavelli died of a stomach ailment.
• 1535 – Thomas More was beheaded in 1535 after he had fallen out of favour with King Henry VIII.
• 1546 – Martin Luther died of Menière's disease.
• 1572 – Girolamo Maggi was executed by strangulation on the orders of a prison captain in Constantinople; Maggi had been incarcerated after being arrested during the Siege of Famagusta.
• 1572 – Peter Ramus was killed in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.
• 1600 – Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake by the Catholic Church for allegedly committing heresy.
• 1619 – Lucilio Vanini was executed by strangulation by the local authorities of Toulouse, France for allegedly being an atheist and blasphemer.
• 1626 – Francis Bacon died of pneumonia, contracted while stuffing snow into a chicken as an experiment in refrigeration.
• 1640 – Uriel da Costa, after being beaten and trampled by a religious group he had offended, went home and shot himself.
• 1650 – René Descartes died of a cold after rising early to instruct Queen Christina of Sweden.
• 1677 – Baruch Spinoza died of a pulmonary ailment, thought to be either tuberculosis or silicosis, brought on by inhaling glass dust while working as a lens grinder.
• 1683 – Algernon Sidney was executed for treason.
• 1704 – John Locke died of respiratory disease.
• 1716 – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz died in Hanover on 14 November 1716 after a prolonged case of arthritis and gout. The only one to attend his funeral was his secretary, Johann Georg von Eckhart.
• 1778 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau died of an apoplectic stroke.
• 1778 – Voltaire died after a five-day journey to Paris to attend the opening of his tragedy Irène.
• 1790 – Benjamin Franklin died of pleurisy.
• 1794 – The Marquis de Condorcet died in prison.
• 1814 – Johann Gottlieb Fichte died of typhus in Berlin, during the campaign against Napoleon.
• 1826 – Thomas Jefferson died of complications from a variety of issues likely stemming from undiagnosed prostate cancer.
• 1831 – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel died of a gastrointestinal disease during a cholera outbreak in Berlin.
• 1832 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died of a heart attack in Weimar.
• 1837 – Giacomo Leopardi died in Naples during a cholera epidemic, perhaps from pulmonary edema.
• 1860 – Arthur Schopenhauer died of pulmonary-respiratory failure
• 1862 – Henry David Thoreau died of tuberculosis.
• 1864 – Ferdinand Lassalle died in a duel.
• 1866 – William Whewell was thrown from his horse and sustained fatal injuries.
• 1876 – Philipp Mainländer hanged himself in his residence in Offenbach
• 1882 – Ralph Waldo Emerson died of pneumonia.
• 1882 – William Jevons drowned while bathing.
• 1883 – Karl Marx died of bronchitis.
• 1889 – Benno Kerry died as a result of an ear infection.
• 1900 – Friedrich Nietzsche died of syphilis after 10 years of being in a psychosis-like state.
• 1901 – Paul Rée fell to his death from a mountain.
• 1903 – Otto Weininger committed suicide by shooting himself.
• 1906 – Ludwig Boltzmann hanged himself.
• 1910 – Carlo Michelstaedter committed suicide by shooting himself.
• 1911 – Paul Lafargue died with his wife, Laura Marx, in a suicide pact.
• 1915 – Emil Lask was killed in action as a soldier in World War I.
• 1916 – J. Howard Moore committed suicide by shooting himself.
• 1917 – Adolf Reinach fell outside Diksmuide in Flanders during World War I.
• 1919 – Rosa Luxemburg was murdered by the Freikorps.
• 1924 – Vladimir Lenin died of a brain hemorrhage.
• 1928 – Alexander Bogdanov died as a result of one of his experiments in blood transfusion.
• 1930 – Frank P. Ramsey died after "contracting jaundice" at the age of 26 (jaundice by itself is not a cause of death but instead indicates hemolytic or hepatic disease).
• 1931 – Jacques Herbrand died in a mountaineering accident in the Alps at the age of 23.
• 1936 – G. K. Chesterton died of congestive heart failure.
• 1936 – Moritz Schlick was murdered by an insane student.
• 1937 – Gustav Shpet was executed after being accused of involvement in an anti-Soviet organization.
• 1937 – Pavel Florensky was executed by the NKVD.
• 1937 – Antonio Gramsci died during his imprisonment by Benito Mussolini.
• 1939 – Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz committed suicide by taking an overdose of barbital and trying to slit his wrists a day after the Soviet invasion of Poland; it was planned to be a joint suicide with a close friend of his, but she survived the attempt.
• 1940 – Walter Benjamin committed suicide at the Spanish-French border after attempting to flee from the Nazis.
• 1940 – Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, along with most of his family, by Soviet agent Ramón Mercader on direct orders from Joseph Stalin.
• 1941 – Henri Bergson died of pneumonia in occupied Paris, which he supposedly contracted after standing in a queue for several hours in order to register as a Jew.
• 1941 – Kurt Grelling was killed by the Nazis.
• 1941 – Edith Stein died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz concentration camp.
• 1942 – Georges Politzer was executed by the Nazis.
• 1943 – Simone Weil starved herself to death (the technical cause of death was tuberculosis, possibly aggravated by malnutrition).
• 1944 – Jean Cavaillès was shot by the Gestapo.
• 1944 – Albert Lautman was shot by the Gestapo.
• 1944 – Marc Bloch was shot by the Gestapo for his work in the French Resistance.
• 1944 – Giovanni Gentile was murdered by communist partisans.
• 1944 – Eugenio Colorni was murdered by a Nazi-Fascist ambush in 1944.
• 1945 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging.
• 1945 – Gerhard Gentzen died of malnutrition while being detained in a Russian prison camp.
• 1945 – Ernst Bergmann committed suicide after the Allied forces captured Leipzig.
• 1945 – Johan Huizinga died in De Steeg where he was being held in detention by the Nazis.
• 1945 – Miki Kiyoshi died in prison; he had been imprisoned after helping a friend on the run from the authorities.
• 1948 – Mahatma Gandhi was shot and killed by a Hindu zealot.
• 1951 – Ludwig Wittgenstein died of cancer in Cambridge, three days after his 62nd birthday. His last words: "Tell them I've had a wonderful life."
• 1954 – Alan Turing ate a cyanide-poisoned apple. He was believed at the time to have committed suicide due to chemical depression, but his death was possibly an accident.
• 1960 – Albert Camus died in an automobile accident.
• 1961 – Maurice Merleau-Ponty died of a stroke while preparing a lecture on Descartes.
• 1963 – W. E. B. DuBois died of diphtheria in Ghana.
• 1965 – Malcolm X was assassinated.
• 1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
• 1969 – Theodor Adorno died of a heart attack after attempting to climb a 3000 meter high mountain.
• 1970 – Bertrand Russell died of the flu in Wales. There was no religious ceremony.
• 1971 – Richard Montague was beaten to death, presumably by a male prostitute.
• 1973 – Amílcar Cabral was assassinated while fighting for the independence of Portuguese colonies in Africa.
• 1977 – Jan Patočka died of an apoplexy after having been interrogated by the Czechoslovak secret police for eleven hours.
• 1977 – Jacques Maritain died in Toulouse.
• 1978 – Kurt Gödel starved himself to death for fear of being poisoned.
• 1979 – Evald Ilyenkov committed suicide.
• 1979 – Nicos Poulantzas committed suicide by jumping out of the twentieth floor of an apartment building.
• 1980 – Roland Barthes was struck in the street by a laundry van after leaving a luncheon with future French President François Mitterrand.
• 1980 – Jean-Paul Sartre, a notorious chainsmoker, died of an edema of the lung.
• 1983 – Arthur Koestler committed joint suicide with his third wife, Cynthia, by taking an overdose of drugs following a painful struggle with disease.
• 1984 – Michel Foucault was the first high-profile French personality to die of AIDS.
• 1986 – Simone de Beauvoir died of pneumonia.
• 1989 – Wilfrid Sellars died of complications from long-term alcohol abuse.
• 1990 – Louis Althusser died of a heart attack.
• 1992 – Félix Guattari died of a heart attack.
• 1994 – Paul Feyerabend died of a brain tumour.
• 1994 – David Stove committed suicide by hanging himself following a painful struggle with disease.
• 1994 – Sarah Kofman committed suicide on Nietzsche's birthday.
• 1994 – Guy Debord committed suicide by shooting himself following a painful struggle with polyneuritis.
• 1995 – Gilles Deleuze committed suicide by jumping out of his fourth-story apartment window following years of debilitating respiratory ailments.
• 1996 – Thomas Kuhn died of cancer of the bronchial tubes and throat.
• 1998 – Dimitris Liantinis committed suicide on the mountains of the Taygetus.
• 2000 – Willard Van Orman Quine died of Alzheimer's disease.
• 2001 – David Lewis died of complications from diabetes.
• 2002 – Robert Nozick died of stomach cancer.
• 2002 – John Rawls died of heart failure.
• 2003 – Bernard Williams died of heart failure.
• 2003 – Donald Davidson died of complications following knee replacement surgery.
• 2004 – Jacques Derrida died of pancreatic cancer.
• 2005 – Pope John Paul II died of heart failure from hypotension and circulatory from septic shock.
• 2006 – Murray Bookchin died of congestive heart failure.
• 2007 – Richard Rorty died of pancreatic cancer.
• 2007 – André Gorz committed joint suicide with his wife by lethal injection.
• 2008 – David Foster Wallace hanged himself on the back porch of his house in Claremont, California.
• 2009 – G. A. Cohen died of a stroke.
• 2016 – Hilary Putnam died of mesothelioma, a type of cancer.
• 2017 – Anne Dufourmantelle drowned while trying to rescue two children.
• 2017 – Mark Fisher committed suicide by hanging.
• 2019 – Ágnes Heller drowned in Lake Balaton near Balatonalmádi while she was swimming.
• 2020 – Roger Scruton died of lung cancer.
• 2020 – Bernard Stiegler committed suicide.
• 2020 – David Graeber died of necrotic pancreatitis.
• 2022 – Saul Kripke died of pancreatic cancer.
• 2022 – Pope Benedict XVI died from cardiogenic shock.
• 2024 – Daniel Dennett died of interstitial lung disease.
• 2024 – Gustavo Gutiérrez died of pneumonia in a convent.
• 2026 – Jürgen Habermas died on 14 March 2026.

References

Further reading

• Ava Chitwood, Death by Philosophy, University of Michigan Press, 2004.
• Simon Critchley, Book of Dead Philosophers, Vintage, 2009.
• David Palfrey, "How Philosophers Die", British Academy Review, Issue 10 (2007)
• Anthony Quinton, 'Deaths of philosophers', The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford, 1995, 2005.