Deaths of philosophers

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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.

  • 435 B.C.E. According to legend, Empedocles leapt to his death into the crater of Etna.
  • 420 B.C.E. According to some reports, Protagoras died in a shipwreck.
  • 399 B.C.E. Socrates, condemned to death for corrupting the young, drank hemlock amongst his friends as described in Plato’s Phaedo.
  • 338 B.C.E. According to legend, Isocrates starved himself to death.
  • 207 B.C.E. Chrysippus is said to have died from laughter after giving wine to his donkey and seeing it attempt to eat figs.
  • 52 B.C.E. Lucretius is alleged to have killed himself after being driven mad by taking a love potion.
  • 65 Seneca was forced to commit suicide after falling out with Emperor Nero.
  • 415 Hypatia was killed by a mob of Christians.
  • 526 Boethius was strangled on the orders of the Ostrogoth king Theodoric by whom he was employed.
  • 1141 Judah Ha-Levi was killed on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
  • 1180 Abraham Ibn Daud was martyred.
  • 1277 Peter of Spain was killed by the collapse of a roof.
  • 1284 Siger of Brabant was stabbed to death by his clerk.
  • 1415 John Hus was executed at the Council of Constance.
  • 1535 Thomas More was beheaded.
  • 1572 Peter Ramus was killed in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
  • 1600 Giordano Bruno was burnt by the Inquisition.
  • 1619 Lucilio Vanini was also burnt by the Inquisition.
  • 1626 Francis Bacon died of a cold 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 was killed by a cold acquired through his rising early to instruct Queen Christina of Sweden.
  • 1794 The Marquis de Condorcet died in prison.
  • 1866 William Whewell was thrown from his horse and sustained fatal injuries.
  • 1882 William Jevons was drowned while bathing.
  • 1901 Paul Rée fell to his death from a mountain.
  • 1906 Ludwig Boltzmann hanged himself.
  • 1928 Alexandr Bogdanov died in an experiment in blood transfusion.
  • 1931 Jacques Herbrand died in a mountaineering accident in the Alps.
  • 1936 Moritz Schlick was murdered by an insane student.
  • 1937 Gustav Shpet was executed.
  • 1937 Antonio Gramsci died during his imprisonment by Mussolini.
  • 1940 Walter Benjamin committed suicide at the Spanish-French border, after attempting to flee from the Nazis.
  • 1940 Leon Trotsky was axe murdered.
  • 1941 Kurt Grelling was killed by the Nazis.
  • 1943 Simone Weil starved herself to death.
  • 1944 Giovanni Gentile was murdered by communist partisans.
  • 1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed.
  • 1945 Miki Kiyoshi died in prison.
  • 1948 Mohandas Gandhi was shot and killed by a Hindu zealot.
  • 1954 Alan Turing is believed to have committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple.
  • 1960 Albert Camus died in an automobile accident.
  • 1971 Richard Montague was beaten to death, presumably by a male prostitute.
  • 1973 Amilcar Cabral was assassinated while fighting for the independence of Portuguese colonies in Africa.
  • 1978 Kurt Gödel starved himself to death by refusing to eat for fear of being poisoned.
  • 1979 Evald Ilyenkov committed suicide.
  • 1984 Michael Foucault first French personage to die of AIDS contraction - linked to his philandering in San Francisco.
  • 1994 David Stove committed suicide after a painful struggle with disease.
  • 1995 Gilles Deleuze committed suicide by jumping out of his fourth-story apartment window.

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