Philosophers as librarians: fourth century B.C. to eighteenth century A.D.

Abstract

This is a descriptive essay that aims to list which prominent philosophers of Western thought had a close- ness with library activities in period from the 4th century b.c. to the 18th century a.d. The approach to this subject and the corresponding methodology were detonated by the series “The Adventure of Thought”, led by Fernando Savater. From this, we proceeded to search the biographies of librarian philosophers. The results of the research about the thinkers who had an interest in libraries are Aristotle, Andronicus of Rhodes, Leibniz, Hume and Kant. The general conclusion is that there were, indeed, philosophers in the reporting period that were related to libraries, both in the management of the same, and in the document analysis and intellectual production.