Hendrik Gerhardus Stoker (1899–1993) was a Calvinistic philosopher. He is known for creating his own philosophical system called "Philosophy of the creation-idea." (1933).Johan Heyns said in "Denkers deur die eeue" that Stoker is one of the greatest philosophers that Africa has ever produced. He studied at the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education and the University of Cologne, and he completed his doctoral dissertation on "Nature and the forms of conscience" under Max Scheler.

Max Ferdinand Scheler was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers, Scheler developed the philosophical method of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Given that school's utopian ambitions of re-founding all of human knowledge, Scheler was nicknamed the "Adam of the philosophical paradise" by José Ortega y Gasset.