Philippe Van Parijs (French: [filip vɑ̃ paʁɛjs]; born May 23, 1951) is a Belgian political philosopher and political economist, best known as a proponent and main defender of the concept of an unconditional basic income[2] and for the first systematic treatment of linguistic justice.

[3] In 2020, he was listed by Prospect as the eighth-greatest thinker for the COVID-19 era, with the magazine writing, "Today’s young UBI enthusiasts draw on the books and tap the networks of this Belgian polymath, who championed it before it was fashionable.

He also coordinates the Pavia Group[7] with Kris Deschouwer and, with Paul De Grauwe, the Re-Bel initiative.

As proposed by Van Parijs, such freedom should be feasible through taxing the scarce, valued social good of jobs, as a form of income redistribution.

In order to address the injustice arising from the privilege enjoyed by English as a global lingua franca,[11] he discusses a wide range of measures such as a language tax[12] which would be paid by English-speaking countries, a ban on the dubbing of films, and the enforcement of a linguistic territoriality principle that would protect weaker languages.