Erich Rothacker (12 March 1888 – 11 August 1965) was a German philosopher, a leading exponent of philosophical anthropology.

Rothacker's first major work, Logik und Systematik der Geisteswissenschaften (Logic of the Human Sciences, 1920), presents the view that actual historical individuals, whose cognitive equipment is partially created by a specific cultural community while at the same time constantly modifying it, are the elements that constitute the subject of knowledge, rather than a timeless universal entity as it is represented by Descartes or Locke.