The History of Philosophy

The first philosopher — sought the single stuff behind all things.

Proposed the boundless 'apeiron' and drew the first map of the world.

India's materialist and empiricist heterodoxy — only perception is knowledge, only this world is real.

24th Tīrthaṅkara of Jainism — radical nonviolence and the many-sidedness of truth.

Said air is the source of all, transformed by condensation and rarefaction.

Number is the essence of reality; founded a mystical mathematical brotherhood.

Mocked man-made gods; glimpsed one non-human God and the limits of knowledge.

Semi-legendary founder of Daoism and the Dao De Jing — the Way and non-action.

Awakened teacher of suffering's end — the Four Noble Truths and the Middle Way.

Teacher of virtue, ritual, and humaneness who shaped East Asian civilization.

'Everything flows' — reality is ceaseless change governed by the Logos.

Argued from pure reason that Being is one, changeless, and eternal.

'In everything a portion of everything'; Mind (Nous) orders the cosmos.

Four roots (earth, air, fire, water) mixed by Love and Strife.

Defended Parmenides with paradoxes showing motion and plurality absurd.

'Man is the measure of all things' — the first great relativist.

Master rhetorician who argued that nothing exists — and if it did, we couldn't know it.

Founder of atomism — 'nothing happens in vain, but all from reason and necessity.'

Knew that he knew nothing; died for the examined life.

Eleatic who argued Being is infinite — and an admiral who beat the Athenian fleet.

First Pythagorean to publish; put a 'central fire', not the earth, at the cosmos's heart.

Founder of Mohism — impartial care, meritocracy, and against wasteful war.

Reality is atoms and void — a purposeless, mechanical universe.

Socratic ascetic and founder of Cynicism — virtue alone suffices for happiness.

The Socratic who made pleasure the goal — founder of Cyrenaic hedonism.

Pythagorean statesman, mathematician, and the friend who saved Plato's life.

Soldier-historian whose memoirs preserve a practical, down-to-earth Socrates.

Reality lies in eternal Forms; founded the Academy and wrote the dialogues.

The Cynic who lived in a jar and mocked every convention.

The systematizer of everything — logic, nature, ethics, politics.

The 'Second Sage' of Confucianism who held that human nature is good.

Aristotle's successor and the 'father of botany.'

Daoist master of spontaneity, relativity, and the freedom of the open mind.

The gentle Cynic who gave away a fortune — and taught Zeno the Stoic.

Founder of Skepticism — suspend judgement to find peace.

Cynic who chose the ragged life over wealth — one of antiquity's few named women thinkers.

Pleasure as tranquillity; do not fear the gods or death.

Founder of Stoicism — live in agreement with nature and reason.

The boxer-turned-Stoic who drew water by night and led the Stoa.

Turned Plato's Academy skeptical — suspend judgement, act on the reasonable.

Confucian realist who held human nature is bad and must be reformed by culture.

Master theorist of Legalism — rule by law, method, and power, not virtue.

The 'second founder' of Stoicism who systematized its logic.

The Academy's greatest skeptic — argued for and against justice on successive days.

Founder of Vaiśeṣika — an ancient Indian atomism of substances and categories.

Founder of Middle Stoicism who softened the Stoa and carried it to Rome.

The Stoic polymath who measured the earth and bound all knowledge into one system.

Roman statesman who gave Latin its philosophical vocabulary and preserved Greek thought.

Cast Epicurean physics into sublime Latin verse to free humanity from fear.

Revived Pyrrhonism and codified the 'Ten Modes' of suspending judgement.

Fused the Torah with Plato; father of the allegorical reading of scripture.

Stoic statesman and playwright who taught how to live — and how to die.

The 'Roman Socrates' — philosophy is practice, and women too should study it.

Platonist priest and biographer whose Lives and Moralia shaped Western character.

Born a slave; taught that freedom lies in what is 'up to us'.

Roman emperor and Stoic who wrote the Meditations to himself.

Compiler of the Yoga Sūtras — the classical philosophy and psychology of yoga.

Founder of Madhyamaka Buddhism — the philosophy of emptiness (śūnyatā).

Founder of Nyāya — India's great school of logic, debate, and epistemology.

Systematized ancient Skepticism; our fullest source on it.

Founder of Neoplatonism — all reality flows from and returns to the One.

Plotinus' editor, whose 'Isagoge' framed a thousand years of logic.

Made ritual ('theurgy') central to Neoplatonism and multiplied its divine hierarchy.

Founder of Yogācāra Buddhism — the systematic path of 'consciousness-only'.

Systematizer of Sāṃkhya — the dualism of consciousness (puruṣa) and nature (prakṛti).

Co-founder of Yogācāra — 'consciousness-only' Buddhist idealism.

Fused Christianity with Platonism and wrote the first great autobiography.

Mathematician and Neoplatonist teacher of Alexandria, murdered by a mob.

The last great pagan systematizer — Neoplatonism as rigorous, geometric metaphysics.

Semi-legendary first patriarch of Chan (Zen) — 'a direct pointing to the mind'.

'Last of the Romans, first of the Scholastics' — wrote philosophy's great prison book.

Anonymous mystic who fused Proclus with Christianity and gave the West negative theology.

Founder of Buddhist logic and epistemology — the 'father of medieval Indian logic'.

The greatest Buddhist logician — perfected the epistemology of perception and inference.

Sixth Patriarch of Chan (Zen) — sudden awakening and the Buddha-nature within.

Great systematizer of Advaita (non-dual) Vedānta — Brahman alone is real.

The 'Philosopher of the Arabs' who first married Greek philosophy to Islam.

Carolingian Irishman who built a daring Neoplatonic system of all reality.

The 'Second Teacher' after Aristotle and founder of Islamic political philosophy.

First great Jewish philosopher; used reason (kalām) to defend the faith.

The supreme system-builder of Islamic philosophy and medicine.

Revived Platonism in Byzantium and put philosophy back at the center of learning.

Founder of Vishishtadvaita — qualified non-dualism and a philosophy of devotion.

Founder of Neo-Confucian metaphysics — the 'Supreme Ultimate' and the diagram of cosmic order.

Andalusian poet-philosopher whose Neoplatonism reached the Latins as 'Avicebron'.

'Faith seeking understanding'; invented the ontological argument for God.

Co-founder of Neo-Confucian 'principle' philosophy — the 'Cheng' of the Cheng-Zhu school.

Theologian-Sufi who challenged the philosophers and reconciled reason with mysticism.

Poet who defended the God of Abraham against the God of the philosophers.

Brilliant, combative logician of universals — and the lover of Héloïse.

Cistercian mystic of love who distrusted Abelard's cold dialectic.

Author of the 'Sentences' — the textbook every medieval theologian had to master.

Visionary abbess, composer, and natural philosopher — a rare medieval woman's voice.

'The Commentator' on Aristotle who defended philosophy against al-Ghazālī.

Great synthesizer of Neo-Confucianism — principle (li), vital force (qi), and the investigation of things.

The greatest Jewish philosopher; reconciled the Torah with Aristotle.

Founder of the Neo-Confucian 'School of Mind' — the universe is the mind.

Founder of 'Illuminationist' philosophy — reality as gradations of light.

The 'Greatest Master' of Sufi metaphysics and the 'unity of being'.

Oxford's founding master of light-metaphysics and the mathematical study of nature.

The 'Universal Doctor' who brought Aristotle and empirical science into Christendom.

The most influential master between Aquinas and Scotus; defender of divine illumination.

'Doctor Mirabilis' who championed experiment and mathematics centuries early.

The 'Seraphic Doctor' who kept Augustine and mysticism at the heart of Scholasticism.

Synthesized Aristotle with Christianity — the towering system of Scholasticism (Thomism).

Catalan visionary whose 'Art' sought a universal logic to convert the world.

Founder of Dvaita — thoroughgoing dualism and the eternal distinction of soul and God.

Radical Aristotelian ('Latin Averroist') whose theses provoked the 1277 Condemnation.

Beguine mystic burned for a book on the soul annihilated in divine love.

Dominican mystic of the soul's 'divine spark' and detachment — union with God within.

The 'Subtle Doctor' — univocity of being, 'thisness', and the primacy of the will.

Argued that political authority rises from the people — a radical medieval secularism.

Nominalist of 'Ockham's razor' who cut away universals and split faith from reason.

Defender of Hesychast mysticism; distinguished God's unknowable essence from his energies.

Nominalist logician of Paris who theorized 'impetus', anticipating inertia.

Founder of the philosophy of history and a science of society.

Last of the Byzantine Platonists who reignited Plato in the Renaissance West.

'Learned ignorance' and the coincidence of opposites — a bridge from medieval to modern.

Founder of modern political realism — how power is actually won and kept.

Neo-Confucian idealist of innate moral knowing and the unity of knowledge and action.

Inventor of the essay; a skeptical, humane inquiry into the self.

Prophet of the scientific method — knowledge is power, built from experiment.

Materialist of the social contract — the state as escape from the war of all against all.

Father of modern philosophy — 'I think, therefore I am' and methodic doubt.

Mathematician-mystic of the wager and the limits of reason.

Rationalist of the one substance — God-or-Nature, and freedom through understanding.

Father of empiricism and liberalism — the mind a blank slate, government by consent.

Rationalist polymath of monads and the best of all possible worlds.

Idealist empiricist — 'to be is to be perceived'; no matter, only minds and ideas.

Theorist of the separation of powers and the spirit of the laws.

The Enlightenment's fiercest wit — tolerance, free speech, and 'crush the infamous'.

Enlightenment physicist-philosopher who synthesized Newton and Leibniz — and 'living force'.

The great skeptic — cause, self, and reason dissolved by experience and habit.

Prophet of natural goodness and the general will — 'man is born free, and everywhere in chains.'

Moral philosopher of sympathy and the 'invisible hand' of the market.

The Copernican revolution in philosophy — the mind shapes experience; act on universal law.

Founder of modern feminist philosophy — reason and rights for women.

German Idealist of the dialectic — reality and history as the unfolding of Spirit.

Philosopher of the blind Will — pessimism, and release through art and compassion.

The great liberal utilitarian — the greatest happiness, liberty, and the rights of women.

Father of existentialism — truth is subjectivity, and faith is a leap.

Historical materialist and critic of capital — 'the point is to change it.'

Founder of pragmatism and semiotics — meaning is in practical effects.

Pragmatist and psychologist — truth is what works, and the will to believe.

'God is dead' — the will to power, the critique of morality, and self-creation.

Father of modern logic — quantification, sense and reference, the foundations of arithmetic.

Founder of phenomenology — 'to the things themselves', and the structures of consciousness.

Founder of the Kyoto School — 'pure experience' and the logic of 'nothingness'.

Logician, analytic pioneer, and public conscience — logic, language, and reason against dogma.

Philosopher of language, twice over — the limits of language, and meaning as use.

Thinker of Being — Dasein, being-in-the-world, and being-toward-death.

Philosopher of science and the open society — knowledge grows by refutation.

Existentialist of radical freedom — 'existence precedes essence.'

Political thinker of action, plurality, and 'the banality of evil'.

Founder of modern feminist philosophy — 'one is not born, but becomes, a woman.'

Analytic naturalist — no dogma of analytic truth, and knowledge as one web of belief.

Reviver of political philosophy — justice as fairness, behind a veil of ignorance.

Historian-philosopher of science — 'paradigm shifts' and scientific revolutions.

Philosopher of decolonization — race, the psychology of oppression, and liberation.

Analyst of power and knowledge — how discipline, discourse, and norms make the subject.

Utilitarian of the expanding circle — animal liberation and effective altruism.

Philosopher of capabilities and emotions — what people are actually able to do and be.

Philosopher of mind — the 'hard problem' of consciousness.