Branches
of philosophy
metaphysics - study of ultimate reality
epistemology - study of origin of knowledge
ethics - study of morals
aesthetics - study of beauty
Greek
Ionian School (500s BC)
Thales of Miletus - all matter is a form of water
Anaximander - student of Thales; all matter is a form of apeiron
("the boundless")
Anaximenes - all matter is a form of air
Pythagorean School (500s BC)
Pythagoras - established school in Crotona Italy; emphasized myths,
reincarnation,
musical
pitch, and math
Heraclitean School (500s BC)
Heraclitus of Ephesus - all matter made of fire; only reality is the
law of change, Logos
Eleatic School (400s BC)
Parmenides - established school in Elea Italy; emphasized unchanging
universe; "being
is"
Zeno of Elea - student of Parmenides; introduced four logical paradoxes
to prove the
unity
of being
Pluralists (400s BC)
Empedocles - proposed the four elements of air, water, earth, and fire
and the two forces
of
love and strife; eternal cycle of
chaos
Anaxagoras - all matter is composed of tiny seeds;
proposed cosmic evolution
Atomists (300s BC)
Leucippus
Democritus - student of Leucippus; proposed atomic theory and
deterministic
materialism
Sophists (400s BC)
Protagoras - "Man is the measure of all things"; natural
science and religion are
worthless;
one should only be ethical if it is to his advantage; sophists were
known as deceitful and insincere
Socratic School (400s BC)
Socrates - sentenced to death 399 BC; refused payment for his lectures;
held that all
people have full knowledge of ultimate truth;
Socrates' paradox: no man does evil
voluntarily
Platonic School (300s BC)
Plato - student of Socrates; recorded Socrates' teachings in his
dialogues; virtue =
wisdom; proposed theory of Ideas, doctrine of Forms,
the intelligible and sensible
realms, and the Absolute Idea of the Good; wrote the
Republic (discussion of justice),
Meno (Socrates shows innate knowledge of all people
by teaching a slave the
Pythagorean theorem), Apology (Socrates' trial
defense), Crito (Socrates' defense of
obedience to the state), Phaedo (death of Socrates),
Symposium (a drama), Parmenides
(theory of Forms), Laws (political discussions),
Timaeus (thoughts on cosmology and
science)
Aristotelian School (300s BC)
Aristotle - student of Plato; tutor to Alexander the Great; founded
Lyceum and
Peripatetic ("walking") school; founded
logic, syllogism, scientific method; forms
contained in objects; natural hierarchical order of
inanimate, vegetative, animal, rational,
and heavenly ether; emphasized happiness; wise king
best government but limited
democracy a good compromise; wrote Organon
("instrument" logic), Physics, Metaphysics,
Poetics (literary criticism, definitions of drama)
Hellenistic
and Roman
Cynics (300s BC)
Diogenes of Sinope - held civilization in contempt as artificial;
advocated self-sufficient
simple
life; called "Kyon" (dog)
Epicureanism (200s BC)
Epicurus - "philosopher of the garden"; proposed atomic
theory with uniform downward
motion;
emphasized free will and attaining maximum pleasure
Lucretius - wrote On the Nature of Things
Stoicism (200s BC)
Zeno of Citium - insensitive to material comforts; adopted Heraclitean
ideas of fire and
Logos;
each person is part of God; natural law
Epictetus
Marcus Aurelius - emperor; wrote Meditations
Skepticism (200s BC)
Pyrrho - humans can't obtain knowledge; happiness only obtained by
suspending
judgment;
wouldn't change directions as he approached a cliff
Carneades - beliefs gained from experience are probable but not certain
Jewish-Hellenistic (0s AD)
Philo Judaeus - proposed a transcendent God and advocated theocracy;
matter is source
of
all evil
Neoplatonism (200s AD)
Anmonius Saccus
Plotinus - student of Anmonius; become one with God in ecstasy; trinity
of the One,
Logos,
and World Soul; the One is beyond rational thought
Porphyry - student of Plotinus; wrote the Enneads
Medieval
Augustinian (300s AD)
St. Augustine - saw philosophy and religion as complementary; combined
Christianity
and
Platonic ideas; earthly happiness not possible; wrote The City of God
Miscellaneous (400s - 600s)
Boethius - revived Aristotelian thought; wrote The Consolation of
Philosophy
John Erigena (Irish) - pantheistic Christianity; advocated trinity of
the One, Logos, and
the
World Soul like Plotinus
Scholasticism (1100s - 1400s)
Avicenna (Arab) - united Neoplatonism, Aristotelian, and Islam
Solomon ben Yehuda Ibn Gabirol - united Jewish and Greek philosophy
Anselm of Canterbury - proposed logical realism
Roscelin - proposed nominalism (only concrete objects exist, universals
are intangible);
declared
a heretic for saying there are three separate beings in the Trinity
Peter Abelard (French) - proposed conceptualism (compromise of realism
and
nominalism);
had tragic love affair with Heloise
Averroes (Spanish-Arab) - known as "the Commentator" for
commentaries on Aristotle;
proposed
double-truth doctrine with separate realms of faith and reason
Moses Maimonides (Jewish) - rabbi; gave rational explanations for
Jewish doctrine;
wrote
Guide for the Perplexed
Alexander of Hales (English) - substantial form accounts for soul's
immortality
St. Bonaventure (Italian) - advocated pantheistic mysticism with goal
of ecstatic union
with
God
St. Albertus Magnus (German) - endorsed all Aristotelian thought
Roger Bacon (English) - monk; advocated learning by experimentation
St. Thomas Aquinas - Dominican monk; learn scientific truths from
experimentation and
religious truths by faith, but the two are not
inconsistent; gave five proofs of God's
existence; wrote Summa Theologica and Summa Contra
Gentiles; followers called Thomists
John Dun Scotus (Scottish) - advocated double-truth doctrine except
that God's existence
is provable; divine will controls nature (not vice
versa); Duns came to mean dumb (dunce)
because of some
of his irrational followers who opposed Thomists
William of Ockham (English) - Ockham's Razor: don't assume existence of
more than is
logically
necessary
Nicholas of Cusa and Nicolaus Copernicus (Polish) - earth revolves
around sun
Giordano Bruno (Italian) - worked on philosophical implications of
Copernicus's ideas
Modern
Mechanism and Materialism (1400s - 1600s)
Francis Bacon (English) - denounced authority and Aristotelian logic;
advocated
inductive inference and experimentation; wrote Novum
Organum, the Advancement of
Learning, the New Atlantis (advocating scientific
academies)
Galileo (Italian) - applied geometry to study of motion; showed nature
obeys mechanical
laws
Rene Descartes (French) - math is model for all science; "I think
therefore I am" became
the basic fact from which all others are deduced;
dualism separates mind and body; wrote
Philosophical Essays and Discourse on Method
Thomas Hobbes (English) - reduced all to physical relations and
mechanics; justified
egoism
as natural; supported absolute monarchy; wrote De Cive and Leviathan
Baruch Spinoza (Dutch) - al nature is based on a few basic axioms (like
geometry);
banished by Jews in Amsterdam; all things are modes
of God; psychophysical parallelism
explains interaction between mind and body; advocated
rational self-interest
John Locke (English) - focus on epistemology and empiricism; supported
constitutional
government; led to utilitarianism; wrote Essay
Concerning Human Understanding and Two
Treatises of Government
Humanism (1500s)
Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch) - emphasized dignity and worth of the
individual; wrote On
the
Freedom of the Will
Philipp Melanchthon (German) - participated in Reformation
Idealism and Skepticism (1600s - 1700s)
Gottfreid Wilhelm Leibniz (German) - infinitely small force units
called monads are
closed worlds but mirror each other; God is Monad of
Monads; founded idealism
George Berkeley (Irish) - advocated idealism; to exist means to be
perceived;
epistemological view of phenomenalism (matter
analyzed in terms of sensations); wrote
Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
and The Three Dialogues
Between Hylas and Philoneus
David Hume (Scottish) - said there is no evidence for mind, spirit, or
God; no
justification for cause and effect relationships;
wrote A Treatise of Human Nature and
An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Immanuel Kant (German) - combined empiricism (knowledge gained by
experience) and
rationalism (knowledge gained by deduction); limited
knowledge to the phenomenal
world; moral principles are categorical imperatives
with no exceptions; emphasized
individual conscience; wrote Critique of Pure Reason
Voltaire (French, Francois Marie Arouet) - advocated Deism; reduced
religion to beliefs
justified
by rational inference from nature
Blaise Pascal (French) - wrote Pensees
Emanuel Swedenborg (Swedish) - mystic
Jean Jacques Rosseau (French) - state is based on a social contract
with its citizens;
civilization is a corruption of human nature; wrote
Confessions and the Social Contract
Absolute Idealism (1800s)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (German) - will is the ultimate reality; world
created by absolute
ego;
called an atheist
Friedrich von Schelling (German) - reduced everything to self-realizing
activities of the
absolute
spirit; romanticism
Transcendentalists
Ralph Waldo Emerson (US) - oversoul, self-reliance; wrote
Self-Reliance,
American
Scholar, Nature
Henry David Thoreau (US) - wrote Walden and Civil Disobedience
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (German) - truth is a process not a
state; source of
reality is the absolute spirit that becomes concrete
by dialectrical triadic states with thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis; history is more real than
science; the state is the highest absolute
spirit; wrote Phenomenology of Mind
Arthur Scholpenhauser (German) - nature and reality are products of
irrational will; only
escape
is through art; wrote The World as Will and Idea
Auguste Comte (French) - advocated positivism; all knowledge is in
positive (factual)
science;
arranged sciences with sociology at top
John Stuart Mill (British) - wrote Utilitarianism, advocating greatest
good for greatest
number
Jeremy Bentham (British) - enunciated utilitarianism
Soren Kierkegaard (Danish) - defended felling; subjective problem
solving methods;
wrote
Fear and Trembling
Evolutionary (1800s)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (German) - advocated dialectrical
materialism; matter is
the
ultimate reality; historical materialism; wrote Communist Manifesto
Herbert Spencer (British) - "survival of the fittest"
philosophy
Friedrich Nietzsche (German) - "will to power" is source of
all value; called for return
from religious values to primitive and natural values
of courage and strength; called
Christianity "slave morality"; wrote Thus
Spake Zarathustra
Pragmatism (1800s)
Charles Sanders Pierce (US) - formulated pragmatic theory defining
concept as
the
predictions it makes
William James (US) - formulated pragmatic theory of truth; all beliefs
are
evaluated
by their usefulness
Francis Bradley (British) - no relationships exist because there is
only one real
subject,
the real itself; all else is contradictory
Pragmatic Idealism (1900s)
Josiah Royce (US) - human life is the effort of finite self to expand
into absolute
self
John Dewey (US) - advocated experimental naturalism and
instrumentalism;
advocated
education to prepare children for a creative life
Henri Bergson (French) - proposed evolutionary vitalism
Edmund Husserl (German) - founded school of phenomenology; studied
structures
of consciousness
Alfred North Whitehead (British) - developed highly technical system of
concepts; 1900s
show failures of mechanistic science; things are
living processes; wrote
Principia Mathematica with Russell
George Santayana (US) - combined pragmatism, Platonism, and
materialism; stressed
aesthetics
Beredetto Croce (Italian) - idealist
Logical empiricism (logical positivism; analytical philosophy)
Bertrand
Russell (British) - advocated empiricism and utilitarianism; applied
math to philosophy; developed logical empiricism
(established at Vienna; combination
of Hume's positivism and Cartesian rigor; metaphysics
and theology are inadequate;
experimentation)
GE
Moore (British) - realist revolt against idealism; applied common sense
AJ
Ayer (British) - wrote Language Truth and Logic
Rudolph
Carnap (US)
Gilbert
Ryle (British) - wrote The Concept of Mind
Ludwig
Wittgenstein (German) - wrote Tractatus Logicus philosophicus;
linguistic
analysis
Existential Philosophy (1900s) - based on existence, freedom, and
choice
Martin Heidegger (German) - substitute Nothingness for God as source of
values;
combines
work of Husserl and Kierkegaard; wrote Being and Time
Karl Jaspers (German) - finds God (Transcendence) in human emotions
Jose Ortega y Gasset (Spanish) - defended intuition
Martin Buber (Austrian) - combined Jewish mysticism with existential
thought
Karl Barth (Swiss) - knowledge is more emotional than science
Reinhold Niebuhr (US)
Paul Tillich (US) - brought depth psychology to Protestantism
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (French)
Jean Paul Sartre (French) - humans project themselves out of
nothingness by asserting
values
and assuming moral responsibility; wrote Being and Nothingness
Others
JL Austin (British) - ordinary-language philosopher
Jacques Maritain (French) - Neo-Thomist
Lyman
Abbot (US, 1800s-1900s) - advocate of Christian Socialism
Felix
Adler (US, 1800s-1900s) - founded Ethical Culture Society
Bahaullah
(Mirza Husayn Ali, Persian, 1800s) - founded Baha'i
Karl
Barth (Swiss, 1900s) - Protestant theologian
Thomas
a Becket (English, 1100s) - archbishop of Canterbury; murdered by Henry II's
men
St.
Benedict (Italian, 500s) - founded Benedictines
John
Biddle (English, 1600s) - founder of English Unitarianism
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer (German, 1900s) - Lutheran theologian executed by Nazis
William
Brewster (English, 1600s) - headed Pilgrims
Emil
Brunner (Swiss, 1900s) - Protestant theologian
Buddha
(Siddhartha Gautama, Indian, 500s-400s BC) - founded Buddhism
John
Calvin (French, 1500s) - leader in Protestant Reformation
William
Ellery Channing (US, 1800s) - spokesman for Unitarianism
Confucius
(Chinese, 500s-400s BC) - founder of Confucianism
John
Cotton (English, 1600s) - Puritan theologian
Thomas
Cranmer (English, 1500s) - wrote Book of Common Prayer; worked for Henry VIII
Mary
Baker Eddy (US, 1800s) - founded Christian Science; wrote Science and Health
Jonathan
Edwards (US, 1700s) - preacher in Great Awakening
George
Fox (British, 1600s) - founded Society of Friends (Quakers)
St.
Francis of Assisi (Italian, 1200s) - founded Franciscans
Jan
Hus (Bohemian, 1300s-1400s) - religious reformer; burned at stake
Ignatius
of Loyola (Spanish, 1500s) - founded Jesuits
William
Inge (British, 1800s-1900s) - explored mystic aspects of Christianity
Thomas
a Kempis (German, 1400s) - wrote Imitation of Christ
John
Knox (Scottish, 1500s) - leader in Protestant Reformation
Lao-Tzu
(Chinese, 500s BC) - founded Taoism
Martin
Luther (German, 1500s) - leader in Protestant Reformation; posted 95 thesis
1517
Cotton
Mather (US, 1700s) - orthodox Puritan; founded Yale
Thomas
Merton (US, 1900s) - Trappist monk; wrote The Seven Storey Mountain
Muhammad
(Arab, 600s) - prophet of Islam
Dwight
Moody (US, 1800s) - evangelist
Elijah
Muhammad (US, 1900s) - leader of Black Muslims
Heinrich
Muhlenberg (German, 1700s) - organized Lutheran Church in America
John
H Newman (British, 1800s) - Catholic cardinal; led Oxford Movement; wrote
Apologia pro Vita Sua
St.
Patrick (Irish, 400s) - brought Christianity to Ireland
St.
Paul (Roman, 0s) - Christian missionary and epistle writer
Norman
Vincent Peale (US, 1900s) - wrote The Power of Positive Thinking
Charles
T. Russell (US, 1800s-1900s) - founded Jehovah's Witnesses
Friedrich
Schleiermacher (German, 1700s-1800s) - Protestant theologian
Albert
Schweitzer (German, 1900s) - medical missionary
Joseph
Smith (US, 1800s) - founder of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons)
Billy
Sunday (US, 1900s) - evangelist
Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin (French, 1900s) - Catholic priest; paleontologist; wrote
The Divine Milieu
Daisetz
Teitaro Suzuki (Japanese, 1900s) - Buddhist scholar
Roger
Williams (US, 1600s) - championed separation of church and state; founded
Rhode Island
John
Wycliffe (English, 1300s) - reformer; Bible translator
Brigham
Young (US, 1800s) - led Mormons to Utah
Huldrych
Zwingli (Swedish, 1500s) - leader of Protestant Reformation in Switzerland