Philosophers Network

Traditionally the first philosopher, who sought a single natural principle (water) behind all things.

• → Taught: Anaximander

Pupil of Thales; proposed the boundless (apeiron) as the origin and drew one of the first world maps.

• ← Taught: Thales
• → Read / studied: Pythagoras
• → Taught: Anaximenes

Founded a philosophical brotherhood that held number to be the essence of reality.

• ← Read / studied: Anaximander
• → Read / studied: Parmenides

Taught that all things flow and that strife is the logos ordering the world.

• ↔ Rivalled: Parmenides
• → Read / studied: Plato

Argued that being is one and change an illusion — the great rival of Heraclitus's flux.

• ← Read / studied: Pythagoras
• ↔ Rivalled: Heraclitus
• → Read / studied: Plato
• → Taught: Zeno of Elea

Co-founder of atomism, holding that reality is atoms and void — a doctrine Epicurus later inherited.

• → Read / studied: Epicurus

Pupil of Anaximander who named air (pneuma) as the arche, thickening and thinning into all things.

• ← Taught: Anaximander
• → Read / studied: Anaxagoras

Brought philosophy to Athens and made Mind (nous) the ordering principle — a book the young Socrates read eagerly.

• ← Read / studied: Anaximenes
• → Read / studied: Socrates

Held that four roots — earth, water, air, fire — mix under Love and part under Strife, a scheme Aristotle inherited.

• → Read / studied: Aristotle

Pupil of Parmenides whose paradoxes of motion defended the One and seeded the study of infinity.

• ← Taught: Parmenides
• → Read / studied: Plato

The leading Sophist, who declared 'man is the measure of all things' — a relativism Socrates and Plato fought.

• ↔ Rivalled: Socrates
• → Read / studied: Gorgias

Sophist and master of rhetoric whose dazzling display speeches provoked Plato's dialogue against him.

• ↔ Rivalled: Plato
• ← Read / studied: Protagoras

Turned philosophy toward ethics and self-examination; taught by question, wrote nothing himself.

• → Taught: Plato
• → Taught: Xenophon
• → Taught: Antisthenes
• ← Read / studied: Anaxagoras
• ↔ Rivalled: Protagoras

Soldier and writer; his Memorabilia preserve a more practical portrait of Socrates than Plato's.

• ← Taught: Socrates

Pupil of Socrates who prized virtue and self-sufficiency, seeding the Cynic movement.

• ← Taught: Socrates
• → Taught: Diogenes of Sinope

Socrates' student who founded the Academy and gave the West its first complete philosophical system.

• ← Read / studied: Parmenides
• ← Read / studied: Heraclitus
• ← Taught: Socrates
• → Taught: Aristotle
• ↔ Rivalled: Diogenes of Sinope
• → Read / studied: Plotinus
• ← Read / studied: Zeno of Elea
• ↔ Rivalled: Gorgias
• → Read / studied: Arcesilaus
• → Read / studied: Hypatia

Studied twenty years in Plato's Academy before founding his own Lyceum and his own system.

• ← Taught: Plato
• ← Read / studied: Empedocles

Founder of Neoplatonism; read Plato as a mystic of the One, shaping late-antique and medieval thought.

• ← Read / studied: Plato
• → Taught: Porphyry

Pupil of Plotinus who edited the Enneads and whose Isagoge became a standard logic primer for a thousand years.

• ← Taught: Plotinus
• → Read / studied: Proclus

Neoplatonist mathematician and astronomer of Alexandria, a renowned teacher of Plato's philosophy.

• ← Read / studied: Plato

Last great systematiser of Neoplatonism, whose Elements of Theology shaped medieval and Renaissance metaphysics.

• ← Read / studied: Porphyry

The archetypal Cynic who lived in a jar and mocked convention — Plato's exasperating rival in the agora.

• ← Taught: Antisthenes
• → Read / studied: Zeno of Citium
• ↔ Rivalled: Plato

Founded Stoicism on the Painted Porch after studying with the Cynics — virtue as the only good.

• ← Read / studied: Diogenes of Sinope
• → Taught: Chrysippus
• ↔ Rivalled: Epicurus
• → Read / studied: Seneca
• → Taught: Cleanthes

The 'second founder' of Stoicism, whose logic and systematising made the school intellectually dominant.

• ← Taught: Zeno of Citium
• → Read / studied: Epictetus
• ← Taught: Cleanthes
• → Read / studied: Panaetius

Roman statesman and dramatist whose Letters made Stoic ethics vivid and personal.

• ← Read / studied: Zeno of Citium
• → Read / studied: Marcus Aurelius

Former slave turned teacher; his Discourses centre on the dichotomy of control.

• ← Read / studied: Chrysippus
• → Read / studied: Marcus Aurelius

The philosopher-emperor whose Meditations are a private notebook of Stoic practice, shaped by reading Epictetus.

• ← Read / studied: Epictetus
• ← Read / studied: Seneca

Zeno's successor as head of the Stoa, author of the Hymn to Zeus, and teacher of Chrysippus.

• ← Taught: Zeno of Citium
• → Taught: Chrysippus

Softened Stoicism for a Roman audience within the Scipionic circle, shaping Cicero's ethics.

• ← Read / studied: Chrysippus
• → Taught: Posidonius
• → Read / studied: Cicero

Polymath Stoic of Rhodes — astronomer, geographer, historian — whose lectures Cicero attended.

• ← Taught: Panaetius
• → Taught: Cicero

Built a philosophy of tranquil pleasure on Democritus's atoms — the great rival school to the Stoa.

• ← Read / studied: Democritus
• ↔ Rivalled: Zeno of Citium
• ↔ Rivalled: Pyrrho

Founder of Skepticism; suspended judgement on all things to reach an unshakeable calm.

• ↔ Rivalled: Epicurus
• → Read / studied: Sextus Empiricus

Roman orator and Academic Skeptic whose treatises transmitted Greek philosophy — and much of its vocabulary — to the Latin world.

• ← Taught: Posidonius
• ← Read / studied: Panaetius
• ← Read / studied: Carneades

Turned Plato's Academy toward skepticism, reviving Socratic questioning against Stoic certainty.

• ← Read / studied: Plato
• → Read / studied: Carneades

Greatest head of the skeptical Academy, who argued both sides of every case and scandalised Rome doing so.

• ← Read / studied: Arcesilaus
• → Read / studied: Cicero

Physician who systematised Pyrrhonian Skepticism in the works that preserved it for later ages.

• ← Read / studied: Pyrrho