Philosophy Timeline

Often called the first philosopher, Thales sought a single natural principle behind all things and proposed that everything originates from water.

Founder of a religious-philosophical brotherhood who held that number and mathematical harmony are the deep structure of reality.

The philosopher of flux: everything is in constant change, unified by the logos, and 'you cannot step into the same river twice.'

Argued that change is an illusion and that being is one, eternal, and unchanging — setting the agenda for metaphysics.

Co-founder of atomism: reality consists of indivisible atoms moving in the void — an astonishingly modern-sounding physics.

Wrote nothing but transformed philosophy through relentless questioning (the elenchus), insisting that the unexamined life is not worth living.

Student of Socrates and founder of the Academy; his theory of Forms holds that eternal ideal patterns underlie the changing sensible world.

Plato's school outside Athens — arguably the first institution of higher learning in the West, active for nearly three centuries.

Plato's student and the first great systematiser — founder of formal logic, whose ethics of virtue and the mean still shapes moral philosophy.

Plato's dialogue on justice, the ideal city, and the philosopher-king, containing the famous allegory of the cave.

Founder of Skepticism, who taught that suspending judgement about all things is the path to peace of mind.

Founder of Epicureanism, who identified the good life with modest, sustainable pleasure and freedom from fear and pain.

Founder of Stoicism, who taught in the painted porch (Stoa) that virtue is the only good and that we should live in accord with nature and reason.

The school of the porch: a philosophy of self-command that distinguishes what is in our control from what is not, spanning Greece and Rome.

Roman statesman and eclectic philosopher who transmitted Greek thought to Rome and shaped the vocabulary of ethics and natural law.

Roman Stoic, dramatist, and adviser to Nero whose letters turn Stoic doctrine into practical guidance on time, anger, and adversity.

Paraphrase of Enchiridion 1: Epictetus distinguishes our judgments and actions from what is not in our control, including body, property and reputation; freedom depends on respecting this distinction.

Roman emperor and Stoic whose private notebook, the Meditations, remains the most intimate record of a philosopher living his doctrine.

Personal notes written on campaign, never meant for publication — a manual of Stoic self-examination that has never gone out of print.

Founder of Neoplatonism, who described reality as an overflow from a single ineffable One — the last great system of the ancient world.

Fused Christian faith with Neoplatonism, and in the Confessions invented a new inward, autobiographical mode of philosophical reflection.

Wrote The Consolation of Philosophy while awaiting execution, bridging antiquity and the Middle Ages and transmitting Aristotle's logic.

Persian polymath whose synthesis of Aristotle and Neoplatonism dominated both Islamic and later European metaphysics.

Formulated the ontological argument for God's existence — 'faith seeking understanding' — a puzzle philosophers still debate.

The great commentator on Aristotle whose work, translated into Latin, reintroduced rigorous Aristotelianism to Christian Europe.

Jewish philosopher whose Guide for the Perplexed reconciled Aristotelian reason with scripture and influenced Aquinas.

Synthesised Aristotle with Christian theology into a vast system; his natural-law ethics remains foundational to Western moral thought.

Founder of modern political realism, who studied power as it is rather than as it ought to be in The Prince.

Champion of the experimental method and inductive reasoning, laying the philosophical groundwork for modern science.

Argued that without a sovereign, life is 'nasty, brutish, and short'; Leviathan founded modern social-contract theory.

Father of modern philosophy, who rebuilt knowledge on the one certainty he could not doubt: 'I think, therefore I am.'

Rationalist who identified God with Nature and derived an ethics of freedom through understanding, laid out in geometric order.

Founder of empiricism and liberalism: the mind begins as a blank slate, and legitimate government rests on consent and natural rights.

Descartes' method of radical doubt in six meditations — the text that opens modern epistemology and the mind-body problem.

Rationalist and co-inventor of calculus who argued this is 'the best of all possible worlds' and reality is composed of monads.

Idealist empiricist who denied the existence of matter: 'to be is to be perceived' — everything exists only in and for minds.

Radical empiricist and skeptic who questioned causation, the self, and induction, and 'woke Kant from his dogmatic slumber.'

Argued that man is born free but is everywhere in chains; his idea of the general will shaped democratic and revolutionary thought.

Reconciled rationalism and empiricism: the mind actively structures experience, and morality rests on the categorical imperative.

Kant's revolution in philosophy: mapping the limits of reason and showing how the mind makes experience possible.

Built a sweeping system in which history is the progressive self-realisation of Spirit through dialectical development.

Held that a blind, striving Will underlies all reality, making life suffering — and pointed to art and compassion as relief.

Refined utilitarianism and made the classic case for individual liberty and free speech in On Liberty.

The first existentialist, who explored anxiety, faith, and the 'leap' of individual commitment against the crowd.

Recast philosophy as a call to change the world, analysing history through material and economic forces and class conflict.

Proclaimed that 'God is dead' and challenged inherited morality, calling for a revaluation of all values and the affirmation of life.

Nietzsche's philosophical prose-poem introducing the Übermensch, eternal recurrence, and the will to power.

Founder of phenomenology, the rigorous study of experience as it presents itself to consciousness.

Co-founder of analytic philosophy and modern logic, who sought to ground mathematics in logic and championed clear reasoning.

Twice revolutionised philosophy of language — first as logical picture, then as 'language games' — arguing that meaning is use.

Reopened the question of Being through the analysis of human existence (Dasein), deeply shaping continental philosophy.

Leading existentialist who held that 'existence precedes essence' — we are condemned to be free and to create our own meaning.

Political theorist of totalitarianism, action, and 'the banality of evil,' who reflected on what it means to live and act together.

Revived political philosophy with A Theory of Justice, deriving fair principles from a hypothetical 'veil of ignorance.'

Analysed how power and knowledge shape institutions, madness, punishment, and the self across history.

Heidegger's landmark analysis of existence, time, and authenticity — a cornerstone of 20th-century continental thought.