Some general topics within the huge subject of philosophy include:
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Philosophy as a whole is traditionally split into four or more main branches. The main four are:
| Metaphysics (the study of existence and the nature of reality) | Epistemology (the study of knowledge, and how and what we know) | Ethics (the study of how people should act, and what is good and valuable) | Aesthetics (the study of basic philosophical questions aboutart and beauty) |
In addition to these, two more branches are often added:
| Logic (the study of good reasoning, by valid inference and demonstration) | Political Philosophy (the study of how people should interact in a proper society) |
In addition to these, there are other branches concerned with philosophical questions arising from other disciplines, including:
| Philosophy of Mind (the study of the nature of mind, consciousness, etc) | Philosophy of Religion (the study of the nature of religion, God, evil, prayer, etc) | Philosophy of Language (the study of the nature, origins, and usage of language) |
| Philosophy of Education (the study of the purpose, process, nature and ideals of education) | Philosophy of History (the study of the eventual significance, if any, of human history) | Philosophy of Science (the study of the assumptions, foundations, and implications of science) |
| Ancient | Medieval | Modern |
Within these, the major movements and schools include:
The long history of Western Philosophy is usually considered to begin with Thales of Miletus, who was active around 585 B.C., and will probably continue as long as humans exist.
For convenience, it can be divided into three main eras:
| Ancient | Medieval | Modern |
Within these eras, the following major historical periods are often identified:
| Ancient: (7th Century B.C. - 5th Century A.D.) Pre-Socratic (7th - 5th Century B.C.) Socratic (5th - 4th Century B.C.) Hellenistic (3rd Century B.C. - 3th Century A.D.) Roman (1st Century B.C. - 5th Century A.D.) | Medieval: (6th - 16th Century) Medieval (6th - 14th Century) Renaissance (15th - 16th Century) Modern: (17th - 20th Century) Age of Reason (17th Century) Modern (19th - 20th Century) |
The dates are just rough guides, and the classifications rather arbitrary (for example, the Modernperiod is sometimes considered to start with the Age of Reason philosophers, and sometimes with the Renaissance philosophers). There is obviously also a certain amount of overlap between these periods.
Also see the Philosophy Timeline for an overview of Western Philosophy, created as one long image to give an idea of the relative scale and the clusters of activity in philosophical thought.
Major philosophers in alphabetical order:
| Abelard, Peter (1079 - 1142) French Albertus Magnus (c. 1206 - 1280) German Anaxagoras (c. 500 - 428 B.C.) Greek Anaximander (c. 610 - 546 B.C.) Greek Anaximenes (c. 585 - 525 B.C.) Greek Anselm, St. (1033 - 1109) Italian Aquinas, St. Thomas (1225 - 1274) Italian Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.) Greek Augustine of Hippo, St. (A.D. 354 - 430) Roman Averroës (1126 - 1198) Spanish-Arabic Avicenna (980 - 1037) Persian Ayer, Alfred (1910 - 1989) English Bacon, Roger (c. 1214 - 1294) English Bacon, Sir Francis (1561 - 1626) English Bentham, Jeremy (1749 - 1832) English Berkeley, Bishop George (1685 - 1753) Irish Boethius (c. A.D. 480 - 525) Roman Burke, Edmund (1729 - 1797) Irish Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106 - 43 B.C.) Roman Comte, Auguste (1798 - 1857) French Democritus (c. 460 - 370 B.C.) Greek Derrida, Jacques (1930 - 2004) French Descartes, René (1596 - 1650) French Dewey, John (1859 - 1952) American Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412 - 323 B.C.) Greek Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803 - 1882) American Empedocles (c. 490 - 430 B.C.) Greek Epictetus (c. A.D. 55 - 135) Greek-Roman Epicurus (341 - 270 B.C.) Greek Erasmus, Desiderius (1466 - 1536) Dutch Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762 - 1814) German Foucault, Michel (1926 - 1984) French Frege, Gottlob (1848 - 1925) German Gorgias (c. 487 - 376 B.C.) Greek Hegel, G.W.F. (1770 - 1831) German Heidegger, Martin (1889 - 1976) German Heraclitus (c. 535 - 475 B.C.) Greek Hobbes, Thomas (1588 - 1679) English Hume, David (1711 - 1776) Scottish Husserl, Edmund (1859 - 1938) German James, William (1842 - 1910) American | Kant, Immanuel (1724 - 1804) German Kierkegaard, Søren (1813 - 1855) Danish Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646 - 1716) German Locke, John (1632 - 1704) English Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469 - 1527) Italian Maimonides (1135 - 1204) Spanish-Jewish Malebranche, Nicolas (1638 - 1715) French Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121 -180) Roman Marx, Karl (1818 - 1883) German Mill, John Stuart (1806 - 1873) English Moore, George Edward (1873 - 1958) English More, Sir Thomas (1478 - 1535) English Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844 - 1900) German Ockham (Occam), William of (c. 1285 - 1348) English Parmenides of Elea (c. 515 - 450 B.C.) Greek Pascal, Blaise (1623 - 1662) French Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839 - 1914) American Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C. - A.D. 50) Egyptian-Jewish Plato (c. 428 - 348 B.C.) Greek Plotinus (A.D. 205 - 270) Egyptian-Greek Protagoras (c. 490 - 420 B.C.) Greek Pyrrho (c. 360 - 270 B.C.) Greek Pythagoras (c. 570 - 490 B.C.) Greek Quine, Willard Van Orman (1908 - 2000) American Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712 - 1778) Swiss-French Russell, Bertrand (1872 - 1970) English Ryle, Gilbert (1900 - 1976) English Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905 - 1980) French Schelling, Friedrich (1775 - 1854) German Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788 - 1860) German Scotus, John Duns (c. 1266 - 1308) Scottish Smith, Adam (1723 - 1790) Scottish Socrates (464 - 399 B.C.) Greek Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict) (1623 - 1677) Dutch-Jewish Thales of Miletos (c. 624 - 546 B.C.) Greek Thoreau, Henry David (1817 - 1862) American Voltaire (François Marie Arouet) (1694 - 1778) French Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947) English Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889 - 1951) Austrian Zeno of Citium (334 - 262 B.C.) Greek Zeno of Elea (c. 490 - 430 B.C.) Greek |
For a chronological analysis of this list of major philosophers, see the section By Historical Period
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