Timeline of Western philosophers

Western philosophers

Ancient Greece

600–500 BC

• Thales of Miletus. Of the Milesian school. Believed that all was made of water.
• Pherecydes of Syros. Cosmologist.
• Anaximander of Miletus. Of the Milesian school. Famous for the concept of Apeiron, or "the boundless".
• Anaximenes of Miletus. Of the Milesian school. Believed that all was made of air.
• Pythagoras of Samos. Of the Ionian School. Believed the deepest reality to be composed of numbers, and that souls are immortal.
• Xenophanes of Colophon. Advocated monotheism. Sometimes associated with the Eleatic school.
• Heraclitus of Ephesus. Of the Ionians. Emphasized the mutability of the universe.
• Epicharmus of Kos. Comic playwright and moralist.
• Parmenides of Elea. Of the Eleatics. Reflected on the concept of Being.
• Anaxagoras of Clazomenae. Of the Ionians. Pluralist.

  400 BC

• Empedocles. Eclectic cosmogonist. Pluralist.
• Zeno of Elea. Of the Eleatics. Known for his paradoxes.
• Gorgias.. Sophist. Early advocate of solipsism.
• Protagoras of Abdera. Sophist. Early advocate of relativism.
• Leucippus of Miletus. Founding Atomist, Determinist.
• Socrates of Athens. Emphasized virtue ethics. In epistemology, understood dialectic to be central to the pursuit of truth.
• Prodicus of Ceos. Sophist.
• Critias of Athens. Atheist writer and politician.
• Hippias. Sophist.
• Democritus of Abdera. Founding Atomist.
• Melissus of Samos.. Eleatic.
• Cratylus. Follower of Heraclitus.
• Antisthenes. Founder of Cynicism. Pupil of Socrates.
• Aristippus of Cyrene. A Cyrenaic. Advocate of ethical hedonism.
• Xenophon. Historian.
• Plato. Famed for view of the transcendental forms. Advocated polity governed by philosophers.
• Diogenes of Apollonia. Cosmologist.
• Speusippus. Nephew of Plato.
• Eudoxus of Cnidus. Pupil of Plato.
• Diogenes of Sinope. Cynic.

  Hellenistic era

300–200 BC

• Xenocrates. Disciple of Plato.
• Aristotle. A polymath whose works ranged across all philosophical fields.
• Theophrastus. Peripatetic.
• Pyrrho of Elis. Skeptic.
• Epicurus. Materialist Atomist, hedonist. Founder of Epicureanism
• Strato of Lampsacus. Atheist, Materialist.
• Zeno of Citium. Founder of Stoicism.
• Aristarchus of Samos. Astronomer.
• Euclid. Mathematician, founder of geometry.
• Archimedes . Mathematician and inventor.
• Chrysippus of Soli. Major figure in Stoicism.
• Eratosthenes. Geographer and mathematician.
• Carneades. Academic skeptic. Understood probability as the purveyor of truth.
• Hipparchus of Nicaea. Astronomer and mathematician, founder of trigonometry.

  Classical Rome

100 BC–100 AD

• Cicero Skeptic. Political theorist.
• Lucretius. Epicurean.
• Quintilian. Rhetorician and teacher.
• Philo. Believed in the allegorical method of reading texts.
• Seneca the Younger. Stoic.
• Jesus of Nazareth the founding figure of Christianity.
• Hero of Alexandria. Engineer.
• Plutarch.
• Epictetus. Stoic. Emphasized ethics of self–determination.

  100–400

• Marcus Aurelius. Stoic.
• Sextus Empiricus. Skeptic, Pyrrhonist.
• Plotinus. Neoplatonist. Had a holistic metaphysics.
• Porphyry. Student of Plotinus.
• Iamblichus of Syria. Late neoplatonist. Espoused theurgy.
• Hypatia of Alexandria. Late neoplatonist, astronomer, and mathematician.
• Augustine of Hippo. Neoplatonist. Original Sin. Church father.
• Proclus. Neoplatonist.
• Boethius.
• John Philoponus.

  Middle Ages

500–900

• Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.
• Isidore of Seville. Christian philosopher.
• John of Damascus.
• Alcuin. Early Scholastic.
• Al-Kindi. Major figure in Islamic philosophy. Influenced by Neoplatonism.
• Abbas ibn Firnas. Polymath.
• John the Scot. neoplatonist, pantheist.
• al-Faràbi. Major Islamic philosopher. Neoplatonist.
• al-Razi. Rationalist. Major Islamic philosopher. Held that God creates universe by rearranging pre–existing laws.
• Saadia Gaon. Jewish Philosopher
• Al-Biruni . Islamic polymath.
• Ibn Sina . Islamic philosopher.
• Ibn Hazm

  1000–1100

• Ibn Gabirol . Jewish philosopher.
• Anselm. Christian philosopher. Produced ontological argument for the existence of God.
• Omar Khayyam. Islamic philosopher. Agnostic. Mathematician. Philosophical poet, one of the 5 greatest Iranian Poets.
• Al-Ghazali. Islamic philosopher. Mystic.
• Yehudah HaLevi. Jewish poet, physician and philosopher.
• Peter Abelard. Scholastic philosopher. Dealt with the problem of universals.
• Peter Lombard. Scholastic.
• Ibn Tufail
• Averroes . Islamic philosopher.
• Maimonides. Jewish philosopher.
• Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
• Suhrawardi. Major Islamic philosopher.
• Ibn Arabi. Andalusian Muslim philosopher, mystic, poet, and scholar. Founder of Akbarism, one of the major current of later Islamic philosophy.
• Fibonacci, mathematician.
• Robert Grosseteste.
• Francis of Assisi. Ascetic.
• Albert the Great . Early Empiricist.

  1200–1300

• Roger Bacon. Empiricist, mathematician.
• Thomas Aquinas. Aristotelian.
• Bonaventure. Franciscan.
• Ramon Llull Spanish philosopher
• Meister Eckhart. mystic.
• Ibn Taymiyya Islamic scholar, jurist and philosopher
• Dante Alighieri .
• Duns Scotus. Franciscan, Scholastic, Original Sin.
• Marsilius of Padua. Understood chief function of state as mediator.
• William of Ockham. Franciscan. Scholastic. Nominalist, creator of Ockham's razor.
• Jean Buridan. Nominalist.
• John Wycliffe.
• Nicole Oresme. Made contributions to economics, science, mathematics, theology and philosophy.
• Ibn Khaldun.
• Hasdai Crescas. Jewish philosopher.
• Gemistus Pletho. Late Byzantine scholar of neoplatonic philosophy.

  1400

• Nicholas of Cusa. Christian philosopher.
• Lorenzo Valla. Humanist, critic of scholastic logic.
• Marsilio Ficino. Christian Neoplatonist, head of Florentine Academy and major Renaissance Humanist figure. First translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin.
• Pico della Mirandola. Renaissance humanist.
• Desiderius Erasmus. Humanist, advocate of free will.
• Niccolò Machiavelli. Political realism.
• Nicolaus Copernicus. Scientist, whose works affected Philosophy of Science.
• Sir Thomas More. Humanist, created term "utopia".
• Martin Luther. Major Western Christian theologian.

  Early modern period

1500

• John Calvin. Major Western Christian theologian.
• Michel de Montaigne. Humanist, skeptic.
• Giordano Bruno. Advocate of heliocentrism.
• Francisco Suarez. Politically proto–liberal.
• Francis Bacon. Empiricist.
• Galileo Galilei. Heliocentrist.
• Johannes Kepler. Scientist, whose works affected Philosophy of Science.
• Molla-Sadra. Major Islamic philosopher.
• Hugo Grotius. Natural law theorist.
• Marin Mersenne. Cartesian.
• Robert Filmer. Absolutist, monarchist, patrimonialist. Divine right of kings.
• Thomas Hobbes. Advocate of extensive government power, social contract theorist, materialist.
• Pierre Gassendi. Mechanicism. Empiricist.
• René Descartes. Heliocentrism, mind-body dualism, rationalism.

  1600

• Baltasar Gracián. Spanish Catholic philosopher
• François de La Rochefoucauld.
• Blaise Pascal. Physicist, scientist. Noted for Pascal's wager.
• Margaret Cavendish. Materialist, feminist.
• Robert Boyle.
• Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet .
• Baruch Spinoza. Rationalism.
• Samuel von Pufendorf. Social contract theorist.
• John Locke. Major Empiricist. Political philosopher.
• Nicolas Malebranche. Cartesian.
• Isaac Newton.
• John Flamsteed. Astronomer.
• Gottfried Leibniz. Co-inventor of calculus.
• Pierre Bayle. Pyrrhonist.
• Jean Meslier. Atheist Priest.
• Giambattista Vico.
• John Toland.
• Anthony Ashley-Cooper.
• Dimitrie Cantemir
• Christian Wolff. Determinist, rationalist.
• George Berkeley. Idealist, empiricist.
• Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu. Skeptic, humanist.
• Francis Hutcheson. Proto–utilitarian.
• Voltaire. Advocate for freedoms of religion and expression.

  1700

• Jonathan Edwards. American philosophical theologian.
• David Hartley.
• Julien La Mettrie. Materialist, genetic determinist.
• Thomas Reid. Member of Scottish Enlightenment, founder of Scottish Common Sense philosophy.
• David Hume. Empiricist, skeptic.
• Jean–Jacques Rousseau. Social contract political philosopher.
• Denis Diderot.
• Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten.
• Claude Adrien Helvétius. Utilitarian.
• Etienne de Condillac.
• Jean d'Alembert.
• Baron d'Holbach. Materialist, atheist.
• Adam Smith. Economic theorist, member of Scottish Enlightenment.
• Immanuel Kant. Major contributions in nearly every field of philosophy, especially metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.
• Moses Mendelssohn. Member of the Jewish Enlightenment.
• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.
• Edmund Burke. Conservative political philosopher.
• Johann Georg Hamann.
• Thomas Paine.
• Cesare Beccaria. Italian criminologist, jurist, and philosopher from the Age of Enlightenment.
• Thomas Jefferson. Liberal political philosopher.
• Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi.
• Johann Gottfried von Herder.
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Early evolutionary theorist.
• Jeremy Bentham. Utilitarian, hedonist.
• Pierre-Simon Laplace. Determinist.
• Joseph de Maistre Conservative
• Louis de Bonald.
• William Godwin. Anarchist, utilitarian.
• Mary Wollstonecraft. Feminist.
• Friedrich Schiller.
• Comte de Saint-Simon. Socialist.
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte.
• Madame de Staël.
• Friedrich Schleiermacher. Hermeneutician.
• Friedrich Hölderlin. Poet and philosopher.
• G. W. F. Hegel. German idealist.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
• James Mill. Utilitarian.
• F. W. J. von Schelling. German idealist.
• Bernard Bolzano.
• Arthur Schopenhauer. Pessimism, Critic, Absurdist.
• Thomas Carlyle.
• Sojourner Truth. Egalitarian, abolitionist.
• Auguste Comte. Social philosopher, positivist.

  Modern philosophers

1800–1850

• Ralph Waldo Emerson. Transcendentalist, abolitionist, egalitarian, humanist.
• Ludwig Feuerbach.
• Alexis de Tocqueville.
• Max Stirner. Anarchist.
• Augustus De Morgan. Logician.
• John Stuart Mill. Utilitarian.
• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Anarchist.
• Harriet Taylor Mill. Egalitarian, utilitarian.
• Charles Darwin. Scientist, whose works affected Philosophy of Science.
• Margaret Fuller. Egalitarian.
• Søren Kierkegaard. Existentialist.
• Mikhail Bakunin. Revolutionary anarchist.
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Egalitarian.
• Henry David Thoreau. Transcendentalist, pacifist, abolitionist.
• Karl Marx. Socialist, formulated historical materialism.
• Friedrich Engels. Egalitarian, dialectical materialist.
• Herbert Spencer. Nativism, libertarianism, social Darwinism.
• Susan B. Anthony. Feminist.
• Ernest Renan.
• Hippolyte Taine.
• Wilhelm Dilthey.
• T.H. Green. British idealist.
• Henry Sidgwick. Rationalism, utilitarianism.
• Ernst Mach. Philosopher of science, influence on logical positivism.
• Franz Brentano. Phenomenologist.
• Charles Sanders Peirce. Pragmatist.
• Philipp Mainländer. Pessimist.
• William James. Pragmatism, Radical empiricism.
• Hermann Cohen. Neo-Kantianism, Jewish philosophy.
• Peter Kropotkin. Anarchist communism.
• Friedrich Nietzsche. Naturalistic philosopher, influence on Existentialism.
• W. K. Clifford. Evidentialist.
• F. H. Bradley. Idealist.
• Vilfredo Pareto. Social philosopher.
• Gottlob Frege. Influential analytic philosopher.

  1850–1900

• Henri Poincaré.
• Josiah Royce. Idealist.
• Sigmund Freud. Neurologist, founded psychoanalysis, posited structural model of mind.
• Georgi Plekhanov. Marxist, established Marxism in Russia.
• Ferdinand de Saussure. Linguist, Semiotics, Structuralism.
• Émile Durkheim. Social philosopher.
• Giuseppe Peano.
• Edmund Husserl. Founder of phenomenology.
• Henri Bergson. Vitalism.
• John Dewey. Pragmatism.
• Jane Addams. Pragmatist.
• Pierre Duhem.
• Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophy
• Alfred North Whitehead. Process Philosophy, Mathematician, Logician, Philosophy of Physics, Panpsychism.
• George Herbert Mead. Pragmatism, symbolic interactionist.
• George Santayana. Pragmatism, naturalism; known for many aphorisms.
• Max Weber. Social philosopher.
• Miguel de Unamuno. Existentialist.
• Benedetto Croce.
• Lev Shestov.
• Emma Goldman. Anarchist.
• Rosa Luxemburg. Marxist political philosopher.
• Bertrand Russell. Analytic philosopher, nontheist, influential.
• G. E. Moore. Common sense theorist, ethical non–naturalist.
• Nikolai Berdyaev. Existentialist.
• Ernst Cassirer. Neo-Kantianism.
• Max Scheler. German phenomenologist.
• Carl Jung. Psychoanalyst, metaphysicist.
• Giovanni Gentile. Idealist and fascist philosopher.
• Martin Buber. Jewish philosopher, existentialist.
• Jan Łukasiewicz. Logician.
• Oswald Spengler.
• Ludwig von Mises.
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Christian evolutionist.
• Hans Kelsen. Legal positivist.
• Moritz Schlick. Founder of Vienna Circle, logical positivism.
• Otto Neurath. Member of Vienna Circle.
• Nicolai Hartmann.
• Jacques Maritain. Human rights theorist.
• José Ortega y Gasset. Philosopher of History.
• Karl Jaspers. Existentialist.
• Gaston Bachelard.
• Otto Rank.
• Georg Lukács. Marxist philosopher.
• Karl Barth.
• René Guénon.
• Carl Schmitt.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein. Analytic philosopher, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, influential.
• Gabriel Marcel. Christian existentialist.
• Martin Heidegger. Phenomenologist.
• Antonio Gramsci. Marxist philosopher.
• Rudolf Carnap. Vienna Circle. Logical positivist.
• Walter Benjamin. Marxist. Philosophy of language.
• Herman Dooyeweerd. Philosophy of the Law Idea.
• Max Horkheimer. Frankfurt School.
• Ernst Jünger.
• Susanne Langer.
• Georges Bataille.
• Julius Evola.
• Herbert Marcuse. Frankfurt School.
• C. S. Lewis.
• Friedrich Hayek.
• Leo Strauss. Political Philosopher.

  1900–1950

• Gilbert Ryle.
• Hans-Georg Gadamer. Hermeneutics.
• Jacques Lacan. Structuralism.
• Henri Lefebvre. Marxist philosopher
• Alfred Tarski. Created T–Convention in semantics.
• Michael Oakeshott.
• Karl Popper. Philosopher of Science.
• Mortimer Adler.
• Eric Hoffer
• Frank P. Ramsey. Proposed redundancy theory of truth.
• Theodor Adorno. Frankfurt School.
• Joseph Campbell comparative mythology and comparative religion
• María Zambrano
• Raymond Aron.
• Jean-Paul Sartre. Humanism, existentialism.
• Ayn Rand. Objectivist, Individualist.
• Kurt Gödel. Vienna Circle.
• Emmanuel Levinas.
• Hannah Arendt. Political Philosophy.
• H.L.A. Hart. Legal positivism.
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Influential French phenomenologist.
• Simone de Beauvoir. Existentialist, feminist.
• Willard van Orman Quine.
• Isaiah Berlin, historian of ideas.
• Simone Weil.
• A. J. Ayer. Logical positivist, emotivist.
• J. L. Austin.
• Marshall McLuhan. Media theory.
• Alan Turing. Functionalist in philosophy of mind.
• Wilfrid Sellars. Influential American philosopher
• Albert Camus. Absurdist.
• Paul Ricœur. French philosopher and theologian.
• Roland Barthes. French semiotician and literary theorist.
• Donald Davidson. Coherentist philosophy of mind.
• Louis Althusser. Structural Marxist.
• Russell Kirk.
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
• M. Bunge.
• P. F. Strawson. Ordinary language philosophy.
• John Rawls. Liberal.
• Paulo Freire. Pedagogy.
• Thomas Kuhn. Author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
• Norwood Russell Hanson.
• Zygmunt Bauman. Polish sociologist and philosopher, who introduced the idea of liquid modernity.
• Frantz Fanon. Postcolonialism
• Gilles Deleuze. Post-structuralism
• Michel Foucault. Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Postmodernism, and the concept of biopolitics.
• Hilary Putnam. Neopragmatism.
• Noam Chomsky. Linguist.
• Robert M. Pirsig. Introduced the Methaphysics of Quality. MOQ incorporates facets of East Asian philosophy, pragmatism and the work of F. S. C. Northrop.
• Bernard Williams. Moral philosopher.
• Jean Baudrillard. Postmodernism, Post-structuralism.
• Jürgen Habermas. Discourse ethics.
• Jaakko Hintikka.
• Alasdair MacIntyre. Aristotelian.
• Hubert Lederer Dreyfus
• Allan Bloom. Political Philosopher.
• Pierre Bourdieu. French psychoanalytic sociologist and philosopher.
• Jacques Derrida. Deconstruction.
• Thomas Sowell. Political Philosopher, capitalist.
• Guy Debord. French Marxist philosopher.
• Richard Rorty. Pragmatism, Postanalytic philosophy.
• Charles Taylor. Political philosophy, Philosophy of Social Science, and Intellectual History.
• Umberto Eco. Semiotics, Aesthetics
• John Searle. Direct realism.
• Alvin Plantinga. Reformed epistemology, Philosophy of Religion.
• Jerry Fodor.
• Alain Badiou.
• Thomas Nagel. Qualia theory.
• Robert Nozick. Libertarian.
• Tom Regan. Animal rights philosopher.
• Saul Kripke. Modal semantics.
• Jean-Luc Nancy French philosopher.
• David K. Lewis. Modal realism.
• Gerald Allan Cohen Analytical Marxism.
• Derek Parfit.
• Giorgio Agamben. State of exception, form–of–life, and Homo sacer.
• Daniel Dennett.
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Postcolonialism, Feminism, Literary theory.
• Roger Scruton. Traditionalist conservatism.
• Simon Blackburn. Analytic philosophy.
• Peter Singer Moral philosopher on animal liberation, effective altruism.
• Bruno Latour French Philosopher, anthropologist, sociologist.
• Camille Paglia.
• Martha Nussbaum. Political philosopher.
• Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
• Slavoj Žižek. German Idealism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis.
• Ken Wilber. Integral Theory.

  1950–2000

• Cornel West.
• Michael Sandel. Political philosopher
• Judith Butler. Poststructuralist, feminist, queer theory.
• Alexander Wendt. Social constructivism.
• Michel Onfray.
• Byung-Chul Han.
• Simon Critchley. Continental philosophy
• Nick Land. Accelerationist.
• Ray Brassier. Nihilist.
• David Benatar. Antinatalist.
• Alenka Zupančič. German Idealism, Nietzsche, Lacanian Psychoanalysis.
• Alain de Botton.
• Nick Bostrom.
• Bernardo Kastrup.