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.