Timeline of major philosophers

🏺 Ancient Philosophy (Before 500 CE)

Pre-Socratic (Before Socrates):

• Thales of Miletus (c. 624–546 BCE) – First philosopher in Western tradition, focused on natural elements.
• Anaximander (c. 610–546 BCE) – Introduced the concept of the “boundless” (apeiron).
• Pythagoras (c. 570–495 BCE) – Mathematics, mysticism, and the soul.
• Heraclitus (c. 535–475 BCE) – Doctrine of change; “You cannot step into the same river twice.”
• Parmenides (c. 515–450 BCE) – Being is unchanging; founder of metaphysics.
• Empedocles (c. 494–434 BCE) – Four classical elements; proto-evolutionary ideas.
• Democritus (c. 460–370 BCE) – Atomic theory of the universe.

Classical Greek Philosophy:

• Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE) – Ethics and dialectics; Socratic method.
• Plato (c. 428–348 BCE) – Theory of Forms; founder of the Academy.
• Aristotle (384–322 BCE) – Logic, ethics, metaphysics, politics; founded the Lyceum.

Hellenistic Philosophy:

• Epicurus (341–270 BCE) – Hedonism, atomism, tranquility.
• Zeno of Citium (c. 334–262 BCE) – Founder of Stoicism.
• Pyrrho (c. 360–270 BCE) – Skepticism; suspension of judgment (epoché).

Roman Philosophy:

• Cicero (106–43 BCE) – Stoicism, natural law, political philosophy.
• Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE–65 CE) – Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman.
• Epictetus (c. 50–135 CE) – Enchiridion; Stoic ethics.
• Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) – Roman Emperor; Meditations.

Late Antiquity:

• Plotinus (c. 204–270 CE) – Founder of Neoplatonism.
• St. Augustine (354–430 CE) – Christian philosopher; synthesis of Plato and Christianity.

🕌 ✡️ Medieval Philosophy (c. 500–1300s)

Islamic Philosophers:

• Al-Kindi (c. 801–873) – First Arab philosopher; translated Greek works.
• Al-Farabi (c. 872–950) – Political philosophy, Neoplatonism.
• Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980–1037) – Metaphysics, medicine, influenced Scholasticism.
• Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (1126–1198) – Commentary on Aristotle.

Jewish Philosophers:

• Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE–50 CE) – Jewish-Hellenistic thought.
• Saadia Gaon (882–942) – Rationalist theology.
• Maimonides (Rambam) (1135–1204) – Guide for the Perplexed.

Christian Scholastics:

• Boethius (c. 480–524) – The Consolation of Philosophy.
• Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) – Ontological argument for God’s existence.
• Peter Abelard (1079–1142) – Logic and ethics.
• Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) – Synthesized Aristotelianism with Christianity.

🏛️ Renaissance and Early Modern Philosophy (1300s–1700s)

• Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) – Political realism; The Prince.
• Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) – Father of the essay; skepticism.
• Francis Bacon (1561–1626) – Scientific method, empiricism.
• René Descartes (1596–1650) – Cogito; dualism; rationalism.
• Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) – Political philosophy; Leviathan.
• Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) – Pantheism; ethics.
• John Locke (1632–1704) – Empiricism; liberalism.
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) – Monadology; optimism.
• George Berkeley (1685–1753) – Idealism; “to be is to be perceived”.
• David Hume (1711–1776) – Empiricism, skepticism, problem of induction.

🇩🇪 18th–19th Century Philosophy (Enlightenment to Modernity)

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) – Social contract; romanticism.
• Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) – Critique of Pure Reason; categorical imperative.
• G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) – Dialectics; absolute idealism.
• Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) – Pessimism, will as metaphysical force.
• John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) – Utilitarianism, liberty, feminism.
• Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) – Christian existentialism.
• Karl Marx (1818–1883) – Historical materialism, class struggle.
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) – Will to power, eternal recurrence, nihilism.

🧠 20th–21st Century Philosophy (Modern and Contemporary)

Analytic Tradition:

• Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) – Logic, analytic philosophy, pacifism.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) – Language, logic, meaning.
• A.J. Ayer (1910–1989) – Logical positivism.
• Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) – Epistemology, language, holism.

Continental Tradition:

• Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) – Founder of phenomenology.
• Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) – Being and Time, ontology.
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) – Existentialism; freedom and responsibility.
• Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) – Feminist existentialism.
• Michel Foucault (1926–1984) – Power, knowledge, institutions.
• Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) – Deconstruction; post-structuralism.

Other Major Thinkers:

• Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) – Totalitarianism, human condition.
• Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) – Political pluralism.
• Noam Chomsky (b. 1928) – Linguistics and political philosophy.
• Judith Butler (b. 1956) – Gender theory, post-structuralism.
• Slavoj Žižek (b. 1949) – Psychoanalysis, ideology critique.

🧭 Eastern Philosophers (Selected Figures)

• Laozi (c. 6th century BCE) – Tao Te Ching, Taoism.
• Confucius (551–479 BCE) – Ethics, family, governance.
• Zhuangzi (c. 369–286 BCE) – Daoism; skepticism, spontaneity.
• Nagarjuna (c. 150–250 CE) – Buddhist philosophy; emptiness.
• Adi Shankara (c. 700s CE) – Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism).
• Al-Ghazali (1058–1111) – Islamic theology, Sufism, skepticism.
• Dōgen (1200–1253) – Japanese Zen Buddhism.