Philosopher Catalog
A chronological reference catalog of ~80+ named philosophers across the Western, Islamic, Jewish, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and modern global traditions. Each entry gives dates, nationality/tradition, school, major works (italicized), and a brief gloss of key concepts. Use this when you need to cite a name by surname and year rather than learn a concept.
I. Ancient — Pre-Socratic and Classical Greek (c.624 BCE – 322 BCE)
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thales of Miletus | c.624 – c.546 BCE | Milesian; archê | (no surviving texts; reported by Aristotle) | Water as the underlying principle (archê); first naturalistic cosmology; predicted solar eclipse of 585 BCE |
| Anaximander | c.610 – c.546 BCE | Milesian | On Nature (lost; one fragment) | Apeiron (the boundless) as archê; rudimentary evolution of life from moisture |
| Anaximenes | c.586 – c.526 BCE | Milesian | (fragments) | Aēr (air) as archê; condensation and rarefaction explain change |
| Pythagoras of Samos | c.570 – c.495 BCE | Pythagorean | (oral; school texts in his name) | Number as the substance of all things; transmigration of souls; harmony of the spheres |
| Heraclitus of Ephesus | c.535 – c.475 BCE | Ephesian; logos | On Nature (fragments) | Flux (“you cannot step in the same river twice”); logos as cosmic order; unity of opposites |
| Parmenides of Elea | c.515 – c.450 BCE | Eleatic | On Nature (poem, two parts) | Being is one, eternal, unchanging; “what is, is”; change is illusion |
| Zeno of Elea | c.490 – c.430 BCE | Eleatic | (paradoxes preserved by Aristotle) | Achilles and the Tortoise; Dichotomy; arrow paradox — defends Parmenidean monism |
| Empedocles of Acragas | c.494 – c.434 BCE | Pluralist | On Nature, Purifications | Four roots (earth, water, air, fire); cosmic cycle of Love and Strife |
| Anaxagoras of Clazomenae | c.500 – c.428 BCE | Pluralist | On Nature (fragments) | Nous (Mind) orders matter; everything contains a portion of everything; first to teach philosophy at Athens |
| Leucippus | fl. 5th c BCE | Atomist | (almost nothing survives) | Founded atomism with Democritus; “nothing happens without reason” |
| Democritus of Abdera | c.460 – c.370 BCE | Atomist | Little World-System (fragments) | Atoms and void; mechanistic universe; cheerfulness as the goal of life |
| Protagoras of Abdera | c.490 – c.420 BCE | Sophist | On Truth, On the Gods (fragments) | “Man is the measure of all things”; relativism; agnosticism |
| Gorgias of Leontini | c.483 – c.375 BCE | Sophist | On Non-Being, Encomium of Helen | Three-part nihilism; rhetoric as power; nothing exists / is knowable / is communicable |
| Socrates | 470 – 399 BCE | Athenian | (no writings; portrayed by Plato and Xenophon) | Elenchus (refutation); “the unexamined life is not worth living”; virtue is knowledge |
| Plato | 428 – 348 BCE | Platonic Academy | Republic, Phaedo, Symposium, Timaeus, Theaetetus, Parmenides, Laws | Theory of Forms; recollection (anamnēsis); tripartite soul; philosopher-kings |
| Aristotle | 384 – 322 BCE | Lyceum / Peripatetic | Nicomachean Ethics, Metaphysics, Politics, Physics, De Anima, Organon | Substance and accident; four causes; eudaimonia; virtue ethics; syllogistic logic |
| Diogenes of Sinope (the Cynic) | c.412 – 323 BCE | Cynic | (anecdotes only) | Living “according to nature”; rejection of convention; cosmopolitanism |
| Pyrrho of Elis | c.360 – c.270 BCE | Pyrrhonist Skepticism | (none; Timon preserved teaching) | Epochē (suspension of judgment); ataraxia (untroubledness) |
II. Ancient — Hellenistic and Roman (c.341 BCE – 270 CE)
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epicurus | 341 – 270 BCE | Epicurean | Letter to Menoeceus, Letter to Herodotus, Principal Doctrines | Atomism + ethics; pleasure as absence of pain (ataraxia); the Garden; tetrapharmakos |
| Zeno of Citium | c.334 – c.262 BCE | Stoic (founder) | (fragments) | Founded Stoicism in the Stoa Poikilē; “the good life flows smoothly” |
| Chrysippus of Soli | c.279 – c.206 BCE | Stoic | (705 works claimed; fragments) | Systematized Stoic logic, physics, ethics; “second founder of Stoicism” |
| Carneades | c.214 – c.129 BCE | Academic Skepticism | (oral) | Probabilism; argued both sides of justice in Rome 155 BCE |
| Lucretius | c.99 – c.55 BCE | Roman Epicurean | De Rerum Natura | Six-book Latin poem expounding Epicurean atomism and ethics |
| Marcus Tullius Cicero | 106 – 43 BCE | Eclectic / Academic | De Officiis, De Finibus, Tusculan Disputations, De Natura Deorum | Transmitted Greek philosophy to Rome; coined much Latin philosophical vocabulary |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | c.4 BCE – 65 CE | Stoic | Epistulae Morales, De Brevitate Vitae, De Ira | Practical Stoic ethics; tutor and victim of Nero |
| Epictetus | c.50 – c.135 CE | Stoic | Discourses, Enchiridion (compiled by Arrian) | Dichotomy of control; freedman; “it is not things, but our views of them, that disturb us” |
| Marcus Aurelius | 121 – 180 CE | Stoic | Meditations (Greek: Ta eis heauton) | Roman Emperor 161–180; private reflections; cosmopolitan duty |
| Sextus Empiricus | fl. c.160 – 210 CE | Pyrrhonist | Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Against the Mathematicians | Canonical exposition of skeptical modes; transmitted Pyrrhonism to early modernity |
| Plotinus | 204 – 270 CE | Neoplatonism (founder) | Enneads (edited by Porphyry) | The One, Intellect, Soul; emanation; mystical union; influence on Augustine |
| Porphyry of Tyre | c.234 – c.305 CE | Neoplatonist | Isagoge, On Abstinence, Against the Christians | Standard medieval logic textbook; tree of Porphyry |
III. Medieval — Christian, Jewish, and Islamic (354 – 1406 CE)
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Augustine of Hippo | 354 – 430 | Patristic Christian | Confessions, City of God, On Christian Doctrine, De Trinitate | Original sin; two cities; time and memory; influence on Reformation predestination |
| Boethius | c.477 – 524 | Late Roman Christian | Consolation of Philosophy, On Music, logical commentaries | Problem of universals; transmitted Aristotelian logic to Latin West |
| Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite | c.500 CE | Christian Neoplatonist | Mystical Theology, Divine Names, Celestial Hierarchy | Apophatic (negative) theology; angelic hierarchies; major influence on mysticism |
| John Scotus Eriugena | c.815 – c.877 | Carolingian Neoplatonist | Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature) | Fourfold division of nature; translated Pseudo-Dionysius into Latin |
| al-Farabi | c.872 – 950 | Islamic Aristotelian | The Virtuous City, Book of Letters | ”Second Teacher” after Aristotle; harmonization of Plato and Aristotle |
| Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) | 980 – 1037 | Islamic Aristotelian | The Book of Healing, The Canon of Medicine | Distinction of essence and existence; floating-man thought experiment; necessary being |
| Anselm of Canterbury | 1033 – 1109 | Scholastic | Proslogion, Monologion, Cur Deus Homo | Ontological argument; “faith seeking understanding”; satisfaction theory of atonement |
| al-Ghazali | 1058 – 1111 | Ash’arite / Sufi | Incoherence of the Philosophers, Revival of the Religious Sciences | Critique of Avicennan necessitarianism; occasionalism; influence on Hume |
| Peter Abelard | 1079 – 1142 | Scholastic | Sic et Non, Ethics (Scito Te Ipsum) | Conceptualism re: universals; intention-based ethics; logic of dialectic |
| Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon) | 1135 – 1204 | Jewish Aristotelian | Guide for the Perplexed, Mishneh Torah | Negative theology; reconciliation of Torah and Aristotle; thirteen principles of faith |
| Averroes (Ibn Rushd) | 1126 – 1198 | Islamic Aristotelian | Incoherence of the Incoherence, commentaries on Aristotle | Defended philosophy against al-Ghazali; “the Commentator” to medieval Latins; double truth |
| Thomas Aquinas | 1225 – 1274 | Scholastic (Dominican) | Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles, De Ente et Essentia | Five Ways; natural law; analogia entis; canonical Catholic systematization |
| John Duns Scotus | c.1266 – 1308 | Scholastic (Franciscan) | Ordinatio, Quaestiones Quodlibetales | Univocity of being; haecceity (thisness); formal distinction |
| William of Ockham | c.1287 – 1347 | Scholastic (Franciscan) | Summa Logicae, Quodlibeta | Nominalism; Ockham’s razor; voluntarism; early separation of philosophy and theology |
| Ibn Khaldun | 1332 – 1406 | Islamic historiography | Muqaddimah | Asabiyyah (group solidarity); cyclical dynastic theory; founding figure of sociology |
IV. Renaissance and Early Modern (1469 – 1804)
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Niccolò Machiavelli | 1469 – 1527 | Italian humanism / political realism | The Prince, Discourses on Livy | Virtù vs fortuna; raison d’état; ends justify means |
| Desiderius Erasmus | 1466 – 1536 | Northern humanism | In Praise of Folly, Enchiridion Militis Christiani | Christian humanism; critical edition of the Greek New Testament 1516 |
| Thomas More | 1478 – 1535 | English humanism | Utopia (1516) | Coined “utopia”; martyred under Henry VIII |
| Francis Bacon | 1561 – 1626 | English Empiricism | Novum Organum, The Advancement of Learning | Inductive method; four idols; “knowledge is power” |
| Thomas Hobbes | 1588 – 1679 | English contractarian | Leviathan (1651), De Cive | State of nature; social contract; absolute sovereign; mechanistic materialism |
| René Descartes | 1596 – 1650 | French Rationalism | Meditations on First Philosophy, Discourse on Method, Principles of Philosophy | Cogito ergo sum; mind-body dualism; method of doubt; analytic geometry |
| Blaise Pascal | 1623 – 1662 | French Jansenist | Pensées, Provincial Letters | Pascal’s Wager; the heart has its reasons; probability theory |
| Baruch Spinoza | 1632 – 1677 | Dutch Rationalism | Ethics (1677), Theological-Political Treatise (1670) | Substance monism (Deus sive Natura); parallelism; conatus; biblical criticism |
| John Locke | 1632 – 1704 | English Empiricism | Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Two Treatises of Government | Tabula rasa; primary/secondary qualities; natural rights; consent-based government |
| Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz | 1646 – 1716 | German Rationalism | Monadology, Theodicy, New Essays on Human Understanding | Monads; pre-established harmony; “best of all possible worlds”; calculus |
| Giambattista Vico | 1668 – 1744 | Italian historicism | New Science (Scienza Nuova, 1725) | Verum factum principle; cycles of civilization (corsi e ricorsi) |
| George Berkeley | 1685 – 1753 | Irish Empiricism / Idealism | A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues | ”Esse est percipi”; subjective idealism; critique of abstraction |
| David Hume | 1711 – 1776 | Scottish Empiricism | A Treatise of Human Nature, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion | Problem of induction; bundle theory of self; is-ought distinction; critique of miracles |
| Jean-Jacques Rousseau | 1712 – 1778 | French Enlightenment | The Social Contract, Emile, Discourse on Inequality | General will; noble savage; education; civil religion |
| Adam Smith | 1723 – 1790 | Scottish moral philosophy / economics | The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations | Invisible hand; sympathy; division of labor; foundation of classical economics |
| Immanuel Kant | 1724 – 1804 | German Critical philosophy | Critique of Pure Reason (1781/87), Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgment, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals | Transcendental idealism; categorical imperative; synthetic a priori; phenomena/noumena |
| Mary Wollstonecraft | 1759 – 1797 | English Enlightenment / proto-feminist | A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), A Vindication of the Rights of Men | Foundational liberal feminism; rationalist case for women’s education |
V. Nineteenth Century (1748 – 1925)
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeremy Bentham | 1748 – 1832 | British Utilitarianism | An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation | Greatest happiness principle; hedonic calculus; panopticon |
| Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel | 1770 – 1831 | German Idealism | Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Science of Logic, Philosophy of Right | Dialectic; absolute spirit; master-slave dialectic; world-historical individuals |
| Arthur Schopenhauer | 1788 – 1860 | German pessimism | The World as Will and Representation | Will as the thing-in-itself; pessimism; aesthetic and ascetic escape from suffering |
| John Stuart Mill | 1806 – 1873 | British Utilitarianism / Liberalism | Utilitarianism, On Liberty, A System of Logic, The Subjection of Women | Higher/lower pleasures; harm principle; methods of induction |
| Søren Kierkegaard | 1813 – 1855 | Danish proto-existentialist | Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Concluding Unscientific Postscript | Three stages (aesthetic/ethical/religious); leap of faith; subjective truth |
| Karl Marx | 1818 – 1883 | German materialism / socialism | Capital (Das Kapital), The German Ideology, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The Communist Manifesto (with Engels) | Historical materialism; alienation; surplus value; class struggle |
| Friedrich Engels | 1820 – 1895 | German materialism | The Condition of the Working Class in England, Anti-Dühring, The Origin of the Family | Co-founder of Marxism; dialectical materialism systematized |
| Charles Sanders Peirce | 1839 – 1914 | American Pragmatism (founder) | Collected Papers, “The Fixation of Belief”, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” | Semiotics (icon/index/symbol); abduction; pragmatic maxim |
| William James | 1842 – 1910 | American Pragmatism | The Principles of Psychology, Pragmatism, The Varieties of Religious Experience | Will to believe; stream of consciousness; radical empiricism |
| Friedrich Nietzsche | 1844 – 1900 | German | Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Birth of Tragedy, The Gay Science | Will to power; eternal recurrence; Übermensch; “God is dead”; master/slave morality |
| Gottlob Frege | 1848 – 1925 | German analytic / logic | Begriffsschrift (1879), Foundations of Arithmetic (1884), Grundgesetze der Arithmetik | Predicate logic; sense and reference; logicism; founded modern logic |
VI. Twentieth Century — Analytic (1872 – present)
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bertrand Russell | 1872 – 1970 | British analytic | Principia Mathematica (with Whitehead), The Problems of Philosophy, Our Knowledge of the External World, A History of Western Philosophy | Theory of descriptions; logical atomism; Russell’s paradox; ramified type theory |
| Alfred North Whitehead | 1861 – 1947 | British / American process | Principia Mathematica, Process and Reality | Process philosophy; prehension; God as fellow sufferer |
| G. E. Moore | 1873 – 1958 | Cambridge analytic | Principia Ethica, “A Defence of Common Sense”, “Proof of an External World” | Naturalistic fallacy; commonsense realism; non-naturalism in ethics |
| Ludwig Wittgenstein | 1889 – 1951 | Austrian / Cambridge | Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), Philosophical Investigations (posthumous 1953) | Picture theory of meaning (early); language-games and forms of life (late); private-language argument |
| Rudolf Carnap | 1891 – 1970 | Vienna Circle / logical positivism | The Logical Structure of the World, Logical Syntax of Language, Meaning and Necessity | Verificationism; constitution systems; tolerance principle in logic |
| Karl Popper | 1902 – 1994 | Austrian / philosophy of science | The Logic of Scientific Discovery, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Conjectures and Refutations | Falsifiability; critical rationalism; piecemeal social engineering |
| Willard Van Orman Quine | 1908 – 2000 | American analytic | Word and Object, From a Logical Point of View, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” | Indeterminacy of translation; ontological relativity; rejection of analytic-synthetic |
| A. J. Ayer | 1910 – 1989 | English logical positivism | Language, Truth and Logic (1936) | Verification principle; emotivism in ethics |
| P. F. Strawson | 1919 – 2006 | Oxford ordinary language | Individuals, The Bounds of Sense | Descriptive metaphysics; persons as basic particulars; reactive attitudes |
| Donald Davidson | 1917 – 2003 | American analytic | Essays on Actions and Events, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation | Anomalous monism; radical interpretation; reasons as causes |
| Hilary Putnam | 1926 – 2016 | American analytic | Reason, Truth and History, Representation and Reality, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning‘“ | Twin Earth; semantic externalism; multiple realizability; internal realism |
| Saul Kripke | 1940 – 2022 | American analytic | Naming and Necessity (1980), Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language | Rigid designators; a posteriori necessity; modal logic semantics |
| David K. Lewis | 1941 – 2001 | American analytic | On the Plurality of Worlds, Counterfactuals, Convention | Modal realism; Humean supervenience; counterfactual analysis of causation |
| John Searle | 1932 – present | American analytic | Speech Acts, Intentionality, The Construction of Social Reality | Chinese Room; speech-act theory; biological naturalism |
| Michael Dummett | 1925 – 2011 | English analytic | Frege: Philosophy of Language, Truth and Other Enigmas | Anti-realism; manifestation argument; meaning-as-use |
| Timothy Williamson | 1955 – present | English analytic | Knowledge and Its Limits, The Philosophy of Philosophy | Knowledge-first epistemology; safety condition; modal epistemology |
| David Chalmers | 1966 – present | Australian analytic | The Conscious Mind, Constructing the World, Reality+ | Hard problem of consciousness; zombies; extended mind (with Clark); virtual realism |
| Daniel Dennett | 1942 – 2024 | American analytic | Consciousness Explained, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Freedom Evolves | Multiple drafts; intentional stance; heterophenomenology |
VII. Twentieth Century — Continental (1859 – present)
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edmund Husserl | 1859 – 1938 | German phenomenology (founder) | Logical Investigations, Ideas I, Cartesian Meditations, The Crisis of European Sciences | Phenomenological reduction (époché); intentionality; lifeworld (Lebenswelt) |
| Martin Heidegger | 1889 – 1976 | German existential phenomenology | Being and Time (1927), Letter on Humanism, The Question Concerning Technology | Dasein; being-in-the-world; thrownness; enframing (Gestell) |
| Hans-Georg Gadamer | 1900 – 2002 | German hermeneutics | Truth and Method (1960) | Fusion of horizons; effective history; hermeneutic circle |
| Theodor W. Adorno | 1903 – 1969 | Frankfurt School | Dialectic of Enlightenment (with Horkheimer), Negative Dialectics, Minima Moralia | Culture industry; identity thinking; non-identity |
| Max Horkheimer | 1895 – 1973 | Frankfurt School | Dialectic of Enlightenment, Eclipse of Reason | Critical theory; instrumental reason |
| Jean-Paul Sartre | 1905 – 1980 | French existentialism | Being and Nothingness (1943), Existentialism Is a Humanism, Critique of Dialectical Reason | Existence precedes essence; bad faith; radical freedom |
| Maurice Merleau-Ponty | 1908 – 1961 | French phenomenology | Phenomenology of Perception (1945), The Visible and the Invisible | Embodied perception; flesh of the world; chiasm |
| Emmanuel Levinas | 1906 – 1995 | French / Jewish phenomenology | Totality and Infinity (1961), Otherwise than Being | Ethics as first philosophy; the face of the Other; infinite responsibility |
| Hannah Arendt | 1906 – 1975 | German-American political theory | The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, Eichmann in Jerusalem, On Revolution | Vita activa; banality of evil; natality; public realm |
| Simone de Beauvoir | 1908 – 1986 | French existentialism / feminism | The Second Sex (1949), The Ethics of Ambiguity | ”One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”; woman as Other; situated freedom |
| Jürgen Habermas | 1929 – present | Frankfurt School (2nd gen) | The Theory of Communicative Action, Between Facts and Norms, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere | Communicative rationality; ideal speech situation; public sphere |
| Axel Honneth | 1949 – present | Frankfurt School (3rd gen) | The Struggle for Recognition, Reification | Recognition theory; pathologies of social freedom |
| Michel Foucault | 1926 – 1984 | French post-structuralism | The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish, The History of Sexuality (3 vols), Madness and Civilization | Power/knowledge; biopolitics; panopticism; genealogy |
| Jacques Derrida | 1930 – 2004 | French deconstruction | Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, Speech and Phenomena, Specters of Marx | Deconstruction; différance; logocentrism; trace |
| Gilles Deleuze | 1925 – 1995 | French | Difference and Repetition, A Thousand Plateaus (with Guattari), Anti-Oedipus | Rhizome; assemblage; deterritorialization; univocity of being |
| Jacques Lacan | 1901 – 1981 | French psychoanalysis | Écrits, Seminars | Mirror stage; symbolic/imaginary/real; “the unconscious is structured like a language” |
| Slavoj Žižek | 1949 – present | Slovenian / Lacanian Marxism | The Sublime Object of Ideology, Less Than Nothing, The Parallax View | Ideology critique; parallax gap; Hegelian-Lacanian-Marxist synthesis |
| Judith Butler | 1956 – present | American post-structuralist | Gender Trouble (1990), Bodies That Matter, Precarious Life | Gender performativity; performative speech acts; precarity |
VIII. American Pragmatism
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charles Sanders Peirce | 1839 – 1914 | Classical pragmatism | (see §V) | Pragmatic maxim; semiotics; abduction |
| William James | 1842 – 1910 | Classical pragmatism | (see §V) | Truth as “what works”; varieties of religious experience |
| John Dewey | 1859 – 1952 | Pragmatism / instrumentalism | Democracy and Education, Experience and Nature, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry | Inquiry; instrumentalism; democracy as a way of life |
| George Herbert Mead | 1863 – 1931 | Pragmatism / social psychology | Mind, Self, and Society (posthumous) | “I” and “me”; generalized other; symbolic interactionism |
| Richard Rorty | 1931 – 2007 | Neo-pragmatism | Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity | Anti-representationalism; ironist; private/public distinction |
IX. Women Philosophers (selected; cross-listed where relevant)
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hypatia of Alexandria | c.350 – 415 CE | Neoplatonist mathematician | (lost; reported by Damascius) | Commentaries on Diophantus and Apollonius; martyred in Alexandria |
| Mary Astell | 1666 – 1731 | English proto-feminist Cartesian | A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Some Reflections upon Marriage | Female academies; rationalist critique of patriarchal marriage |
| Mary Wollstonecraft | 1759 – 1797 | English Enlightenment | (see §IV) | Liberal feminism foundation |
| Hannah Arendt | 1906 – 1975 | German-American political theory | (see §VII) | Vita activa; banality of evil |
| Simone de Beauvoir | 1908 – 1986 | French existentialism | (see §VII) | The Second Sex; woman as Other |
| Iris Murdoch | 1919 – 1999 | Anglo-Irish moral philosophy | The Sovereignty of Good, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals | Attention; moral perception; Platonic good |
| G. E. M. Anscombe | 1919 – 2001 | Cambridge analytic / Catholic | Intention (1957), “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958) | Revived virtue ethics; coined “consequentialism”; action theory |
| Mary Midgley | 1919 – 2018 | British moral philosophy | Beast and Man, The Myths We Live By | Critique of scientism; pluralist naturalism |
| Philippa Foot | 1920 – 2010 | Oxford analytic | Virtues and Vices, Natural Goodness | Trolley Problem (1967); revival of virtue ethics |
| Elizabeth Anderson | 1959 – present | American political philosophy | The Imperative of Integration, Private Government | Relational egalitarianism; workplace as private government |
| Christine Korsgaard | 1952 – present | American Kantian | The Sources of Normativity, Self-Constitution | Constructivist Kantianism; practical identity |
| Martha Nussbaum | 1947 – present | American virtue ethics / capabilities | The Fragility of Goodness, Women and Human Development, Upheavals of Thought | Capabilities approach (with Sen); literary ethics; emotions as cognitive |
| Onora O’Neill | 1941 – present | British Kantian | Constructions of Reason, Towards Justice and Virtue | Practical reason; trust; constructivist Kantianism |
| Patricia Churchland | 1943 – present | Canadian-American philosophy of mind | Neurophilosophy, Touching a Nerve | Eliminative materialism (with P. M. Churchland); neuroethics |
| Miranda Fricker | 1966 – present | British analytic | Epistemic Injustice (2007) | Testimonial and hermeneutical injustice |
| Charles W. Mills | 1951 – 2021 | Jamaican-American political philosophy | The Racial Contract (1997), Black Rights/White Wrongs | Racial contract; non-ideal theory; critique of liberal contractarianism |
| Carole Pateman | 1940 – present | Political philosophy / feminism | The Sexual Contract (1988), The Problem of Political Obligation | Sexual contract; critique of contractarian gender silence |
| Susan Sontag | 1933 – 2004 | American essayist | On Photography, Regarding the Pain of Others, Illness as Metaphor | Aesthetics; visual culture; metaphor critique |
| Sissela Bok | 1934 – present | Swedish-American applied ethics | Lying, Secrets | Ethics of deception; ethics of secrecy |
X. Twentieth–Twenty-First Century Modern & Contemporary
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| John Rawls | 1921 – 2002 | American political liberalism | A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism, The Law of Peoples | Veil of ignorance; original position; justice as fairness; difference principle |
| Robert Nozick | 1938 – 2002 | American libertarianism | Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Philosophical Explanations | Entitlement theory; minimal state; experience machine |
| Amartya Sen | 1933 – present | Indian welfare economics / philosophy | Development as Freedom, The Idea of Justice, Inequality Reexamined | Capabilities (with Nussbaum); social choice; comparative justice |
| Alasdair MacIntyre | 1929 – present | Scottish virtue ethics / Catholic | After Virtue (1981), Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Dependent Rational Animals | Tradition-constituted inquiry; revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics |
| Peter Singer | 1946 – present | Australian applied ethics | Animal Liberation (1975), Practical Ethics, The Life You Can Save | Preference utilitarianism; animal rights; effective altruism |
| Derek Parfit | 1942 – 2017 | British analytic ethics | Reasons and Persons (1984), On What Matters (3 vols) | Personal identity reductionism; non-identity problem; triple theory |
| Bernard Williams | 1929 – 2003 | British analytic | Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Shame and Necessity, Truth and Truthfulness | Critique of utilitarianism; moral luck; internal reasons |
| T. M. Scanlon | 1940 – present | American contractualism | What We Owe to Each Other (1998) | Contractualist ethics; reasons fundamentalism |
| Philip Pettit | 1945 – present | Irish republican political philosophy | Republicanism, On the People’s Terms | Non-domination; republican freedom; group agency |
XI. Non-Western Traditions
Chinese
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Confucius (Kongzi) | 551 – 479 BCE | Confucian (founder) | Analects (compiled by disciples) | Ren (humaneness); li (ritual propriety); rectification of names; junzi |
| Laozi | trad. 6th c BCE | Daoist | Daodejing (81 chapters) | Dao (the way); wu wei (non-action); naturalness (ziran) |
| Mozi | c.470 – c.391 BCE | Mohist | Mozi | Universal love (jian’ai); consequentialism; anti-Confucian |
| Mencius (Mengzi) | c.372 – c.289 BCE | Confucian | Mencius | Innate goodness of human nature; four sprouts; right of rebellion |
| Zhuangzi | c.369 – c.286 BCE | Daoist | Zhuangzi (Inner Chapters authentic) | Butterfly dream; perspectival relativism; equalization of things |
| Xunzi | c.310 – c.235 BCE | Confucian | Xunzi | Human nature as bad; ritual as cultivation; naturalistic heaven |
| Han Feizi | c.280 – c.233 BCE | Legalist | Han Feizi | Law (fa), method (shu), legitimacy (shi); statecraft for the Qin |
| Wang Yangming | 1472 – 1529 | Neo-Confucian | Instructions for Practical Living | Unity of knowledge and action; innate moral knowing (liangzhi) |
Indian
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nagarjuna | c.150 – c.250 CE | Mahayana Buddhist (Madhyamaka founder) | Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Vigrahavyāvartanī | Emptiness (śūnyatā); two truths; tetralemma |
| Shankara | c.788 – c.820 CE | Advaita Vedānta | Brahmasūtrabhāṣya, Upadeśasāhasrī, commentaries on Upanishads | Non-dualism; Brahman alone is real; māyā |
| Ramanuja | 1017 – 1137 | Vishishtadvaita Vedānta | Śrī Bhāṣya, Vedārthasaṃgraha | Qualified non-dualism; bhakti as path; reality of the world |
| Madhva | 1238 – 1317 | Dvaita Vedānta | Anuvyākhyāna, commentaries | Strict dualism between God, souls, and world |
| Vivekananda (Narendranath Datta) | 1863 – 1902 | Neo-Vedānta | Raja Yoga, Jnana Yoga, lectures | Universalist Hinduism; introduction of Vedanta to the West (1893 Parliament of Religions) |
| Sri Aurobindo | 1872 – 1950 | Integral Yoga | The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Savitri | Integral evolution; supramental consciousness |
Japanese
| Philosopher | Dates | School / Tradition | Major Works | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi) | 774 – 835 | Shingon Buddhism | Sangō Shīki, Jūjūshinron | Esoteric Buddhism in Japan; ten stages of mind |
| Dōgen | 1200 – 1253 | Sōtō Zen | Shōbōgenzō (96 fascicles) | Just-sitting (shikantaza); being-time (uji); enlightenment as practice |
| Nishida Kitarō | 1870 – 1945 | Kyoto School (founder) | An Inquiry into the Good, The Logic of Topos | Pure experience; logic of place (basho); absolute nothingness |
| Watsuji Tetsurō | 1889 – 1960 | Kyoto School | Climate and Culture, Ethics | Climate (fūdo); ethics of betweenness (aidagara) |
| Tanabe Hajime | 1885 – 1962 | Kyoto School | Philosophy as Metanoetics | Logic of species; metanoetics |
Adjacent
- Ancient §I cross-refs Greek archê concepts in metaphysics-and-ontology.
- Dynasties catalog for political context (Athens, Rome, Tang, Mughal, etc.).
- Sacred texts catalog for the canonical texts that medieval philosophers commented on.
- Language families catalog for Sanskrit / Pali / Classical Greek / Latin / Classical Chinese traditions.
- Hominin catalog for biological substrate of human-nature claims.
- Philosophy Tier 1 root · Philosophy Tier 3 index