Thales (c.624-c.547 B.C.)

Thales was considered by Aristotle to be the first philosopher and his position as the father of Western Philosophy has remained unchanged. He was renowned as a scientist, mathematician, engineer, astronomer and politician. He claimed that the basic substance of the universe was water. The Earth itself floats on water, which prompted Aristotle to ask what the water rested on. He thought that magnets and amber have souls and that there are gods in everything. Perhaps his most famous achievement in antiquity was to have predicted an eclipse that took place during a battle between the Medes and the Lydians after which both sides stopped fighting and agreed terms of peace. He said that philosophers are not interested in material wealth but apparently made a good deal of money with his meteorological skills. He was perhaps also the first absent-minded professor, apparently fell into a well after walking around at night looking at the stars.  [more]

Anaximander (c.610-c.546 B.C.)

Anaximander was a citizen of Miletus like Thales. Whereas none of Thales' actual words have survived, we have a tiny fragment from a lost work of Anaximander, making him the oldest philosopher in print. He thought that the earth was shaped like a squat cylinder and, cleverly, reasoned that it needed no support because it was at the centre of the universe. It was hence subject to no inclination to move one way rather than another. At some distance from the earth was a circular tube of fire with a hole in it: the sun is the light shining through the hole. Anaximander claimed that basic principle or stuff was the infinite or the 'boundless'. He apparently argued that the first humans grew inside fish-like animals up to the age of puberty whereupon they (literally) burst into the world. Since humans have a long childhood in which they need nursing, the first humans could not have appeared as children.

Pythagoras (c.580-c.500 B.C.)

A charismatic figure who founded a school in Croton (southern Italy), Pythagoras embodied the idea of philosophy of a way of life. Pythagoras believed that our souls are immortal and could be incarnated in animal and human bodies from one life to the next. It was said that Pythagoras claimed to be able to remember his previous incarnations. Members of the school - who, notably, included women as well as men - followed a strict codes that regulated everything from clothing to sex to food. Pythagoras' name is of course associated with mathematics. Aristotle says that the Pythagoreans were first to study mathematics and that numbers were the fundamental elements of the universe. It is highly questionable whether Pythagoras' ever proved the famous theorem that bears his name, though. They also discovered - to their horror - irrational numbers. They were also known for linking mathematics and music through discovering that musical intervals are integral ratios of the notes.

Heraclitus (c.540-c.480-470 B.C.)

Parmenides (b. c.515 B.C.)

Parmenides was born and lived in Elea (now Velia) in southern Italy. His philosophy is known to us through his poem, On Nature, substantial parts of which survive. He teaches us that our senses are no guide to the true nature of reality but are fundamentally misleading. It is a world in which there is change and diversity. There are a great many things which come into existence, undergo many changes, and ultimately perish. If we turn away from the senses to reasons, we will find that change and diversity are illusions. Reality contains - is - just one thing that is unchanging. Nevertheless, he then seems to provide an explanation of the apparent world. It is created by the interplay of two elements: light and night. It appeared Parmenides had a detailed cosmology. He was said to be the first to say that the Earth was a sphere at the centre of the universe.

Anaxagoras (c.500-c.428 B.C.)

Zeno (c.490-c.425 B.C.)

Protagoras (c.490-c.420 B.C.)

Socrates (469-399 B.C.)

Plato (429-347 B.C.)

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

St. Augustine (354-430)

St. Anselm (1033-1109)

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Thomas Hobbes(1588-1679)

René Descartes (1596-1650)

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715)

Gottfried Wilhelm Freidrich von Leibniz (1646-1716)

John Locke (1648-1712)

George Berkeley (1685-1753)

David Hume (1711-1776)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Georg Wilheim Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

G. E. Moore (1873-1958)

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

W. v. O. Quine (1908-2000)

A. J. Ayer (1910-1989)

Donald Davidson (1917-2003)

Edmund Gettier (1927-)

Noam Chomsky (1928-)

Robert Nozick (1938-2002)

David Lewis (1941-2001)