History of Philosophy - TimeLine

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1. Chronological Timeline of Philosophers

Very early Indian & Chinese philosophy (before the Greeks)

Vedic & Upanishadic thinkers (c. 1500–500 BCE) – Early Indian speculative theologians/philosophers behind the Vedas and Upanishads; themes of brahman, atman, karma, liberation.
“Kapila” of Sāṃkhya (legendary) – Traditionally placed around c. 7th–5th c. BCE, founder-figure of the dualist Sāṃkhya school.
Confucius (551–479 BCE) – Chinese; founder of Confucianism, ethics of role, ritual, and humane virtue (ren).
Laozi (traditional dates 6th c. BCE, possibly 4th c.) – Putative author of the Daodejing, central to Daoism.
Mozi (c. 470–391 BCE) – Chinese founder of Mohism, advocating impartial concern and utilitarian-flavored ethics.
Zhuangzi (4th c. BCE) – Major Daoist philosopher, sceptical and playful, deepening Daoist themes.
Mencius (372–289 BCE) – Confucian who argued for the innate goodness of human nature.
Xunzi (c. 310–235 BCE) – Confucian who argued human nature is bad and must be shaped by ritual and education.
Han Feizi (c. 280–233 BCE) – Major Legalist thinker: strong laws, harsh punishments, realist view of politics.

Early Indian systematic schools

Gautama (Akṣapāda) (traditional founder, dates uncertain) – Nyāya logic and epistemology, c. 2nd c. BCE–2nd c. CE.
Kaṇāda (Vaisheshika) – Founder-figure of the Vaiśeṣika atomist metaphysics, c. 2nd–1st c. BCE.
Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha) (c. 5th c. BCE) – Founder of Buddhism, path of the Middle Way, four noble truths, no-self.
Mahavira (c. 599–527 BCE) – Principal teacher of Jainism, radical non-violence and asceticism.

Early Greek philosophy (Presocratics)

(Grayling, Kenny, and Evans all begin their Western story here.)

Thales of Miletus (c. 624–546 BCE) – Usually treated as the first Western philosopher; Milesian naturalist, “all is water.”
Anaximander (c. 610–546 BCE) – Milesian, posits the apeiron (the indefinite) as origin of things.
Anaximenes (c. 585–528 BCE) – Milesian, makes air the fundamental stuff.
Pythagoras (c. 570–495 BCE) – Pythagorean; number and harmony as the key to reality, communal way of life.
Xenophanes (c. 570–475 BCE) – Critic of anthropomorphic gods; proto-theological critic and epistemological sceptic.
Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BCE) – Philosopher of flux and logos; “you cannot step into the same river twice.”
Parmenides (c. 515–450 BCE) – Eleatic monist: Being is one, change and plurality are illusory.
Zeno of Elea (c. 495–430 BCE) – Eleatic, famous paradoxes of motion and plurality.
Empedocles (c. 494–434 BCE) – Pluralist: four elements + Love/Strife as causes.
Anaxagoras (c. 500–428 BCE) – Pluralist, posits Nous (Mind) ordering all.
Leucippus (5th c. BCE) – Co-founder of Atomism.
Democritus (c. 460–370 BCE) – Major Atomist; reality as atoms and void.

Classical Greek (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle)

The Sophists (esp. Protagoras c. 490–420 BCE, Gorgias c. 485–380 BCE) – Professional teachers of rhetoric and relativistic approaches to truth and morality.
Socrates (469–399 BCE) – Founder of the Socratic/ethical turn, method of elenchus, focus on virtue and the examined life.
Plato (427–347 BCE) – Platonism: theory of Forms, tripartite soul, ideal state in Republic, metaphysical dualism.
Aristotle (384–322 BCE) – Peripatetic / Aristotelian: categories, four causes, substance, virtue ethics, systematic logic.

Hellenistic and Roman philosophy

Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412–323 BCE) – Cynicism, radical simplicity, rejection of convention.
Epicurus (341–270 BCE) – Epicureanism: hedonistic but modest pursuit of pleasure, atomism, gods indifferent.
Zeno of Citium (334–262 BCE) – Founder of Stoicism: living in accord with nature/logos.
Chrysippus (c. 279–206 BCE) – Systematizer of Stoic logic and ethics.
Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360–270 BCE) – Founder of Pyrrhonian scepticism, suspension of judgment.
Carneades (c. 214–129 BCE) – Academic sceptic, probability and plausibility over certainty.
Lucretius (c. 99–55 BCE) – Latin Epicurean poet, On the Nature of Things.
Cicero (106–43 BCE) – Eclectic Roman thinker; important for transmitting Greek philosophy, especially Stoicism and Academic scepticism.
Plotinus (c. 204/5–270 CE) – Founder of Neoplatonism, hierarchy of the One–Intellect–Soul.
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) – Christian Platonist; key to Augustinian theology and medieval philosophy.

Early medieval, Islamic, and Jewish philosophy

Boethius (c. 477–524) – Transmitter of Greek logic; Consolation of Philosophy.
John Philoponus, Pseudo-Dionysius, etc. (late antique / early medieval Christian Platonists).
Al-Kindi (c. 801–873) – First major Arabic–Persian “falsafa” philosopher.
Al-Farabi (c. 872–950) – Synthesizes Plato and Aristotle; political and metaphysical thought.
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980–1037) – Monumental Islamic Aristotelian–Neoplatonist; essence/existence distinction, contingency arguments.
Al-Ghazali (1058–1111) – Critic of the philosophers; Ash‘arite theologian arguing limits of reason.
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126–1198) – Defender of Aristotelian philosophy against Al-Ghazali; influential in Latin West.
Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) – Scholastic; ontological argument, faith-seeking-understanding.
Peter Abelard (1079–1142) – Scholastic logician and ethicist, early discussion of universals and intention.
Maimonides (1138–1204) – Jewish Aristotelian, Guide for the Perplexed; major in Kenny’s medieval part.

High Scholasticism and late medieval West

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) – High Scholastic / Thomist, synthesis of Aristotle and Christian doctrine.
Bonaventure (1217–1274) – Franciscan, more Augustinian/Neoplatonic than Aquinas.
John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308) – Subtle doctor; univocity of being, haecceity, alternative to Thomism.
William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347) – Nominalist; parsimony (“Ockham’s razor”), critique of universals.
Late Scholastics like Suárez (1548–1617) help bridge medieval and modern discussions of metaphysics and law (highlighted in both Kenny and Evans).

Renaissance & Reformation era

(Evans and Grayling treat this mainly as transitional: humanism, political thought, and religious upheaval.)

Machiavelli (1469–1527) – Renaissance political realist, The Prince.
Erasmus (1466–1536) – Christian humanist, critical editions of scripture, advocate of learned reform.
Martin Luther (1483–1546), John Calvin (1509–1564) – Theological reformers whose ideas deeply shape political and moral philosophy.

Early modern: Scientific revolution & rationalism/empiricism

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) – Methodological empiricist, advocate of experiment and induction.
René Descartes (1596–1650) – Foundational rationalist; cogito, mind–body dualism, clear and distinct ideas.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) – Materialist, social contract theorist, mechanistic physics.
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) – Radical rationalist monist, God/Nature, geometric ethics.
John Locke (1632–1704) – Empiricism, theory of ideas, political liberalism.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) – Rationalist; monads, pre-established harmony, necessary truths.
George Berkeley (1685–1753) – Idealist empiricist, esse est percipi.
David Hume (1711–1776) – Radical empiricist and sceptic; problem of induction, bundle theory of self.
Thomas Reid (1710–1796) – Scottish common-sense realist, critic of Hume.

Enlightenment & Kant

Voltaire (1694–1778), Diderot (1713–1784) – Philosophes, champions of reason and critique of superstition.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) – Critic of civilization, theorist of the general will, profound influence on political and educational thought.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) – Early feminist philosopher, Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) – Central figure of critical philosophy; synthetic a priori, categorical imperative, transcendental idealism.

19th-century philosophy

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) – Founder of classical utilitarianism.
G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) – Systematic German idealist; dialectic, absolute spirit.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) – Pessimistic metaphysics of will, critic of Hegelian optimism.
Auguste Comte (1798–1857) – Founder of positivism, “law of three stages.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) – Developed utilitarianism, liberty, harm principle, women’s rights.
Karl Marx (1818–1883) – Marxism, critique of capitalism, historical materialism.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) – Proto-existentialist, Christian individualism, subjectivity, leap of faith.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) – Radical critic of morality, “death of God,” will to power.
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) – Founder of pragmatism, logic and semiotics.
William James (1842–1910) – Pragmatism, radical empiricism, psychology of belief.

Late 19th / early 20th: Analytic & Continental foundations

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) – Founder of analytic logic and philosophy of language.
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) – Founder of phenomenology: rigorous description of consciousness.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) – Logicism, analytic philosophy, theory of descriptions.
G. E. Moore (1873–1958) – Common-sense philosophy, open-question argument in ethics.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) – Not a philosopher proper but central to Kenny’s “Freud to Derrida”; unconscious, psychoanalytic theory.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) – Two major phases: early Tractatus logical atomism; later ordinary language and use-theory of meaning.
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) – Existential phenomenology; Being-in-the-world, Being and Time.
Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) – Key logical positivist, verificationism, philosophy of science.
Karl Popper (1902–1994) – Falsificationism, critical rationalism, open society.

Mid–late 20th century Analytic

W. V. O. Quine (1908–2000) – Challenge to analytic/synthetic, naturalized epistemology.
Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976) – Category-mistake critique of Cartesian dualism (The Concept of Mind).
J. L. Austin (1911–1960) – Speech-act theory, ordinary language philosophy.
P. F. Strawson (1919–2006) – Descriptive metaphysics, reference theory.
Donald Davidson (1917–2003) – Truth-conditional semantics, anomalous monism.
Michael Dummett (1925–2011) – Anti-realism about truth, philosophy of language and logic.
Saul Kripke (1940–2022) – Modal logic, rigid designation, causal theory of reference.
C. L. Stevenson (1908–1979), R. M. Hare (1919–2002), J. L. Mackie (1917–1981) – Major analytic ethicists (emotivism, prescriptivism, error theory).
Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001), Philippa Foot (1920–2010), Alasdair MacIntyre (b. 1929) – Core figures in virtue ethics revival.
John Rawls (1921–2002) – A Theory of Justice, liberal egalitarianism, original position.
Robert Nozick (1938–2002) – Libertarian response to Rawls, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

20th-century Continental & critical traditions

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) – Phenomenology of embodiment.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) – Atheist existentialism, freedom, bad faith.
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) – Hermeneutics, Truth and Method.
Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) – Hermeneutics, narrative identity, time and narrative.
Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) – Metaphysics of difference, assemblages, with and without Guattari.
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) – Deconstruction, critique of logocentrism, writing and différance.
Feminist philosophers (e.g. Simone de Beauvoir, later Gilligan, MacKinnon, etc.) – Explored gender, oppression, embodiment.

Non-Western 20th-century & African philosophy (Grayling Part V)

Modern Indian, Chinese, and African thinkers are treated more briefly but include:
- African: work on sage philosophy (H. Odera Oruka), conceptual decolonization (Kwasi Wiredu), critiques of ethnophilosophy (Paulin Hountondji).

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2. Major Schools / Movements

Below: approximate start date (when it crystallizes as a school), one-sentence summary, and key figures from your three books.

Upanishadic / Vedantic speculation (c. 800–500 BCE)

Start: Late Vedic period in India.
Idea: Speculative reflection on ultimate reality (brahman), self (atman), karma, and liberation; roots of later Vedānta.
Key figures: Anonymous Upanishadic sages; later Vedāntins are beyond the scope of these books, but the background is stressed.

Early Indian schools: Sāṃkhya, Nyāya–Vaiśeṣika, Jainism, Buddhism, Cārvāka (c. 500–200 BCE)

Sāṃkhya (dualism of puruṣa and prakṛti), Nyāya–Vaiśeṣika (logic + atomist metaphysics), Jainism (non-violence, many-sided truth), Buddhism (no-self, dependent arising), Cārvāka (materialist scepticism).
Figures: Buddha, Mahavira, Gautama (Nyāya), Kaṇāda, early Jain/Buddhist philosophers.

Classical Chinese traditions (from c. 6th c. BCE)

Confucianism: ethical/political philosophy of role, ritual, and humane virtue (Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi).
Mohism: universal love, anti-ritual, proto-utilitarian (Mozi).
Daoism: alignment with the Dao, spontaneity, scepticism of language (Laozi, Zhuangzi).
Legalism: authoritarian realpolitik, rule by law and punishment (Han Feizi).

Milesian natural philosophy (c. 585 BCE)

Start: With Thales’ natural explanation of eclipse and unity of matter.
Idea: Seek natural, not mythic, explanations; search for a single basic stuff.
Figures: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes.

Pythagoreanism (c. 530 BCE)

Idea: Number and mathematical ratios are the essence of things; communal rule-bound life.
Figures: Pythagoras, later Pythagoreans.

Eleatic monism (early 5th c. BCE)

Idea: Being is one, unchanging; change and plurality are contradictions.
Figures: Xenophanes (proto), Parmenides, Zeno of Elea.

Atomism (mid-5th c. BCE)

Idea: Reality is indivisible atoms in the void; qualities reduced to arrangements of atoms.
Figures: Leucippus, Democritus; later Epicureans.

The Sophistic movement (c. 450–400 BCE)

Idea: Paid teachers of rhetoric, often with relativistic views about truth and morality.
Figures: Protagoras, Gorgias, others; heavily treated via Socrates’ response.

Platonism (from c. 387 BCE)

Start: Plato’s Academy.
Idea: Realm of Forms as ultimate reality; philosophical rulers; immortal soul.
Figures: Plato, later Middle Platonists, culminating in Plotinus’ Neoplatonism.

Aristotelianism / Peripatetic school (from c. 335 BCE)

Idea: Hylomorphism (form+matter), systematic logic, classification of sciences, virtue as rational mean.
Figures: Aristotle, his school, later Aristotelians (Averroes, Aquinas, Suárez).

Cynicism (c. 400 BCE)

Idea: Radical simplicity, rejection of convention and materialism.
Figures: Antisthenes, Diogenes of Sinope.

Epicureanism (307 BCE)

Start: Epicurus’ Garden in Athens.
Idea: Pleasure as absence of pain, simple living, atomist physics, no fear of gods or death.
Figures: Epicurus, Lucretius.

Stoicism (c. 300 BCE)

Idea: Living according to reason/nature; virtue is the only good; determinism; sophisticated logic.
Figures: Zeno of Citium, Chrysippus, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius.

Hellenistic scepticism (3rd c. BCE onward)

Academic scepticism (Carneades) and Pyrrhonian scepticism (Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus); suspension of judgment, probability.

Neoplatonism (3rd c. CE)

Idea: Hierarchical emanation from the ineffable One; mystical ascent.
Figures: Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus; influences Augustine and later Christian thought.

Augustinian Christian Platonism (4th–5th c.)

Idea: Christianization of Platonism; divine illumination, inner turn, history as salvation narrative.
Figures: Augustine, later Augustinians.

Islamic falsafa and kalām (9th–12th c.)

Falsafa: Aristotelian–Neoplatonic philosophy in Arabic (Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes).
Kalām: Theological dialectic (Al-Ghazali).
Theme: Interaction of Greek philosophy with Islamic theology.

Latin Scholasticism (12th–14th c.)

Idea: Systematic use of logic and Aristotle in theology and philosophy; university culture.
Figures: Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Scotus, Ockham, later Suárez.

Renaissance Platonism & Humanism (14th–16th c.)

Humanism: Return to classical texts, focus on eloquence and moral improvement (Erasmus, Pico).
Renaissance Platonism: Ficino, Pico, Christianized Platonism, magic, and cosmology.

Early modern Rationalism (17th c.)

Idea: Certain knowledge grounded in reason and innate ideas; often a priori metaphysics.
Figures: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz.

Early modern Empiricism (17th–18th c.)

Idea: All (or most) ideas derived from experience; sceptical about metaphysical speculation.
Figures: Locke, Berkeley, Hume; Scottish common-sense realism (Reid) as a variant response.

Enlightenment / philosophes (18th c.)

Idea: Reason, progress, critique of superstition and absolutism, early secularism.
Figures: Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, deists, early feminists like Wollstonecraft.

Critical / transcendental philosophy (late 18th c.)

Idea: Investigate conditions of possibility of experience and knowledge; synthetic a priori, moral autonomy.
Figures: Immanuel Kant, post-Kantian debates.

German Idealism (late 18th–early 19th c.)

Idea: Reality as fundamentally mind-like or rational; history as development of spirit.
Figures: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel.

Utilitarianism (late 18th–19th c.)

Idea: Morally right actions maximize overall happiness.
Figures: Bentham, Mill; continues into 20th-century analytic ethics.

Positivism (mid-19th c.)

Idea: Only scientifically verified knowledge counts; theology and metaphysics are earlier “stages.”
Figures: Comte; later logical positivists rework the idea.

Marxism (mid-19th c. onward)

Idea: Historical materialism, class struggle, critique of capitalism, revolution.
Figures: Marx, Engels; later Marxist and neo-Marxist traditions.

Existentialism (19th–20th c.)

Idea: Individual existence, freedom, anxiety, authenticity.
Figures: Kierkegaard (religious precursor), Nietzsche, then Sartre, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger (in a different key).

Pragmatism (late 19th–early 20th c.)

Idea: Meaning and truth tied to practical consequences and inquiry.
Figures: Peirce, James, Dewey; later neo-pragmatists.

Phenomenology (from c. 1900)

Idea: Rigorous description of structures of consciousness and lived experience.
Figures: Husserl, then Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Ricoeur, Gadamer (hermeneutic offshoot).

Analytic philosophy (c. 1900 onward)

Idea: Clarity via logic and language, often piecemeal problem-solving.
Figures: Frege, Russell, early Wittgenstein, Moore, then Carnap, logical positivists, later ordinary-language and post-Kripke analytic metaphysics.

Logical positivism (1920s–40s)

Idea: Verification principle; metaphysics as nonsense; focus on science and meaning.
Figures: Carnap, Schlick, Ayer, Vienna Circle.

Ordinary language philosophy (1940s–60s)

Idea: Many philosophical problems dissolve when we attend carefully to ordinary language use.
Figures: Later Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin, early Strawson.

Virtue ethics revival (mid-20th c. onward)

Idea: Return to character and virtues (Aristotle) rather than rules or consequences.
Figures: Anscombe, Foot, MacIntyre, others.

20th-century political philosophy

Liberal egalitarianism & rights: Rawls, Nozick (as critic), debates about justice and state legitimacy.

Feminist philosophy (20th c. onward)

Idea: Critique of patriarchy in ethics, epistemology, and politics; focus on gendered experience and oppression.
Figures: de Beauvoir, later waves (Gilligan, MacKinnon, etc.).

Late 20th-century Continental: hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism

Hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur): understanding, tradition, interpretation.
Structuralism/Post-structuralism: language, power, difference (Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida).

African philosophy (20th c. onward)

Idea: Critique of “ethnophilosophy”, retrieval of oral sages, focus on decolonization and contemporary African concerns.
Figures: Outlined by Grayling as a modern development: Oruka, Wiredu, Hountondji and others.

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