Western philosophy - Ancient Greek, Roman, & Medieval

Western philosophy

Table of Contents

Introduction
The nature of Western philosophy
- The Western tradition
- General considerations
  - Ways of ordering the history
  - Factors in writing the history
  - Shifts in the focus and concern of Western philosophy
Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy
- The pre-Socratic philosophers
  - Cosmology and the metaphysics of matter
    - Monistic cosmologies
    - Pluralistic cosmologies
  - Epistemology of appearance
  - Metaphysics of number
  - Anthropology and relativism
- The seminal thinkers of Greek philosophy
  - Socrates
  - Plato
    - Life
    - Philosophy
  - Aristotle
    - Philosophy
    - Disciples and commentators
- Hellenistic and Roman philosophy
  - Stoicism
  - Epicureanism
  - Skepticism
  - Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neoplatonism
Medieval philosophy
- The early Middle Ages
  - Augustine
  - Boethius
  - The Greek Fathers of the Church and Erigena
  - Anselm
  - Bernard de Clairvaux and Abelard
- The transition to Scholasticism
  - Arabic thought
  - Jewish thought
- The age of the Schoolmen
  - Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon
  - William of Auvergne
  - Bonaventure
  - Albertus Magnus
  - Thomas Aquinas
  - Averroists
- The late Middle Ages
  - John Duns Scotus
  - William of Ockham
  - Meister Eckehart
  - Nicholas of Cusa
Renaissance philosophy
- Political philosophy
- Humanism
- Philosophy of nature
Modern philosophy
- The rise of empiricism and rationalism
  - The empiricism of Francis Bacon
  - The materialism of Thomas Hobbes
  - The rationalism of Descartes
  - The rationalism of Spinoza and Leibniz
- Literary forms and sociological conditions
- The Enlightenment
  - Classical British empiricism
    - Reason in Locke and Berkeley
    - Basic science of human nature in Hume
  - Nonepistemological movements in the Enlightenment
    - Materialism and scientific discovery
    - Social and political philosophy
    - Professionalization of philosophy
  - Critical examination of reason in Kant
  - Literary forms
- The 19th century
  - The idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel
  - Positivism and social theory in Comte, Mill, and Marx
  - Independent and irrationalist movements
Contemporary philosophy
- Bergson, Dewey, and Whitehead
- Western Marxism
- Analytic philosophy
  - The formalist tradition
    - Logical atomism
    - Logical positivism
    - Naturalized epistemology
    - Identity theory, functionalism, and eliminative materialism
  - The informalist tradition
    - Common-sense philosophy
    - Ordinary-language philosophy
    - Speech-act theory
- Continental philosophy
  - The phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger
  - The existentialism of Jaspers and Sartre
  - Recent trends

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images

Read Next

Plato (left) and Aristotle, detail from School of Athens, fresco by Raphael, 1508-11; in the Stanza della Segnatura, the Vatican. Plato points to the heavens and the realm of Forms, Aristotle to the earth and the realm of things.

Plato and Aristotle: How Do They Differ?

Aristotle (384-322 BC), Ancient Greek philosopher and scientist. One of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western thought, Aristotle established the foundations for the modern scientific method of enquiry. Statue

Philosophers to Know, Part I

Philosophers to Know, Part II

Casino. Gambling. Slots. Slot machine. Luck. Rich. Neon. Hit the Jackpot neon sign lights up casino window.

Brain Games: 8 Philosophical Puzzles and Paradoxes

Discover

solar eclipse, sun, moon, astronomy, space

How Do You Tell the Difference Between Total, Annular, Solar, and Lunar Eclipses?

Queen Elizabeth II addresses at opening of Parliament. (Date unknown on photo, but may be 1958, the first time the opening of Parliament was filmed.)

All 119 References in “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” Explained

Pluto. The Changing Faces of Pluto. Most detailed view to date of the entire surface of the dwarf planet Pluto, as constructed from multiple NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken from 2002 to 2003.

10 Important Dates in Pluto History

Vietnam War. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson awards the Distinguished Service Cross to First Lieutenant Marty A. Hammer, during a visit to military personnel, Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam, October 26, 1966. President Johnson

Vietnam War Timeline

earthquake. Heavily damaged school in the town of Yingxiu after a major earthquake struck China's Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008.

The 6 Deadliest Earthquakes Since 1950

Solar Eclipse, Eclipse, Solar Flare, Outer Space, Astronomy

What Causes Lunar and Solar Eclipses?

In this aerial photo, structures are damaged and destroyed October 15, 2005 in Balakot, Pakistan. It is estimated that 90% of the city of Balakot was leveled by the earthquake. The death toll in the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck northern Pakistan on October 8, 2005 is believed to be 38,000 with at least 1,300 more dead in Indian Kashmir. SEE CONTENT NOTES.

6 of the World’s Deadliest Natural Disasters

Because the earliest Greek philosophers of Classical antiquity focused their attention upon the origin and nature of the physical world, they are often called cosmologists, or naturalists. Although monistic views (which trace the origin of the world to a single substance) prevailed at first, they were soon followed by several pluralistic theories (which trace it to several ultimate substances). There is a consensus, dating back at least to the 4th century bce and continuing to the present, that the first Greek philosopher was Thales of Miletus (flourished 6th century bce). In Thales’ time the word philosopher (“lover of wisdom”) had ...(100 of 35939 words)

Access the full article

Help support true facts by becoming a member.