InfoGuides: Philosophy, RIT Croatia: Western Philosophy

Last Updated: Jan 29, 2024 4:22 PM

Ancient Greek Philosophers

Socrates

469–399 B.C., Greek philosopher of Athens. Famous for his view of philosophy as a pursuit proper and necessary to all intelligent men, he is one...
Plato
427?–347 B.C., Greek philosopher. Plato's teachings have been among the most influential in the history of Western civilization. Life After...
Aristotle
384–322 B.C., Greek philosopher, b. Stagira. He is sometimes called the Stagirite. Life Aristotle's father, Nicomachus, was a noted...
Democritus
(460–370 BCE) Ancient writers believed that Democritus was the student of Leucippus. They are associated together as the first philosophers to...
Pythagoras
C.582–c.507 B.C., pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, founder of the Pythagorean school. He migrated from his native Samos to Crotona and...
Epicurus
341–270 B.C., Greek philosopher, b. Samos; son of an Athenian colonist. He claimed to be self-taught, although tradition states that he was...

Medieval Philosophers

St. Thomas Aquinas
Scholastic philosopher and theologian, born in the castle of Roccasecca, near Aquino, SC Italy. He studied with the...
Peter Abelard
Theologian, born near Nantes, W France. He studied under Roscellinus and Guillaume de Champeaux (c.1070–1171). As...
John Duns Scotus
John Duns Scotus (or ‘the Scot’) was born about 1265 at Maxton, Roxburghshire, and died in Cologne, Germany, supposedly on 8 November 1308. He...

Renaissance Philosophers

Niccolò Machiavelli

1469–1527, Italian author and statesman, one of the outstanding figures of the Renaissance, b. Florence. Life A member of the impoverished...
Thomas More
More was born in London on 7 February 1478, and executed on Tower Hill in the same city on 6 July 1535. He was the sole surviving son of Sir...

Early Modern Philosophers

René Descartes
French philosopher and mathematician whose work in attempting to reduce the physical sciences to purely mathematical principles – and...
John Locke
Locke was born on 29 August 1632 at Wrington, Somerset, into a Puritan family of the minor gentry. He died on 28 October 1704 at Oates in Essex...
Thomas Hobbes
Hobbes was born at Westport (now a part of Malmesbury), Wiltshire on 5 April 1588. He died 4 December 1679 at Hardwick, Derbyshire. He was...
Francis Bacon
Bacon was born 22 January 1561 at York House in the Strand in London. He died near London on 9 April 1626. He was the second child of Anne Cooke...
Gottfried Leibniz
German philosopher and mathematician who was one of the founders of the differential calculus and symbolic logic. Leibniz was born on 1 July...
David Hume
Hume was born David Home on 7 May 1711 in Edinburgh, and died there on 25 August 1776. He was the youngest son of the lawyer Joseph Home of...
George Berkeley
1685–1753, Anglo-Irish philosopher and clergyman, b. Co. Kilkenny, Ireland. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he became a scholar and later a...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1712–78, Swiss-French philosopher, author, political theorist, and composer. Life and Works Rousseau was born at Geneva, the son of a...
Immanuel Kant
1724–1804, German metaphysician, one of the greatest figures in philosophy, b. Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). Early Life and Works...

Late Modern and 20th Century Philosophers

John Stuart Mill
Mill was born in London on 20 May 1806 and died on 7 May 1873 in Avignon, in a house next to the cemetery where his wife was buried (his date of...
Friedrich Nietzsche
German, b: 15 October 1844, Rocken. d: 25 August 1900, Weimar, Germany. Cat: Post-Kantian philosopher. Ints: Ontology: epistemology...
Søren Kierkegaard
1813–55, Danish philosopher and religious thinker. Kierkegaard's outwardly uneventful life in Copenhagen contrasted with his intensive inner...
Jean-Paul Sartre
French, b: 1905, Paris, d: 1980, Paris. Cat: Existentialist, Ints: Phenomenology; ontology; psychology. Educ: École Normale Supérieure...
Jeremy Bentham
Bentham was born in London 15 February 1748 and died there on 6 June 1832. He was the elder son of a London attorney, Jeremiah Bentham, and his...
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1770–1831, German philosopher, b. Stuttgart; son of a government clerk. Life and Works Educated in theology at Tübingen, Hegel was a...
Martin Heidegger
German, b: 26 September 1889, Messkirch, Germany. d: 26 May 1976. Cat: Phenomenologist; ontologist. Ints: The question of being. Educ:...
Auguste Comte
1798–1857, French philosopher, founder of the school of philosophy known as positivism , educated in Paris. From 1818 to 1824 he contributed to...
Charles Sanders Peirce
American, b: 10 September 1839, Cambridge, Massachusetts, d: 14 April 1914, Milford, Pennsylvania. Cat: Physicist; logician; philosopher...
Edmund Husserl
German, b: 8 April 1859, Prossnitz, Moravia. d: 27 April 1938, Freiburg, Germany. Cat: Phenomenologist. Ints: Epistemology; ontology...
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Austrian (naturalized British in 1939). b: 26 April 1889, Vienna, d: 29 April 1951, Cambridge, England. Cat: Logical atomist (developed...