Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Basics of Philosophy

Some general topics within the huge subject of philosophy include:
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Philosophy as a whole is traditionally split into four or more main branches. The main four are:
Metaphysics
(the study of existence and the nature of reality)
Epistemology
(the study of knowledge, and how and what we know)
Ethics
(the study of how people should act, and what is good and valuable)
Aesthetics
(the study of basic philosophical questions aboutart and beauty)
In addition to these, two more branches are often added:
Logic
(the study of good reasoning, by valid inference and demonstration)
Political Philosophy
(the study of how people should
interact
 in a proper society)
 
In addition to these, there are other branches concerned with philosophical questions arising from other disciplines, including:
Philosophy of Mind
(the study of the nature of mind, consciousness, etc)
Philosophy of Religion
(the study of the nature of religion, God, evil, prayer, etc)
Philosophy of Language
(the study of the nature, origins, and usage of language)
Philosophy of Education
(the study of the purpose, process, nature and ideals of education)
Philosophy of History
(the study of the eventual significance, if any, of human history)
Philosophy of Science
(the study of the assumptions, foundations, and implications of science)
For convenience, the major movements and schools can be classified under three main sub-headings:
AncientMedievalModern
Within these, the major movements and schools include:
Ancient:
Aristotelianism
Atomism
Cynicism
Eleatic School
Ephesian School
Epicureanism
Hedonism
Milesian School
Neo-Platonism
Platonism
Pluralism
Pythagoreanism
Skepticism
Sophism
Stoicism

Medieval:
Averroism
Avicennism
Illuminationism
Scholasticism
Scotism
Thomism
Modern:
Analytic Philosophy
British Empiricism
Continental Philosophy
Deconstructionism
Existentialism
German Idealism
Hegelianism
Humanism
Kantianism
Logicism
Logical Positivism
Marxism
Modernism
Ordinary Language Philosophy
Phenomenology
Positivism
Post-Modernism
Post-Structuralism
Pragmatism
Rationalism
Romanticism
Structuralism
Transcendentalism
Utilitarianism

The long history of Western Philosophy is usually considered to begin with Thales of Miletus, who was active around 585 B.C., and will probably continue as long as humans exist.
For convenience, it can be divided into three main eras:
AncientMedievalModern
Within these eras, the following major historical periods are often identified:
Ancient: (7th Century B.C. - 5th Century A.D.)
Pre-Socratic (7th - 5th Century B.C.)
Socratic (5th - 4th Century B.C.)
Hellenistic (3rd Century B.C. - 3th Century A.D.)
Roman (1st Century B.C. - 5th Century A.D.)
Medieval: (6th - 16th Century)
Medieval (6th - 14th Century)
Renaissance (15th - 16th Century)

Modern: (17th - 20th Century)
Age of Reason (17th Century)
Age of Enlightenment (18th Century)
Modern (19th - 20th Century)
The dates are just rough guides, and the classifications rather arbitrary (for example, the Modernperiod is sometimes considered to start with the Age of Reason philosophers, and sometimes with the Renaissance philosophers). There is obviously also a certain amount of overlap between these periods.
Also see the Philosophy Timeline for an overview of Western Philosophy, created as one long image to give an idea of the relative scale and the clusters of activity in philosophical thought.

Major philosophers in alphabetical order:
Abelard, Peter (1079 - 1142) French
Albertus Magnus (c. 1206 - 1280) German
Anaxagoras (c. 500 - 428 B.C.) Greek
Anaximander (c. 610 - 546 B.C.) Greek
Anaximenes (c. 585 - 525 B.C.) Greek
Anselm, St. (1033 - 1109) Italian
Aquinas, St. Thomas (1225 - 1274) Italian
Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.) Greek
Augustine of Hippo, St. (A.D. 354 - 430) Roman
Averroës (1126 - 1198) Spanish-Arabic
Avicenna (980 - 1037) Persian
Ayer, Alfred (1910 - 1989) English
Bacon, Roger (c. 1214 - 1294) English
Bacon, Sir Francis (1561 - 1626) English
Bentham, Jeremy (1749 - 1832) English
Berkeley, Bishop George (1685 - 1753) Irish
Boethius (c. A.D. 480 - 525) Roman
Burke, Edmund (1729 - 1797) Irish
Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106 - 43 B.C.) Roman
Comte, Auguste (1798 - 1857) French
Democritus (c. 460 - 370 B.C.) Greek
Derrida, Jacques (1930 - 2004) French
Descartes, René (1596 - 1650) French
Dewey, John (1859 - 1952) American
Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412 - 323 B.C.) Greek
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803 - 1882) American
Empedocles (c. 490 - 430 B.C.) Greek
Epictetus (c. A.D. 55 - 135) Greek-Roman
Epicurus (341 - 270 B.C.) Greek
Erasmus, Desiderius (1466 - 1536) Dutch
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762 - 1814) German
Foucault, Michel (1926 - 1984) French
Frege, Gottlob (1848 - 1925) German
Gorgias (c. 487 - 376 B.C.) Greek
Hegel, G.W.F. (1770 - 1831) German
Heidegger, Martin (1889 - 1976) German
Heraclitus (c. 535 - 475 B.C.) Greek
Hobbes, Thomas (1588 - 1679) English
Hume, David (1711 - 1776) Scottish
Husserl, Edmund (1859 - 1938) German
James, William (1842 - 1910) American
Kant, Immanuel (1724 - 1804) German
Kierkegaard, Søren (1813 - 1855) Danish
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646 - 1716) German
Locke, John (1632 - 1704) English
Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469 - 1527) Italian
Maimonides (1135 - 1204) Spanish-Jewish
Malebranche, Nicolas (1638 - 1715) French
Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121 -180) Roman
Marx, Karl (1818 - 1883) German
Mill, John Stuart (1806 - 1873) English
Moore, George Edward (1873 - 1958) English
More, Sir Thomas (1478 - 1535) English
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844 - 1900) German
Ockham (Occam), William of (c. 1285 - 1348) English
Parmenides of Elea (c. 515 - 450 B.C.) Greek
Pascal, Blaise (1623 - 1662) French
Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839 - 1914) American
Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C. - A.D. 50) Egyptian-Jewish
Plato (c. 428 - 348 B.C.) Greek
Plotinus (A.D. 205 - 270) Egyptian-Greek
Protagoras (c. 490 - 420 B.C.) Greek
Pyrrho (c. 360 - 270 B.C.) Greek
Pythagoras (c. 570 - 490 B.C.) Greek
Quine, Willard Van Orman (1908 - 2000) American
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712 - 1778) Swiss-French
Russell, Bertrand (1872 - 1970) English
Ryle, Gilbert (1900 - 1976) English
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905 - 1980) French
Schelling, Friedrich (1775 - 1854) German
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788 - 1860) German
Scotus, John Duns (c. 1266 - 1308) Scottish
Smith, Adam (1723 - 1790) Scottish
Socrates (464 - 399 B.C.) Greek
Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict) (1623 - 1677) Dutch-Jewish
Thales of Miletos (c. 624 - 546 B.C.) Greek
Thoreau, Henry David (1817 - 1862) American
Voltaire (François Marie Arouet) (1694 - 1778) French
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947) English
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889 - 1951) Austrian
Zeno of Citium (334 - 262 B.C.) Greek
Zeno of Elea (c. 490 - 430 B.C.) Greek
For a chronological analysis of this list of major philosophers, see the section By Historical Period

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