Ancient Philosophers

Cicero

(106 BC-43 BC) Though he is better remembered today for his role in the political life of the Roman Republic, they were also a significant philosopher. He described the ideal state in such dialogues as On the Republic and On the Laws, while he discussed Epicurean and Stoic views on religion in On the Nature of the Gods. Through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, he was considered one of the most important of ancient philosophers. Indeed, Saint Augustine asserted that he turned to philosophy as a result of reading a now-lost work by him known as the Hortensius.

Confucious (Kong Fu Zi)

(6th century BC) A pivotal thinker from China's Spring and Autumn period, their views on proper conduct and filial piety influence China to this day. Many sayings attributed to him were compiled by his disciples following his death in a text known as the Analects. He put much importance on ren, the inner state which allows one to behave compassionately toward others, and on a concept called li, which can help individuals attain ren.

Plotinus

(born 205 CE, Lyco, or Lycopolis, Egypt?—died 270, Campania), ancient philosopher, the centre of an influential circle of intellectuals and men of letters in 3rd-century Rome, who is regarded by modern scholars as the founder of the Neoplatonic school of philosophy.

Epicurus

(born 341 BC, Samos, Greece—died 270, Athens), Greek philosopher, author of an ethicalphilosophy of simple pleasure, friendship, and retirement. He founded schools of philosophy that survived directly from the 4th century BC until the 4th century AD.

Aristotle

(born 384 BCE, Stagira, Chalcidice, Greece—died 322, Chalcis, Euboea), ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy. Even after the intellectual revolutions of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, Aristotelian concepts remained embedded in Western thinking.

Plato

(born 428/427 BCE, Athens, Greece—died 348/347, Athens), ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470-399 BCE), teacher of Aristotle (384-322 BCE), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.

Boethius

(born 470-475? CE, Rome? [Italy]—died 524, Pavia?), Roman scholar, Christian philosopher, and statesman, author of the celebrated De consolatione philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy), a largely Neoplatonic work in which the pursuit of wisdom and the love of God are described as the true sources of human happiness.

Antisthenes

(born c. 445 BC—died c. 365), Greek philosopher, of Athens, who was a disciple of Socrates and is considered the founder of the Cynic school of philosophy.

Democritus

(born c. 460 BCE—died c. 370), ancient Greek philosopher, a central figure in the development of philosophical atomism and of the atomic theory of the universe.

Pythagoras

(born c. 570 BCE, Samos, Ionia [Greece]—died c. 500-490 BCE, Metapontum, Lucanium [Italy]), Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the Pythagorean brotherhood that, although religious in nature, formulated principles that influenced the thought of Plato and Aristotle and contributed to the development of mathematics and Western rational philosophy.

Diogenes

(born, Sinope, Paphlygonia—died c. 320 BCE, probably at Corinth, Greece), archetype of the Cynics, a Greek philosophical sect that stressed stoic self-sufficiency and the rejection of luxury. He is credited by some with originating the Cynic way of life, but he himself acknowledges an indebtedness to Antisthenes, by whose numerous writings he was probably influenced. It was by personal example rather than any coherent system of thought that he conveyed the Cynic philosophy. His followers positioned themselves as watchdogs of morality.

Socrates

(c. 469 BC-399 BC) We have no writings from his own hand, and know about him largely from the dialogues of his student Plato. Proclaiming his own ignorance of all things, they went around Athens engaging in question-and-answer sessions to search for truths or draw out contradictions (the "Socratic Method"). The Athenian state disapproved of his conduct; he was put on trial for corrupting the city's youth, and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock.

Zeno of Elea

(c. 490 BC-430 BC) They were a student of Parmenides, who founded the Eleatic school in a Greek colony of the Italian peninsula. He is most famous today for "Zeno's paradoxes," the best-known of which involve an arrow in flight and a race between Achilles and a tortoise. Their paradoxes purport to show that physical movement is impossible, since any attempt to travel a distance must be preceded by moving half that distance, which must be preceded by moving half of half that distance, and so on.

Thales of Miletus

(c. 620 BC-546 BC) They were a pre-Socratic thinker from the Greek colony of Miletus who many consider to be the "first philosopher." Rejecting mythical explanations of the universe's nature, he believed that the first principle of all existence, the natural element from which all things emerged, was water. He was also a civil engineer and mathematician, and is credited with discovering that if a circle goes through all three vertices of a triangle and one side of the triangle is a diameter of the circle, then the triangle is a right triangle. He is sometimes thought of as the founder of a "Milesian school" of philosophy, whose other members include Anaximander and Anaximenes.

Plutarch

(died 431/432 CE), Greek philosopher who preceded Syrianus as head of the Platonicschool at Athens and who was one of the teachers of the Greek philosopher Proclus. Very little is known of his teaching; his commentaries on a number of the Platonic dialogues and on Aristotle's De Animahave not survived and are known only from allusions by later writers; it is thus practically impossible to form any estimate of his importance. Although evidence would seem to suggest that his thinking was not notably different from that of other Neoplatonists of his day, it is said that he attempted to combine Aristotle's psychology with the Platonic doctrine of recollection.

Melissus of Samos

(flourished 5th century BC), Greek philosopher who was the last significant member of the Eleatic school of philosophy, which adhered to Parmenides' doctrine of reality as a single, unchanging whole. Although they defended Parmenides, he differed from him in that he held reality to be boundless and of infinite duration (having a past and a present). He is also known as the commander of the Samian fleet, which was victorious over the Athenians in 441/440 BC.

Laozi (Lao Tzu)

(flourished 6th century BCE, China), the first philosopher of Chinese Daoism and alleged author of the Daodejing (q.v.), a primary Daoist writing. Modern scholars discount the possibility that the Daodejing was written by only one person but readily acknowledge the influence of Daoism on the development of Buddhism. He is venerated as a philosopher by Confucians and as a saint or god in popular religion and was worshipped as an imperial ancestor during the Tang dynasty (618-907).

Anaxemines

(flourished c. 545 BC), Greek philosopher of nature and one of three thinkers of Miletus traditionally considered to be the first philosophers in the Western world. Of the other two, Thales held that water is the basic building block of all matter, whereas they chose to call the essential substance "the unlimited."