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Thinkers

20 thinkers

Thales

c. 624 BCE – c. 546 BCE

Pre-SocraticMilesian

The first philosopher. He looked at the world and asked what it was made of.

Anaximander

c. 610 BCE – c. 546 BCE

Pre-SocraticMilesian

Thales asked what the world is made of. Anaximander answered: nothing you can name. The origin is the boundless.

Anaximenes

c. 586 BCE – c. 526 BCE

Pre-SocraticMilesian

Everything is air, thickening and thinning. The first attempt to explain change by a single measurable process.

Pythagoras

c. 570 BCE – c. 495 BCE

Pre-SocraticPythagorean

Number is the language of the cosmos. He built a life around that belief.

Heraclitus

c. 535 BCE – c. 475 BCE

Pre-SocraticIonians

Everything flows. The world is fire, and stillness is a lie we tell ourselves.

Parmenides

c. 515 BCE – c. 450 BCE

Pre-SocraticEleatic

What is, is. What is not, cannot be thought. Change is an illusion.

Anaxagoras

c. 500 BCE – c. 428 BCE

Pre-Socratic

Mind orders the cosmos. He brought philosophy to Athens and was exiled for saying the sun is a hot rock, not a god.

Zeno of Elea

c. 495 BCE – c. 430 BCE

Pre-SocraticEleatic

Achilles can never catch the tortoise. Motion is impossible. He invented the paradox as a philosophical weapon.

Empedocles

c. 494 BCE – c. 434 BCE

Pre-Socratic

Four roots: earth, water, air, fire. Two forces: love draws together, strife tears apart. He jumped into a volcano to prove he was a god.

Protagoras

c. 490 BCE – c. 420 BCE

ClassicalSocratic

Man is the measure of all things. The first and greatest of the Sophists turned philosophy toward human judgment.

Gorgias

c. 483 BCE – c. 375 BCE

Classical

The sophist who argued that nothing exists, and that if it did, no one could know it, and if they could, no one could say it.

Socrates

c. 470 BCE – 399 BCE

ClassicalSocratic

He wrote nothing, but changed everything. Philosophy became a conversation.

Democritus

c. 460 BCE – c. 370 BCE

Pre-SocraticAtomist

Atoms and void. The universe is particles in motion, and cheerfulness is the goal.

Plato

c. 428 BCE – c. 348 BCE

ClassicalPlatonist

He saw a world behind the world. The Forms are real; what we see are shadows.

Diogenes

c. 412 BCE – c. 323 BCE

ClassicalCynic

He lived in a jar, mocked convention, and carried a lantern looking for an honest man.

Aristotle

384 BCE – 322 BCE

ClassicalPeripatetic

He classified the world. Logic, biology, ethics, politics; he gave each its language.

Theophrastus

c. 371 BCE – c. 287 BCE

Peripatetic

Aristotle's chosen successor, who turned the master's curiosity on plants, weather, stones, and the small comedies of human character.

Pyrrho

c. 365 BCE – c. 275 BCE

HellenisticSkeptic

Suspend judgment. The world as we think we know it may not be the world at all.

Epicurus

341 BCE – 270 BCE

HellenisticEpicurean

Pleasure is the absence of pain. The good life is quiet, shared, and free from fear.

Zeno of Citium

c. 334 BCE – c. 262 BCE

HellenisticStoic

He lost everything in a shipwreck and found philosophy. Then he built Stoicism.