School↕ | Era Founded↕ | Key Thinkers↕ | Core Idea↕ | Known For↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Stoicism | 3rd century BC (Athens) | Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca | Control what you can, accept what you can't | Silicon Valley's favorite philosophy, Marcus Aurelius journaling by campfire, 'memento mori' tattoos, Ryan Holiday book empire, ancient wisdom for modern anxiety |
Existentialism | 19th-20th century | Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir | Existence precedes essence — you define your own meaning | Parisian cafes and black turtlenecks, 'Hell is other people', Camus's absurd hero, radical freedom is terrifying, the philosophy of the anxious and cool |
Utilitarianism | 18th-19th century | Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Peter Singer | Greatest happiness for the greatest number | The trolley problem's favorite philosophy, effective altruism roots, Bentham's auto-icon sits in a glass case at UCL, quantifying morality with math |
Nihilism | 19th century | Nietzsche (critic), Turgenev, Cioran | Life has no inherent meaning or value | 'God is dead' (Nietzsche describing it, not endorsing it), Big Lebowski 'say what you want about nihilists', edgy teenager phase philosophy, actually deeper than it sounds |
Absurdism | 20th century | Albert Camus | Life is meaningless but we should embrace it anyway | The Myth of Sisyphus — 'one must imagine Sisyphus happy', revolt against meaninglessness, Camus refused to be called an existentialist, the most life-affirming 'dark' philosophy |
Pragmatism | Late 19th century (USA) | William James, John Dewey, Charles Peirce | Truth is what works — ideas are tools, not mirrors of reality | America's original philosophy, 'the cash value of an idea', anti-dogmatic to the core, if it works it's true enough, philosophy for doers not dreamers |
Rationalism | 17th century | Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz | Reason alone can discover truth, independent of experience | 'I think therefore I am', Descartes doubted everything until he couldn't doubt his own thinking, built knowledge from pure logic, math as the path to truth |
Empiricism | 17th-18th century | John Locke, David Hume, George Berkeley | All knowledge comes from sensory experience | Locke's 'blank slate' (tabula rasa), Hume's problem of induction, founded modern science's method, if you can't observe it don't trust it |
Epicureanism | 3rd century BC (Athens) | Epicurus | Pleasure (especially tranquility) is the highest good | Not about hedonism — actually about simple pleasures and friendship, 'don't fear death', the Garden community, often misunderstood as 'eat drink be merry' |
Taoism | 4th century BC (China) | Laozi, Zhuangzi | Live in harmony with the Tao — the natural flow of the universe | Wu wei (effortless action), yin and yang, 'the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao', water is soft but carves mountains, go with the flow literally |
Confucianism | 5th century BC (China) | Confucius, Mencius | Social harmony through virtue, ritual, and proper relationships | Shaped East Asian civilization for 2,500 years, filial piety and respect for elders, the Analects, emphasis on education and self-cultivation |
Phenomenology | Early 20th century | Edmund Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty | Study consciousness and experience as they appear, without assumptions | 'Back to the things themselves', Heidegger's Being and Time, how does it feel to BE in the world, the philosophical foundation of mindfulness |
Cynicism | 4th century BC (Athens) | Diogenes of Sinope, Antisthenes | Reject social conventions, live simply according to nature | Diogenes lived in a barrel and told Alexander the Great to get out of his sunlight, the original punk philosophers, reject materialism completely |
Determinism | Ancient (refined 17th-18th century) | Laplace, Spinoza, d'Holbach | Every event is caused by prior events — free will is an illusion | Laplace's demon (a being who could predict everything), challenges the justice system if no one chooses, neuroscience keeps finding evidence for it |
Buddhism (as philosophy) | 5th century BC (India) | Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), Nagarjuna | Suffering arises from attachment — liberation through the Eightfold Path | Four Noble Truths, meditation as philosophical practice, non-self (anatta) concept, mindfulness went mainstream, 2,500 years before therapy was invented |
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