School↕ | Era↕ | Founder↕ | Region↕ | Core Belief↕ | Known For↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stoicism | Ancient (300 BC) | Zeno of Citium | Greece/Rome | Virtue is the highest good; focus only on what you can control | Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca; massive modern revival |
Existentialism | 19th-20th century | Soren Kierkegaard / Jean-Paul Sartre | Europe | Existence precedes essence; individuals create their own meaning | Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir; 'existence precedes essence' |
Utilitarianism | 18th-19th century | Jeremy Bentham | England | The right action maximizes overall happiness for the greatest number | Bentham and John Stuart Mill; foundation of consequentialist ethics |
Nihilism | 19th century | Friedrich Nietzsche (associated) | Germany/Russia | Life has no inherent meaning, purpose, or value | Nietzsche's 'God is dead'; Dostoevsky's exploration in fiction |
Pragmatism | 19th century | Charles Sanders Peirce | United States | Truth is what works in practice; ideas are tools for solving problems | William James, John Dewey; uniquely American philosophy |
Platonism | Ancient (4th century BC) | Plato | Greece | True reality consists of eternal, unchanging Forms or Ideas beyond the physical world | Allegory of the Cave, Theory of Forms, Republic |
Aristotelianism | Ancient (4th century BC) | Aristotle | Greece | Knowledge comes from observation; virtue is the mean between extremes | Logic, empiricism, virtue ethics, golden mean |
Epicureanism | Ancient (3rd century BC) | Epicurus | Greece | Pleasure (especially tranquility) is the highest good; fear of death is irrational | Often misunderstood as hedonism; actually advocates simple pleasures |
Confucianism | Ancient (5th century BC) | Confucius | China | Social harmony through proper relationships, ritual, education, and moral cultivation | Five relationships, filial piety, the Analects |
Taoism | Ancient (4th century BC) | Laozi | China | Live in harmony with the Tao (the Way); embrace naturalness and non-action (wu wei) | Tao Te Ching, yin and yang, wu wei (effortless action) |
Buddhism (as philosophy) | Ancient (5th century BC) | Siddhartha Gautama | India | Suffering arises from attachment; liberation through the Eightfold Path | Four Noble Truths, impermanence, no-self (anatta) |
Rationalism | 17th century | Rene Descartes | Europe | Knowledge comes primarily from reason and innate ideas, not sensory experience | Cogito ergo sum; Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz |
Empiricism | 17th-18th century | John Locke | England | All knowledge comes from sensory experience; the mind starts as a blank slate | Locke, Berkeley, Hume; tabula rasa |
Kantian Ethics | 18th century | Immanuel Kant | Germany | Act only according to rules you could will to be universal laws | Categorical imperative, duty-based ethics, Critique of Pure Reason |
Phenomenology | 20th century | Edmund Husserl | Germany | Study consciousness and experience as they appear, without assumptions | Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty; 'to the things themselves' |
Absurdism | 20th century | Albert Camus | France | The universe is meaningless, but humans should embrace life anyway | The Myth of Sisyphus; 'one must imagine Sisyphus happy' |
Cynicism | Ancient (4th century BC) | Antisthenes / Diogenes | Greece | Virtue is the only good; reject wealth, fame, and social conventions | Diogenes living in a barrel, carrying a lamp looking for an honest man |
Skepticism | Ancient (3rd century BC) | Pyrrho of Elis | Greece | True knowledge is impossible; suspend judgment to achieve tranquility | Questioning all claims to certainty; Pyrrhonian vs Academic skepticism |
Marxism (philosophical) | 19th century | Karl Marx | Germany | History is driven by material conditions and class struggle | Dialectical materialism, critique of capitalism, alienation |
Logical Positivism | 20th century | Vienna Circle (Schlick, Carnap) | Austria | Only statements verifiable by observation or logic are meaningful | Verification principle; rejecting metaphysics as meaningless |
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