Thales: Early Greek thinker who said water is the basic stuff of everything Heraclitus: Said everything is in flux: 'you cannot step into the same river twice' Parmenides: Argued that reality is unchanging and that change is an illusion Pythagoras: Greek thinker linking number and harmony to the structure of the universe Democritus: Proposed that all matter is made of tiny indivisible atoms Zeno of Elea: Posed paradoxes arguing that motion is impossible Socrates: Questioned others to find truth; 'the unexamined life is not worth living' Plato: Student of Socrates; theory of Forms and the Republic Aristotle: Student of Plato; logic, virtue ethics and the golden mean Epicurus: Taught that a good life is tranquility and freedom from fear and pain Zeno of Citium: Founder of Stoicism Epictetus: Stoic who taught focusing on what is within our control Marcus Aurelius: Roman emperor and Stoic; wrote the Meditations Seneca: Roman Stoic who wrote letters on living well Confucius: Chinese thinker who stressed virtue, family duty and respect Laozi: Traditional author of the Tao Te Ching, central to Daoism Mencius: Confucian thinker who held that human nature is good Sun Tzu: Author of The Art of War Siddhartha Gautama: The Buddha, founder of Buddhism, who taught the path ending suffering Augustine of Hippo: Early Christian thinker who wrote Confessions and City of God Boethius: Roman philosopher who wrote The Consolation of Philosophy Avicenna (Ibn Sina): Persian philosopher and physician whose works shaped medieval thought Averroes (Ibn Rushd): Andalusian philosopher who commented on Aristotle Maimonides: Medieval Jewish philosopher who wrote the Guide for the Perplexed Thomas Aquinas: Medieval thinker who blended Aristotle with Christian theology Ibn Khaldun: North African scholar who studied the rise and fall of societies Niccolo Machiavelli: Wrote The Prince on power and politics Thomas More: Wrote Utopia, describing an imagined ideal society Francis Bacon: Champion of the scientific method based on observation Thomas Hobbes: Argued that strong government is needed to avoid a life that is 'nasty, brutish and short' Rene Descartes: 'I think, therefore I am'; mind-body dualism Blaise Pascal: Mathematician and thinker who proposed Pascal's wager Baruch Spinoza: Rationalist who saw god and nature as one John Locke: Empiricist who argued for natural rights and government by consent Gottfried Leibniz: Rationalist who said we live in 'the best of all possible worlds' George Berkeley: Idealist: 'to be is to be perceived' David Hume: Empiricist skeptic who questioned cause and effect and induction Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Wrote The Social Contract and the idea of the general will Voltaire: Enlightenment writer who defended tolerance and free speech Montesquieu: Argued for the separation of powers Adam Smith: Moral philosopher and economist who wrote The Wealth of Nations Immanuel Kant: Categorical imperative; argued the mind shapes experience Mary Wollstonecraft: Early advocate for women's education and rights G.W.F. Hegel: Idealist who saw history as the unfolding of reason; dialectic Arthur Schopenhauer: Pessimist who saw will as the root of suffering Jeremy Bentham: Founder of utilitarianism John Stuart Mill: Utilitarian who defended liberty in On Liberty Soren Kierkegaard: Founder of existentialism; the leap of faith Karl Marx: Analyzed capitalism and class struggle Friedrich Nietzsche: Declared 'God is dead'; will to power and the overman William James: American pragmatist and psychologist Charles Sanders Peirce: Founder of pragmatism John Dewey: Pragmatist who championed learning by doing Henry David Thoreau: Wrote Walden and Civil Disobedience Ralph Waldo Emerson: Transcendentalist who urged self-reliance Edmund Husserl: Founder of phenomenology Martin Heidegger: Wrote Being and Time on the meaning of being Bertrand Russell: Logician and philosopher who co-wrote Principia Mathematica Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosopher of language: 'the limits of my language mean the limits of my world' Karl Popper: Proposed falsifiability as the mark of science Thomas Kuhn: Wrote about scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialist: 'existence precedes essence' Simone de Beauvoir: Existentialist feminist who wrote The Second Sex Albert Camus: Writer on the absurd who wrote The Myth of Sisyphus Hannah Arendt: Political thinker who wrote about totalitarianism and the 'banality of evil' Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenologist who emphasized the lived body Michel Foucault: Studied how power and knowledge shape society John Rawls: Wrote A Theory of Justice with the veil of ignorance Robert Nozick: Libertarian philosopher who wrote Anarchy, State, and Utopia Peter Singer: Utilitarian ethicist known for work on animals and global poverty Martha Nussbaum: Philosopher of the capabilities approach and emotions Alan Turing: Mathematician who posed the Turing test for machine intelligence Gottlob Frege: Founder of modern logic and philosophy of language Kurt Godel: Logician whose incompleteness theorems limit formal systems John Searle: Proposed the Chinese room argument Daniel Dennett: Philosopher of mind who wrote about consciousness and evolution Thomas Nagel: Asked 'What is it like to be a bat?' Derek Parfit: Philosopher of personal identity and ethics W.E.B. Du Bois: Scholar who developed the idea of double consciousness Frantz Fanon: Thinker on colonialism and identity Mahatma Gandhi: Developed nonviolent resistance as a philosophy and strategy Martin Luther King Jr.: Applied nonviolent philosophy to civil rights Rumi: Persian poet and mystic of the 13th century Al-Farabi: Philosopher who blended Greek and Islamic thought Al-Ghazali: Islamic theologian who critiqued the philosophers Nagarjuna: Buddhist philosopher of emptiness Zhuangzi: Daoist thinker known for stories about perspective and freedom Mozi: Chinese philosopher who taught impartial care Xunzi: Confucian who held that human nature needs shaping Wang Yangming: Chinese Neo-Confucian who stressed the unity of knowledge and action Hypatia: Alexandrian philosopher and mathematician Aristotle's Lyceum: School Aristotle founded in Athens Plato's Academy: School Plato founded in Athens Free flashcards from Peabody at peabody.kids/flashcards/tp-philosophers