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428 BCE
Plato
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Period: 428 BCE to 348 BCE
Plato
His most famous contribution is the theory of Forms understood by pure reason, also known as Platonism, which provides a solution to the problem of universals and is ambiguously referred to as either Platonic realism or Platonic idealism. -
384 BCE
Aristotle
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Period: 384 BCE to 322 BCE
Aristotle
He founded the field of formal logic, made groundbreaking contributions to all areas of philosophy and science, and identified the connections between the numerous scientific disciplines. In addition to being a philosopher, Aristotle was a teacher who established the Lyceum in Athens. -
David Hume
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Period: to
David Hume
The empiricist philosophy of Hume held that "causes and effects are discoverable not by reason, but by experience." He continues by asserting that despite having a historical viewpoint, humanity cannot control the course of the future. -
Period: to
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a theory of morality that advocates actions that foster happiness or pleasure and oppose actions that cause unhappiness or harm. When directed toward making social, economic, or political decisions, a utilitarian philosophy would aim for the betterment of society as a whole. -
Auguste Compte
positivism, in Western philosophy, generally, any system that confines itself to the data of experience and excludes a priori or metaphysical speculations. More narrowly, the term designates the thought of the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857). -
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
Utilitarianism is a tradition of ethical philosophy that is associated with Jeremy Bentham (1747-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), two late 18th- and 19th-century British philosophers, economists, and political thinkers. Utilitarianism holds that an action is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to produce sadness, or the reverse of happiness—not just the happiness of the actor but that of everyone affected by it. -
Karl Marx
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Period: to
Karl Marx
His major points focused on the shortcomings of capitalism. Marx had the view that capitalism will ultimately collapse.
The alienated, exploited workers would topple the owners and seize control of the means of production themselves, establishing a classless society. -
Moral Positivism
Moral positivism is the theory that claims there is no natural law, and therefore no such thing as “natural right.” All human rights, it holds, are derived from the state, from contracts, from each person's freedom, or from custom. In other words, it rejects Thomas Jefferson’s claim in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: