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551 BCE
Confucius
Confucius was a Chinese philosopher, teacher, and political figure largely considered the father of the Eastern style of thought. His teachings focused on creating ethical social relationships, setting educational standards, and promoting justice and honesty. His social philosophy was based on the principle of ren—loving others—and he believed this could be achieved using the Golden Rule. Famous Quote:
“What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.” -
469 BCE
Socrates
Socrates was a Greek philosopher and known as the primary source of Western thought. His “Socratic method” laid the groundwork for Western systems of logic and philosophy, delivering a belief that through the act of questioning, the mind can manage to find truth.
He emphasized the idea that the more a person knows, the greater his or her ability to reason and make choices that will bring true happiness. Famous Quotes:
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." -
428 BCE
Plato
Plato was a priori, a rational philosopher who sought knowledge logically rather than from the senses. He established the Academy in Athens, one of the first institutions of higher learning in the Western world. Plato’s logic explored justice, beauty, and equality, and contained discussions in aesthetics, politics, language, and cosmology—the science of the origin and development of the universe.
Famous Quote:
"Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man." -
384 BCE
Aristotle
Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy. One of the areas of lasting impact was Aristotle’s work on ethics and politics, which he considered to be intimately related subjects. His ethical theory was based on the idea that each of us ultimately seeks a concept he called eudaimonia, often translated as “happiness” but better rendered as “flourishing” or “wellbeing.” Famous Quote:
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” -
341 BCE
Epicurus
Epicurus is one of the major philosophers in the Hellenistic period. Epicurus’ ethics is a form of egoistic hedonism; he says that the only thing that is intrinsically valuable is one’s own pleasure; anything else that has value is valuable merely as a means to securing pleasure for oneself. Famous Quote: Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for. -
John Locke
Locke is a realist and a rationalist about moral rules. For Locke, even though a large part of the content of morality is determined by what God wills, it is not the fact of being willed by God that makes moral principles true: God's will fixes the content, but not the truth, of morality. Famous Quotes:
• “No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”
• “We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.” -
Benedict "Baruch" Spinoza
He became one of the key figures of the seventeenth-century Dutch and European Enlightenment. Spinoza's most famous and provocative idea is that God is not the creator of the world, but that the world is part of God. This is often identified as pantheism, the doctrine that God and the world are the same thing – which conflicts with both Jewish and Christian teachings. Famous Quote:
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss Enlightenment philosopher with some radical ideas. He argued passionately for democracy, equality, liberty, and supporting the common good by any means necessary. While his ideas may be utopian (or dystopian), they are thought-provoking and can inform modern discourse. Famous Quote:
"You must have learned a lot to be able to ask about what you don't know." -
Immanuel Kant
His moral philosophy is a philosophy of freedom. Without human freedom, thought Kant, moral appraisal and moral responsibility would be impossible. Kant believes that if a person could not act otherwise, then his or her act can have no moral worth. Famous Quote: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end." -
John Stuart Mill
He was the most influential English language philosopher of the nineteenth century. He was a naturalist, a utilitarian, and a liberal, whose work explores the consequences of a thoroughgoing empiricist outlook. Famous Quote:
"Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."