Timeline of Major Ethical Philosophies (Navarra, Christian F. BESOR 083)

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  • Period: 624 BCE to 526 BCE

    Thales of Miletus

    Thales of Miletus is generally cited as one of the first philosophers, although his contributions extended to many sciences and business endeavors. He taught that the first element, out of everything, is water and that everything around us contains souls.
  • Period: 610 BCE to 546 BCE

    Anaximander

    Thales' pupil and successor, Anaximander, wrote a book, the first general account of the world, in a new way. Evolution (cosmic and organic), survival of the fittest, postulated entities tethered to primitive beliefs, the balance of nature, and even gravitation appeared in it. It was highly imaginative, but it had to be.
  • Period: 585 BCE to 525 BCE

    Anaximenes

    Anaximenes of Miletus was a younger contemporary of Anaximander and widely regarded as his student. Known as the Third Philosopher of the Milesian School after Thales and Anaximander, Anaximenes proposed air as the First Cause from which all else comes.
  • Period: 579 BCE to 490 BCE

    Pythagoras of Samos

    Pythagoras of Samos was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, Western Philosophy. He founded a school where initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle.
  • Period: 428 BCE to 348 BCE

    Plato

    Plato ranks among the greatest philosophers of
    the world - he is viewed by many scholars as the
    most important Philosopher of Western civilization.

    Plato held that moral values are objective in the sense
    that they exist in a spirit-like realm beyond subjective
    human conventions. He stated that they are absolute,
    or eternal, in that, they never change, and also that
    they are universal insofar as they apply to all rational
    creatures around the world and throughout time
    (Racelis, 2017).
  • Period: 384 BCE to 322 BCE

    Aristotle

    Aristotle made pioneering contributions to all fields of philosophy and science, invented the study of formal logic, identified various scientific disciplines, and explored their relationships. Aristotle was also a teacher and founded his school in Athens, known as the Lyceum (Britannica, 2023). The ethics of Aristotle is concerned with action, not as being right in itself irrespective of any other consideration, but with their conduct (Copleston, 1993).
  • Period: 341 BCE to 270 BCE

    Epicurus

    Epicurus, the Philosopher, is considered a figure in the history of science and philosophy. He argued that "we should only proportion belief to empirical evidence and logic." He propounded the scientific view of atomism - all facts in the macroscopic world have arisen by the configuration of atoms or indivisible elements in the microscopic world." In ethics, he is famous for propounding the theory of hedonism, which holds that pleasure is the only intrinsic value.
  • Period: 334 BCE to 262 BCE

    Zeno of Citium

    Zeno of Citium was the founder of the Stoic School of philosophy in Athens, which taught that the Logos (also called the Universal Reason) was the greatest good in life and that living by reason was the purpose of human life.
  • Period: 354 to 430

    Saint Augustine of Hippo

    Saint Augustine of Hippo was acquainted with a version of the Philosophy of Plato. He developed the Platonic idea of the rational soul into a Christian view in which humans are essentially souls, using their bodies to achieve their spiritual ends. The ultimate objective remains happiness, as in Greek ethics, but Augustine conceived of happiness as consisting of the union of the soul with God after the body has died.
  • Period: 1225 to Mar 7, 1274

    Saint Thomas Aquinas

    Saint Thomas Aquinas developed a theological system that synthesized Western Christian theology. In his Summa Theologica, which he intended as a primer for theology students, Aquinas devised five arguments for the existence of God, known as the Five Ways, that subsequently proved highly influential.
  • Period: to

    Immanuel Kant

    Kant was one of the foremost thinkers of the Enlightenment and arguably one of the greatest philosophers of all time. In him were subsumed new trends that had begun with the rationalism (stressing reason) of René Descartes and the empiricism (stressing experience) of Francis Bacon. He thus inaugurated a new era in the development of philosophical thought (Britannica, 2023).
  • Period: to

    John Rawls

    John Rawls was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition. His Theory of Justice as Fairness describes a society of free citizens holding equal rights and cooperating within an egalitarian economic system. His Theory of Political Liberalism explores the legitimate use of political power in a democracy and envisions how civic unity might endure despite the diversity of worldviews that free institutions allow.
  • Period: to

    Jürgen Habermas

    Habermas is perhaps best known for his Theory of Communicative Action (1981). The central concern of this work is the deepening legitimation crisis of advanced capitalist societies. Habermas probed whether modern world citizens believe that the institutions in which they live are just, honest, and capable of serving their best interests. He presses for what he calls communicative action to restore the legitimacy of social institutions (Library of Congress, n.d.).