Key Philosophers

Table of Contents
Confucius (551BC - 479BC) 2
Western Philosophy 3
Socrates (459BC - 399BC) 5
Plato (428BC - 348BC) 6
Aristotle (384BC - 322BC) 8
Epicurus (341BC - 270BC) 10
 Eastern Philosophy

Confucius (551BC - 479BC)

 Pre-Socratic Western Philosophy

Thales of Miletus (624BC – 546BC) – Milesian

Many, most notably Aristotle, regarded him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition. Thales is most
famous for positing that everything is fundamentally made of water.

Thales rejected the Greek pantheon of Gods, looking for predictable laws in nature, much like modern science.
He thought the world was rational, orderly and understandable through investigation and inquiry. Thales
wanted to identify the unifying principle.

Arche is a Greek word with primary senses “origin”, or “source of action”. Thales wanted to identify Arche:
 Unifying principle: a glue that holds everything together
 Source of motion: the universe if full of motion and action
 Source of life

As a result, Thales identified water as the Arche. He thought that it moved by itself, made life possible and
brought forth Earth.

Anaximander (610BC – 546BC) – Milesian

He was the student of Thales.

His ideas included the following:

 The western world picture: celestial bodies move around the earth in full circles. He asserted that
things move in circles around the earth, and therefore passed underneath it. He also asserted that
heavenly bodies are spaced at varying distances. He basically invented the idea of space.
 The origin of people: he considered that from warmed up water and earth emerged either fish or
entirely fishlike animals. Inside these animals, men took form and embryos were held prisoners until
puberty; only then, these animals burst open, could men and women come out, now able to feed
themselves. Arguably, he developed a proto-evolutionary idea about human anthropology.
 Apeiron: water like other elements contains properties that oppose properties of other elements.
Whatever explains everything cannot be a subset of everything. This might seem like a challenge to
the whole idea of an Arche. Anaximander had an answer to that: “Apeiron”. A word that is translated
as “the boundless”. It is a kind of unidentified substance that explains the origin of all that is.

Aristotle writes that the pre-Socratics were searching for the element that constitutes all things. Anaximander
understood the beginning to be an endless, unlimited primordial mass, subject to neither old age nor decay,
that perpetually yielded fresh materials from which everything he perceives. For Anaximander, the principle of
things, the constituent of all substances is nothing determined. According to him, the universe originates in the
separation of opposites. It embraces the opposites of hot and cold, death and life,

Anaximander became the world’s first metaphysicist.

Anaximenes (585BC – 528BC) – Milesian

He was the student of Anaximander.

Anaximenes stated that the Arche was air. His major contribution to the Milesian project is:
 Rarefication: an element (air) gets lighter, quicker, hotter
 Condensation: an element (air) gets heavier, slower, cooler. The process of by which the atmosphere
becomes cloud, which in turn becomes water.
Pythagoras (570BC-495BC) - Pythagoeranism
As a mathematician, he is known as the father of numbers, and is best known for his Pythagorean theorem on
the relation between the sides of a right triangle, the concept of square numbers, and the discovery of the
golden ratio.

He was famous throughout Greece as the leader of a religious community, for his belief that the soul is immortal
and in the possibility of reincarnation. Pythagoreans believed that numbers were the building block of reality.
The thought that numbers were God, specifically number 10.

He saw mathematics and the relationship between numbers as the basis for harmony in the world. Just as music
was harmonious, so was the soul, and so too was the entire world.

Pythagoras’s teachings have been very influential on later developments in philosophy. He influenced
Plato’s understanding of the soul as distinct from the body (the tripartite soul).

It was believed that the Pythagoreans were not allowed to eat beans, touch a white chicken, couldn’t look in the
mirror if it was beside a light, couldn’t eat meat. Oddly enough, the sticking point seemed to be the beans.
Socrates (459BC - 399BC)
He spent nearly all of his life in Athens, Greece during the golden age. He was a soldier, then a stone cutter,
then a philosopher (lover of wisdom). Everything we know about him is through the writings of his
contemporaries.

The Nature of Love

In one Plato’s most famous works, the Symposium, Socrates and his interlocutors discussed the nature of love.
Socrates claimed that everything he knows about love was taught to him by Diotima. According to her, it is
neither physical nor divine, and cannot be describe as good or beautiful. Instead, love is in the desire of
something. Socrates concludes that he is a lover of knowledge.

The Socratic Method

In an attempt to uproot ignorance, Socrates acted as Athens’ gadfly. He went around the city pressing around
with people’s beliefs, ultimately exposing that they knew nothing. This process of gradual questioning, known
as the Socratic method is perhaps greatest contribution to the academic world. It Iead to the invention of the
scientific methods (challenging hypotheses in an attempt to question their validity).

Democracy
He was an open critic of the newly form of democracy, as he said it would ultimately lead to the election of
tyrants. In a conversation with Adeimantus, Socrates compared society to a ship. If you were heading out in a
journey by sea, who would you ideally want to be in charge of the vessel. Anyone, or people that are educated
in sea faring.

Socrates was as a result very unpopular. In 399 BC, he was charged in not believing in the Athenian gods and
using his ideas to corrupt the youth, sentenced to death by poison.

He didn’t resist the verdict. It was part of the social contract by being a citizen of Athens.

Even though Socrates was convinced that he knew nothing he was indeed the wisest man in Athens because
he “knew that he did not know.” Socrates established the role of the philosopher to question everything.

“True wisdom is in knowing you know nothing”

“The unexamined life is not worth living”
Plato (428BC - 348BC)
Born into a prominent and wealth family, he devoted his life to one goal – helping people to reach a state of
what he termed eudaimonia (fulfilment). Socrates was an older friend of Plato.

Plato wrote 36 dialogues, beautifully crafted scripts of imaginary discussions in which Socrates is always
allotted a starring role. He had four big ideas in making life more fulfilled:

1. Think More
We rarely give ourselves time to think carefully, logically about our lives and how to lead them. Sometimes we
just go along with popular opinions. Plato’s answer is KNOW YOURSELF. Subjecting your ideas on examination,
rather than impulse.

2. Let Your Love Change You

In The Symposium, Plato’s play about a dinner party where a group of friend drinks too much and get talking
about love, sex and relationships, Plato said ‘true love is admiration’. The person you need to get together
with should have very good qualities, that you yourself lack.

3. Decode the Message of Beauty

Everyone likes beautiful things, but Plato was the first to ask why. He found a reason. Beautiful objects are
whispering important truths to us about the good life. We find things beautiful when we unconsciously sense
in them qualities we need but are missing in our lives. Plato sees art as therapeutic.

4. Reform Society
Plato spent a lot of time thinking how the government and society should ideally be. In this, he was inspired by
Athens’ great rival, Sparta. In his book, The Republic, Plato identified plenty of changes that should be made.
Athenian society was very focussed on the rich. Plato wasn’t impressed. It really matters on who we admire
since celebrities influence our outlook. He therefore wanted to give Athens new celebrities, replacing the
current crop with ideally wise and good people, he called guardians.

He also wanted to end democracy. He observed how few people think properly before they vote. He didn’t
want to replace democracy with a dictatorship, but wanted to prevent people from voting until they think
rationally.
To start the process, Plato started a school called The Academy which lasted 300 years.
“Kings must become philosophers, or philosopher kings”
Plato’s Ethics
In his book The Republic, Socrates raises the question “what is justice?”. In Ancient Greece, the common
viewpoint was that justice is the interest of the stronger. Socrates rejected the definition.

A story we are given to illustrate this is the ring of Gyges. It is a given ring that makes him invisible and the
story is used to argue that no man would be just if he could commit unjust acts without being caught.
Plato’s ethics could be described as virtue ethics. It states that the reasoning of what is moral is determined by
the person rather than by rules or consequences.

Plato’s Political Philosophy

He disliked democracy and described it as ‘mob rule’. Plato’s idea of an ideal government is radically
communitarian where every person works for the whole of society. Plato gives his central government enough
power to censor all artists since they portray a copy of reality that deceives those who experience it.

This is an interesting stance since Plato’s government is based on a lie in itself. It is specifically called “the
noble lie” or “myth of the metals.” What this myth entails is that each citizen will be told that they are
destined to a certain station at birth and their soul is matched with a corresponding metal. This is a lie that is
presented to citizens in order to keep social order and assure that everybody stays within their position of
society. At the top of the order are the “philosopher kings” that Plato feels are the only ones wise enough to
rule over the city. It is worth noting that though he placed them at the top of the hierarchy he gave them little
monetary reward for their status. Wealth was always distributed within Plato’s society.

Tripartite Soul
Plato asserted that the soul is is composed of three parts:
 Rational/Logical: seeks truth and is swayed by facts and arguments
 Spirited/Emotional: how feelings fuel your actions
 Appetitive/Physical desires: drives you to eat, have sex, protect yourself from danger
Plato believes that the best human beings are always ruled by the rational part of their soul.

The Allegory of the Cave

In his book The Republic, Plato talked about people living in cave for their whole lives and don’t know anything
from the outside world. There is no natural light, the walls are dampened dark, all the habitants can see comes
from the shadows thrown on the wall from a fire. The cave dwellers assumed the shadows were real, and if
you paid a lot of attention to them, you’d understand and succeed in life.

One day, someone discovers a way out of the cave. At first, it’s overwhelming. He encounters the true forms of
what were formerly shadows. He tries to explain reality to his companions. However, they get sarcastic, then
very angry, then plot to kill him.

The story of the cave is an allegory of the life of all enlightened people. The cave dwellers are humans before
philosophy, the sun is the light of reason. The alienation of the returned philosopher is what all truth tellers
can expect, when they take their knowledge back to people who have not devoted themselves to thinking.
For Plato, we are all in shadow. Fame and wealth are for the most part phantoms projected by our culture.

The Forms
Plato’s theory of the forms consists of the idealized essence of an object existed apart from that object. He
argued that focussing on the ideal versions of something is one of the most useful kinds of thoughts exercise
we can generate. When he was talking about ideals, he was referring to it as the forms. It’s the guide you need
that shows how to do something.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle”

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something”
Aristotle (384BC - 322BC)
He was born in the ancient kingdom of Macedonia, where his father was the royal doctor. His first big job was
to tutor Alexander the Great, who soon after went out and conquered the known world.

He then headed to Athens, worked with Plato for a while then branched out on his own. He founded a little
school called the Lyceum. He liked to walkabout while teaching and discussion ideas. His followers were
nicknamed peripatetics - the wanderers. His many books were actually lecture notes.

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher who contributed the foundation of both symbolic logic and
scientific thinking to Western philosophy. He also made advances in the branch of philosophy known as
metaphysics, moving away from the idealism of his mentor Plato to a more empirical and less mystical view of
the nature of reality.

Aristotle was fascinated by how many things actually worked. For him, philosophy was about practical wisdom.

There were four big philosophy questions he answered:

1. What makes people happy?
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle set himself the task of identifying the factors to lead people to have a
good life or not. He suggested good and successful people all possessed distinct virtues and proposed that we
should get better at identifying what these are to nurture them in ourselves and honour them in others.

He identified 11 virtues: courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, pride, patience,

truthfulness, wittiness, friendliness, modesty.

He observed that every virtue seems to bang in the middle of two vices. It occupies what he terms the golden
mean, between two extreme of character.

2. What is art for?

The blockbuster art at the time is tragedy. Aristotle wrote a how to write great plays manual, called the
Poetics.

What’s the point of a whole community watching horrible things happen?

Catharsis: the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong repressed emotions. For instance,
music is a means of catharsis.

3. What are friends for?

Aristotle identifies three different kinds of friendship:
 Friendship that comes about when each person is seeking fun. Their chief interest is in their own
pleasure and the opportunity of the moment.
 Friendships that are strategic acquaintances. They take pleasure in each other’s companies only in so
far as they have hopes of advantage of it
 True friend: someone about whom you care as much you care about yourself. The sorrows of a true
friend are your sorrows. Your share virtues and cancel out each other defects

4. How can ideas cut through in a busy world?

Aristotle was struck by the fact that the best argument doesn’t always win the debate or the battle. He
invented the art of rhetoric, the art of getting people to agree with you.
Science & Metaphysics
Aristotle rejected Plato’s theory of the forms. While Plato thought that physical things were representations of
idealized perfect forms that existed in another plane of reality, Aristotle thought that the essence of an object
existed with the thing itself. In this way, he also rejected the idea of a soul that existed outside of the physical
body.

Aristotle thought that the best way to gain knowledge was through natural philosophy, which is now what we
call science (empiricism). Despite this belief, many of the theories that Aristotle put forth have not held up to
the passing of time and scientific advancement.

This is to his method’s credit, since science constantly examines hypothesis through experimentation and
gradually replaces claims that cannot hold up with stronger claims. Aristotle initially claimed that everything
was made up of five elements: earth, fire, air, water, and Aether.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principle of things, including abstract
concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time and space.

When you ask questions, who am I? what is an acorn? according to Aristotle, there are four causes behind all
the change in the world. (statue of liberty)
 material cause: is what it is actually made of (copper, iron)
 formal cause: is the structure or design of a being (a picture of)
 efficient cause: is where it came from (construction workers)
 final cause: is its ultimate purpose for being (freedom)

You could use this to define your identity.

When it came to biology, Aristotle proposed that all life originated from the sea and that complex life came
from a gradual development of less-complex life forms. This hypothesis would later be proven true by Charles
Darwin and a huge number of biological observations and experiments.

Logic
Aristotle believed that when trying to determine the fundamental nature of reality the only place to begin was
with basic axioms. An axiom is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point to
further reasoning or arguments (deductive reasoning). Aristotle would use this concept not only as an
important beginning point for natural philosophy and metaphysics but for the basis of symbolic logic, which he
was the first to establish. Even though an axiom can’t be proven, it is something that we assume to true
because it seems to be self-evident, and this allows us to move forward in establishing an argument.

Ethics
Aristotle thought that the goal of human beings in their search of happiness was to search eudemonia ( a state
of flourishing).

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”

“What is a friend? a single soul dwelling in two bodies”
Epicurus (341BC - 270BC)
He was a Greek philosopher and the founder of the Epicureanism, whose main goal was to attain a happy,
tranquil life, characterized by the absence of pain and fear, through the cultivation of friendship, freedom and
an analysed life

Epicurus founded The Garden, a school named for the garden he owned that served as the meeting place of
his school. With its emphasis on friendship and freedom, the school resembled in many ways a commune or
community of friends living together.

Epicurus owned only to cloaks, and lived on bread, olives and cheese. As for the bedroom, he merely
responded that he married philosophy. After studying happiness for many years, he came up with certain
conclusions.

He proposed that we typically make three mistakes when we think about happiness:
 Having romantic or sexual relationships: He observed how much nicer friendships are.
 Money: what makes work satisfying is when we’re able to work alone or in small groups and helping
others
 Obsession with luxury: does it actually makes us calm?

You really only need 3 things to be happy in this life:

1. You need your friends around.
2. Everyone down shifted.
3. Devoted themselves to finding calm in their own minds. Reflecting, writing stuff down, meditating

Epicurean communities opened all around the Mediterranean. At the height of the movement, there were 400
thousand people. It was only the Christian Church that ended things in the 5th century. They converted all the
communities into monasteries.

Karl Marx did his thesis on Epicurus. Communism is a grown up, corrupted, not-very successful version of
Epicureanism.
Thomas Aquinas

Karl Popper

Rene Descartes

W.K Clifford

Soren Kierkegaard

Bernard Williams

Jean-Paul Sartre

Zhuangzi

Friedrich Nietzsche