600 BCE – 400 · 27 philosophers
Ancient Greece & Rome
What is the first principle of all things?
In the sixth century BCE, thinkers in Miletus on the Ionian coast began explaining nature by natural causes rather than by myth. Thales said everything comes from water. The answer looks naive now, but the way of asking changed everything: the world was treated as a whole that reason could grasp.
Over the next two centuries Greek thought ran along two lines. One pursued the origin of nature, from Heraclitus' fire to Democritus' atoms. The other turned toward the human being: Socrates pressed Athenians in the street about justice and courage, Plato built those questions into the theory of Forms, and Aristotle divided the system into logic, physics, ethics and politics.
After Alexander the city-state declined and philosophy turned to how an individual might live well. Epicureans, Stoics and Sceptics each offered a way of life, and Rome carried the Stoic flame. In the third century CE Plotinus pushed Plato toward a mystical One, preparing a vocabulary for Christian theology.
Schools of this era
Philosophers of this era
Thales泰勒斯
The first to explain the world by nature rather than myth; traditionally called the father of philosophy.
Anaximander阿那克西曼德
Proposed the Boundless as first principle, drew the first world map, and guessed that life began in the sea.
Anaximenes阿那克西美尼
Made air the first principle and explained all differences by condensation and rarefaction, giving change its first mechanism.
Pythagoras毕达哥拉斯
Declared that number is the principle of all things, fusing mathematics, music and purification of the soul into a religious way of life.
Heraclitus赫拉克利特
'The Obscure', who declared that everything flows, that opposites are one, and that the Logos is the law behind all change.
Parmenides巴门尼德
Argued that Being is one, ungenerated, motionless and unchanging, and that change is illusion; the beginning of metaphysics and of logical argument.
Anaxagoras阿那克萨戈拉
Brought philosophy to Athens, proposed Nous or Mind as the cause that orders all things, and was charged with impiety for calling the sun a red-hot stone.
Empedocles恩培多克勒
Proposed the four roots, earth, air, fire and water, mixed and parted by Love and Strife, reconciling Parmenides with the world of experience.
Zeno of Elea芝诺（爱利亚）
Defended Parmenides with paradoxes such as Achilles and the tortoise; Aristotle called him the inventor of dialectic.
Protagoras普罗泰戈拉
The most famous Sophist; 'man is the measure of all things' made truth relative to each person and turned philosophy toward human affairs.
Gorgias高尔吉亚
Master of rhetoric who denied being, knowledge and communication in three theses, and treated language as a kind of spell.
Socrates苏格拉底
Brought philosophy down from the heavens to the marketplace, replaced teaching with questioning, and drank hemlock for it.
Democritus德谟克利特
Completed atomism: nothing exists but atoms and void, all else is convention.
Plato柏拉图
Built Socrates' questions into the theory of Forms, founded the Academy, and set the agenda of Western philosophy in dialogue form.
Diogenes of Sinope第欧根尼
The Cynic who lived in a jar, carried a lamp in daylight looking for an honest man, and asked Alexander to step out of his sunlight.
Aristotle亚里士多德
Plato's greatest student and most thorough critic; divided philosophy into its disciplines and ruled thought for the next two millennia.
Pyrrho皮浪
Returned from Alexander's expedition to India teaching suspension of judgement about everything as the road to peace of mind.
Epicurus伊壁鸠鲁
Taught in the Garden that pleasure is tranquillity, and used atomism to banish fear of the gods and of death.
Zeno of Citium芝诺（季蒂昂）
Shipwrecked into philosophy, founded Stoicism under a painted colonnade in Athens, teaching that virtue is the only good and that one should live in accord with nature.
Chrysippus克吕西波
The second founder of Stoicism, author of over seven hundred books, who built propositional logic and defended the compatibility of fate and freedom.
Cicero西塞罗
Rome's greatest orator, who rendered Greek philosophy into Latin and gave Europe its philosophical vocabulary.
Lucretius卢克莱修
Set out Epicurean atomism in over seven thousand lines of Latin verse; On the Nature of Things is antiquity's greatest philosophical poem.
Seneca塞涅卡
Nero's tutor and one of Rome's richest men, who taught in his letters how to face death and fortune, and died by imperial order.
Epictetus爱比克泰德
From slave to Stoic teacher, he taught that only one thing is in our control: our own judgements.
Marcus Aurelius马可·奥勒留
The philosopher-emperor who wrote the Meditations, addressed to himself alone, in army camps on the Danube frontier.
Sextus Empiricus塞克斯都·恩披里柯
The compiler of ancient scepticism, whose works, rediscovered in the Renaissance, set off the sceptical crisis of early modern philosophy.
Plotinus普罗提诺
Founder of Neoplatonism, who raised Plato's Forms toward the One, from which all things emanate and to which the soul longs to return.