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Don't know if this helps?????
Hiya all,
Was reading the thread that was started by Spike. Personally I felt the need Not to justify a thing, I thought that this might help?????
Thales: Traditionally considered the first ever western philosopher. None of his writings survive.
SOCRATES: Ancient Greek, changed philosophy from a study of natural science to ethics and politics. Wrote nothing.
PLATO: Ancient Greek, student of Socrates, most influential philosopher of all time. Works: The Republic.
ARISTOTLE: Ancient Greek, student of Plato, second most influential philosopher of all time. Works: The Nichomachean Ethics, The Metaphysics, The Politics.
Plotinus: Fused Platonic principles with Christian teaching. The last of the ancient Greek philosophers. Works: The Enneads.
St Augustine: Continued Plotinus' project of Platonic Christianity. The first of the Scholastic philosophers. Works: The Confessions, The City of God.
St Anselm: Scholastic, mostly famous for his argument for the existence of God, the Ontological Argument, which was based on the argument that it would be contradictory to God's nature for him not to exist. Works: The Monologion.
ST AQUINAS: The greatest Scholastic, he changed their emphasis from Plato to Aristotle, promoting him as the greatest of all philosophers and attempting to fuse Aristotelianism and Christianity. Works: The Summa Theologica.
Duns Scotus: Scholastic. I don't know much about him.
William of Ockham: Scholastic. Mostly famous for Ockham's razor, which argues for simplicity in arguments.
Machiavelli: Political philosopher, famous for the ruthless advice he gave to rulers in The Prince. Works: The Prince, The Discourses.
DESCARTES: The father of modern philosophy for challenging the blind acceptance of Aristotle. Works: The Meditations, Discourse on Method.
HOBBES: Political philosopher. Explosively infamous in his day for being a suspected atheist, among other reasons. Works: Leviathan.
SPINOZA: As infamous as Hobbes, his contemporary, in his day. Thought that the universe was God and we were all part of it. Works: Ethics.
Malebranche: Considered the equal of Descartes or Spinoza in his day, now mostly ignored. Works: The Search After Truth.
Arnauld: Equal to Leibniz and Malebranche in his day, now suffers the same fate as Malebranche. Works: His correspondance is highly important, but also Logic or the Art of Thinking.
LOCKE: Empiricist. Famous for his views on the human mind, knowledge and how we can own property. Currently my favourite philosopher. Works: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Two Treatises of Government.
LEIBNIZ: Rationalist, famous for his justification of evil and his ideas on substance. Works: Discourse on Metaphysics, Monadology, Theodicy.
BERKELEY: Idealist, argued that the physical didn't really exist, only the mental did. Not a popular view nowadays. Works: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous.
HUME: Empiricist, most famous for arguing that inductive knowledge is not certain. Works: A Treatise on Human Nature, The Enquiries.
Rousseau: Political philosopher mostly. Some consider him great, others, like me, think him a sloppy and shallow thinker. Works: The Social Contract, The Origins of Social Inequality, Emile.
KANT: Considered to be the greatest of the modern philosophers, his influence is all-pervasive in almost every area of philosophy. Works: Critique of Pure Reason, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
Fichte: Follower of Kant, one of the founders of nationalism.
HEGEL: Argued that all history was progressing towards a perfect state of being. Works: Phenomenology of Spirit, The Philosophy of Right.
Marx: Follower of Hegel, took his ideas and changed them into Communism. Works: The Communist Manifesto, Capital.
Kierkeguaard: First major objector to Hegel, consider to be a founder of existentialism. Works: Either/Or, Sickness Unto Death, Fear and Trembling.
Schopenhauer: Famous mostly for his pessimistic outlook and for influencing Nietzsche. Works: The World as Will and Representation.
J.S. Mill: Utilitarian, follower of Bentham. Works: On Liberty, Utilitarianism.
NIETZSCHE: Mostly a moral philosopher, famously rejected traditional Christian and Jewish morality as 'slave morality'. Works: Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil.
James: Important US philosopher, proponent of pragmatism. Works: Pragmatism, Varieties of Religious Experience.
Frege: Most important logician since Aristotle.
Russell: Perhaps the greatest philosopher of the last century. Works: Problems of Philosophy, History of Western Philosophy, Principia Mathematica (with Whitehead).
Wittgenstein: Student of Russell, another contender for greatest of the last century, premier philosopher of language. Works: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations.
Heidegger: Important German philosopher. Works: Being and Time.
Sartre: Famous French existentialist. Works: Being and Nothingness.
There are more recent important philosophers, like Rawls, Nozick, Searle, Singer, and so on, but I'd say it's too early to tell if they belong on this list yet.
Epistemology: The philosophy of knowledge. Concerned with such questions as, is knowledge of anything really possible, is our knowledge certain, how do we get our knowledge, what things can we have knowledge about, what exactly is knowledge, etc. Classic works include Descartes' Meditations, Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Almost all the major philosophers have written on this subject, though it is less popular nowadays.
Ethics: This is probably the most self-explanatory of all the branches. Concerned with such things as what is good/evil, is there such a thing as objective morals or are they created by us, or some other being, how we should live our lives, and so on. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.
Metaphysics: Meta means above; this is the study of the nature of things above physics. Metaphysics covers the kinds of things most people probably think of if asked what philosophy covers e.g. those 'big questions', such as, is there God, why are we here, what is the ultimate nature of the universe, and so on. Another important area of metaphysics is the nature of substance, that is, what is the universe really made of, a particular favourite of mine. Metaphysics has often come under attack for being too abstract to actually have any worth, particularly famously by A.J. Ayer. Classic works include Aristotle's Metaphysics, Spinoza's Ethics (which unsurprisingly also is a classic work on Ethics), and almost anything written by Leibniz.
Aesthetics: The philosophy of art. Concerned with questions like why do we find certain things beautiful, what makes things great art, so on. Classic works include Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics, Schopenhauer and Hegel's lectures, Kant's Critique of Judgement. Plato had a famously dim view of this branch.
Philosophy of Education: Fairly self-explanatory. A minor branch, mainly concerned with what is the correct way to educate a person. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education, and Rousseau's Emile.
Philosophy of History: Fairly minor branch (not as minor as education), although highly important to Hegel and those who followed him, most notably Marx. It is the philosophical study of history, particularly concerned with the question whether history (i.e. the universe and/or humankind) is progressing towards a specific end? Hegel argued that it was, as did Marx. Classic works include Vico's New Science, and Hegel and Marx's works.
Philosophy of Language: Ancient branch of philosophy which gained prominence in the last century under Wittgenstein. Basically concerned with how our languages affect our thought. Wittgenstein famously asserted that the limits of our languages mark the limits of our thought. Classic works include Plato's Cratylus, Locke's Essay, and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Philosophy of Law: Also called Jurisprudence. Study of law attempting to discern what the best laws might be, how laws came into being in the first place, attempting to delimit human laws from natural laws, whether we should always obey the law, and so on. Law isn't often directly dealt with by philosophers, but much of political philosophy obviously has a bearing on it.
Logic: The study of the proper methods of thinking and reasoning. Logic languages, like Predicate Logic, promise to produce arguments which, if the premises are true, can only lead to true conclusions. Logic is slightly different than the other branches as it aims to suggest the correct ways of studying philosophy in general. Classic works include Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics, and Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica.
Philosophy of Mathematics: Study of mathematics concerned with issues such as, is mathematics real or created by us, is it necessary to understand the world, do perfect mathematical forms exist in the real world, and so on. Principia Mathematica is almost certainly the most important work in this field.
Philosophy of Mind: Study of the mind, attempting to ascertain exactly what the mind is, how it interacts with our body, do other minds exist, how does it work, and so on. Probably the most popular branch of philosophy right now, it has expanded to include issues of AI. Classic works include Plato's Republic and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, although every major philosopher has had some opinion at least on what the mind is and how it works.
Philosophy of Politics: Closely related to ethics, this is a study of government and nations, particularly how they came about, what makes good governments, what obligations citizens have towards their government, and so on. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Two Treatises, and J.S. Mill's On Liberty.
Philosophy of Religion: Theology is concerned with the study of God, recommending the best religious practises, how our religion should shape our life, and so on. Philosophy of religion is concerned with much the same issues, but where Theology uses religious works, like the Bible, as it's authority, philosophy likes to use reason as the ultimate authority.
Philosophy of Science: Study of science concerned with whether scientific knowledge can be said to be certain, how we obtain it, can science really explain everything, does causation really exist, can every event in the universe be described in terms of physics and so on. Also popular in recent times, classic works include Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, Kripke's Naming and Necessity, Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Epistemology: The philosophy of knowledge. Concerned with such questions as, is knowledge of anything really possible, is our knowledge certain, how do we get our knowledge, what things can we have knowledge about, what exactly is knowledge, etc. Classic works include Descartes' Meditations, Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Almost all the major philosophers have written on this subject, though it is less popular nowadays.
Ethics: This is probably the most self-explanatory of all the branches. Concerned with such things as what is good/evil, is there such a thing as objective morals or are they created by us, or some other being, how we should live our lives, and so on. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.
Metaphysics: Meta means above; this is the study of the nature of things above physics. Metaphysics covers the kinds of things most people probably think of if asked what philosophy covers e.g. those 'big questions', such as, is there God, why are we here, what is the ultimate nature of the universe, and so on. Another important area of metaphysics is the nature of substance, that is, what is the universe really made of, a particular favourite of mine. Metaphysics has often come under attack for being too abstract to actually have any worth, particularly famously by A.J. Ayer. Classic works include Aristotle's Metaphysics, Spinoza's Ethics (which unsurprisingly also is a classic work on Ethics), and almost anything written by Leibniz.
Aesthetics: The philosophy of art. Concerned with questions like why do we find certain things beautiful, what makes things great art, so on. Classic works include Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics, Schopenhauer and Hegel's lectures, Kant's Critique of Judgement. Plato had a famously dim view of this branch.
Philosophy of Education: Fairly self-explanatory. A minor branch, mainly concerned with what is the correct way to educate a person. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education, and Rousseau's Emile.
Philosophy of History: Fairly minor branch (not as minor as education), although highly important to Hegel and those who followed him, most notably Marx. It is the philosophical study of history, particularly concerned with the question whether history (i.e. the universe and/or humankind) is progressing towards a specific end? Hegel argued that it was, as did Marx. Classic works include Vico's New Science, and Hegel and Marx's works.
Philosophy of Language: Ancient branch of philosophy which gained prominence in the last century under Wittgenstein. Basically concerned with how our languages affect our thought. Wittgenstein famously asserted that the limits of our languages mark the limits of our thought. Classic works include Plato's Cratylus, Locke's Essay, and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Philosophy of Law: Also called Jurisprudence. Study of law attempting to discern what the best laws might be, how laws came into being in the first place, attempting to delimit human laws from natural laws, whether we should always obey the law, and so on. Law isn't often directly dealt with by philosophers, but much of political philosophy obviously has a bearing on it.
Logic: The study of the proper methods of thinking and reasoning. Logic languages, like Predicate Logic, promise to produce arguments which, if the premises are true, can only lead to true conclusions. Logic is slightly different than the other branches as it aims to suggest the correct ways of studying philosophy in general. Classic works include Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics, and Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica.
Philosophy of Mathematics: Study of mathematics concerned with issues such as, is mathematics real or created by us, is it necessary to understand the world, do perfect mathematical forms exist in the real world, and so on. Principia Mathematica is almost certainly the most important work in this field.
Philosophy of Mind: Study of the mind, attempting to ascertain exactly what the mind is, how it interacts with our body, do other minds exist, how does it work, and so on. Probably the most popular branch of philosophy right now, it has expanded to include issues of AI. Classic works include Plato's Republic and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, although every major philosopher has had some opinion at least on what the mind is and how it works.
Philosophy of Politics: Closely related to ethics, this is a study of government and nations, particularly how they came about, what makes good governments, what obligations citizens have towards their government, and so on. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Two Treatises, and J.S. Mill's On Liberty.
Philosophy of Religion: Theology is concerned with the study of God, recommending the best religious practises, how our religion should shape our life, and so on. Philosophy of religion is concerned with much the same issues, but where Theology uses religious works, like the Bible, as it's authority, philosophy likes to use reason as the ultimate authority.
Philosophy of Science: Study of science concerned with whether scientific knowledge can be said to be certain, how we obtain it, can science really explain everything, does causation really exist, can every event in the universe be described in terms of physics and so on. Also popular in recent times, classic works include Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, Kripke's Naming and Necessity, Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
A Posteriori: A type of knowledge, gained by induction. That is to say, that this knowledge is gained from experience (a posteriori literally means after experience). For example, by observing that the sun has always risen in the morning in the past, we come to the a posteriori conclusion that it will always rise.
A Priori: Knowledge gained before experience (deductively). For example, a shape which is both a perfect square and a perfect circle at exactly the same time is impossible, this we know before even having experience of attempting to draw such an object.
Cartesian: Follower of Descartes' ideas.
Deduction: The process of gaining knowledge independently of experience, through pure logical reasoning. This knowledge is deductive knowledge, or a priori knowledge. Of the spheres of human reasoning, only mathematics can truly be said to be deductive.
Deism: The belief that there is a God who created the universe, but that after creating it he left it to regulate itself and doesn't step in to provide miracles or the like.
Dualism: Dualists believe that the world consists of both mental and physical objects, like minds and bodies respectively. Most of the major philosophers, including Descartes and Locke, were dualists.
Empiricist: One of the two main schools of philosophical thought throughout history. Empiricists believed that pure reasoning alone was not sufficient to gain knowledge of the world, but experience was also required. Empiricists started with Aristotle, and include Locke, Berkeley and Hume.
Existentialism: Popular in the last century, the belief that existence comes before essence, that is, that who you are is only determined by you yourself, and not merely an accident of birth. Sartre is the most famous existentialist. It is in part a reaction to the ideas of Hegel and Nietzsche.
Idealist: An idealist is someone who believes that existence is not truly physical at all, but mental. Berkeley is the most famous idealist, and claimed that nothing was real except our minds and God, and everything else was just ideas in those minds. Leibniz also may have been an idealist, but this isn't that clear from his writings.
Induction: The process of gaining knowledge through experience. Hume argued highly convincingly that induction proves nothing for certain, and therefore deductive, or a priori knowledge, is highly prized over inductive, or a posteriori knowledge by philosophers. As may have occurred to you already, all scientific knowledge, relying as it does on experiments - experience in other words - is inductive and therefore uncertain.
Innate Ideas: For centuries philosophers and the intelligentsia at large believed in innate ideas/knowledge, that is, knowledge we are born knowing, put there by God. Usually various moral precepts like repugnance for murder were cited as being innate. I guess we might call them instincts nowadays. Locke mounted a devastating attack on innate ideas in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and since the philosophers preceding and following him had little enthusiasm for them either, they lost popularity.
Master/Slave Morality: Nietzsche's terms for two kinds of morality. In the State of the Nature there were Masters, the strong, proud, cruel, courageous etc, and the Slaves, the weak, humble, compassionate, cowardly, etc. In envy of the Master's powers, the Slaves overthrew them and rose to the dominance they enjoy in Christianity and Judaism today. Master and Slave moralities are simply the judgement of good being attached to one attributes of one of the two groups. Slave morality, for example, is the view that being humble, compassionate etc is good.
Materialist/Physicalist: The opposite of idealists, materialists claim that the mental is just an illusion produced by the entirely physical brain, and only the physical is real.
Monotheism: The belief in one true God. Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all examples of religions based on this belief.
Occasionalism: Malebranches' idea on how the mind and body could interact - namely, that naturally they didn't, and God had to intervene to allow the soul to affect the physical world each and every time you do something. Now justly considered ludicrous.
Ontology: A branch of metaphysics, the study of the nature of being. What is existence, and so on.
Pantheism: The belief that the universe is 'God'. Spinoza was a pantheist. Pantheists usually don't think the universe is conscious, but they often worship it. Ancient religions were often pantheistic.
Polytheism: The belief in more than one God, for example Hinduism or the religion of the Ancient Greeks or Romans.
Pragmatism: A view put forward at the turn of the 19th/20th century, that only those issues that would make a difference should be debated - if it won't make a difference either way, why even bother considering it? William James was a famous proponent.
Pre-established Harmony: The idea, put forward by Leibniz, that the soul and body don't interact at all, instead God set them up at creation to act in perfect harmony.
Rationalist: The other main school of philosophical thought. Rationalists believe that reason alone is sufficient to gain knowledge of the world. Rationalists started with Plato, and include Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. The current thought is that Kant collapsed the two schools of Rationalists and Empiricists into each other, destroying the distinction. I don't really agree with this, and think it still applies today, albeit perhaps to a lesser extent.
Scholastics: Catholic philosophers, usually monks, who dominated western philosophy from St Augustine in the 4th century until the early 16th Century, when Descartes started the process of overthrowing them. St Aquinas is considered to be the greatest of them.
Social Contract: A theory on how government and societies began. Contractarians hold that societies were formed by the consent of the populations of various areas who decided, for whatever reasons (these vary from philosopher to philosopher) that it would be to their mutual advantage to band together and cooperate.
State of Nature: Before governments and societies were formed, humans lived in the state of nature, where it was every man for himself. Accounts of what this was like vary according to who you read. It means more or less the stone age period.
Substratum: An opinion on substance (the stuff the universe is made of), particularly held by Locke, that substance was that which had no properties itself, but lay underneath properties, like solidity, heat, colour, etc, and supported them. The substratum of a table, for example, supports its colour, solidity and shape.
Syllogism: An ancient form of a logical argument, first put forward by Aristotle. A syllogism typically consists of three sentences; two premises, one conclusion. If the premises were true, the conclusion must be true. For example: all left-handed people are smokers. Ann is left-handed. Ann must be a smoker.
Tabula Rasa: A blank slate. Locke claimed that as opposed to the mind being imprinted with innate ideas before birth, in actually the mind was a blank slate, tabula rasa, when born, and all knowledge was gained first from our experience of the world, and later by our reasoning. This view is popular today.
Teleology: Teleological explanations attempt to explain things in terms of their function. For example, Leibniz sought to explain the existence of evil in the world by arguing that it was necessary for free-will to exist.
Theism: The belief that there is a God of some description. Covers a wide variety of religious beliefs, obviously.
Utilitarianism: The view that an action is good in proportion to the amount of people it produces happiness in, and in proportion to how much happiness it produces in them. The greatest good for the greatest number of people is the best action therefore. Bentham and J.S. Mill are famous Utilitarianists.
Just trolled through the internet to find it...........
Was reading the thread that was started by Spike. Personally I felt the need Not to justify a thing, I thought that this might help?????
Thales: Traditionally considered the first ever western philosopher. None of his writings survive.
SOCRATES: Ancient Greek, changed philosophy from a study of natural science to ethics and politics. Wrote nothing.
PLATO: Ancient Greek, student of Socrates, most influential philosopher of all time. Works: The Republic.
ARISTOTLE: Ancient Greek, student of Plato, second most influential philosopher of all time. Works: The Nichomachean Ethics, The Metaphysics, The Politics.
Plotinus: Fused Platonic principles with Christian teaching. The last of the ancient Greek philosophers. Works: The Enneads.
St Augustine: Continued Plotinus' project of Platonic Christianity. The first of the Scholastic philosophers. Works: The Confessions, The City of God.
St Anselm: Scholastic, mostly famous for his argument for the existence of God, the Ontological Argument, which was based on the argument that it would be contradictory to God's nature for him not to exist. Works: The Monologion.
ST AQUINAS: The greatest Scholastic, he changed their emphasis from Plato to Aristotle, promoting him as the greatest of all philosophers and attempting to fuse Aristotelianism and Christianity. Works: The Summa Theologica.
Duns Scotus: Scholastic. I don't know much about him.
William of Ockham: Scholastic. Mostly famous for Ockham's razor, which argues for simplicity in arguments.
Machiavelli: Political philosopher, famous for the ruthless advice he gave to rulers in The Prince. Works: The Prince, The Discourses.
DESCARTES: The father of modern philosophy for challenging the blind acceptance of Aristotle. Works: The Meditations, Discourse on Method.
HOBBES: Political philosopher. Explosively infamous in his day for being a suspected atheist, among other reasons. Works: Leviathan.
SPINOZA: As infamous as Hobbes, his contemporary, in his day. Thought that the universe was God and we were all part of it. Works: Ethics.
Malebranche: Considered the equal of Descartes or Spinoza in his day, now mostly ignored. Works: The Search After Truth.
Arnauld: Equal to Leibniz and Malebranche in his day, now suffers the same fate as Malebranche. Works: His correspondance is highly important, but also Logic or the Art of Thinking.
LOCKE: Empiricist. Famous for his views on the human mind, knowledge and how we can own property. Currently my favourite philosopher. Works: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Two Treatises of Government.
LEIBNIZ: Rationalist, famous for his justification of evil and his ideas on substance. Works: Discourse on Metaphysics, Monadology, Theodicy.
BERKELEY: Idealist, argued that the physical didn't really exist, only the mental did. Not a popular view nowadays. Works: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous.
HUME: Empiricist, most famous for arguing that inductive knowledge is not certain. Works: A Treatise on Human Nature, The Enquiries.
Rousseau: Political philosopher mostly. Some consider him great, others, like me, think him a sloppy and shallow thinker. Works: The Social Contract, The Origins of Social Inequality, Emile.
KANT: Considered to be the greatest of the modern philosophers, his influence is all-pervasive in almost every area of philosophy. Works: Critique of Pure Reason, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
Fichte: Follower of Kant, one of the founders of nationalism.
HEGEL: Argued that all history was progressing towards a perfect state of being. Works: Phenomenology of Spirit, The Philosophy of Right.
Marx: Follower of Hegel, took his ideas and changed them into Communism. Works: The Communist Manifesto, Capital.
Kierkeguaard: First major objector to Hegel, consider to be a founder of existentialism. Works: Either/Or, Sickness Unto Death, Fear and Trembling.
Schopenhauer: Famous mostly for his pessimistic outlook and for influencing Nietzsche. Works: The World as Will and Representation.
J.S. Mill: Utilitarian, follower of Bentham. Works: On Liberty, Utilitarianism.
NIETZSCHE: Mostly a moral philosopher, famously rejected traditional Christian and Jewish morality as 'slave morality'. Works: Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil.
James: Important US philosopher, proponent of pragmatism. Works: Pragmatism, Varieties of Religious Experience.
Frege: Most important logician since Aristotle.
Russell: Perhaps the greatest philosopher of the last century. Works: Problems of Philosophy, History of Western Philosophy, Principia Mathematica (with Whitehead).
Wittgenstein: Student of Russell, another contender for greatest of the last century, premier philosopher of language. Works: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations.
Heidegger: Important German philosopher. Works: Being and Time.
Sartre: Famous French existentialist. Works: Being and Nothingness.
There are more recent important philosophers, like Rawls, Nozick, Searle, Singer, and so on, but I'd say it's too early to tell if they belong on this list yet.
Epistemology: The philosophy of knowledge. Concerned with such questions as, is knowledge of anything really possible, is our knowledge certain, how do we get our knowledge, what things can we have knowledge about, what exactly is knowledge, etc. Classic works include Descartes' Meditations, Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Almost all the major philosophers have written on this subject, though it is less popular nowadays.
Ethics: This is probably the most self-explanatory of all the branches. Concerned with such things as what is good/evil, is there such a thing as objective morals or are they created by us, or some other being, how we should live our lives, and so on. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.
Metaphysics: Meta means above; this is the study of the nature of things above physics. Metaphysics covers the kinds of things most people probably think of if asked what philosophy covers e.g. those 'big questions', such as, is there God, why are we here, what is the ultimate nature of the universe, and so on. Another important area of metaphysics is the nature of substance, that is, what is the universe really made of, a particular favourite of mine. Metaphysics has often come under attack for being too abstract to actually have any worth, particularly famously by A.J. Ayer. Classic works include Aristotle's Metaphysics, Spinoza's Ethics (which unsurprisingly also is a classic work on Ethics), and almost anything written by Leibniz.
Aesthetics: The philosophy of art. Concerned with questions like why do we find certain things beautiful, what makes things great art, so on. Classic works include Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics, Schopenhauer and Hegel's lectures, Kant's Critique of Judgement. Plato had a famously dim view of this branch.
Philosophy of Education: Fairly self-explanatory. A minor branch, mainly concerned with what is the correct way to educate a person. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education, and Rousseau's Emile.
Philosophy of History: Fairly minor branch (not as minor as education), although highly important to Hegel and those who followed him, most notably Marx. It is the philosophical study of history, particularly concerned with the question whether history (i.e. the universe and/or humankind) is progressing towards a specific end? Hegel argued that it was, as did Marx. Classic works include Vico's New Science, and Hegel and Marx's works.
Philosophy of Language: Ancient branch of philosophy which gained prominence in the last century under Wittgenstein. Basically concerned with how our languages affect our thought. Wittgenstein famously asserted that the limits of our languages mark the limits of our thought. Classic works include Plato's Cratylus, Locke's Essay, and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Philosophy of Law: Also called Jurisprudence. Study of law attempting to discern what the best laws might be, how laws came into being in the first place, attempting to delimit human laws from natural laws, whether we should always obey the law, and so on. Law isn't often directly dealt with by philosophers, but much of political philosophy obviously has a bearing on it.
Logic: The study of the proper methods of thinking and reasoning. Logic languages, like Predicate Logic, promise to produce arguments which, if the premises are true, can only lead to true conclusions. Logic is slightly different than the other branches as it aims to suggest the correct ways of studying philosophy in general. Classic works include Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics, and Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica.
Philosophy of Mathematics: Study of mathematics concerned with issues such as, is mathematics real or created by us, is it necessary to understand the world, do perfect mathematical forms exist in the real world, and so on. Principia Mathematica is almost certainly the most important work in this field.
Philosophy of Mind: Study of the mind, attempting to ascertain exactly what the mind is, how it interacts with our body, do other minds exist, how does it work, and so on. Probably the most popular branch of philosophy right now, it has expanded to include issues of AI. Classic works include Plato's Republic and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, although every major philosopher has had some opinion at least on what the mind is and how it works.
Philosophy of Politics: Closely related to ethics, this is a study of government and nations, particularly how they came about, what makes good governments, what obligations citizens have towards their government, and so on. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Two Treatises, and J.S. Mill's On Liberty.
Philosophy of Religion: Theology is concerned with the study of God, recommending the best religious practises, how our religion should shape our life, and so on. Philosophy of religion is concerned with much the same issues, but where Theology uses religious works, like the Bible, as it's authority, philosophy likes to use reason as the ultimate authority.
Philosophy of Science: Study of science concerned with whether scientific knowledge can be said to be certain, how we obtain it, can science really explain everything, does causation really exist, can every event in the universe be described in terms of physics and so on. Also popular in recent times, classic works include Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, Kripke's Naming and Necessity, Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Epistemology: The philosophy of knowledge. Concerned with such questions as, is knowledge of anything really possible, is our knowledge certain, how do we get our knowledge, what things can we have knowledge about, what exactly is knowledge, etc. Classic works include Descartes' Meditations, Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Almost all the major philosophers have written on this subject, though it is less popular nowadays.
Ethics: This is probably the most self-explanatory of all the branches. Concerned with such things as what is good/evil, is there such a thing as objective morals or are they created by us, or some other being, how we should live our lives, and so on. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.
Metaphysics: Meta means above; this is the study of the nature of things above physics. Metaphysics covers the kinds of things most people probably think of if asked what philosophy covers e.g. those 'big questions', such as, is there God, why are we here, what is the ultimate nature of the universe, and so on. Another important area of metaphysics is the nature of substance, that is, what is the universe really made of, a particular favourite of mine. Metaphysics has often come under attack for being too abstract to actually have any worth, particularly famously by A.J. Ayer. Classic works include Aristotle's Metaphysics, Spinoza's Ethics (which unsurprisingly also is a classic work on Ethics), and almost anything written by Leibniz.
Aesthetics: The philosophy of art. Concerned with questions like why do we find certain things beautiful, what makes things great art, so on. Classic works include Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics, Schopenhauer and Hegel's lectures, Kant's Critique of Judgement. Plato had a famously dim view of this branch.
Philosophy of Education: Fairly self-explanatory. A minor branch, mainly concerned with what is the correct way to educate a person. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education, and Rousseau's Emile.
Philosophy of History: Fairly minor branch (not as minor as education), although highly important to Hegel and those who followed him, most notably Marx. It is the philosophical study of history, particularly concerned with the question whether history (i.e. the universe and/or humankind) is progressing towards a specific end? Hegel argued that it was, as did Marx. Classic works include Vico's New Science, and Hegel and Marx's works.
Philosophy of Language: Ancient branch of philosophy which gained prominence in the last century under Wittgenstein. Basically concerned with how our languages affect our thought. Wittgenstein famously asserted that the limits of our languages mark the limits of our thought. Classic works include Plato's Cratylus, Locke's Essay, and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Philosophy of Law: Also called Jurisprudence. Study of law attempting to discern what the best laws might be, how laws came into being in the first place, attempting to delimit human laws from natural laws, whether we should always obey the law, and so on. Law isn't often directly dealt with by philosophers, but much of political philosophy obviously has a bearing on it.
Logic: The study of the proper methods of thinking and reasoning. Logic languages, like Predicate Logic, promise to produce arguments which, if the premises are true, can only lead to true conclusions. Logic is slightly different than the other branches as it aims to suggest the correct ways of studying philosophy in general. Classic works include Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics, and Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica.
Philosophy of Mathematics: Study of mathematics concerned with issues such as, is mathematics real or created by us, is it necessary to understand the world, do perfect mathematical forms exist in the real world, and so on. Principia Mathematica is almost certainly the most important work in this field.
Philosophy of Mind: Study of the mind, attempting to ascertain exactly what the mind is, how it interacts with our body, do other minds exist, how does it work, and so on. Probably the most popular branch of philosophy right now, it has expanded to include issues of AI. Classic works include Plato's Republic and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, although every major philosopher has had some opinion at least on what the mind is and how it works.
Philosophy of Politics: Closely related to ethics, this is a study of government and nations, particularly how they came about, what makes good governments, what obligations citizens have towards their government, and so on. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Two Treatises, and J.S. Mill's On Liberty.
Philosophy of Religion: Theology is concerned with the study of God, recommending the best religious practises, how our religion should shape our life, and so on. Philosophy of religion is concerned with much the same issues, but where Theology uses religious works, like the Bible, as it's authority, philosophy likes to use reason as the ultimate authority.
Philosophy of Science: Study of science concerned with whether scientific knowledge can be said to be certain, how we obtain it, can science really explain everything, does causation really exist, can every event in the universe be described in terms of physics and so on. Also popular in recent times, classic works include Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, Kripke's Naming and Necessity, Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
A Posteriori: A type of knowledge, gained by induction. That is to say, that this knowledge is gained from experience (a posteriori literally means after experience). For example, by observing that the sun has always risen in the morning in the past, we come to the a posteriori conclusion that it will always rise.
A Priori: Knowledge gained before experience (deductively). For example, a shape which is both a perfect square and a perfect circle at exactly the same time is impossible, this we know before even having experience of attempting to draw such an object.
Cartesian: Follower of Descartes' ideas.
Deduction: The process of gaining knowledge independently of experience, through pure logical reasoning. This knowledge is deductive knowledge, or a priori knowledge. Of the spheres of human reasoning, only mathematics can truly be said to be deductive.
Deism: The belief that there is a God who created the universe, but that after creating it he left it to regulate itself and doesn't step in to provide miracles or the like.
Dualism: Dualists believe that the world consists of both mental and physical objects, like minds and bodies respectively. Most of the major philosophers, including Descartes and Locke, were dualists.
Empiricist: One of the two main schools of philosophical thought throughout history. Empiricists believed that pure reasoning alone was not sufficient to gain knowledge of the world, but experience was also required. Empiricists started with Aristotle, and include Locke, Berkeley and Hume.
Existentialism: Popular in the last century, the belief that existence comes before essence, that is, that who you are is only determined by you yourself, and not merely an accident of birth. Sartre is the most famous existentialist. It is in part a reaction to the ideas of Hegel and Nietzsche.
Idealist: An idealist is someone who believes that existence is not truly physical at all, but mental. Berkeley is the most famous idealist, and claimed that nothing was real except our minds and God, and everything else was just ideas in those minds. Leibniz also may have been an idealist, but this isn't that clear from his writings.
Induction: The process of gaining knowledge through experience. Hume argued highly convincingly that induction proves nothing for certain, and therefore deductive, or a priori knowledge, is highly prized over inductive, or a posteriori knowledge by philosophers. As may have occurred to you already, all scientific knowledge, relying as it does on experiments - experience in other words - is inductive and therefore uncertain.
Innate Ideas: For centuries philosophers and the intelligentsia at large believed in innate ideas/knowledge, that is, knowledge we are born knowing, put there by God. Usually various moral precepts like repugnance for murder were cited as being innate. I guess we might call them instincts nowadays. Locke mounted a devastating attack on innate ideas in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and since the philosophers preceding and following him had little enthusiasm for them either, they lost popularity.
Master/Slave Morality: Nietzsche's terms for two kinds of morality. In the State of the Nature there were Masters, the strong, proud, cruel, courageous etc, and the Slaves, the weak, humble, compassionate, cowardly, etc. In envy of the Master's powers, the Slaves overthrew them and rose to the dominance they enjoy in Christianity and Judaism today. Master and Slave moralities are simply the judgement of good being attached to one attributes of one of the two groups. Slave morality, for example, is the view that being humble, compassionate etc is good.
Materialist/Physicalist: The opposite of idealists, materialists claim that the mental is just an illusion produced by the entirely physical brain, and only the physical is real.
Monotheism: The belief in one true God. Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all examples of religions based on this belief.
Occasionalism: Malebranches' idea on how the mind and body could interact - namely, that naturally they didn't, and God had to intervene to allow the soul to affect the physical world each and every time you do something. Now justly considered ludicrous.
Ontology: A branch of metaphysics, the study of the nature of being. What is existence, and so on.
Pantheism: The belief that the universe is 'God'. Spinoza was a pantheist. Pantheists usually don't think the universe is conscious, but they often worship it. Ancient religions were often pantheistic.
Polytheism: The belief in more than one God, for example Hinduism or the religion of the Ancient Greeks or Romans.
Pragmatism: A view put forward at the turn of the 19th/20th century, that only those issues that would make a difference should be debated - if it won't make a difference either way, why even bother considering it? William James was a famous proponent.
Pre-established Harmony: The idea, put forward by Leibniz, that the soul and body don't interact at all, instead God set them up at creation to act in perfect harmony.
Rationalist: The other main school of philosophical thought. Rationalists believe that reason alone is sufficient to gain knowledge of the world. Rationalists started with Plato, and include Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. The current thought is that Kant collapsed the two schools of Rationalists and Empiricists into each other, destroying the distinction. I don't really agree with this, and think it still applies today, albeit perhaps to a lesser extent.
Scholastics: Catholic philosophers, usually monks, who dominated western philosophy from St Augustine in the 4th century until the early 16th Century, when Descartes started the process of overthrowing them. St Aquinas is considered to be the greatest of them.
Social Contract: A theory on how government and societies began. Contractarians hold that societies were formed by the consent of the populations of various areas who decided, for whatever reasons (these vary from philosopher to philosopher) that it would be to their mutual advantage to band together and cooperate.
State of Nature: Before governments and societies were formed, humans lived in the state of nature, where it was every man for himself. Accounts of what this was like vary according to who you read. It means more or less the stone age period.
Substratum: An opinion on substance (the stuff the universe is made of), particularly held by Locke, that substance was that which had no properties itself, but lay underneath properties, like solidity, heat, colour, etc, and supported them. The substratum of a table, for example, supports its colour, solidity and shape.
Syllogism: An ancient form of a logical argument, first put forward by Aristotle. A syllogism typically consists of three sentences; two premises, one conclusion. If the premises were true, the conclusion must be true. For example: all left-handed people are smokers. Ann is left-handed. Ann must be a smoker.
Tabula Rasa: A blank slate. Locke claimed that as opposed to the mind being imprinted with innate ideas before birth, in actually the mind was a blank slate, tabula rasa, when born, and all knowledge was gained first from our experience of the world, and later by our reasoning. This view is popular today.
Teleology: Teleological explanations attempt to explain things in terms of their function. For example, Leibniz sought to explain the existence of evil in the world by arguing that it was necessary for free-will to exist.
Theism: The belief that there is a God of some description. Covers a wide variety of religious beliefs, obviously.
Utilitarianism: The view that an action is good in proportion to the amount of people it produces happiness in, and in proportion to how much happiness it produces in them. The greatest good for the greatest number of people is the best action therefore. Bentham and J.S. Mill are famous Utilitarianists.
Just trolled through the internet to find it...........
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