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The collection

The Philosophers

Every thinker here answers out of their own texts. Choose a voice and put your question to it.

Philosophers
38
Works
291
Passages
112,227
Centuries spanned
24

When the thinkers were born — philosophers per century

38 philosophers, born across 15 centuries from the 6th c. BCE to the 19th c. CE. The 18th c. CE is the fullest, with 14.
Philosophers born, by century
CenturyPhilosophers born
6th c. BCE1
5th c. BCE1
4th c. BCE2
2nd c. BCE1
1st c. BCE1
1st c. CE1
2nd c. CE1
4th c. CE1
5th c. CE1
13th c. CE2
15th c. CE1
16th c. CE2
17th c. CE3
18th c. CE14
19th c. CE6

Which traditions they come from — philosophers per tradition

38 philosophers across 2 traditions. Widths are shares of the roster; the names are in the legend.
  • The Western tradition 37
  • The Chinese tradition 1
Philosophers by tradition
TraditionPhilosophersShare
The Western tradition3797%
The Chinese tradition13%

What the corpus argues about — share of the canon per question

The six great questions, ranked by their share of every tagged passage in the corpus. Mind and knowledge leads at 15.3%. A passage can answer to more than one question, so the six do not sum to a whole.
Share of the canon by question
QuestionShare of the canon
Mind and knowledge15.3%
Politics and power11.5%
Ethics and the good life9.6%
Metaphysics and the cosmos9%
Logic and language5.3%
Being and existence4.5%

By year of birth

6th c. BCE

1 in the arena

  1. 551 BCE

    Confucius

    551–479 BCE

    The Hundred Schools

    Against rule by force, moral character became government’s first instrument.

    1 works · 144 passages grounded

5th c. BCE

1 in the arena

  1. 123 years without a voice

    428 BCE

    Plato

    428–348 BCE

    Classical Athens

    The dialogues that made certainty defend itself—and often fail.

    29 works · 6,708 passages grounded

4th c. BCE

2 in the arena

  1. 384 BCE

    Aristotle

    384–322 BCE

    Classical Athens

    Philosophy inherited its grammar of causes, character, citizenship, and flourishing.

    9 works · 2,534 passages grounded

  2. 341 BCE

    Epicurus

    341–270 BCE

    The Hellenistic Age

    Pleasure became a discipline: luxury and fear lost their claim on happiness.

    4 works · 77 passages grounded

2nd c. BCE

1 in the arena

  1. 235 years without a voice

    106 BCE

    Cicero

    106–43 BCE

    The Hellenistic Age

    Civic virtue acquired a Latin voice, then entered the struggle for power.

    9 works · 9,125 passages grounded

1st c. BCE

1 in the arena

  1. 4 BCE

    Seneca

    4 BCE – 65 CE

    Imperial Rome

    Stoic philosophy turned anger, exile, wealth, and death into training grounds for freedom.

    12 works · 1,196 passages grounded

1st c. CE

1 in the arena

  1. Epictetus

    50–135

    Imperial Rome

    Freedom became a discipline: govern judgment, release everything else.

    2 works · 772 passages grounded

2nd c. CE

1 in the arena

  1. Marcus Aurelius

    121–180

    Imperial Rome

    An emperor’s private notes made self-command a daily practice against anger, loss, and death.

    1 works · 594 passages grounded

4th c. CE

1 in the arena

  1. 233 years without a voice

    Augustine of Hippo

    354–430

    Late Antiquity

    Turning confession inward, Augustine made memory, desire, and grace philosophical problems.

    3 works · 3,379 passages grounded

5th c. CE

1 in the arena

  1. 123 years without a voice

    Boethius

    477–524

    Late Antiquity

    When fortune fails, virtue—not power, wealth, or fame—becomes the measure of happiness.

    5 works · 206 passages grounded

13th c. CE

2 in the arena

  1. 748 years without a voice

    Thomas Aquinas

    1225–1274

    The Medieval World

    Christian thought found a rigorous grammar for causes, virtues, and grace.

    1 works · 9,627 passages grounded

  2. Meister Eckhart

    1260–1328

    The Medieval World

    A theology of detachment that made the boundary between the soul and God almost disappear.

    3 works · 326 passages grounded

15th c. CE

1 in the arena

  1. 209 years without a voice

    Niccolò Machiavelli

    1469–1527

    The Renaissance

    The Prince taught politics to speak plainly about force, fear, fortune, and survival.

    2 works · 1,217 passages grounded

16th c. CE

2 in the arena

  1. Francis Bacon

    1561–1626

    The Renaissance

    Inherited doctrine met its match in experiment, and knowledge acquired a practical task.

    3 works · 826 passages grounded

  2. René Descartes

    1596–1650

    Early Modern

    Doubt became a method, and the thinking self became philosophy’s first certainty.

    3 works · 599 passages grounded

17th c. CE

3 in the arena

  1. Blaise Pascal

    1623–1662

    Early Modern

    Reason meets its limits; human misery presses faith into the space certainty cannot fill.

    1 works · 487 passages grounded

  2. Baruch Spinoza

    1632–1677

    Early Modern

    The philosopher who made God identical with nature—and turned freedom into understanding necessity.

    7 works · 2,090 passages grounded

  3. George Berkeley

    1685–1753

    Early Modern

    The denial of matter forced philosophy to rebuild reality from perception, language, and God.

    3 works · 539 passages grounded

18th c. CE

14 in the arena

  1. David Hume

    1711–1776

    The Enlightenment

    Habit, not reason, became the hidden engine of belief, putting certainty permanently on trial.

    7 works · 2,890 passages grounded

  2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

    1712–1778

    The Enlightenment

    Against inherited authority, Rousseau made freedom both the law’s condition and education’s aim.

    4 works · 2,779 passages grounded

  3. Denis Diderot

    1713–1784

    The Enlightenment

    When matter began to think, priests, kings, and moral certainties lost their monopoly.

    5 works · 498 passages grounded

  4. Adam Smith

    1723–1790

    The Enlightenment

    Wealth could be explained without reducing human beings to greed—and markets without excusing monopolies.

    3 works · 2,623 passages grounded

  5. Baron d'Holbach

    1723–1789

    The Enlightenment

    Theology met a materialist enemy: necessity replaced divine purpose, and morality served human welfare.

    5 works · 1,924 passages grounded

  6. Immanuel Kant

    1724–1804

    The Enlightenment

    The critique that limited knowledge and recast freedom as obedience to self-given law

    17 works · 5,216 passages grounded

  7. Moses Mendelssohn

    1729–1786

    The Enlightenment

    Religious liberty defended Judaism without asking reason to become less demanding.

    3 works · 716 passages grounded

  8. Edmund Burke

    1729–1797

    The Enlightenment

    The defence of inherited institutions against the fantasy that politics can begin from zero

    36 works · 4,446 passages grounded

  9. Jeremy Bentham

    1748–1832

    The Enlightenment

    Pleasure and pain became a legislative test, forcing law to justify every burden.

    27 works · 7,051 passages grounded

  10. Mary Wollstonecraft

    1759–1797

    The Enlightenment

    Women’s education became a revolt against inherited authority—and a claim to equal humanity.

    5 works · 1,008 passages grounded

  11. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

    1770–1831

    German Idealism

    Contradiction became not a flaw in thought, but the engine of history, freedom, and truth.

    5 works · 6,648 passages grounded

  13. Arthur Schopenhauer

    1788–1860

    German Idealism

    By treating blind striving as reality’s engine, Schopenhauer gave pessimism a metaphysics.

    13 works · 5,619 passages grounded

  14. Auguste Comte

    1798–1857

    The Nineteenth Century

    He turned the study of society into a science—and science into a blueprint for society.

    3 works · 1,726 passages grounded

19th c. CE

6 in the arena

  1. Ludwig Feuerbach

    1804–1872

    The Nineteenth Century

    The critique that returned divine perfection to the humans who had projected it.

    2 works · 701 passages grounded

  2. Karl Marx

    1818–1883

    The Nineteenth Century

    The critique that found exploitation inside the ordinary exchange of wages and commodities

    10 works · 5,294 passages grounded

  3. Friedrich Engels

    1820–1895

    The Nineteenth Century

    Factory smoke and crowded housing became an indictment of capitalism’s claim to progress.

    4 works · 1,312 passages grounded

  4. Herbert Spencer

    1820–1903

    The Nineteenth Century

    Evolution escaped biology, turning society, mind, and cosmos into historical processes.

    12 works · 8,414 passages grounded

  5. William James

    1842–1910

    The Nineteenth Century

    Consciousness became a stream, and truth a wager tested in experience.

    8 works · 4,377 passages grounded

  6. Friedrich Nietzsche

    1844–1900

    The Nineteenth Century

    Inherited values became suspects: Nietzsche taught philosophy to distrust the motives behind its ideals.

    17 works · 6,728 passages grounded