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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
148
Works
843
Passages
298k+
Centuries spanned
26

When the thinkers were born — philosophers per century

148 philosophers, born across 26 centuries from the 7th c. BCE to the 19th c. CE. The 19th c. CE is the fullest, with 29.
Philosophers born, by century
CenturyPhilosophers born
7th c. BCE3
6th c. BCE3
5th c. BCE2
4th c. BCE2
3rd c. BCE3
2nd c. BCE4
1st c. BCE4
1st c. CE4
2nd c. CE4
3rd c. CE1
4th c. CE5
5th c. CE6
6th c. CE1
7th c. CE4
8th c. CE1
9th c. CE4
10th c. CE4
11th c. CE10
12th c. CE4
13th c. CE5
14th c. CE3
15th c. CE3
16th c. CE9
17th c. CE9
18th c. CE21
19th c. CE29

Which traditions they come from — philosophers per tradition

148 philosophers across 6 traditions. Widths are shares of the roster; the names are in the legend.
  • The Western tradition 87
  • The Indian tradition 29
  • The Chinese tradition 15
  • The Japanese tradition 6
  • The Jewish tradition 6
  • The Islamic and Persian tradition 5
Philosophers by tradition
TraditionPhilosophersShare
The Western tradition8759%
The Indian tradition2920%
The Chinese tradition1510%
The Japanese tradition64%
The Jewish tradition64%
The Islamic and Persian tradition53%

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 11.5%. 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 knowledge11.5%
Metaphysics and the cosmos10%
Politics and power9.5%
Ethics and the good life7.8%
Logic and language4.4%
Being and existence4.1%

7 philosophers match

German Idealism

German idealism holds that thought helps constitute the intelligibility of experience and reality, rather than merely recording facts supplied by the senses. It emerged in the late eighteenth century. Unlike empiricism, it treats reason as an active condition of knowledge.

7 in the arena

  1. Immanuel Kant

    1724–1804

    The Enlightenment

    Immanuel Kant asked how the mind makes experience possible—and where reason must stop, from knowledge and morality to art and politics.

    17 works · 5,638 passages grounded

  2. Johann Gottlieb Fichte

    1762–1814

    German Idealism

    Johann Gottlieb Fichte began philosophy with freedom: the I is an act, the world what resists it. From the Wissenschaftslehre to the Addresses.

    14 works · 3,379 passages grounded

  3. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

    1770–1831

    German Idealism

    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel traced how consciousness, contradiction and history shape freedom in the Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic.

    15 works · 11,821 passages grounded

  4. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

    1775–1854

    German Idealism

    Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling joined nature, art and freedom to a changing philosophy of the Absolute; his major works trace its development.

    7 works · 1,811 passages grounded

  5. Arthur Schopenhauer

    1788–1860

    German Idealism

    Arthur Schopenhauer treated blind striving as reality’s foundation, connecting metaphysics with perception, desire, suffering, ethics, and art.

    13 works · 5,384 passages grounded

  6. Ludwig Feuerbach

    1804–1872

    The Nineteenth Century

    Ludwig Feuerbach recast religion as humanity’s projection of its own essence—and grounded philosophy in nature, feeling, and human relations.

    2 works · 677 passages grounded

  7. Rudolf Steiner

    1861–1925

    The Early Twentieth Century

    Rudolf Steiner, the Goethe editor who founded anthroposophy, argued that thinking reaches the world itself and that a trained mind can perceive spirit.

    11 works · 2,879 passages grounded