Philosophers — Philosophy Arena

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
Century	Philosophers born
7th c. BCE	3
6th c. BCE	3
5th c. BCE	2
4th c. BCE	2
3rd c. BCE	3
2nd c. BCE	4
1st c. BCE	4
1st c. CE	4
2nd c. CE	4
3rd c. CE	1
4th c. CE	5
5th c. CE	6
6th c. CE	1
7th c. CE	4
8th c. CE	1
9th c. CE	4
10th c. CE	4
11th c. CE	10
12th c. CE	4
13th c. CE	5
14th c. CE	3
15th c. CE	3
16th c. CE	9
17th c. CE	9
18th c. CE	21
19th c. CE	29

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
Tradition	Philosophers	Share
The Western tradition	87	59%
The Indian tradition	29	20%
The Chinese tradition	15	10%
The Japanese tradition	6	4%
The Jewish tradition	6	4%
The Islamic and Persian tradition	5	3%

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
Question	Share of the canon
Mind and knowledge	11.5%
Metaphysics and the cosmos	10%
Politics and power	9.5%
Ethics and the good life	7.8%
Logic and language	4.4%
Being and existence	4.1%

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2 philosophers match

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism holds that every person can reach moral and religious truth directly, by intuition, without scripture or church and not through the senses alone. It arose in New England in the 1830s among people who rejected the Unitarian practice of proving religion from miracles. Its name comes from Kant, who held that some ideas do not come from experience but make experience possible. Unlike German idealism, from which it borrowed, it pressed toward conduct: trust in conscience over custom and law, attention to nature, and social reform.

2 in the arena

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803–1882
The Nineteenth Century

Ralph Waldo Emerson left the pulpit to argue that anyone can know truth first-hand, with no church in between. His ideas, his works, his questions.
10 works · 2,596 passages grounded
Henry David Thoreau
1817–1862
The Nineteenth Century

Henry David Thoreau built a house at Walden Pond, went to jail over a tax and held that conscience outranks the law. His ideas, his works, his questions.
3 works · 1,281 passages grounded

When the thinkers were born — philosophers per century

Which traditions they come from — philosophers per tradition

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau