Ethical Philosophers

Socrates of Athens

470 BCE

Socrates was a classical Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and as being the first moral philosopher, of the Western ethical tradition of thought.

Plato

428 BCE

Plato was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle. His writings explored justice, beauty and equality, and also contained discussions in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology and the philosophy of language.

Aristotle

384 BCE

Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, making contributions to logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance and theatre. He was a student of Plato who in turn studied under Socrates.

Augustine

354

Augustine is a fourth century philosopher whose groundbreaking philosophy infused Christian doctrine with Neoplatonism. He is famous for being an inimitable Catholic theologian and for his agnostic contributions to Western philosophy. He argues that skeptics have no basis for claiming to know that there is no knowledge. In a proof for existence similar to one later made famous by René Descartes, Augustine says, "If I am mistaken, I am.”

Thomas Aguinas

1125

St. Thomas Aquinas (AKA Thomas of Aquin or Aquino) (c. 1225 - 1274) was an Italian philosopher and theologian of the Medieval period. He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology at the peak of Scholasticism in Europe, and the founder of the Thomistic school of philosophy and theology.

Francis Bacon

1561

Bacon served as attorney general and Lord Chancellor of England, resigning amid charges of corruption. His more valuable work was philosophical. Bacon took up Aristotelian ideas, arguing for an empirical, inductive approach, known as the scientific method, which is the foundation of modern scientific inquiry

Rene Descartes

1596

Rene Descartes, French mathematician and philosopher was born in 1596. It was partly because of his contribution that western philosophy and mathematics flourished. In recognition of his contribution, he is often referred as “father or founder father of modern philosophy”.

John Locke

1632

The English philosopher and political theorist John Locke (1632-1704) laid much of the groundwork for the Enlightenment and made central contributions to the development of liberalism. Trained in medicine, he was a key advocate of the empirical approaches of the Scientific Revolution.

Immanuel Kant

1724

Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy. His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics have had a profound impact on almost every philosophical movement that followed him.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1770

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (born August 27, 1770, Stuttgart, Württemberg [Germany]—died November 14, 1831, Berlin), German philosopher who developed a dialectical scheme that emphasized the progress of history and of ideas from thesis to antithesis and thence to a synthesis.

Charles Darwin

1809

Charles Darwin is often cited as the greatest biologist in history. His most famous work, On the Origin of Species, explains the theory of evolution by natural selection, providing numerous supporting examples.

John Dewey

1856

John Dewey on education, experience and community. Arguably the most influential thinker on education in the twentieth century, Dewey's contribution lies along several fronts. His attention to experience and reflection, democracy and community, and to environments for learning have been seminal.