Timeline of Major Ethical Philosophies

By juwxyen
  • 400 BCE

    Idealism: Aristotle

    Idealism: Aristotle
    Plato, father of Idealism, espoused the view of Idealism in his famous book entitled, "The Republic".
  • 300 BCE

    Realism: Plato

    Realism: Plato
    Aristotle, father of realism, believed that to understand an object (its ultimate form has to be understood which does not change.
  • 1252

    Neo-theism: Thomas Aquinas

    Neo-theism: Thomas Aquinas
    Thomas Aquinas, the father of Theistic Realism or Neo-theism, earned his Master's degree in Theology and was ordained as a priest. Together with other Scholastic philosophers, they sought to create a synthesis of Greek rationalism. "Summa Theologiae" was one of his important philosophical work.
  • Idealism: Bishop Berkeley

    Idealism: Bishop Berkeley
    Bishop George Berkeley is sometimes known as the "Father of Modern Idealism", and he formulated one of the purest forms of Idealism in the early 18th Century.
  • Idealism: Language

    The term "Idealism" entered English language.
  • Idealism: Christian Wolff

    Idealism: Christian Wolff
    Idealism was first used in the abstract metaphysical sense "belief that reality is made up only of ideas by Christian Wolff.
  • Realism: School of Common Sense

    Realism: School of Common Sense
    The Scottish common sense realism, also known as the Scottish school of common sense is a realist school of philosophy that published during this year. It originated in the ideas of Scottish philosophers Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson, James Beattie, and Dugald Stewart during the Scottish enlightenment.
  • Pragmatism: Charls Peirce

    Pragmatism: Charls Peirce
    Charls Sanders Perice, an American philosopher, first proposes Pragmatism as a principle of inquiry and an account of meaning.
  • Pragmatism

    Perice coined the term and described it in his pragmatic maxim: "Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception.
  • Pragmatism: William James

    Pragmatism: William James
    William James, whose ability to translate difficult philosophical principles for laypersons helped spread the tenets of pragmatism until the first quarter of the 20th century.
  • Analytic Philosophy: George Edward Moore

    Analytic Philosophy: George Edward Moore
    George Edward Moore argued for a theory of truth that implies that the physical world foes have the independent existence that it is naively supposed to have. Although the theory was soon abandoned, it represented British philosophy’s return to common sense.
  • Existentialism: Gabriel Marcel

    Existentialism: Gabriel Marcel
    The term existentialism was coined by the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel.
  • Existentialism: Jean-Paul Sarte

    Existentialism: Jean-Paul Sarte
    Marcel applied the term to Jean-Paul Sarte, at a colloquium but this was rejected by Sartre. Sartre subsequently changed his mind and publicly adopted the existentialist label in a lecture to Club Maintenant in Paris, published as L’existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism is a Humanism), a short book that helped popularize existentialist thought.
  • Analytic Philosophy: language

    The term, 'analytic philosophy' was introduced in 1960 by Gustav Bergmann (1906–87), and later formed the title of an influential collection that was published in 1967, edited by Richard Rorty (1931–2007)