159 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 13860 | We can only learn from philosophers of the past if we accept the risk of major misrepresentation [Wright,C] |
| 11391 | 750 (roughly): the Book of Genesis written by Hebrew writers [PG] |
| 11392 | 586: eclipse of the sun on the coast of modern Turkey was predicted by Thales of Miletus [PG] |
| 11395 | 570: Anaximander flourished in Miletus [PG] |
| 11396 | 563: the Buddha born in northern India [PG] |
| 11398 | 540: Lao Tzu wrote 'Tao Te Ching', the basis of Taoism [PG] |
| 11400 | 529: Pythagoras created his secretive community at Croton in Sicily [PG] |
| 11403 | 500: Heraclitus flourishes at Ephesus, in modern Turkey [PG] |
| 11404 | 496: Confucius travels widely, persuading rulers to be more moral [PG] |
| 11408 | 472: Empedocles persuades his city (Acragas in Sicily) to become a democracy [PG] |
| 11412 | 450 (roughly): Parmenides and Zeno visit Athens from Italy [PG] |
| 11414 | 445: Protagoras helps write laws for the new colony of Thurii [PG] |
| 11417 | 436 (roughly): Anaxagoras is tried for impiety, and expelled from Athens [PG] |
| 11535 | 170 (roughly): Marcus Aurelius wrote his private stoic meditations [PG] |
| 11537 | -200 (roughly): Sextus Empiricus wrote a series of books on scepticism [PG] |
| 11541 | 263: Porphyry began to study with Plotinus in Rome [PG] |
| 11545 | 310: Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire [PG] |
| 11549 | 387: Ambrose converts Augustine to Christianity [PG] |
| 11555 | 523: Boethius imprisoned at Pavia, and begins to write [PG] |
| 11557 | 529: the emperor Justinian closes all the philosophy schools in Athens [PG] |
| 11461 | 323 (roughly): Euclid wrote 'Elements', summarising all of geometry [PG] |
| 11390 | 1000 (roughly): Upanishads written (in Sanskrit); religious and philosophical texts [PG] |
| 11421 | 427: Gorgias visited Athens as ambassador for Leontini [PG] |
| 11425 | 399: Socrates executed (with Plato absent through ill health) [PG] |
| 11432 | 387 (roughly): Plato returned to Athens, and founded the Academy [PG] |
| 11433 | 387 (roughly): Aristippus the Elder founder a hedonist school at Cyrene [PG] |
| 11440 | 367: the teenaged Aristotle came to study at the Academy [PG] |
| 11443 | 360 (roughly): Diogenes of Sinope lives in a barrel in central Athens [PG] |
| 11445 | 347: death of Plato [PG] |
| 11454 | 343: Aristotle becomes tutor to 13 year old Alexander (the Great) [PG] |
| 11456 | 335: Arisotle founded his school at the Lyceum in Athens [PG] |
| 11459 | 330 (roughly): Chuang Tzu wrote his Taoist book [PG] |
| 11465 | 322: Aristotle retired to Chalcis, and died there [PG] |
| 11468 | 307 (roughly): Epicurus founded his school at the Garden in Athens [PG] |
| 11470 | 301 (roughly): Zeno of Citium founded Stoicism at the Stoa Poikile in Athens [PG] |
| 11483 | 261: Cleanthes replaced Zeno as head of the Stoa [PG] |
| 11486 | 229 (roughly): Chrysippus replaced Cleanthes has head of the Stoa [PG] |
| 11492 | 157 (roughly): Carneades became head of the Academy [PG] |
| 11509 | 85: most philosophical activity moves to Alexandria [PG] |
| 11513 | 78: Cicero visited the stoic school on Rhodes [PG] |
| 11516 | 60 (roughly): Lucretius wrote his Latin poem on epicureanism [PG] |
| 11528 | 65: Seneca forced to commit suicide by Nero [PG] |
| 11531 | 80: the discourses of the stoic Epictetus are written down [PG] |
| 11564 | 1090: Anselm publishes his proof of the existence of God [PG] |
| 11558 | 622 (roughly): Mohammed writes the Koran [PG] |
| 11559 | 642: Arabs close the philosophy schools in Alexandria [PG] |
| 11560 | 910 (roughly): Al-Farabi wrote Arabic commentaries on Aristotle [PG] |
| 11562 | 1015 (roughly): Ibn Sina (Avicenna) writes a book on Aristotle [PG] |
| 11566 | 1115: Abelard is the chief logic teacher in Paris [PG] |
| 11573 | 1166: Ibn Rushd (Averroes) wrote extensive commentaries on Aristotle [PG] |
| 11581 | 1266: Aquinas began writing 'Summa Theologica' [PG] |
| 11586 | 1280: after his death, the teaching of Aquinas becomes official Dominican doctrine [PG] |
| 11591 | 1328: William of Ockham decides the Pope is a heretic, and moves to Munich [PG] |
| 17916 | 1347: the Church persecutes philosophical heresies [PG] |
| 11593 | 1470: Marsilio Ficino founds a Platonic Academy in Florence [PG] |
| 11596 | 1513: Machiavelli wrote 'The Prince' [PG] |
| 11599 | 1543: Copernicus publishes his heliocentric view of the solar system [PG] |
| 11601 | 1580: Montaigne publishes his essays [PG] |
| 11607 | 1600: Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome [PG] |
| 11613 | 1619: Descartes's famous day of meditation inside a stove [PG] |
| 11614 | 1620: Bacon publishes 'Novum Organum' [PG] |
| 11619 | 1633: Galileo convicted of heresy by the Inquisition [PG] |
| 11623 | 1641: Descartes publishes his 'Meditations' [PG] |
| 11626 | 1650: death of Descartes, in Stockholm [PG] |
| 11627 | 1651: Hobbes publishes 'Leviathan' [PG] |
| 11633 | 1662: the Port Royal Logic is published [PG] |
| 11634 | 1665: Spinoza writes his 'Ethics' [PG] |
| 11643 | 1676: Leibniz settled as librarian to the Duke of Brunswick [PG] |
| 11649 | 1687: Newton publishes his 'Principia Mathematica' [PG] |
| 11652 | 1690: Locke publishes his 'Essay' [PG] |
| 11654 | 1697: Bayle publishes his 'Dictionary' [PG] |
| 11659 | 1713: Berkeley publishes his 'Three Dialogues' [PG] |
| 11666 | 1734: Voltaire publishes his 'Philosophical Letters' [PG] |
| 11667 | 1739: Hume publishes his 'Treatise' [PG] |
| 11675 | 1762: Rousseau publishes his 'Social Contract' [PG] |
| 11682 | 1781: Kant publishes his 'Critique of Pure Reason' [PG] |
| 11683 | 1785: Reid publishes his essays defending common sense [PG] |
| 11687 | 1798: the French Revolution [PG] |
| 11694 | 1807: Hegel publishes his 'Phenomenology of Spirit' [PG] |
| 11701 | 1818: Schopenhauer publishes his 'World as Will and Idea' [PG] |
| 11710 | 1840: Kierkegaard is writing extensively in Copenhagen [PG] |
| 11713 | 1843: Mill publishes his 'System of Logic' [PG] |
| 11715 | 1848: Marx and Engels publis the Communist Manifesto [PG] |
| 11717 | 1859: Darwin publishes his 'Origin of the Species' [PG] |
| 11721 | 1861: Mill publishes 'Utilitarianism' [PG] |
| 11724 | 1867: Marx begins publishing 'Das Kapital' [PG] |
| 11733 | 1879: Peirce taught for five years at Johns Hopkins University [PG] |
| 17907 | 1879: Frege invents predicate logic [PG] |
| 17909 | 1892: Frege's essay 'Sense and Reference' [PG] |
| 17908 | 1884: Frege publishes his 'Foundations of Arithmetic' [PG] |
| 11735 | 1885: Nietzsche completed 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' [PG] |
| 17911 | 1888: Dedekind publishes axioms for arithmetic [PG] |
| 11740 | 1890: James published 'Principles of Psychology' [PG] |
| 11742 | 1895 (roughly): Freud developed theories of the unconscious [PG] |
| 11745 | 1900: Husserl began developing Phenomenology [PG] |
| 17917 | 1953: Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' [PG] |
| 17919 | 1956: Place proposed mind-brain identity [PG] |
| 11804 | 1962: Kuhn's 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions' [PG] |
| 17921 | 1967: Putnam proposed functionalism of the mind [PG] |
| 11808 | 1971: Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice' [PG] |
| 11810 | 1972: Kripke publishes 'Naming and Necessity' [PG] |
| 11813 | 1975: Singer publishes 'Animal Rights' [PG] |
| 17920 | 1975: Putnam published his Twin Earth example [PG] |
| 11820 | 1986: David Lewis publishes 'On the Plurality of Worlds' [PG] |
| 11746 | 1903: Moore published 'Principia Ethica' [PG] |
| 11747 | 1904: Dewey became professor at Columbia University [PG] |
| 17910 | 1908: Zermelo publishes axioms for set theory [PG] |
| 11752 | 1910: Russell and Whitehead begin publishing 'Principia Mathematica' [PG] |
| 11756 | 1912: Russell meets Wittgenstein in Cambridge [PG] |
| 11762 | 1921: Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus' published [PG] |
| 11765 | 1927: Heidegger's 'Being and Time' published [PG] |
| 11768 | 1930: Frank Ramsey dies at 27 [PG] |
| 11770 | 1931: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems [PG] |
| 11773 | 1933: Tarski's theory of truth [PG] |
| 11783 | 1942: Camus published 'The Myth of Sisyphus' [PG] |
| 11784 | 1943: Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' [PG] |
| 11787 | 1945: Merleau-Ponty's 'Phenomenology of Perception' [PG] |
| 17918 | 1947: Carnap published 'Meaning and Necessity' [PG] |
| 11794 | 1950: Quine's essay 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' [PG] |
| 13883 | The best way to understand a philosophical idea is to defend it [Wright,C] |
| 10142 | The attempt to define numbers by contextual definition has been revived [Wright,C, by Fine,K] |
| 9868 | An expression refers if it is a singular term in some true sentences [Wright,C, by Dummett] |
| 13861 | Number theory aims at the essence of natural numbers, giving their nature, and the epistemology [Wright,C] |
| 13892 | One could grasp numbers, and name sizes with them, without grasping ordering [Wright,C] |
| 13867 | Instances of a non-sortal concept can only be counted relative to a sortal concept [Wright,C] |
| 17441 | Wright thinks Hume's Principle is more fundamental to cardinals than the Peano Axioms are [Wright,C, by Heck] |
| 13862 | There are five Peano axioms, which can be expressed informally [Wright,C] |
| 17853 | Number truths are said to be the consequence of PA - but it needs semantic consequence [Wright,C] |
| 17854 | What facts underpin the truths of the Peano axioms? [Wright,C] |
| 13894 | Sameness of number is fundamental, not counting, despite children learning that first [Wright,C] |
| 10140 | We derive Hume's Law from Law V, then discard the latter in deriving arithmetic [Wright,C, by Fine,K] |
| 8692 | Frege has a good system if his 'number principle' replaces his basic law V [Wright,C, by Friend] |
| 17440 | Wright says Hume's Principle is analytic of cardinal numbers, like a definition [Wright,C, by Heck] |
| 13893 | It is 1-1 correlation of concepts, and not progression, which distinguishes natural number [Wright,C] |
| 13888 | If numbers are extensions, Frege must first solve the Caesar problem for extensions [Wright,C] |
| 13869 | Number platonism says that natural number is a sortal concept [Wright,C] |
| 13870 | We can't use empiricism to dismiss numbers, if numbers are our main evidence against empiricism [Wright,C] |
| 13873 | Treating numbers adjectivally is treating them as quantifiers [Wright,C] |
| 7804 | Wright has revived Frege's discredited logicism [Wright,C, by Benardete,JA] |
| 13899 | The Peano Axioms, and infinity of cardinal numbers, are logical consequences of how we explain cardinals [Wright,C] |
| 13896 | The aim is to follow Frege's strategy to derive the Peano Axioms, but without invoking classes [Wright,C] |
| 13863 | Logicism seemed to fail by Russell's paradox, Gödel's theorems, and non-logical axioms [Wright,C] |
| 13895 | The standard objections are Russell's Paradox, non-logical axioms, and Gödel's theorems [Wright,C] |
| 13884 | The idea that 'exist' has multiple senses is not coherent [Wright,C] |
| 13877 | Singular terms in true sentences must refer to objects; there is no further question about their existence [Wright,C] |
| 9878 | Contextually defined abstract terms genuinely refer to objects [Wright,C, by Dummett] |
| 13868 | Sortal concepts cannot require that things don't survive their loss, because of phase sortals [Wright,C] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 13865 | 'Sortal' concepts show kinds, use indefinite articles, and require grasping identities [Wright,C] |
| 13866 | A concept is only a sortal if it gives genuine identity [Wright,C] |
| 13890 | Entities fall under a sortal concept if they can be used to explain identity statements concerning them [Wright,C] |
| 13898 | If we can establish directions from lines and parallelism, we were already committed to directions [Wright,C] |
| 13882 | A milder claim is that understanding requires some evidence of that understanding [Wright,C] |
| 13885 | If apparent reference can mislead, then so can apparent lack of reference [Wright,C] |
| 17857 | We can accept Frege's idea of object without assuming that predicates have a reference [Wright,C] |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |