PHILOSOPHY

ARISTOTLE
 NATIONALITY – GREEK
 384 BC -322 BC
 His most important treatises include Physics,
Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul
and Poetics.
 He made pioneering contributions to all fields of
philosophy and science, he invented the field of formal
logic, and he identified the various scientific disciplines
and explored their relationships to each other. Aristotle
was also a teacher and founded his own school in Athens,
known as the Lyceum.
CUNFUCIUS
 NATIONALITY – CHINESE
 551 – 479 BCE
 Confucius set forth his own Golden Rule: "Do not impose
on others what you do not wish for yourself."
IMMANUEL KANT
 NATIONALITY – GERMAN
 APRIL 22 1724 – FEB 12 1804
 Kant's most famous work, the Critique of Pure Reason,
was published in 1781 and revised in 1787. It is a treatise
which seeks to show the impossibility of one sort of
metaphysics and to lay the foundations for another. His
other books included the Critique of Practical Reason
(1788) and the Critique of Judgment (1790).
EPICURUS
 NATIONALITY – GREEK
 341-270 BCE
 Following the Cyrenaic philosopher Aristippus, Epicurus
believed that the greatest good was to seek modest,
sustainable pleasure in the form of a state of ataraxia
(tranquility and freedom from fear) and aponia (the
absence of bodily pain) through knowledge of the
workings of the world and limiting desires.
FRANCIS BACON
 NATIONALITY – ENGLISH/BRITISH
 JANUARY 22 1561 – APRIL 9 1626
 His most important juridical works are: The Elements of
the Common Laws of England, Maxims of the Law, Cases
of Treason, The Learned Reading of Sir Francis Bacon
upon the Statute of Uses.
FREIDRICH NIETZSCHE
 NATIONALITY – GERMAN
 OCTOBER 15 1844 – AUGUST 25 1900
 Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and
cultural critic. His writings on truth, morality, language,
aesthetics, cultural theory, history, nihilism, power,
consciousness, and the meaning of existence have exerted
an enormous influence on Western philosophy and
intellectual history.
KARL MARX
 NATIONALITY – GERMAN
 MAY 5 1818 – MARCH 14 1883
 He believed all countries should become capitalist and
develop that productive capacity, and then workers would
naturally revolt, leading communism whereby the workers
would become the dominant social class and collectively
control the means of production.
LAO TZU/LAOZI
 NATIONALITY – CHINESE
 Laozi, also known by numerous other names, was a
semilegendary ancient Chinese Taoist philosopher. Laozi
is a Chinese honorific, generally translated as "the Old
Master".
MARCUS AURELIUS
 NATIONALITY – ROMAN/ITALIAN
 APRIL 16 121AD – MARCH 17 180AD
 Best known for his Meditations on Stoic philosophy.
Marcus Aurelius has symbolized for many generations in
the West the Golden Age of the Roman Empire.
PLATO
 NATIONALITY – GREEK
 428-7 B.C.E - 348-7 B.C.E.
 Plato was a philosopher during the 5th century BCE. He
was a student of Socrates and later taught Aristotle. He
founded the Academy, an academic program which many
consider to be the first Western university. Plato wrote
many philosophical texts at least 25.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
 NATIONALITY – AMERICAN
 MAY 25 1803 – APRIL 27 1882
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name
Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher,
abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist
movement of the mid-19th century.
RENE DESCARTES
 NATIONALITY – FRENCH
 MARCH 31 1596 – FEB 11 1650
 A French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician,
widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of
modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was central
to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously
separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic
geometry.
SENECA
 NATIONALITY – ITALIAN
 4 BC – 65 AD
 Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger, usually known
mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of
Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work,
satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature
SOCRATES
 NATIONALITY – GREEK
 469 – 399 BCE
 Socrates is unique among the great philosophers in that he
is portrayed and remembered as a quasi-saint or religious
figure. Indeed, nearly every school of ancient Greek and
Roman philosophy, from the Skeptics to the Stoics to the
Cynics, desired to claim him as one of their own (only the
Epicurians dismissed him, calling him “the Athenian
buffoon”).