| BCE | ||
| Pythagoras | c. 582 - 507 | Numerical mysticism. |
| Heracleitus | c. 535 - 475 | All is change. |
| Parmenides | c. 515 - 450 | Nothing changes. |
| Socrates | 470 - 399 | Look within. |
| Plato | 427 - 347 | Aristocratic government. |
| Aristotle | 384 - 322 | Everything can be discovered through reason or discussion.The vegetative soul |
| Epicurus | 341 - 270 | Hedonism. |
| Zeno | 333 - 264 | Paradoxes to support Parmenides. Stoicism. |
| CE | ||
| Augustine | 354 - 430 | Rationalist support for the church's authority. |
| Roger Bacon | 1214 - 1294 | Early scientist. |
| Aquinas | 1225 - 1274 | Scholasticism. |
| Giordano Bruno | 1548 - 1600 | Science meets mysticism. |
| Francis Bacon | 1561 - 1626 | Scientific method. |
| Hobbes | 1588 - 1679 | — |
| Descartes | 1596 - 1650 | Cogito ergo sum. God exists because the idea of god exists. |
| Spinoza | 1632 - 1677 | Love of god ends suffering. |
| Locke | 1632 - 1704 | Empiricism. |
| Liebniz | 1646 - 1716 | Monads. |
| Berkeley | 1685 - 1753 | Idealism. |
| Voltaire | 1694 - 1778 | |
| Hume | 1711 - 1776 | There is no self - Metaphysical doctrines of god and substance can't be justified by reason or empiricism. |
| Rousseau | 1712 - 1778 | Man is born free and everywhere is in chains. |
| Kant | 1724 - 1804 | Freewill - immortality - god |
| Hegel | 1770 - 1831 | Thesis - antithesis - synthesis |
| Schopenhauer | 1788 - 1860 | Pessimism. |
| Nietzsche | 1844 - 1900 | That which does not kill me makes me stronger. |
| Bertrand Russell | 1872 - 1970 | — |
| Wittgenstein | 1889 - 1951 | — |
| Heidegger | 1889 - 1976 | — |
| Hayden White | 1928 - | talks trash |
| Robert Anton Wilson | 1932 - never | Like what you like, enjoy what you enjoy. Don't take crap from anyone. |
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away—
Half a crate of whisky every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And René Descartes was a drunken fart.
'I drink, therefore I am.'
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker,
But a bugger when he's pissed.
In looking at the history of thought one is struck by how wrong they all were. This may be an example of Godel's incompleteness proof — that no formal system can be complete and consistent. To get anything right, a philosopher has to get something, or a lot of things, wrong.
An example of this is Pythagoras. Pythagoras didn't accept that there were irrational numbers. Irrational numbers messed up his ideas of harmony and that the universe is made out of integers, even though his own famous theorem (the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides) clearly shows that irrational numbers exist.
An example is calculating the diagonal of a unit square. The diagonal is the hypotenuse of a triangle with sides 1 and 1.
The square root of 2 is an irrational number, yet Pythagoras wouldn't believe in them. No philosopher, it seems, has followed the consequences and implications of their system through to their logical, or illogical conclusions.