Who are the three most important eastern philosophers?
Eastern philosophy
The "Dao De Jing" ("Tao-Te-Ching," c. 4th century BCE), traditionally attributed to Laozi, and the "Nan Hua Jing" ("Zhuang Zi") are considered the key texts of the tradition. The first organized form of Taoism, the Tianshi (Celestial Masters') school arose in the 2nd century CE. Xuanxue ("deep learning", also "Neo-Taoism") was a major philosophical movement influenced by Confucian scholarship, which focused on the interpretation of the "Yijing," "Daodejing," and "Zhuangzi" and which flourished during the third to sixth centuries CE. The most important philosophers of this movement were He Yan, Wang Bi, the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, Ge Hong and Guo Xiang. Thinkers like He Yan and Wang Bi focused on the deep nature of Tao, which they saw as being best exemplified by the term "Wu" (nothingness, non-being, negativity).
Taoism
Ideological and political rivals for centuries, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism deeply influenced one another. For example, Wang Bi, one of the most influential philosophical commentators on Laozi (and the "Yijing"), was a Confucian. The three rivals also share some similar values, with all three embracing a humanist philosophy emphasizing moral behavior and human perfection. In time, most Chinese people identified to some extent with all three traditions simultaneously. This became institutionalized when aspects of the three schools were synthesized in the Neo-Confucian school.
Western canon
The seventeenth century was important for philosophy, and the major figures were Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), René Descartes (1596–1650), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), John Locke (1632–1704), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), and Isaac Newton (1642– c.1726).
American philosophy
W.V.O. Quine, while not a logical positivist, shared their view that philosophy should stand shoulder to shoulder with science in its pursuit of intellectual clarity and understanding of the world. He criticized the logical positivists and the analytic/synthetic distinction of knowledge in his essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and advocated for his "web of belief," which is a coherentist theory of justification. In Quine's epistemology, since no experiences occur in isolation, there is actually a holistic approach to knowledge where every belief or experience is intertwined with the whole. Quine is also famous for inventing the term "gavagai" as part of his theory of the indeterminacy of translation.
Saul Kripke, a student of Quine at Harvard, has profoundly influenced analytic philosophy. Kripke was ranked among the top ten most important philosophers of the past 200 years in a poll conducted by Brian Leiter (Leiter Reports: a Philosophy Blog; open access poll) Kripke is best known for four contributions to philosophy: (1) Kripke semantics for modal and related logics, published in several essays beginning while he was still in his teens. (2) His 1970 Princeton lectures Naming and Necessity (published in 1972 and 1980), that significantly restructured the philosophy of language and, as some have put it, "made metaphysics respectable again". (3) His interpretation of the philosophy of Wittgenstein. (4) His theory of truth. He has also made important contributions to set theory (see admissible ordinal and Kripke–Platek set theory)
Pythagoras
According to R. M. Hare, Plato's "Republic" may be partially based on the "tightly organised community of like-minded thinkers" established by Pythagoras at Croton. Additionally, Plato may have borrowed from Pythagoras the idea that mathematics and abstract thought are a secure basis for philosophy, science, and morality. Plato and Pythagoras shared a "mystical approach to the soul and its place in the material world" and it is probable that both were influenced by Orphism. The historian of philosophy Frederick Copleston states that Plato probably borrowed his tripartite theory of the soul from the Pythagoreans. Bertrand Russell, in his "A History of Western Philosophy", contends that the influence of Pythagoras on Plato and others was so great that he should be considered the most influential philosopher of all time. He concludes that "I do not know of any other man who has been as influential as he was in the school of thought."
Duns Scotus
John Duns, commonly called Duns Scotus (; ; 1266 – 8 November 1308), is generally considered to be one of the three most important philosopher-theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages, together with Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham. Scotus has had considerable influence on both Catholic and secular thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are the "univocity of being", that existence is the most abstract concept we have, applicable to everything that exists; the formal distinction, a way of distinguishing between different aspects of the same thing; and the idea of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual. Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God, and argued for the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
Middle Eastern philosophy
The teachings of Zarathustra (Zoroaster) appeared in Persia at some point during the period 1700-1800 BCE. His wisdom became the basis of the religion Zoroastrianism, and generally influenced the development of the Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian philosophy. Zarathustra was the first who treated the problem of evil in philosophical terms. He is also believed to be one of the oldest monotheists in the history of religion. He espoused an ethical philosophy based on the primacy of "good thoughts (pendar-e-nik), good words (goftar-e-nik), and good deeds (kerdar-e-nik)."
Western canon
Important nineteenth century philosophers include Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900).
The History of England (Hume)
The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (linked below) describes Hume as "the third of the great triumvirate of "British Empiricists", along with John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. However, he footnotes Locke, along with Algernon Sidney, Rapin de Thoyras and Benjamin Hoadley, as authors whose "compositions the most despicable, both for style and matter, have been extolled, and propagated, and read; as if they had equalled the most celebrated remains of antiquity". Sidney was a complex man. He was appalled by the death sentence on Charles I, but later wrote tracts justifying the deed. In 1683, he was beheaded for alleged complicity in the Rye House plot to murder Charles II, after a notoriously unfair trial. Rapin was a French Protestant who had written a monumental history of England dedicated to George I. Bishop Hoadley was another luminary of the whig establishment. What Hume particularly objects to in Locke is his presentation of Robert Filmer's "absurd" patriarchal theory of government as if it were something new. What these writers shared was belief in a neverland of ancient English freedoms, which the Stuarts had overthrown.
The Three Philosophers
The Three Philosophers is an oil painting on canvas attributed to the Italian High Renaissance artist Giorgione. 
It shows three philosophers - one young, one middle-aged, and one old.
The work was commissioned by the Venetian noble Taddeo Contarini, a Venetian merchant with an interest in the occult and alchemy. "The Three Philosophers" was finished one year before the painter died. One of Giorgione’s last paintings, it is now displayed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. 
The painting was finished by Sebastiano del Piombo.
Eastern philosophy
The modern period saw the rise of Buddhist modernism and Humanistic Buddhism under Western influences and the development of a Western Buddhism with influences from modern psychology and Western philosophy. Important exponents of Buddhist modernism include Anagarika Dharmapala (1864–1933) and the American convert Henry Steel Olcott, the Chinese modernists Taixu (1890–1947) and Yin Shun (1906–2005), Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki, and the Tibetan Gendün Chöphel (1903–1951). Buddhist modernism refers to "forms of Buddhism that have emerged out of an engagement with the dominant cultural and intellectual forces of modernity." Forces which influenced modernists like Dhammapala, and Yin Shun included Enlightenment values, and Western Science. A Neo-Buddhist movement was founded by the influential Indian Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar in the 1950s who emphasized social and political reform.
Western philosophy
Some problems discussed throughout this period are the relation of faith to reason, the existence and unity of God, the object of theology and metaphysics, the problems of knowledge, of universals, and of individuation. The prominent figure of this period was Augustine of Hippo (one of the most important Church Fathers in Western Christianity) who adopted Plato's thought and Christianized it in the 4th century and whose influence dominated medieval philosophy perhaps up to end of the era but was checked with the arrival of Aristotle's texts. Augustinianism was the preferred starting point for most philosophers (including Anselm of Canterbury, the father of scholasticism) up until the 13th century.
List of Russian philosophers
Russian philosophy as a separate entity started its development in the 19th century, defined initially by the opposition of Westernizers, advocating Russia's following the Western political and economical models, and Slavophiles, insisting on developing Russia as a unique civilization. The latter group included Nikolai Danilevsky and Konstantin Leontiev, the early founders of eurasianism. The discussion of Russia's place in the world has since become the most characteristic feature of Russian philosophy.
Eastern philosophy
Modern Chinese thought is generally seen as being rooted in Classical Confucianism ("Jingxue"), Neo-Confucianism ("Lixue"), Buddhism, Daoism, and "Xixue" (“Western Learning” which arose during the late Ming Dynasty).
Nous
During the Middle Ages, philosophy itself was in many places seen as opposed to the prevailing monotheistic religions, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The strongest philosophical tradition for some centuries was amongst Islamic philosophers, who later came to strongly influence the late medieval philosophers of western Christendom, and the Jewish diaspora in the Mediterranean area. While there were earlier Muslim philosophers such as Al Kindi, chronologically the three most influential concerning the intellect were Al Farabi, Avicenna, and finally Averroes, a westerner who lived in Spain and was highly influential in the late Middle Ages amongst Jewish and Christian philosophers.
Ionian Enlightenment
This school of thought is made up of the philosophies of three Presocratic philosophers: Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. These philosophers all hailed from the Greek city state of Miletus and are known as the first philosophers. Their philosophy is what started the Ionian Intellectual Revolution.
Interactionism (philosophy of mind)
In the 20th century, its most significant defenders have been the noted philosopher of science Karl Popper and the neurophysiologist John Carew Eccles. Popper in fact divided reality into three "worlds"—the physical, the mental, and objective knowledge (outside the mind)—all of which interact, and Eccles adopted this same "trialist" form of interactionism. Other notable recent philosophers to take an interactionist stance have been Richard Swinburne, John Foster, David Hodgson, and Wilfrid Sellars, in addition to the physicist Henry Stapp.
Metaphysics
In a broad sense, process metaphysics is as old as Western philosophy, with figures such as Heraclitus, Plotinus, Duns Scotus, Leibniz, David Hume, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Charles Renouvier, Karl Marx, Ernst Mach, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Émile Boutroux, Henri Bergson, Samuel Alexander and Nicolas Berdyaev. It seemingly remains an open question whether major "Continental" figures such as the late Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, or Jacques Derrida should be included.
Russia
Russian philosophy blossomed in the 19th century, when it was defined initially by the opposition of Westernizers, who advocated Western political and economical models, and Slavophiles, who insisted on developing Russia as a unique civilization. The latter group includes Nikolai Danilevsky and Konstantin Leontiev, the founders of eurasianism. In its further development Russian philosophy was always marked by a deep connection to literature and interest in creativity, society, politics and nationalism; Russian cosmism and religious philosophy were other major areas. Notable philosophers of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries include Vladimir Solovyev, Sergei Bulgakov, and Vladimir Vernadsky.
Early Islamic philosophy
It should be mentioned that this depiction of intellectual tradition in Islamic Lands is mainly dependent upon what West could understand (or was willing to understand) from this long era. In contrast, there are some historians and philosophers who do not agree with this account and describe this era in a completely different way. Their main point of dispute is on the influence of different philosophers on Islamic Philosophy, especially the comparative importance of eastern intellectuals such as Ibn Sina and of western thinkers such as Ibn Rushd.
German philosophy
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was both a philosopher and a mathematician who wrote primarily in Latin and French. Leibniz, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three great 17th century advocates of rationalism. The work of Leibniz also anticipated modern logic and analytic philosophy, but his philosophy also looks back to the scholastic tradition, in which conclusions are produced by applying reason to first principles or a priori definitions rather than to empirical evidence.
Jewish philosophy
A new era began in the 18th century with the thought of Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn has been described as the "'third Moses,' with whom begins a new era in Judaism," just as new eras began with Moses the prophet and with Moses Maimonides. Mendelssohn was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the renaissance of European Jews, Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) is indebted. He has been referred to as the father of Reform Judaism, though Reform spokesmen have been "resistant to claim him as their spiritual father". Mendelssohn came to be regarded as a leading cultural figure of his time by both Germans and Jews. His most significant book was "Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum" ("Jerusalem"), first published in 1783.
Three Chinese Poets
Three Chinese Poets is a book of poetry by the titular poets Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu translated into English by Vikram Seth. The Three Poets were contemporaries and are considered to be amongst the greatest Chinese poets by many later scholars. The three have been described as a Buddhist recluse, a Taoist immortal and a Confucian sage respectively. Though this trichotomy has been criticised as simplistic and artificial, it can act as a guiding approximation. They lived in the Tang Dynasty and the political strife at that time affected all of their lives very much and this impact is evident in the poetry of all three.
Social theory
Important Chinese philosophers and social thinkers included Shang Yang, Lao Zi, Confucius, Mencius, Wang Chong, Wang Yangming, Li Zhi, Zhu Xi, Gu Yanwu, Gong Zizhen, Wei Yuan, Kang Youwei, Lu Xun, Mao Zedong, Xi Jinping, Zhu Ming.
Stanley Jedidiah Samartha
Western Scholars on Hinduism like Jan Peter Schouten brings Samartha in the line of thinking of M. M. Thomas (an Indian thinker) and Raimundo Panikkar (a Catholic Priest) terming them as the "Great Three"
Three Critics of the Enlightenment
Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder is a collection of essays in the history of philosophy by 20th century philosopher and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin. Edited by Henry Hardy and released posthumously in 2000, the collection comprises the previously published works "Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas" (1976) – an essay on Counter-Enlightenment thinkers Giambattista Vico and Johann Gottfried Herder – and "The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism" (1993), concerning irrationalist Johann Georg Hamann.
Eastern philosophy
Following the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 and the end of the Qing Dynasty, the May Fourth Movement sought to completely abolish the old imperial institutions and practices of China (such as the old civil service system). There were two major philosophical trends during this period. One was anti-traditional and promoted Western learning and ideas. A key figure of this anti-traditional current was Yan Fu (1853–1921) who translated various Western philosophical works including Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Mill's On Liberty. There were also attempts to incorporate Western ideas of democracy, and republicanism into Chinese political philosophy, notably by Sun Yat-Sen (1866–1925) at the beginning of the 20th century. Another influential modern Chinese philosopher was Hu Shi, who was a student of John Dewey at Columbia University and who promoted a form of pragmatism.
Ancient Greek philosophy
During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many different schools of thought developed in the Hellenistic world and then the Greco-Roman world. There were Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Syrians and Arabs who contributed to the development of Hellenistic philosophy. Elements of Persian philosophy and Indian philosophy also had an influence. The most notable schools of Hellenistic philosophy and some of their best-known philosophers were:
Eastern philosophy
Buddhism's main concern is soteriological, defined as freedom from dukkha (unease). Because ignorance to the true nature of things is considered one of the roots of suffering, Buddhist thinkers concerned themselves with philosophical questions related to epistemology and the use of reason. Key Buddhist concepts include the Four Noble Truths, Anatta (not-self) a critique of a fixed personal identity, the transience of all things (Anicca), and a certain skepticism about metaphysical questions. Buddhist thinkers in India and subsequently in East Asia have covered topics as varied as phenomenology, ethics, ontology, epistemology, logic and philosophy of time.
Ancient philosophy
The 3rd and 4th centuries saw the rise of the "Xuanxue" (mysterious learning), also called "Neo-Taoism". The most important philosophers of this movement were Wang Bi, Xiang Xiu and Guo Xiang. The main question of this school was whether Being came before Not-Being (in Chinese, "ming" and "wuming"). A peculiar feature of these Taoist thinkers, like the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, was the concept of "feng liu" (lit. wind and flow), a sort of romantic spirit which encouraged following the natural and instinctive impulse.
Greece
Aristotle of Stagira, the most important disciple of Plato, shared with his teacher the title of the greatest philosopher of antiquity. But while Plato had sought to elucidate and explain things from the supra-sensual standpoint of the forms, his pupil preferred to start from the facts given us by experience. Except from these three most significant Greek philosophers other known schools of Greek philosophy from other founders during ancient times were Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism and Neoplatonism.
Dudley North (economist)
North was named by Wilhelm Roscher as one of the triumvirate of the 17th century English school of economists to the foremost place in Europe, the others being John Locke and William Petty.
Three Masters of Jiangdong
The Three Masters of Jiangdong () were a group of Chinese literati who lived and wrote during the Ming-Qing transition. They were Gong Dingzi, Wu Weiye, Qian Qianyi. They are partly famous for reviving the "Ci (poetry)" style of Classical Chinese poetry.
Timeline of Eastern philosophers
This is a wide-ranging alphabetical list of philosophers from the Eastern traditions of philosophy, with special interest in Indo-Chinese philosophy. The list stops at the year 1950, after which philosophers fall into the category of contemporary philosophy.
Twelve Philosophers
The Twelve Philosophers or Wise Ones (Chinese: , "Shí'èr Zhé") are 12 eminent philosophers in the Chinese Confucian tradition. They are traditionally accounted a kind of sainthood and their spirit tablets are prominently placed in Confucian temples, six upon the east and six upon the west side of the Hall of the Great Completion ("Dacheng Dian").
Three teachings
Taoism, or Daoism, is a philosophy centered on the belief that life is normally happy, but should be lived with balance and virtue. Its origin can be traced back to the late 4th century B.C and the main thinkers representative of this teaching are Laozi and Zhuangzi. Key components of Daoism are Dao (the Way) and immortality, along with a stress on balance found throughout nature. There is less emphasis on extremes and instead focuses on the interdependence between things. For example, the yin/yang symbol does not exemplify good or evil. It shows that there are two sides to everything -"Within the Yang there exists the Yin and vice versa."
Twelve Philosophers
Twelve Philosophers are Min Sun (Ziqian), Ran Yong (Zhonggong), Duanmu Ci (Zigong), Zhong You (Zilu), Bu Shang (Zixia), You Ruo (Ziruo), Zai Yu (Ziwo), Ran Geng (Boniu), Ran Qiu (Ziyou), Yan Yan (Ziyou), Zhuansun Shi (Zizhang) all disciples of Confucius and Zhu Xi, who established Neo-Confucianism during the Song dynasty.
Eastern philosophy
Japanese Buddhist philosophy was influenced by the work of the Kyoto School which drew from western philosophers (especially German philosophy) and Buddhist thought and included Kitaro Nishida, Keiji Nishitani, Hajime Tanabe and Masao Abe. The most important trend in Japanese Buddhist thought after the formation of the Kyoto school is Critical Buddhism, which argues against several Mahayana concepts such as Buddha nature and original enlightenment.
Eastern philosophy
Eastern philosophy or Asian philosophy includes the various philosophies that originated in East and South Asia including Chinese philosophy, Japanese philosophy, and Korean philosophy which are dominant in East Asia and Vietnam, and Indian philosophy (including Buddhist philosophy) which are dominant in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet and Mongolia.
Modern philosophy
How much of Renaissance intellectual history is part of modern philosophy is disputed: the Early Renaissance is often considered less modern and more medieval compared to the later High Renaissance. By the 17th and 18th centuries the major figures in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaphysics were roughly divided into two main groups. The "Rationalists," mostly in France and Germany, argued all knowledge must begin from certain "innate ideas" in the mind. Major rationalists were Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Nicolas Malebranche. The "Empiricists," by contrast, held that knowledge must begin with sensory experience. Major figures in this line of thought are John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume (These are retrospective categories, for which Kant is largely responsible). Ethics and political philosophy are usually not subsumed under these categories, though all these philosophers worked in ethics, in their own distinctive styles. Other important figures in political philosophy include Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Chinese philosophy
Neo-Confucianism was a revived version of old Confucian principles that appeared around the Song dynasty, with Buddhist, Taoist, and Legalist features. The first philosophers, such as Shao Yong, Zhou Dunyi and Chang Zai, were cosmologists and worked on the Yi Jing. The Cheng brothers, Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao, are considered the founders of the two main schools of thought of Neo-Confucianism: the School of Principle the first, the School of Mind the latter. The School of Principle gained supremacy during the Song dynasty with the philosophical system elaborated by Zhu Xi, which became mainstream and officially adopted by the government for the Imperial examinations under the Yuan Dynasty. The School of Mind was developed by Lu Jiuyuan, Zhu Xi's main rival, but was soon forgotten. Only during the Ming Dynasty was the School of Mind revived by Wang Shouren, whose influence is equal to that of Zhu Xi. This school was particularly important in Japan.
Chinese philosophy
Xuanxue was a philosophical school that combined elements of Confucianism and Taoism to reinterpret the "Yijing," "Daodejing," and "Zhuangzi." The most important philosophers of this movement were Wang Bi, Xiang Xiu and Guo Xiang. The main question of this school was whether Being came before Not-Being (in Chinese, "ming" and "wuming"). A peculiar feature of these Taoist thinkers, like the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, was the concept of "feng liu" (lit. wind and flow), a sort of romantic spirit which encouraged following the natural and instinctive impulse.
Philosopher
Many philosophers still emerged from the Classical tradition, as saw their philosophy as a way of life. Among the most notable are René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. With the rise of the university, the modern conception of philosophy became more prominent. Many of the esteemed philosophers of the eighteenth century and onward have attended, taught, and developed their works in university. Early examples include: Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
Rationalism
Although the three great Greek philosophers disagreed with one another on specific points, they all agreed that rational thought could bring to light knowledge that was self-evident – information that humans otherwise couldn't know without the use of reason. After Aristotle's death, Western rationalistic thought was generally characterized by its application to theology, such as in the works of Augustine, the Islamic philosopher Avicenna and Jewish philosopher and theologian Maimonides. One notable event in the Western timeline was the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas who attempted to merge Greek rationalism and Christian revelation in the thirteenth-century.
The Three Philosophers
Other scholars have asserted that the figures are typical representations for three stages of humanity (youth, middle and old age), three epochs of European civilization (Antiquity, Middle Age, Renaissance), the three Abrahamic religions or some combination of such general conceptions.
Augusto Gentili proposed that the picture illustrates the waiting for the Antichrist, based on conjunctionist astrology. On the sheet held by the oldest philosopher the word 'eclipsis' and an astronomical diagram can be seen. The great conjunction of 1503 and the eclipse the same year were believed to be signs announcing its coming.
Classics
The earliest surviving philosophy from ancient Greece dates back to the 6th century BC, when according to Aristotle Thales of Miletus was considered to have been the first Greek philosopher. Other influential pre-Socratic philosophers include Pythagoras and Heraclitus. The most famous and significant figures in classical Athenian philosophy, from the 5th to the 3rd centuries BC, are Socrates, his student Plato, and Aristotle, who studied at Plato's Academy before founding his own school, known as the Lyceum. Later Greek schools of philosophy, including the Cynics, Stoics, and Epicureans, continued to be influential after the Roman annexation of Greece, and into the post-Classical world.
History of the world
In the East, three schools of thought would dominate Chinese thinking well into the 20th century. These were Taoism, Legalism, and Confucianism. The Confucian tradition, which would become particularly dominant, looked for political morality not to the force of law but to the power and example of tradition. Confucianism would later spread to the Korean Peninsula and toward Japan.
Philosophy
Medieval philosophy (5th–16th centuries) is the period following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and was dominated by the rise of Christianity and hence reflects Judeo-Christian theological concerns as well as retaining a continuity with Greco-Roman thought. Problems such as the existence and nature of God, the nature of faith and reason, metaphysics, the problem of evil were discussed in this period. Some key Medieval thinkers include St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, Anselm and Roger Bacon. Philosophy for these thinkers was viewed as an aid to Theology ("ancilla theologiae") and hence they sought to align their philosophy with their interpretation of sacred scripture. This period saw the development of Scholasticism, a text critical method developed in medieval universities based on close reading and disputation on key texts. The Renaissance period saw increasing focus on classic Greco-Roman thought and on a robust Humanism.
Early modern philosophy in the Western world begins with thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes (1596–1650). Following the rise of natural science, Modern philosophy was concerned with developing a secular and rational foundation for knowledge and moved away from traditional structures of authority such as religion, scholastic thought and the Church. Major modern philosophers include Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. 19th-century philosophy is influenced by the wider movement termed the Enlightenment, and includes figures such as Hegel a key figure in German idealism, Kierkegaard who developed the foundations for existentialism, Nietzsche a famed anti-Christian, John Stuart Mill who promoted Utilitarianism, Karl Marx who developed the foundations for Communism and the American William James. The 20th century saw the split between Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy, as well as philosophical trends such as Phenomenology, Existentialism, Logical Positivism, Pragmatism and the Linguistic turn.
Exhortation to the Greeks
Next he considers Plato and Aristotle. Despite these two being the most well-regarded of the pagan philosophers, Pseudo-Justin concludes similarly as before: They widely do not agree with each other and are to be criticized for as much. For example, he says that Plato teaches that the human soul has three parts (see Plato's tripartite theory of soul), while Aristotle teaches that the human soul has only one, reasoning aspect (see "On the Soul"). He also maintains that they contradict themselves as well. For example, he claims that Plato says at one time that there are three first causes, but then at another time that there are four. Again, he claims that Plato says that matter is uncreated, but then later contradicts himself and says that it is created. The modern scholarly views on the relationship between Plato's and Aristotle's philosophies are varied and complex.
List of Muslim philosophers
After Averroes, a vivid philosophical activity persisted in the eastern Muslim world – especially Persia through works of Shia philosophers such as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Mir Damad, and Mulla Sadra. Tabatabai suggests that the "element that was instrumental in the appearance of philosophical and metaphysical thought in Shi’ism and through Shi’ism in other Islamic circles was the treasury of knowledge left behind by the Imams." Ali's Nahj al-Balagha is also considered as a primary source of the doctrines professed by Shia thinkers such as Mir Damad, Mulla Sadra, their pupils and their pupils' pupils: Ahmad al-Alawi, Mohsen Fayz Kashani, Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji, Qazi Sa’id Qumi, etc.
Chinese philosophy
During the 19th and 20th centuries, Chinese philosophy integrated concepts from Western philosophy. Anti-Qing Dynasty revolutionaries, involved in the Xinhai Revolution, saw Western philosophy as an alternative to traditional philosophical schools; students in the May Fourth Movement called for completely abolishing the old imperial institutions and practices of China. During this era, Chinese scholars attempted to incorporate Western philosophical ideologies such as democracy, Marxism, socialism, liberalism, republicanism, anarchism and nationalism into Chinese philosophy. The most notable examples are Sun Yat-Sen's Three Principles of the People ideology and Mao Zedong's Maoism, a variant of Marxism–Leninism. In the modern People's Republic of China, the official ideology is Deng Xiaoping's "market economy socialism".
German philosophy
The three most prominent German idealists were Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), who was the predominant figure in nineteenth century German philosophy.
Ayn Rand
Rand acknowledged Aristotle as her greatest influence and remarked that in the history of philosophy she could only recommend "three A's"—Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand. In a 1959 interview with Mike Wallace, when asked where her philosophy came from she responded: "Out of my own mind, with the sole acknowledgement of a debt to Aristotle, the only philosopher who ever influenced me. I devised the rest of my philosophy myself." However, she also found early inspiration in Friedrich Nietzsche, and scholars have found indications of his influence in early notes from Rand's journals, in passages from the first edition of "We the Living" (which Rand later revised), and in her overall writing style. However, by the time she wrote "The Fountainhead", Rand had turned against Nietzsche's ideas, and the extent of his influence on her even during her early years is disputed. Rational egoism was embodied by Russian author Nikolay Chernyshevsky in the 1863 novel "What Is to Be Done?" and several critics claim that "What Is to Be Done?" is one of the sources of inspiration for Rand's thought. For example, the book's main character Lopuhov says "I am not a man to make sacrifices. And indeed there are no such things. One acts in the way that one finds most pleasant." Among the philosophers Rand held in particular disdain was Immanuel Kant, whom she referred to as a "monster", although philosophers George Walsh and Fred Seddon have argued that she misinterpreted Kant and exaggerated their differences.
Sicilian Questions
Other important philosophers and thinkers in the "Sicilian Questions" referred to are, in alphabetical order, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Anaxagoras, Berossus, Crates, Diogenes, Euclid, al-Farabi, Galen, al-Ghazali, al-Hallaj, Ibn Bajja (Avempace), Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Iamblichus, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Themistius, Theophrastus and Zeno of Elea.
Philosophical ethology
Three recent issues of magazine "Angelaki. Journal of the Theoretical Humanities" have explored the thought of three scholars considered among the most influential voices in the field of philosophical ethology by di editors of the magazine, Brett Buchanan, Jeffrey Bussolini and Matthew Chrulew: the three authos are Vinciane Despret, Dominique Lestel and Roberto Marchesini.
Joachim Ritter
Ritter is considered one of the most influential philosophers in postwar West Germany. Among his disciples were scholars and public intellectuals like Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Max Imdahl, Hermann Lübbe, Odo Marquard, and Robert Spaemann. Together with them, Ritter started the „Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie“ and contributed to development of conceptual history in the field of philosophy. In the 1980s, Jürgen Habermas opposed the Ritter School for being leading representatives of German neo-conservatism. More recent scholarship in intellectual history points out Ritter's seminal role for the modernization of German political thought and the development of a modern liberal republicanism.
Buddhism in the West
In 1897, D.T. Suzuki came to the US to work and study with Paul Carus, professor of philosophy. D.T. Suzuki was the single-most important person in popularizing Zen Buddhism in the west. His thought was also influenced by Theosophy and Swedenborgianism. Suzuki's writings had a strong impact on Western intellectuals such as psychologists Erich Fromm and Karen Horney, poets like Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac as well as on other figures like Alan Watts and Edward Conze. Through his writings Suzuki contributed to the emergence of a Zen modernism which blends Asian Buddhism with transcendentalism and romanticism.
Chinese exploration
During the Three Kingdoms, travellers from Eastern Wu are known to have explored the coast. The most important were Zhu Ying (朱應) and Kang Tai, both sent by the Governor of Guangzhou and Jiaozhi Lü Dai in the early 3rd century. Although each wrote a book, both were lost by the 11th century: Zhu's "Record of the Curiosities of Phnom" ( , , "Fúnán Yìwù Zhì") in its entirety and Kang's "Tales of Foreign Countries During the Wu Period" ( , , "Wúshí Wàiguó Zhuàn") only surviving in scattered references in other works, including the "Shuijing Zhu" and the "Yiwen Leiju".
The Story of Philosophy
The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers is a 1926 book by Will Durant, in which he profiles several prominent Western philosophers and their ideas, beginning with Socrates and Plato and on through Friedrich Nietzsche. Durant attempts to show the interconnection of their ideas and how one philosopher's ideas informed the next.
Eastern philosophy
Some Western thinkers claim that philosophy as such is only characteristic of Western cultures. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger is even reported to have said that only Greek and German languages are suitable for philosophizing. It is still commonplace in Western universities to teach only Western philosophy and to ignore Asian philosophy altogether, or consider only newer Western-influenced Asian thought proper "philosophy". Carine Defoort, herself a specialist in Chinese thought, has offered support for such a "family" view of philosophy, while Rein Raud has presented an argument against it and offered a more flexible definition of philosophy that would include both Western and Asian thought on equal terms. In response, Ouyang Min argues that philosophy proper is a Western cultural practice and essentially different from "zhexue", which is what the Chinese have, even though "zhexue" (originally "tetsugaku") is actually a neologism coined in 1873 by Nishi Amane for describing Western philosophy as opposed to traditional Asian thought.
Ruhollah Khomeini
Khomeini studied Greek philosophy and was influenced by both the philosophy of Aristotle, whom he regarded as the founder of logic, and Plato, whose views "in the field of divinity" he regarded as "grave and solid". Among Islamic philosophers, Khomeini was mainly influenced by Avicenna and Mulla Sadra.
Apart from philosophy, Khomeini was interested in literature and poetry. His poetry collection was released after his death. Beginning in his adolescent years, Khomeini composed mystic, political and social poetry. His poetry works were published in three collections: "The Confidant," "The Decanter of Love and Turning Point", and "Divan". His knowledge of poetry is further attested by the modern poet Nader Naderpour (1929–2000), who "had spent many hours exchanging poems with Khomeini in the early 1960". Naderpour remembered: "For four hours we recited poetry. Every single line I recited from any poet, he recited the next."
Cheng Yi (philosopher)
Cheng Yi (, 1033–1107), courtesy name Zhengshu (正叔), also known as Yichuan Xiansheng (伊川先生), was a Chinese philosopher of the Song Dynasty. He worked with his older brother Cheng Hao. Like his brother, he was a student of Zhou Dunyi, a friend of Shao Yong, and a nephew of Zhang Zai. The five of them along with Sima Guang are called the Six Great Masters by his follower Zhu Xi. He became a prominent figure in neo-Confucianism, and the philosophy of Cheng Yi, Cheng Hao and Zhu Xi is referred to as the Cheng–Zhu school or the Rationalistic School.
Western philosophy
Other notable modern philosophers include Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Many other contributors were philosophers, scientists, medical doctors, and politicians. A short list includes Galileo Galilei, Pierre Gassendi, Blaise Pascal, Nicolas Malebranche, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Christiaan Huygens, Isaac Newton, Christian Wolff, Montesquieu, Pierre Bayle, Thomas Reid, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Adam Smith, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Christian culture
These new movements in philosophy developed contemporaneously with larger religious and political transformations in Europe: the Reformation and the decline of feudalism. Though the theologians of the Protestant Reformation showed little direct interest in philosophy, their destruction of the traditional foundations of theological and intellectual authority harmonized with a revival of fideism and skepticism in thinkers such as Erasmus, Montaigne, and Francisco Sanches. Meanwhile, the gradual centralization of political power in nation-states was echoed by the emergence of secular political philosophies, as in the works of Niccolò Machiavelli (often described as the first modern political thinker, or a key turning point towards modern political thinking), Thomas More, Erasmus, Justus Lipsius, Jean Bodin, and Hugo Grotius.
Islamic philosophy
There would be many Islamic thinkers who were not enthusiastic about its potential, but it would be incorrect to assume that they opposed philosophy simply because it was a "foreign science". Oliver Leaman, an expert on Islamic philosophy, points out that the objections of notable theologians are rarely directed at philosophy itself, but rather at the conclusions the philosophers arrived at. Even the 11th century al-Ghazali, known for his "Incoherence of the Philosophers" critique of philosophers, was himself an expert in philosophy and logic. His criticism was that they arrived at theologically erroneous conclusions. In his view the three most serious of these were believing in the co-eternity of the universe with God, denying the bodily resurrection, and asserting that God only has knowledge of abstract universals, not of particular things, though it should be noted that not all philosophers subscribed to these same views.
Vincent Descombes
Descombes has also written an introduction to modern French philosophy ("Le même et l'autre") focused on the transition, after 1960, from a focus on the three H's, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger to the "three masters of suspicion", Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. In the same book, he introduced the term "post-Kojèvian discourse" to designate the period of French philosophy after the 1930s (from 1933 to 1939, Alexandre Kojève delivered in Paris a series of lectures on Hegel's work "The Phenomenology of Spirit" that had an immense influence on 20th-century French philosophy).
Elizabeth Costello
Elizabeth Costello frequently engages philosophers and their ideas. Among the philosophers mentioned by name are historical figures such as Aristotle, Porphyry, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, René Descartes and Jeremy Bentham, as well as contemporary figures such as Mary Midgley, Tom Regan and Thomas Nagel. In addition two minor characters, Elaine Marx and an academic named Arendt (whose first name is not mentioned) share surnames with the famous philosophers Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt. The frequent allusions to philosophers have caused critics to debate whether there are philosophical themes in Coetzee’s work and, if so, what they might be.
Transmodernism
Today, whilst transmodernism still remains a minor philosophical movement in comparison to postmodernism, and is relatively new to the Northern Hemisphere, it has a large set of leading figures and philosophers. Enrique Dussel, its founder, is indeed an important philosophical figure. Ken Wilber, the inventor of Integral Theory, argues from a transpersonal point of view, Paul Gilroy, a cultural theorist, has also "enthusiastically endorsed" transmodern thinking, and Ziauddin Sardar, an Islamic scholar, is a critic of postmodernism and in many cases adopts a transmodernist way of thinking.
Islamic philosophy
During the Abbasid caliphate, a number of thinkers and scientists, some of them heterodox Muslims or non-Muslims, played a role in transmitting Greek, Hindu and other pre-Islamic knowledge to the Christian West. They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. Three speculative thinkers, Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Al-Kindi, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam.
East Asian Mādhyamaka
The most influential "Sānlùn" scholar of the Tang was Fa-lang's pupil Jízàng (549-623), a prolific writer who composed commentaries on these three treatises. One of his most famous works is the "Erdi Yi" (二諦意), or "Meaning of the Two Truths", referring to the conventional and ultimate truths. In one passage of the "Erdi Yi", Jizang cites Falang, and argues that the four treatises have the same goal, "to explain the two truths and manifest the doctrine of non-duality".
The Three Philosophers
New hypotheses about the figures, their identities and the symbolism are still currently advanced. In a note about the picture G. C. Williamsom, early in the 20th century, stated that "It represents Evander and his son Pallas showing to Aeneas the future site of Rome". The possibility that the three men are King Solomon, Hiram I, King of Tyre, and Hiram Abiff has been advanced by Neil K. MacLennan and Ross S. Kilpatrick.
Augustan prose
Also in contrast to the Restoration, when philosophy in England was so fully dominated by John Locke that few other voices are remembered today, the 18th century had a vigorous competition among followers of Locke, and philosophical writing was strong. Bishop George Berkeley and David Hume are the best remembered major philosophers of 18th-century England, but other philosophers adapted the political ramifications of empiricism, including Bernard de Mandeville, Charles Davenant, and Adam Smith. All of these figures can be considered empiricists, for they all begin with the relative certainty of perception, but they reach vastly different conclusions.
Philosophy
After the Muslim conquests, Early Islamic philosophy developed the Greek philosophical traditions in new innovative directions. This Islamic Golden Age influenced European intellectual developments. The two main currents of early Islamic thought are Kalam which focuses on Islamic theology and Falsafa which was based on Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. The work of Aristotle was very influential among the falsafa such as al-Kindi (9th century), Avicenna (980 – June 1037) and Averroes (12th century). Others such as Al-Ghazali were highly critical of the methods of the Aristotelian falsafa. Islamic thinkers also developed a scientific method, experimental medicine, a theory of optics and a legal philosophy. Ibn Khaldun was an influential thinker in philosophy of history.
The Three Philosophers
It has been suggested that the figure of the young man can be inscribed neatly in a right-angled triangle for which the Pythagorean theorem applies. , relying on a reading of Polydore Vergil has proposed that the philosophers are the teachers of Pythagoras - Pherecydes of Syros and Thales. Thales has been painted as a Jew, while Pherecydes was mistakenly believed to be a Syrian. This interpretation was modified by Frank Keim who claimed that the older philosopher is in fact Aristarchus of Samos
17th-century philosophy
The three main rationalists are normally taken to have been Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz. Building upon their English predecessors Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, the three main empiricists were John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. The former were distinguished by the belief that, in principle (though not in practice), all knowledge can be gained by the power of our reason alone; the latter rejected this, believing that all knowledge has to come through the senses, from experience. Thus the rationalists took mathematics as their model for knowledge, and the empiricists took the physical sciences.
List of Muslim philosophers
The ninth-century Neo-Platonist Al-Kindi is considered the founder of Arab philosophy. The tenth century philosopher al-Farabi contributed significantly to the introduction of Greek and Roman philosophical works into Muslim philosophical discourse and established many of the themes that would occupy Islamic philosophy for the next centuries; in his broad-ranging work, his work on logic stands out particularly. In the eleventh century, Avicenna, one of the greatest creative philosophers ever, developed his school of philosophy with strong Aristotelian and Neoplatonist roots. In the twelfth century, the philosophy of illumination was systematized by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi. Towards the end of the century philosophy underwent a decline in much of the Muslim world, in part due to al-Ghazali's argument that philosophy was incompatible with religion. In Andalusia, Averroes, defended philosophy against this charge; his extensive works include noteworthy commentaries on Aristotle. Although philosophy in its traditional Aristotelian form fell out of favor in much of the Arab world, forms of mystical philosophy following on from writers such as Ibn Arabi and Ibn Sabin, persisted.
Wenshu Temple (Chengdu)
The Hall of Three Sages of the West enshrining statues of the Three Sages of the West (), namely Guanyin, Amitabha and Mahasthamaprapta.
Western philosophy
Western philosophers have often been divided into some major branches, or schools, based either on the questions typically addressed by people working in different parts of the field, or notions of ideological undercurrents. In the ancient world, the most influential division of the subject was the Stoics' division of philosophy into logic, ethics, and physics (conceived as the study of the nature of the world, and including both natural science and metaphysics). In contemporary philosophy, specialties within the field are more commonly divided into metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics (the latter two of which together comprise axiology, or value theory). Logic is sometimes included as a main branch of philosophy, sometimes as a separate science philosophers happen to work on, and sometimes just as a characteristically philosophical method applying to all branches of philosophy.
Ch'ien Mu
Ch'ien Mu or Qian Mu (; 30 July 1895 – 30 August 1990) was a Chinese historian, educator, philosopher and Confucian. He is considered to be one of the greatest historians and philosophers of 20th-century China. Ch'ien, together with Lü Simian, Chen Yinke and Chen Yuan, was known as the "Four Greatest Historians" of Modern China.
Ancient Greek literature
Of all the classical philosophers, however, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are generally considered the most important and influential. Socrates did not write any books himself and modern scholars debate whether or not Plato's portrayal of him is accurate. Some scholars contend that many of his ideas, or at least a vague approximation of them, are expressed in Plato's early socratic dialogues. Meanwhile, other scholars have argued that Plato's portrayal of Socrates is merely a fictional representation intended to expound Plato's own opinions who has very little to do with the historical figure of the same name. The debate over the extent to which Plato's portrayal of Socrates represents the actual Socrates's ideas is known as the Socratic problem.
Plato expressed his ideas through dialogues, that is, written works purporting to describe conversations between different individuals. Some of the best-known of these include: "The Apology of Socrates", a purported record of the speech Socrates gave at his trial; "Phaedo", a description of the last conversation between Socrates and his disciples before his execution; "The Symposium", a dialogue over the nature of love; and "The Republic", widely regarded as Plato's most important work, a long dialogue describing the ideal government.
Søren Kierkegaard
Philosophers and theologians influenced by Kierkegaard are numerous and include major twentieth century theologians and philosophers. Paul Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism in the philosophy of science was inspired by Kierkegaard's idea of subjectivity as truth. Ludwig Wittgenstein was immensely influenced and humbled by Kierkegaard, claiming that "Kierkegaard is far too deep for me, anyhow. He bewilders me without working the good effects which he would in deeper souls". Karl Popper referred to Kierkegaard as "the great reformer of Christian ethics, who exposed the official Christian morality of his day as anti-Christian and anti-humanitarian hypocrisy". Hilary Putnam admired Kierkegaard, "for his insistence on the priority of the question, 'How should I live?'". By the early 1930s, Jacques Ellul's three primary sources of inspiration were Karl Marx, Søren Kierkegaard, and Karl Barth. According to Ellul, Marx and Kierkegaard were his two greatest influences, and the only two authors of which he read all of their work.
Buddhist philosophy
Western Buddhist monastics and priests such as Nanavira Thera, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Nyanaponika Thera, Robert Aitken, Taigen Dan Leighton, Matthieu Ricard have written texts on Buddhist philosophy. A feature of Buddhist thought in the West has been a desire for dialogue and integration with modern science and psychology, and various modern Buddhists such as Alan Wallace, James H. Austin, Mark Epstein and the 14th Dalai Lama have worked and written on this issue. Another area of convergence has been Buddhism and environmentalism, which is explored in the work of Joanna Macy. Another Western Buddhist philosophical trend has been the project to secularize Buddhism, as seen in the works of Stephen Batchelor.
Epictetus
Kiyozawa Manshi, a controversial reformer within the Higashi Honganji branch of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism cited Epictetus as one of the three major influences on his spiritual development and thought.
De rerum natura
Lucretius has also had a marked influence upon modern philosophy, as perhaps the most complete expositor of Epicurean thought. His influence is especially notable in the work of the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, who praised Lucretiusalong with Dante and Goethein his book "Three Philosophical Poets".
Northern and Southern dynasties
Confucianism's unchallenged domination of Chinese culture and thought was greatly weakened during the Jin dynasty, which led to a wide diversification of political thought and philosophy by the time of the Northern and Southern dynasties. This era produced a myriad of writers that advocated practical systems of governance and administration, such as Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang in the Three Kingdoms Period, Wang Dao and Bao Jingyan of the Eastern Jin, as well as Fan Zhen, Xing Shao (), and Fan Xun () of the Northern and Southern period. Much of the philosophy of the period is despondent and dispirited, and a number of scholars and poets became reclusive mountain hermits living apart from society. Of these various trends, the most influential was Neo-Daoism (). Neo-Daoism was highly influential during the Southern Dynasty, to the point that Emperor Wen of Liu Song established a Neo-Daoist Academy and promoted it, along with Confucianism, literature, and history, as the four great subjects of study. A phenomenon known as "empty chat" () became common, where educated men would meet and talk about philosophy all day without paying any attention to "mundane" things such as their profession or family. The phenomenon gradually waned during the Sui dynasty, though it did not fully disappear until the Tang dynasty.
British philosophy
The three 'classic' British empiricists in the early modern era were John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. The term "British empiricism" refers to the philosophical tradition in Britain that was epitomised by these thinkers (though this tradition did have precursors in Britain stretching back to Roger Bacon). Berkeley, despite being Irish, was referred to as British as County Kilkenny, where he lived in Ireland, was a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at the time.
Al-Ghazali
His influences and impact on Sufism and Islam during the 11th century has been a subject of debate in contemporary times. Some fifty works that he had written is evidenced that he was one of the most important Islamic thinkers of his time. Three of his works, Ihaya' Ulum ad-Din (Revival of Religious Sciences), Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of Philosophers), and al-Muniqidh min a-alal (Al-Ghazali's Path to Sufism: His Deliverance from Error) are still widely read and circulated among Islamic scholars today. After the death of Al-Ghazali, it is believed there followed a long era in which there was a notable absence of Islamic philosophers, contributing to the status of Ghazali in the modern era. The staple of his religious philosophy was arguing that the creator was the center point of all human life that played a direct role in all world affairs. Al-Ghazali's influence was not limited to Islam, but in fact his works were widely circulated among Christian and Hebrew scholars and philosophers. Some of the more notable philosophers and scholars in the west include David Hume, Dante, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Moses Ben Maimon, a Jewish theologian was deeply interested and vested in the works of Al-Ghazali. One of the more notable achievements of Ghazali were his writing and reform of education that laid the path of Islamic Education from the 12th to the 19th centuries CE. Al-Ghazali's works were heavily relied upon by Islamic mathematicians and astronomers such as At-Tusi.
Ibadi studies
This is of particular interest to those who apply Edward Said’s thesis on the relation between power and knowledge in post-Orientalism. For example, the French and Italian Orientalists were Enrico Insabato, André Nègre and Pessah Shinar. Additionally, the scholars who devoted some works to East Africa were from a variety of European countries for example: the French, A. Imbert (1903) and Gabriel Ferrand (1928), the German Albert Friedemann (1930), the British, W. Ingrams (1967) and the American, Michael Lofchie(1965). As far as Oman is concerned, most of the scholars were British, starting with S. B. Miles (1871) up to John Kelly (1956, 1964, 1968). Certainly, the highest level of scholarship was reached by John Wilkinson, who continues his academic work to this day. Modern historians hold that Winkinson’s writings on the religious, social and political structures of the Sultanate of Oman are the most important in this field. Russian Orientalists have also shown interest in Ibāḍī studies, beginning with V. R. Rosen. In more recent years, the Ukrainian Daniil Radivilov left his imprint on the field.
Ethical egoism
Philosophers before Sidgwick have also retroactively been identified as ethical egoists. One ancient example is the philosophy of Yang Zhu (4th century BC), Yangism, who views "wei wo", or "everything for myself", as the only virtue necessary for self-cultivation. Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics were exponents of virtue ethics, and "did not accept the formal principle that whatever the good is, we should seek only our own good, or prefer it to the good of others." However, the beliefs of the Cyrenaics have been referred to as a "form of egoistic hedonism", and while some refer to Epicurus' hedonism as a form of virtue ethics, others argue his ethics are more properly described as ethical egoism.
Enrique Dussel
Enrique Dussel is one of the primary figures along with others such as Rodolfo Kusch, Arturo Roig, and Leopoldo Zea, in the philosophical movement referred to as the Philosophy of Liberation. The philosophical content is heterogenous but arises from and responds to the particular historical/socio-political context of Latin America as part of a global periphery (see Dependency Theory). The movement originated in Argentina in the early 1970s but during the period of military dictatorship it dispersed across Latin America as many intellectuals were forced into exile. Subsequently, the Philosophy of Liberation has been highly influential both in Latin America and beyond. The philosophy of liberation seeks to critique structures of colonialism, imperialism, globalization, racism, and sexism, from the particular experience of exploitation and alienation of the global periphery. It poses a direct challenge to the discourses of Euro-American philosophy, and emphasizes the socio-political responsibilities of Latin American philosophy towards the project of historical liberation.
Three teachings
In Chinese philosophy, the phrase three teachings () refers to Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism when considered as a harmonious aggregate. Some of the earliest literary references to the "three teachings" idea dates back to the 6th century by prominent Chinese scholars of the time. The term may also refer to a non-religious philosophy built on that aggregation.
Ancient history
In the east, three schools of thought were to dominate Chinese thinking until the modern day. These were Taoism, Legalism and Confucianism. The Confucian tradition, which would attain dominance, looked for political morality not to the force of law but to the power and example of tradition. Confucianism would later spread into the Korean peninsula and Goguryeo and toward Japan.
Eastern philosophy
Confucianism ("Kǒngjiào" — "Confucius' doctrine"), also known as "Ruism" ("Rújiào" — "doctrine of the scholars"), is a Chinese philosophical system with ritual, moral, and religious applications. The tradition developed around the teachings of Confucius ("Kǒng Fūzǐ", 孔夫子, "Master Kong", 551–479 BCE) who saw himself as transmitting the values and theology of the ancestors before him. Other influential classical Confucian philosophers include Mencius and Xun Kuang who famously disagreed on the innate moral nature of humans.
Roman philosophy
Some important figures include Lucretius, Cicero, and his school of "eclecticism", and Seneca the younger. Later with the spread of Christianity inside the Roman empire the Christian philosophy of Saint Augustine of Hippo was fundamental.
Western canon
Ancient Greek philosophy has consistently held a prominent place in the canon. Only a relatively small number of works of Greek philosophy have survived, essentially those thought most worth copying in the Middle Ages. Plato, Aristotle and, indirectly, Socrates are the primary figures. Roman philosophy is included, but regarded as less significant (as it tended to be even by the Romans themselves). The ancient philosophy of other cultures now receives more attention than before the 20th century. The vast body of Christian philosophy is typically represented on reading lists mainly by Saints Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, and the 12th-century Jewish scholar Maimonides is now usually represented, mostly by "The Guide for the Perplexed". The academic canon of early modern philosophy generally includes Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, though influential contributions to philosophy were made by many thinkers in this period.
Zhantanlin
The Hall of the Three Sages of the West (), for the worship of the Three Sages of the West, namely Guanyin, Amitabha and Mahasthamaprapta, is an important hall in the temple.
Misogyny
Numerous influential Western philosophers have been expressed ideas that can be characterized as misogynistic, including Aristotle, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G. W. F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Otto Weininger, Oswald Spengler, and John Lucas. Because of the influence of these thinkers, feminist scholars trace misogyny in western culture to these philosophers and their ideas.
Anarchism in the United States
Historian Wendy McElroy reports that American individualist anarchism received an important influence of three European thinkers: "One of the most important of these influences was the French political philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon whose words "Liberty is not the Daughter But the Mother of Order" appeared as a motto on "Liberty's" masthead" (influential individualist anarchist publication of Benjamin Tucker). "Another major foreign influence was the german philosopher Max Stirner". "The third foreign thinker with great impact was the British philosopher Herbert Spencer". Other influences to consider include William Godwin's "anarchism (which) exerted an ideological influence on some of this, but more so the socialism of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier.
Doctor of the Church
In the Eastern Church three Doctors were pre-eminent: Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nazianzus. The feasts of these three saints were made obligatory throughout the Eastern Empire by Leo VI the Wise. A common feast was later instituted in their honour on 30 January, called "the feast of the three Hierarchs". In the Menaea for that day it is related that the three Doctors appeared in a dream to John Mauropous, Bishop of Euchaita, and commanded him to institute a festival in their honour, in order to put a stop to the rivalries of their votaries and panegyrists. This was under Alexius Comnenus (1081–1118; see "Acta SS.", 14 June, under St. Basil, c. xxxviii). But sermons for the feast are attributed in manuscripts to Cosmas Vestitor, who flourished in the tenth century. The three are as common in Eastern art as the four are in Western. Durandus (i, 3) remarks that Doctors should be represented with books in their hands. In the West analogy led to the veneration of four Eastern Doctors, Saint Athanasius being added to the three hierarchs.
Eastern philosophy
The political thought of Hindu nationalism is also another important current in modern Indian thought. The work of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Aurobindo, Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan have had a large impact on modern Indian philosophy.
Women in philosophy
In ancient philosophy in the West, while academic philosophy was typically the domain of male philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, female philosophers such as Hipparchia of Maroneia (active ca. 325 BC), Arete of Cyrene (active 5th–4th century BC) and Aspasia of Miletus (470–400 BC) were active during this period. Notable medieval philosophers include Hypatia (5th century), St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) and St. Catherine of Sienna (1347-1380). Notable modern philosophers included Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) and Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810-1850). Influential contemporary philosophers include Susanne Langer (1895–1985), Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), Mary Midgley (born 1919), Mary Warnock (born 1924), Julia Kristeva (born 1941), Patricia Churchland (born 1943) and Susan Haack (born 1945).