Thinkers Timeline

Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE) was a philosopher in ancient Athens, Greece. He wrote nothing himself — everything we know about him comes from the writings of his students, especially Plato. He spent his life in the streets and public spaces of Athens, asking people questions about the things they claimed to know — justice, courage, virtue, knowledge. He was famously described as the wisest man in Athens, but said this could only be true because he alone knew that he knew nothing. In 399 BCE he was put on trial by the Athenian government, charged with corrupting the youth and not respecting the gods. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by drinking poison. He refused to escape when he had the chance, saying a philosopher must obey the law even when it is unjust.

Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher. He is one of the most important thinkers in human history. The whole tradition of Western philosophy has been called 'a series of footnotes to Plato'. He was born around 428 BCE in Athens, the great Greek city of his time. He died around 348 BCE, aged about 80. He came from a wealthy aristocratic family. His real name was probably Aristocles. 'Plato' (meaning 'broad' in Greek) seems to have been a nickname, possibly from his physical build. As a young man, he expected to enter politics. The political life of Athens, however, made him turn away. He was a student of Socrates, the philosopher who walked the streets of Athens questioning everyone. In 399 BCE, when Plato was about 29, the Athenian democracy executed Socrates on charges of corrupting the young and disrespecting the gods. Plato never got over it. The death shaped his philosophy and his deep distrust of democracy. After Socrates' death, Plato travelled. He went to southern Italy, Sicily, and possibly Egypt. Around 387 BCE, he returned to Athens and founded the Academy, a school for philosophy. The Academy lasted in some form for nearly 900 years. Aristotle studied there as a young man. Plato wrote about 35 dialogues, almost all of which survive. The dialogues are conversations, usually with Socrates as the main speaker. They cover almost every philosophical topic: justice, knowledge, beauty, love, the soul, government, education. The Republic is his most famous. The Symposium and the Phaedo are also widely read. He died in his eighties, still teaching at the Academy.

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher. He is one of the most important thinkers in the history of Western philosophy and science. He was born in 384 BCE in Stagira, a small city in northern Greece. His father was a doctor to the royal court of Macedonia. At seventeen, Aristotle travelled to Athens and joined the Academy, the school founded by Plato. He stayed there for twenty years as a student and then as a teacher. When Plato died in 347 BCE, Aristotle left Athens. He travelled, taught, and did natural history research on the island of Lesbos. Around 343 BCE, he was invited by King Philip II of Macedonia to tutor Philip's son, the teenager who would become Alexander the Great. This is one of the most famous teacher-student relationships in history, though its actual influence on Alexander is hard to measure. In 335 BCE, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum. He taught there for twelve years and wrote many of his most important works. After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens made Aristotle's position dangerous. He fled the city, reportedly saying he would not let Athens 'sin twice against philosophy', a reference to the execution of Socrates. He died a year later in 322 BCE, aged 62. His surviving works, which are mostly lecture notes rather than polished books, cover logic, biology, psychology, ethics, politics, poetry, rhetoric, and metaphysics. Together they shaped Western thought for more than two thousand years. Almost every field of inquiry has at some point been measured against Aristotle.

Mencius was a Chinese philosopher. His Chinese name was Meng Ke, which means 'Master Meng'. Later Chinese tradition called him the 'Second Sage', meaning second only to Confucius himself. The Latin name 'Mencius' was given to him by European Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century. He was born around 371 BCE in the small state of Zou, in what is now Shandong province in eastern China. This was the same region where Confucius had lived over a century earlier. Mencius's father died when he was three years old. His mother raised him alone. Stories about her wisdom became famous in China. In one story, she moved house three times to find a place where her son would have good influences around him. The story of 'Mencius's Mother's Three Moves' is still told in China today. Mencius lived during the Warring States Period. This was a violent time. Several Chinese kingdoms fought each other constantly. Armies swept across the land. Ordinary people suffered terribly from war, high taxes, and harsh rulers. Mencius spent much of his adult life travelling from one kingdom to another, offering advice to their rulers. He wanted them to govern more humanely. Some listened for a while. Most did not take his advice seriously. In the end, he retired from public life, disappointed. His students collected his conversations and teachings in a book. It is called simply the Mencius. The book is long and often funny. Mencius argues with rulers, other philosophers, and his own students. He is sharp, stubborn, and clear. He died around 289 BCE, aged about 82. Nearly 1500 years later, the Mencius became one of the 'Four Books' that every educated Chinese person had to study. His ideas shaped China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam for centuries.

Zhuangzi was a Chinese philosopher of the 4th century BCE. His name means 'Master Zhuang'. His personal name was Zhuang Zhou. He lived during a period called the Warring States, when several Chinese kingdoms fought each other constantly. This was a violent and unstable time. It was also a golden age of Chinese thought. Many of China's most important thinkers lived then: Confucius had lived a generation earlier, Mencius and Laozi were also writing in this period. We know very little for certain about Zhuangzi's life. The historian Sima Qian, writing about 150 years after his death, says he was a minor official in a place called Qiyuan, in what is now Henan province. He was offered a high position by the king of the state of Chu but turned it down. He preferred to live simply. He married and had children. He died in peace, probably in his sixties. The book known as the Zhuangzi is named after him. It has 33 chapters and is one of the great works of world literature. Modern scholars think Zhuangzi himself wrote only the first seven chapters, sometimes called the 'Inner Chapters'. These contain the most famous and powerful writing. The rest of the book was written by his students and later followers over several generations. The Zhuangzi is, along with the Daodejing, the foundation of Daoist philosophy. Together the two books form the core of the Daoist tradition. Unlike most philosophers of his time, Zhuangzi wrote mostly in stories. His book is full of talking animals, wise cooks, strange encounters, and dream sequences. He is one of the first great storytellers in world philosophy. His influence on Chinese literature, art, and humour has been enormous.

Epictetus (c.50-135 CE) was a Greek Stoic philosopher who was born into slavery in Hierapolis, a city in what is now Turkey. His name means acquired, or something like the purchased one, which reflects his status. He was owned by a freedman named Epaphroditus who worked in the imperial court of the Emperor Nero in Rome. Epictetus was permitted to study philosophy, and he became a student of the Stoic teacher Musonius Rufus. He was eventually freed, probably after Nero's death, and established his own philosophical school first in Rome and later, after the Emperor Domitian expelled philosophers from Rome, in the city of Nicopolis in northwestern Greece. He was lame, probably as a result of mistreatment during his time in slavery, though ancient accounts of the specific circumstances differ. He left no writings himself: everything we have from him is in the notes taken by his student Arrian, who compiled them into two works, the Discourses and the shorter Enchiridion or Handbook. He had an enormous influence on later Stoic thinkers including Marcus Aurelius.

Nagarjuna (approximately 150-250 CE) was an Indian Buddhist philosopher, widely considered one of the most important and influential thinkers in the entire history of Asian philosophy. He was born in South India, probably in what is now Andhra Pradesh, and became a Buddhist monk and teacher. He is the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy, which became one of the dominant schools of Buddhist thought across India, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Very little is known about his life as a historical person: later tradition attributed extraordinary feats and a legendary biography to him, making it difficult to separate fact from story. What we do have are his philosophical texts, above all the Mulamadhyamakakarika, the Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, a short but extraordinarily dense philosophical work in verse form that argues for one of the most radical positions in the history of philosophy: that nothing whatsoever has fixed, independent existence. He died sometime in the second or third century CE, but his ideas have continued to shape Buddhist philosophy and practice across Asia for nearly two thousand years.

Philo of Alexandria was a Jewish philosopher who lived in Egypt. He was born around 20 BCE and died around 50 CE. Alexandria, his home city, was one of the largest and most learned cities in the ancient world. It had a big Jewish community and also a famous tradition of Greek philosophy. Philo lived in both of these worlds at once. He came from a wealthy and important Jewish family. His brother was one of the richest men in the city. Philo had a full Greek education. He read Plato, the Stoics, and other Greek thinkers closely. But he was also a devout Jew who knew the Hebrew scriptures well. He spent his life trying to bring these two traditions together. Most of what Philo wrote was about the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah. He read them mostly in Greek, in a translation called the Septuagint. He wrote long commentaries explaining their deeper meaning. We know one firm fact about his life. In the year 39 or 40 CE, he led a Jewish group from Alexandria to Rome. They went to ask the emperor Caligula to protect the Jews after violent attacks in their city. Philo wrote about this dangerous mission himself. The year of his death is not known exactly, but it was probably soon after.