Index

PhiloDocs

Open-source notes for the history of thought: a philosophy wiki, timeline, and relationship graph built for clear understanding. It started as a personal database for remembering what thinkers actually said, and it keeps that bias toward plain language, useful examples, and visible links between ideas.

350
Thinkers
75
Schools
119
Works
390
Timeline rows

Thinkers

Essential nodes

Browse all

Thales

thinker

Early Greek thinker traditionally treated as the first Presocratic philosopher, associated with natural explanation and the claim that water is fundamental.

Presocratic / Milesian

Anaximander

thinker

Milesian Presocratic thinker associated with the apeiron, an indefinite originating principle, and one of the earliest surviving fragments of Greek philosophy.

Presocratic / Milesian

Mahavira

thinker

Jain teacher and reformer associated with nonviolence, ascetic discipline, karma theory, and liberation through purification of the soul.

Jainism / Indian philosophy

Pythagoras

thinker

Greek religious-philosophical figure associated with number, harmony, transmigration, communal discipline, and the Pythagorean tradition.

Pythagorean / Presocratic

Confucius

thinker

Chinese teacher and ritual thinker whose model of humane cultivation became a central source for Confucian ethics and political thought.

Confucianism

Heraclitus

thinker

Presocratic thinker of flux, conflict, logos, and hidden order, known through dense fragments that shaped later metaphysics.

Presocratic

Parmenides

thinker

Presocratic thinker whose poem argues for the unity and necessity of being, forcing later philosophy to confront the problem of change.

Presocratic / Eleatic

Mozi

thinker

Chinese thinker and founder of Mohism, known for impartial concern, anti-aggression, merit, frugality, and practical argument.

Mohism / Warring States

Schools

Core traditions

All schools

Africana Philosophy

school

Philosophical work rooted in African, African diasporic, Black Atlantic, and anti-colonial thought.

Africana Philosophy / Political Philosophy

Aristotelianism

school

Tradition rooted in Aristotle's systematic work on logic, nature, metaphysics, virtue, politics, and inquiry into causes.

Ancient Greek philosophy / Virtue ethics

Buddhism

school

Philosophical and religious tradition centered on suffering, impermanence, non-self, dependent arising, disciplined practice, and liberation.

Indian philosophy / Soteriology

Confucianism

school

Chinese ethical and political tradition focused on ritual, humane conduct, family roles, moral cultivation, and ordered social life.

Classical Chinese philosophy / Political ethics

Continental Philosophy

school

Modern European family of traditions focused on history, subjectivity, meaning, critique, existence, power, language, and social life.

Continental philosophy / Modern philosophy

Critical Theory

school

Tradition of social critique focused on domination, ideology, reason, capitalism, culture, and emancipatory possibility.

Social philosophy / Continental philosophy

Works

Text anchors

All works

A Treatise of Human Nature

work

Hume's ambitious attempt to build a science of human nature through impressions, ideas, causation, personal identity, passions, and morals.

Empiricism / Skepticism

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

work

Hume's mature and concise presentation of empiricist skepticism about causation, induction, miracles, necessity, and human knowledge.

Empiricism / Skepticism

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

work

Locke's major empiricist study of ideas, knowledge, probability, personal identity, language, and the limits of human understanding.

Empiricism / Liberalism

Being and Time

work

Heidegger's inquiry into the question of being through Dasein, worldhood, care, temporality, death, and authenticity.

Phenomenology / Existentialism

Capital

work

Marx's mature critique of capitalist production, commodity form, surplus value, exploitation, accumulation, and crisis.

Marxism / Historical Materialism

Critique of Pure Reason

work

Kant's first critique, written to determine the conditions, scope, and limits of human knowledge and metaphysics.

German Idealism / Transcendental philosophy

Clusters

Tradition index

Abhidharma · 2Abolitionist thought · 1Absolute idealism · 1Absolute Idealism · 2Absurdism · 1Academic Skepticism · 1Actor-network theory · 1Advaita Vedanta · 2Aesthetics · 17African philosophy · 1African Philosophy · 3Africana philosophy · 1Africana Philosophy · 9AI ethics · 2