School included Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.
Metaphysics
All things arise from one unified cosmic matter or element, air or water or unperceived material, which is imperishable, inexhaustible, indestructible, infinite, and eternal. Such matter always moves of itself, without cause, and so is alive. Objects can change into each other, because all things are element transformations. Matter temperature changes cause changes. A succession of universes has arisen and then collapsed, through temperature effects. Their unifying element can be divine but not like persons.
Alternatively, substances can be unmoving and finite, like solid crystal spheres. The four elements are earth, water, air, and fire, in order of rarefication. God is one substance and is reason and perfection. Justice or fate is a world law.
He lived -610 to -550 and was of Milesian School. Infinite, living intelligence {apeiron} transforms itself to make all things. Universe is always in motion.
He lived -570 to -500 and was of Milesian School. Universe is air at different densities.
He lived -540 to -480 and was Pre-Socratic.
Epistemology
People can look in themselves and into nature to find meaning and structure, because soul is like the moving element fire. Soul is ideal, eternal, and underlying intelligence in universe. He said that you never step into same river twice.
Metaphysics
Universe essence is change or becoming. Change is the element fire. All matter always changes. Justice or fate balancing conflicting movements or flows {flux, Heraclitus} causes apparent object permanence. All things come from opposites, being and not being. Nature and mind have structure or harmony, as opposites unite. Matter transformations have definite ways and orders, as law, reason, and destiny work in universe. World goes through orderly state successions, back to original state.
He lived -500 to -428 and was Socrates' teacher. Nature has uncountable numbers of unchangeable elements, which can divide into small particles that have same properties as elements. Objects have varying element proportions. Highest element is Mind or Reason, which can move itself and move other elements by collision. Mind is alive and includes reason, order, and purpose {teleology, Anaxagoras}, because all motions follow laws. Universal Mind exists and everything has purpose.
He was Anaximenes' student. Air is spirit or reason and can account mechanically for animal adaptations.
He lived -492 to -432 and introduced the four elements. Reality has earth, water, air, and fire {four elements}. Elements can divide into infinitely small parts. Ways elements combine, not elements themselves, cause physical qualities. Elements are unchanging, but their movements cause world changes. Love or attraction opposes conflict, hate, strife, or repulsion. Tension causes motion, which has cycles. Circular motion {vortex, Empedocles} is element fundamental motion, because element collisions result in rotations, which draw in more elements and increase size. Lighter elements go to edge, mechanically forming worlds and living things. There is no purpose. Animals change as living conditions change, and only the fittest survive.
He combined ideas of Parmenides and Empedocles. Infinite numbers of very small particles {atom, Leucippus}, differing in size, form, and other quantitative features, move in empty space. Atom types are eternal, indestructible, unchangeable, indivisible, homogeneous, and finite. Atom motion is eternal, deterministic, and without cause or purpose. Atom motions are change or becoming. Space exists but is not material. Objects are atom combinations. Quantitative atom differences cause qualitative differences.
He lived -99 to -55 and was Epicurean. Universe is atomistic and governed by natural laws. People are matter only. Plants and animals evolve.
School included Marcion, Apelles, Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates, Valentinus, and Bardesanes. Fallen angels create matter and physical world. Matter or Void is against God. Material world is battleground for good and evil spirits. Matter will evolve from incomplete and imperfect states to the perfect state of God {system of evolution, Gnostic}. Indefinite states can divide into opposites, for example material and spiritual, and then reorder themselves.
He lived 100 to 153, was Gnostic, and founded Valentinians.
Metaphysics
The indefinite state joined with silence or thought to make spirit or reason, which then joined with truth or Ideas. Then reason joined with life to make the ideal man, who joined with Church. The Wisdom longs for original indefinite state, and this sinful desire enters the Void to make material world.
In Gnosticism, Sophia or Wisdom disorders the divine world {pleroma}, and God banishes it. Jesus Christ has the knowledge {gnosis} to restore the divine world to include people. Now Holy Spirit rules the world. Jesus the Savior will return. The Demiurge, Yahweh of Old Testament, who created the physical world, rules the world outside the pleroma.
He lived ? to 215 and was Christian. God created the world so all wills can overcome sin, face punishment, and have redemption. God does not oppose his creation but is separate from it. Evil is an action by people, not substance, and so God did not create it. Evil is rebellion against God's will. Evil is love of God's creation, rather than God. Evil spirits are wills that do evil but are not human.
He lived 185 to 254, was founder of Christian philosophy, and was Latin Father. God's power, wisdom, and goodness created universe out of nothing, and universe's beauty and perfection reveals its origin. God constantly creates the logos, which supports the free spirits surrounding God with love, harmony, and knowledge. God sends spirits that fall out of these states to the actual world for punishment. World will vanish when all spirits are pure and in harmony with God.
He lived 232 to 304, was Commentator on Aristotle, and was Plotinus' student. A chain of being goes from lowest forms to highest {Porphyry Tree} {Tree of Porphyry}.
He lived 350 to 433, founded School of Athens [400 to 529], and was Neo-Platonist. Matter is principle equal to God.
School included Pseudo-Dionysius, Synesius, Maximus the Confessor, and John Scotus Erigena.
He was mystic.
He lived 490 to 570 and was Commentator on Aristotle. Motion requires force. World began finite time ago, because motion through infinite interval {traversal of the infinite} cannot finish.
He lived 803 to 867. There is predestination.
He lived 806 to 882 and was archbishop of Reims [845 to 882]. There is no predestination.
He lived 838 to 923.
People can imagine perfect island, but no such thing exists. Actual things are better than concepts, because concepts have no actuality. Concepts are lower reality. Therefore, people must reject Anselm's argument for God's existence.
School grew out of Neo-Platonism and included Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Damian, Manegold of Lantenbach, Joachim Floris, Dominicus Gundissalinus, Arnold of Brescia, and Amaury of Bene. They were orthodox or heretical mystics.
Epistemology
Body knows world, reason knows self, and soul knows God. Knowledge forms use imagination.
Ethics
Life is progression toward salvation.
Mind
Soul and body are completely separate. God's power unites people's souls and bodies. Souls have feelings, not intellect. Soul's highest stage is contemplation and love of God and final unity with God. Mental states and activities have classes that arise and develop to fit into mental life.
He lived 1106 to 1138, invented a separate-substances theory, and emphasized the solitary life.
Johannes Eckhart founded school that included Beghards, Friends of God in Basel, Dominican friar Johann Tauler, John Ruysbroeck, Heinrich Suso (Heinrich Seuse), Thomas à Kempis, and Gerson. It presaged Reformation by emphasizing laymen, teaching, preaching, New Testament, Christ, and German or Dutch language.
He lived 1300 to 1361 and was mystic.
He lived 1300 to 1366 and was mystic.
He lived 1379 to 1471 and was mystic.
School included Agrippa of Nettesheim, John Reuchlin, Francesco Zorsi, Paracelsus, Johann Baptist van Helmont, Franz van Helmont, Robert Fludd, and Jacob Böhme. Knowledge of God comes only through mystic revelation. People have several separable bodies and souls: astral, etheric, and physical.
School included Andreas Osiander, Caspar Schwenkfeld, Sebastian Franck, Valentine Weigel, Nicolaus Taurellus, Lelio Sozzini, Fausto Sozzini, John of the Cross, and Theresa. John of the Cross and Theresa later became Roman Catholic saints.
School included Mir Damad, Mulla Sadra or Molla Sadra or Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Mir Fendereski, and Shaykh Baha'i.
School included Charles Bouille, Girolamo Cardano, Francesco Patrizzi, Giordano Bruno, Bernardino Telesio, Pietro Pompanazzi, Tommaso Campanella, and Vanini. Material objects are atom complexes {corpuscle, atom}. Eternal atom motions under mathematical laws govern corpuscle movements. Atoms are monads.
He lived 1486 to 1545.
He lived 1525 to 1562, and founded Anti-trinitarian movement.
He lived 1539 to 1604, started Unitarianism {Socinianism}, which denied the Trinity, and founded Polish Brethern [1579].
He lived 1548 to 1600 and was Dominican. He influenced Spinoza and Leibniz.
Epistemology
Absolute truth does not exist. Knowledge has no limit.
Ethics
People should be optimistic and joyous about man, nature, and God.
Metaphysics
Space, time, and particles have no limit. Countless worlds exist, each growing and decaying in the living universe.
Reality units {monad, Bruno} are parts of eternal infinite being. Monads are infinite in number, living, imperishable, individual, material, spiritual, and existing. Monads follow own laws and general law.
Universe is alive and has soul {anima mundi} {world-soul}.
God is the formal, efficient, and final cause of all things and is immanent and transcendent. World is life of God and so is perfect and harmonious, if viewed as whole. God is like light: illuminating, animating, and forming world. Essence of God and world are same {pantheism, Bruno}. World opposites harmonize in God's infinity.
All things have matter, mind, and spirit. People can know these if they are in themselves. Things are individual and different but in essence are God.
Descartes founded school that included Joachim Jung, Erhard Weigel, Jansenists, Occasionalists, Mystics, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Matter {res extensa} behaves using quantitative rules about sizes, shapes, and motions. Matter keeps moving and does not tend to stop, as Aristotle had claimed. Matter is inert and has no forces. God set matter in motion and causes all actions. Mind is separate and opposite from matter, is unity, and is not in space or time. God correlates mind and body.
He lived 1575 to 1624 and was German Mystic. He united neo-Platonism and Paracelsus to try to unify religion and science.
Ethics
Good and evil in world result from absolute necessity of God revealing itself in world as being, because everything in world has to have opposite. Nature moves by will, which can choose good or evil. People's acts affect universe. People should progress from spiritual perception, to mystical devotion, to pure spirit.
Metaphysics
Nature is unified whole, created by God using laws and reason. Nature is beautiful. God is world essence and efficient cause. God is spirit with infinite senses and reason and is world inner activity, like the living sap of trees.
He lived 1600 to 1641 and was Shi'ite. Essence motions cause higher essences by transformation, so everything is eternal becoming.
School included Blaise Pascal and Pierre Poiret.
He lived 1624 to 1669 and was follower of Descartes and Occasionalist. Thing can only do what it knows how to do. Because no finite material thing has mind and can know anything, only God can cause things. God is not an efficient cause. God supplies fixed and general relations between physical and mental worlds by synchronizing them, so they can appear as causes or sequences.
School included Cagliostro.
He lived 1711 to 1787 and studied matter and space.
He lived 1765 to 1835 and was Ontologist. Electricity and magnetism have relation [1802].
He lived 1792 to 1867 and modified spiritualism.
School included Victor Cousin, J. Simon, P. Damiron, E. Vacherot, H. Martin, A. Chaignet, A. Franck, B. Haureau, d'Tocqueville, C. Bartholmess, E. Saisset, C. de Remusat, P. Janet, E. Caro, F. Ravisson, Bouillier, Jean Rouisson, J. Lachelier, E. Bactroux, and H. Bergson.
He lived 1820 to 1900. Source of existence is will.
Herbert Spencer founded school that included W. W. Rende, William K. Clifford, Chauncey Wright, L. Stephen, S. Alexander, Benjamin Kidd, C. M. Williams, John Fiske, Thomas Henry Huxley, George Romanes, and J. M. Guyau. In evolution philosophy, new inventions and machines provided more power and control to people. Ideas about power and control in society began. Evolutionary theories developed about human progress, race, social class, and survival of fittest. Social Darwinism was a variant.
He lived 1830 to 1875 and was evolutionist.
School was Neo-Hegelian and idealist and included Alfred Fouille, Paul Desjardins, and Leon Brunschvicg.
He lived 1876 to 1938, was Islamic, and combined Neoplatonism and Aristotle. The One is the first mover or cause of all existence.
He lived 1869 to 1944 and was spiritualist.
He lived 1881 to 1955 and was Catholic. Purposes determine universe {teleology, Chardin}. Life moves toward higher consciousness {omega point}.
He lived 1873 to 1962 and was Critical Realist.
He lived 1906 to 1995. The Other is absolute.
He lived 1900 to 1990. Inner self is creative void {ku} and nothingness {mu, nothingness}.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225