- Confucius

- Confucius (551/552-479 BC) was a Chinese teacher, philosopher and politician.

- He was the founder of Confucianism, ethical and philosophical system that still has many
followers in China.
- His philosophical system reveals the influence of the Chinese tradition such ancestor
worship, loyalty to the family, respect of the elders, etc..
- He is also remembered for the so-called Golden Rule that is based on the principle “Do not
do to others what you do not want done to yourself”.

- Democritus
- known in antiquity as the ‘laughing philosopher’ because of his emphasis on the value of
‘cheerfulness,’ was one of the two founders of ancient atomist theory
- His knowledge of natural phenomena (such as diagnosing illnesses and predicting the
weather) gave him the reputation of being something of a prophet or soothsayer.
- It is believed that he died at the age of 90, in about 370 B.C., although some writers have him
living to over a hundred years of age.

- Rene Descartes
- Often credited with being the “Father of Modern Philosophy.”
- Descartes tries to establish absolute certainty in his famous reasoning: Cogito, ergo sum or “I
think, therefore I am.”
- This just means that the mere fact that I am thinking, regardless of whether or not what I am
thinking is true or false, implies that there must be something engaged in that activity,
namely an “I.”

- Sigmund Freud
- The founding father of psychoanalysis, a method for treating mental illness and also a theory
which explains human behavior.
- He developed a more structural model of the mind comprising the entities id, ego, and
superego

- Karl Marx
- a German philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary of the 19th Century
- Both a scholar and a political activist, Marx is often called the father of Communism, and
certainly his Marxist theory provided the intellectual base for various subsequent forms
of Communism.

- David Hume
- Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist known especially for his
philosophical empiricism and skepticism.
- Hume tried to describe how the mind works in acquiring what is called knowledge.
- He concluded that no theory of reality is possible; there can be no knowledge of anything
beyond experience.

- Thomas Hobbes
- His main concern is the problem of social and political order: how human beings can live
together in peace and avoid the danger and fear of civil conflict.
- Hobbes's reminder that human life is never without inconvenience and troubles that we
must live with a certain amount of bad, to prevent the worst: fear of violence, and violent
death.

- Sun Tzu
- A Chinese military strategist, Taoist philosopher, and general in the 6th century BCE who is
widely recognized for his work The Art of War, a treatise on military strategy (also known
as The Thirteen Chapters).
- The Art of War provides guidelines for military strategy and suggests the reader examines his
enemies’ and his own strengths so he can act accordingly, disarm or defeat his enemy
through the use of subterfuge and stratagem, and only resort to brute force when all other
options fail.

- Jean Jacques-Rousseau
- A French philosopher and writer of the Age of Enlightenment.
- His Political Philosophy, particularly his formulation of social contract
theory (or Contractarianism), strongly influenced the French Revolution and the
development of Liberal, Conservative and Socialist theory.

- Lao Tzu
- Chinese philosopher and poet, well-known for penning the book Tao Te Ching
- He was the founder of philosophy of Taoism, a religious and ethical custom of ancient China.
- He is largely respected as a religious deity in various traditional Chinese religious schools of
thought.

- Aristotle
- He was a student of Plato who in turn studied under Socrates.
- Aristotle famously rejected Plato’s theory of forms, which states that properties such as
beauty are abstract universal entities that exist independent of the objects themselves.
- He argued that forms are intrinsic to the objects and cannot exist apart from them, and so
must be studied in relation to them. However, in discussing art, Aristotle seems to reject this,
and instead argues for idealized universal form which artists attempt to capture in their
work.

- John Stuart Mill

- The ethical theory of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) is most extensively articulated in his classical
text Utilitarianism (1861).
- This principle says actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote overall human
happiness. So, Mill focuses on consequences of actions and not on rights nor ethical
sentiments.

- Niccolo Machiavelli
- A 16th century Florentine philosopher known primarily for his political ideas.
- He is best known today for two main works, the well-known "The Prince" (a treatise on
political realism and a guide on how a ruler can retain control over his subjects), and
the "Discourses on Livy" (the most important work on republicanism in the early modern
period).

- Immanuel Kant
- His theoretical philosophy, which includes metaphysics, is based on the rational understanding
of the concept of nature.
- The second, his practical philosophy, comprising ethics and political philosophy, is based on the
concept of freedom.
- Kant also believes that the entire natural world is subject to a strict Newtonian principle of
causality, implying that all of our physical actions are caused by prior events, not by our free
wills.
-

- Soren Kierkegaard
- Father of existentialism
- Aesthetical lives were lives lived in search of such things pleasure, novelty, and romantic
individualism. Kierkegaard thought that such "pleasure", such "novelty", and such "romantic
individualism" would eventually tend to decay or become meaningless and this would
inevitably lead to much boredom and dire frustration.

- Jean-Paul Sartre
- A philosopher of human freedom. He build an existentialist philosophy, where man
loneliness and responsibility is absolute. Despite this fragile condition, man has to invent his
way to define who he is.
- Sartre's early works are characterized by a development of classic phenomenology, but his
reflection diverges from Husserl’s on methodology, the conception of the self, and an
interest in ethics.

- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. His writings on truth,
morality, language, aesthetics, cultural theory, history, nihilism, power, consciousness, and
the meaning of existence have exerted an enormous influence on Western philosophy and
intellectual history.
- He spoke of "the death of God," and foresaw the dissolution of traditional religion and
metaphysics.

- Epicurus
- Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based on the teachings of Epicurus, founded around
307 B.C.
- It teaches that the greatest good is to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state
of tranquillity, freedom from fear ("ataraxia") and absence from bodily pain ("aponia").
- This combination of states is held to constitute happiness in its highest form, and so
Epicureanism can be considered a form of Hedonism.

- John Locke
- John Locke was among the most famous philosophers and political theorists of the
17th century.
- He is often regarded as the founder of a school of thought known as British Empiricism, and he
made foundational contributions to modern theories of limited, liberal government.

- John Locke
- Objectivism is the philosophy of rational individualism founded by Ayn Rand (1905-1982).
- In novels such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged , Rand dramatized her ideal man, the
producer who lives by his own effort and does not give or receive the undeserved, who honors
achievement and rejects envy.