Yaroslav Golubev

Yaroslav Golubev

Senior Researcher in the ML4SE group at JetBrains Research

The timeline of Western philosophy

While studying philosophy, I find it helpful to keep some sort of notes. At the same time, writing fully-fledged synopses is time-consuming, plus I don’t think I will ever re-read them. Instead, I wanted some sort of a chart, which I could look over with one glance, but that would systemize what I’ve learned. Thus, I decided to put all major philosophers on a timeline. On the one hand, it automatically provides a more-or-less ordered list that can be useful for remembering ideas based on names, and on the other hand, it creates an important feeling of relativity, puts the dates in context, reminding you that some philosophers from the “same” period were as far away from each other as the French Revolution is from us.

The list is mostly based on Reale and Antiseri’s “Il pensiero occidentale dalle origini ad oggi” in three volumes, with some additions from various sources. Overall, currently, there are three periods ready, which you can find below:

The following periods are in works and will come soon:

Perhaps, the categorization will be more specific if there are too many philosophers. Also, when I finish the initial version of this project, I plan to re-work it into interactive graphs for the future.

Note: some dates are only approximate, and the categorization is mostly for my own convenience and the ease of learning, not always based on the shared school of thought.

Ancient philosophy (68 names)

Medieval philosophy (80 names)

Renaissance philosophy (52 names)