Philosophy

From the first thinkers who asked what the world is made of to the questions we still cannot answer, this is a global history of philosophy. The Greeks and the Presocratics; the parallel awakenings of Confucius, the Buddha and the Vedic sages; the Stoics and Epicureans; the medieval synthesis of Augustine, Aquinas, Avicenna and Maimonides; the rationalists and empiricists; the Enlightenment; Kant and the German idealists; Marx, Nietzsche and the 19th-century upheaval; phenomenology, existentialism and the analytic turn; and the thinkers who carried the argument into our own time. Two and a half thousand years of asking how to think and how to live.

A chronological documentary of 140 moments spanning -500–2026 on Loreline.

Curated by Olivier · last updated 2026-09-20

1. -500 - Heraclitus (c. 535–475 BC). "No man steps in the same river twice." The Presocratic of flux and the logos.
2. -500 - The Buddha (c. 563–483 BC). Siddhartha Gautama: suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the Eightfold Path.
3. -500 - Confucius (551–479 BC). The Chinese sage of ren (benevolence) and li (ritual propriety), the spine of East-Asian ethics.
4. -500 - Laozi (6th c. BC). The legendary author of the Tao Te Ching, the Way that cannot be named, wu wei, the soft over the hard.
5. -430 - Socrates (470–399 BC). The gadfly of Athens who claimed to know only that he knew nothing, and was executed for it.
6. -380 - Plato (428–348 BC). Socrates' student: the Forms, the Republic, the Academy, the fountainhead of Western philosophy.
7. -350 - Mencius (372–289 BC). Confucius' great successor, who argued human nature is innately good.
8. -350 - Diogenes the Cynic (c. 412–323 BC). The philosopher in a barrel, searching by daylight with a lamp for an honest man.
9. -350 - Plato & Aristotle (Raphael's "School of Athens"). Plato points up to the Forms, Aristotle down to the world, the two poles of all that follows.
10. -340 - Aristotle (384–322 BC). Logic, biology, ethics, politics, metaphysics, the systematizer who mapped almost every field.
11. -300 - Epicurus (341–270 BC). Pleasure rightly understood: the absence of pain and fear, friendship and a quiet garden.
12. 0170 - Marcus Aurelius (121–180). The emperor-philosopher whose private "Meditations" became the great handbook of Stoicism.
13. 0400 - Augustine of Hippo (354–430). The Confessions and the City of God, fusing Platonism with Christianity at the close of antiquity.
14. 0800 - Adi Shankara (c. 700–750). Advaita Vedanta: the non-dual reality of Brahman behind the world of appearances.
15. 0900 - Al-Farabi (c. 872–950). "The Second Teacher" after Aristotle, logic, the virtuous city, and the synthesis of Greek and Islamic thought.
16. 1010 - Avicenna / Ibn Sina (980–1037). The "Flying Man" and the necessary being, the towering metaphysician of the Islamic Golden Age.
17. 1180 - Averroes / Ibn Rushd (1126–1198). The great commentator on Aristotle whose work reignited reason in medieval Europe.
18. 1190 - Maimonides (1138–1204). The Guide for the Perplexed, reconciling Aristotle with Jewish scripture.
19. 1270 - Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). The Summa Theologica, the grand scholastic synthesis of faith and Aristotelian reason.
20. 1320 - William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347). Ockham's Razor: do not multiply entities beyond necessity, the edge of medieval thought.
21. 1640 - René Descartes (1596–1650). "I think, therefore I am", radical doubt and the foundation of modern philosophy.
22. 1651 - Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Leviathan: life in the state of nature "nasty, brutish and short", and the social contract that ends it.
23. 1670 - Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677). God-or-Nature: a single substance, geometry applied to ethics, freedom through understanding.
24. 1690 - John Locke (1632–1704). The mind as a blank slate, knowledge from experience, and government by consent.
25. 1700 - Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716). Monads, the best of all possible worlds, and the calculus, the last universal genius.
26. 1750 - Voltaire (1694–1778). The wit of the Enlightenment: tolerance, reason, and "écrasez l'infâme."
27. 1750 - David Hume (1711–1776). Causation as habit, the is/ought gap, and the most rigorous skepticism of the age.
28. 1762 - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). The general will, the noble savage, and "man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains."
29. 1781 - Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). The Critique of Pure Reason and the categorical imperative, the hinge on which modern philosophy turns.
30. 1792 - Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Enlightenment reason turned to equality.
31. 1820 - G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831). The dialectic, the unfolding of Spirit through history, and the system that swallowed everything.
32. 1845 - Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). The leap of faith, the individual against the crowd, the father of existentialism.
33. 1859 - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). The World as Will and Representation, blind striving, suffering, and the consolations of art. This photograph dates from 1859.
34. 1870 - John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). On Liberty and utilitarianism refined, the greatest good, and the harm principle. This photograph dates from 1870.
35. 1875 - Karl Marx (1818–1883). Historical materialism, alienation, and "philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it." This photograph dates from 1875.
36. 1885 - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). The death of God, the will to power, the eternal recurrence, and the revaluation of all values.
37. 1900 - Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). Phenomenology: "to the things themselves", the rigorous study of consciousness as it appears.
38. 1903 - William James (1842–1910). Pragmatism and the stream of consciousness, truth as what works. This photograph dates from 1903.
39. 1930 - Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). The Tractatus and the Investigations, the limits of language, twice redrawn. This photograph dates from 1930.
40. 1936 - Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). Logic, the theory of descriptions, and a public conscience, a founder of analytic philosophy. This photograph dates from 1936.
41. 1945 - Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980). Existence precedes essence; we are "condemned to be free."
42. 1960 - Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). Being and Time, the question of Being, thrownness, and being-toward-death. This photograph dates from 1960.
43. 1967 - Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986). The Second Sex: "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman", existentialist feminism. This photograph dates from 1967.
44. 1971 - John Rawls (1921–2002). A Theory of Justice: fairness from behind the "veil of ignorance."
45. 1975 - Hannah Arendt (1906–1975). The human condition, totalitarianism, and the banality of evil. This photograph dates from 1975.
46. 1975 - Michel Foucault (1926–1984). Power/knowledge, discipline, and the genealogies of madness, punishment and sexuality.
47. 2010 - Is "Universal Grammar" really wrong? (the debate). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
48. 2014-10-10 - Nietzsche (The School of Life). The death of God, the will to power, and self-overcoming.
49. 2014-10-10 - Kant: On Metaphysical Knowledge (Wireless Philosophy). Kant famously claims that we have synthetic apriori knowledge. Indeed, this claim is absolutely central to all of his philosophy. But what is synthetic apriori knowledge? Scott Edgar helpfully breaks-down this category of knowledge by first walking through Kant's distinction between empirical and apriori knowledge and...
50. 2014-10-29 - Aristotle (The School of Life). Aristotle on virtue, the golden mean and flourishing.
51. 2014-12-12 - Descartes' Cogito argument (Wireless Philosophy). The argument that grounds modern certainty.
52. 2015-01-03 - Plato's Theory of Forms - David Sedley (Royal Institute of Philosophy). Part of the Royal Institute of Philosophy's lecture series: The History of Philosophy. The aim of this lecture is to explain the meaning of Plato’s most celebrated doctrine, starting with its origins in the ethical inquiries of his master Socrates, and proceeding to its pivotal role in epistemology and ontology.
53. 2015-01-09 - John Rawls (The School of Life). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
54. 2015-02-06 - Confucius (The School of Life). Ren, li, and the ethics that shaped East Asia.
55. 2015-02-27 - Augustine (The School of Life). The Confessions and the turn inward.
56. 2015-03-17 - Plato's Allegory of the Cave (TED-Ed). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
57. 2015-03-30 - Buddhism's Four Noble Truths (BBC Radio 4). The core of the Buddha's teaching.
58. 2015-05-08 - Ludwig Wittgenstein (The School of Life). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
59. 2015-06-12 - Baruch Spinoza (The School of Life). God-or-Nature and the ethics of understanding.
60. 2015 - Noam Chomsky (b. 1928). Universal grammar and the mind's innate structure, and a relentless public critic. The subject dates from 2000; this photograph was taken in 2015.
61. 2015-06-16 - A History of Philosophy: David Hume (Wheaton). A lecture on Hume's empiricism and skepticism.
62. 2015-09-11 - René Descartes (The School of Life). Doubt, the cogito, and the method.
63. 2016-03-11 - Plato on the Forms (The School of Life). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
64. 2016-03-15 - Locke, Berkeley & Empiricism (Crash Course). The British empiricist line.
65. 2016-04-15 - Thomas Aquinas (The School of Life). The scholastic synthesis of faith and Aristotle.
66. 2016-05-29 - Kierkegaard on Religion (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
67. 2016-05-30 - Hegel's God (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
68. 2016-09-22 - Noam Chomsky - Universal Grammar. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
69. 2016-10-10 - David Hume (The School of Life). Skepticism, causation, and the is/ought gap.
70. 2016-11-14 - Kant & Categorical Imperatives (Crash Course). Duty, the moral law, and acting on universalizable maxims.
71. 2016-12-05 - Aristotle & Virtue Theory (Crash Course). How to be good, the Aristotelian way.
72. 2017-02-13 - What is a good life? (Crash Course). The ancient question that started it all.
73. 2017-03-14 - Schopenhauer pt. 1 - Metaphysics & Love (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
74. 2017-03-28 - Schopenhauer pt. 2 - Ethics (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
75. 2017-06-19 - The philosophy of Stoicism (TED-Ed). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
76. 2018-04-09 - The Presocratics (Crash Course). The first philosophers ask what the world is made of.
77. 2018-07-13 - Heraclitus & Parmenides - being vs becoming. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
78. 2018-08-16 - Michel Foucault pt. 1 - Discipline and Punish (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
79. 2018-09-24 - Michel Foucault pt. 3 - Power (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
80. 2019-05-18 - Presocratic Philosophy - Ionian (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
81. 2019-05-18 - Presocratic Philosophy - Italian (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
82. 2019-05-19 - Aristotle, Part 1 (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
83. 2019-05-19 - Socrates and the Sophists (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
84. 2019-05-19 - Plato (Philosophize This!). A deep dive into Plato's Forms and the Republic.
85. 2019-05-21 - The Hellenistic Age: Epicurus (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
86. 2019-05-23 - Critical Theory: Adorno, Horkheimer & the culture industry. This video provides a basic understanding of Critical Theory as it applies to The Culture Industry, a concept formulated by two prominent members of The Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Source: Horkheimer, M. & Adorno, T. (1942/!979). Dialectic of enlightenment, New York: Verso.
87. 2019-05-27 - Descartes pt. 1 - Context (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
88. 2019-05-28 - Descartes pt. 2 (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
89. 2019-06-06 - Kant pt. 2 - The Actual Introduction (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
90. 2019-06-09 - Hegel pt. 1 - Introduction (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
91. 2019-08-10 - Augustine - City of God. The two cities and Christian political philosophy.
92. 2020-02-07 - The Frankfurt School: from failed revolution to critical theory (Tom Nicholas). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
93. 2020-02-24 - Zeno of Citium - the founder of Stoicism. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
94. 2020-03-10 - The meaning of life according to Simone de Beauvoir (TED-Ed). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
95. 2020-03-31 - What Pragmatism Means - William James. This video discusses the beginning part of James's "What Pragmatism Means" where he outlines pragmatism as a method.
96. 2020-04-30 - The Islamic Golden Age - philosophy & humanities (Kings and Generals). Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes and the flowering of reason.
97. 2020-05-24 - Aristotle's virtue ethics, eudaimonia & the golden mean. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
98. 2020-07-20 - Plato's Republic: justice, power & knowledge (Michael Sugrue). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
99. 2020-09-01 - Hume and the Problem of Induction. We often use inductive reasoning especially in science. But David Hume, an 18th century Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, identified a puzzle about such reasoning. It rests on an unjustified assumption. So induction might be a good form of reasoning, but we don't have good reason for believing it.
100. 2020-12-11 - Camus's Myth of Sisyphus - the philosophy of the absurd (Eternalised). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
101. 2021-01-24 - Heidegger: Being and Time (Michael Sugrue). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
102. 2021-02-16 - John Locke's empiricism. The blank slate and knowledge from experience.
103. 2021-06-19 - Is justice for the strong? - Plato's Republic. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
104. 2021-06-30 - Nietzsche: Master & Slave Morality explained. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
105. 2021-07-08 - Intro to Confucianism (ReligionForBreakfast). The Confucian tradition explained.
106. 2021-07-15 - Kant's Categorical Imperative (deontology). Kantian deontology is about rules and duties. Kant argued for an ultimate moral principle called The Categorical Imperative. It says that one must only act on principles (or "maxims") that could be universalized. This means they must still be rational even if everyone were to use them.
107. 2021-10-15 - Marx: Alienation and Private Property (Overthink). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
108. 2021-10-15 - Hegel: dialectical philosophy (Overthink). Thesis, antithesis, and the unfolding of Spirit.
109. 2021-11-05 - Stoic rules for a better life (Marcus Aurelius). The Stoicism of the emperor-philosopher.
110. 2022-01-10 - Kierkegaard - Silence, Obedience and Joy (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
111. 2022-02-07 - Spinoza: a complete guide to life (Then & Now). A deep dive into Spinoza's thought.
112. 2022-05-27 - Sartre: Existentialism is a Humanism (Overthink). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
113. 2022-10-27 - Plotinus, Neoplatonism & the Great Chain of Being. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
114. 2023-04-12 - Pythagoras: when mathematics became philosophy. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
115. 2024-01-14 - Dennett and Sapolsky argue over free will. Daniel Dennett and the neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky debate whether free will survives what neuroscience shows, staged by How To Academy. It was among Dennett's last public debates; he died in April 2024.
116. 2024-02-15 - The Butterfly Dream - the Zhuangzi. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
117. 2024-04-06 - Nagarjuna and the philosophy of emptiness (Madhyamaka). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
118. 2024-05-14 - Miranda Fricker on Bernard Williams (Whitehead Lecture). Miranda Fricker of NYU gives the Harvard philosophy department's Whitehead Lecture on Bernard Williams's historical self-consciousness, reading Descartes and Wittgenstein as practitioners of an 'impure' enquiry.
119. 2024-08-08 - The Socratic Method. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
120. 2024-08-23 - Arendt's lessons: the banality of evil & totalitarianism (British Academy). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
121. 2024-09-04 - Gifford Lecture on the feminine and religious imagination. The fifth lecture of Miri Rubin's 2024 Gifford series at Aberdeen, on how religious imagination has been gendered and what lies beyond that framing. The Gifford Lectures remain the standing forum for natural theology and philosophy of religion.
122. 2024-10-30 - Aristotle's guide to the good life (Nicomachean Ethics). Eudaimonia and the life well lived.
123. 2025-06-03 - Charles Taylor answers a seminar's questions. Charles Taylor takes questions from a philosophy seminar in a session recorded for teaching. Taylor's work on secularity and the modern self is one of the through-lines of late twentieth-century philosophy.
124. 2025-06-20 - Laozi and the Daodejing (Overly Sarcastic Productions). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
125. 2025-08-08 - Plotinus - the mystic of the One. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
126. 2025-09-04 - Loving the world, between atheism and theism (Gifford Lectures). The opening lecture of the 2025 Gifford series asks whether belief in God helps or hinders the care a suffering world requires. Amor mundi is posed as an ethical problem before a theological one.
127. 2025-09-04 - Schopenhauer on suffering and the will to nothingness. The second of the 2025 Gifford Lectures takes up Schopenhauer's argument that it would be better for the world not to exist, and asks what a consistent pessimism actually commits one to.
128. 2025-09-08 - David Benatar makes the antinatalist case. The philosopher David Benatar sets out philanthropic antinatalism and the asymmetry argument behind it: that coming into existence is a harm for any being that can be harmed. The position is contested and Benatar is its best-known academic defender.
129. 2025-10-03 - The case against the Stoics (Philosophize This!). A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
130. 2025-10-30 - Alison Gopnik on the evolution of human intelligences. The annual Natural Philosophy Forum lecture at Johns Hopkins, given by Alison Gopnik of Berkeley, arguing that human intelligence is plural rather than singular. Her work on how children learn has become a reference point in current arguments about what artificial systems do and do not do.
131. 2025-11-03 - John Gray on the English revolutionary tradition. The 2025 Oakeshott Lecture, delivered at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, with John Gray in conversation with the historian Robert Tombs about England's revolutionary inheritance.
132. 2025-11-14 - Alice Crary on the politics of artificial intelligence. The Royal Institute of Philosophy annual lecture, hosted with the UCD School of Philosophy, in which Alice Crary argues that philosophers cannot remain neutral about artificial intelligence or the politics forming around it.
133. 2026-03-19 - The annual Boyle Lecture on science and religion. The 2026 edition of the Boyle Lecture at St Mary-le-Bow in London, the annual address on science and religion endowed by Robert Boyle and revived in its modern form in the 2000s.
134. 2026-04-16 - What is a point of view?. Rick Lewis, editor of Philosophy Now, gives the 2026 Annual Philosophy Lecture in Malta on the tension between the subjective and objective standpoint, and on what having a point of view amounts to.
135. 2026-05-11 - A long interview with Nick Land. An extended interview with Nick Land, whose accelerationist writing and association with the so-called Dark Enlightenment have made him one of the most contested figures in recent political philosophy. Kept as a primary statement of a position rather than an endorsement of it.
136. 2026-06-04 - Chiara Cordelli on capitalism and the rule of none. The Brian Barry Memorial Lecture at the LSE, given by Chiara Cordelli on capitalism, alienation and what she calls the rule of none: domination without an identifiable ruler.
137. 2026-06-09 - Will Hornett on the form of agency. The first of four lectures in the 2026 UPD-Cambridge series, given online by Will Hornett of Cambridge on the philosophy of action and what shape agency takes, followed by a question session.
138. 2026-06-30 - Swinburne and Huemer on whether theism is coherent. Richard Swinburne and Michael Huemer, both working academic philosophers, debate whether theism is even a coherent position before asking whether it is true.
139. 2026 - Robert Brandom on Sellars, Kant and the mind-independent world. Robert Brandom speaks at a Sellars conference at Zhejiang University on Sellars's reading of Kant and on what it means for a world to be independent of mind. Brandom is among the most influential living analytic philosophers.
140. 2026-07-10 - David Chalmers: what are we talking to when we talk to AI?. David Chalmers at Berkeley on whether a large language model is an entity at all, and what the older picture of artificial intelligence as a single digital mind now fails to capture. Chalmers has been central to philosophy of mind since the 1990s.

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