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 122 moments spanning -600–2024 on Loreline.

last updated 2026-07-22

1. -600 — Presocratic Philosophy — Ionian (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
2. -550 — The Presocratics (Crash Course). The first philosophers ask what the world is made of.
3. -550 — Presocratic Philosophy — Italian (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
4. -530 — Pythagoras: when mathematics became philosophy. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
5. -500 — Heraclitus & Parmenides — being vs becoming. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
6. -500 — Heraclitus (c. 535–475 BC). "No man steps in the same river twice." The Presocratic of flux and the logos.
7. -500 — The Buddha (c. 563–483 BC). Siddhartha Gautama: suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the Eightfold Path.
8. -500 — Confucius (The School of Life). Ren, li, and the ethics that shaped East Asia.
9. -500 — Intro to Confucianism (ReligionForBreakfast). The Confucian tradition explained.
10. -500 — Buddhism's Four Noble Truths (BBC Radio 4). The core of the Buddha's teaching.
11. -500 — Confucius (551–479 BC). The Chinese sage of ren (benevolence) and li (ritual propriety) — the spine of East-Asian ethics.
12. -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.
13. -500 — Laozi and the Daodejing (Overly Sarcastic Productions). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
14. -430 — The Socratic Method. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
15. -430 — Socrates (470–399 BC). The gadfly of Athens who claimed to know only that he knew nothing — and was executed for it.
16. -430 — Socrates and the Sophists (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
17. -380 — Plato on the Forms (The School of Life). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
18. -380 — Plato's Theory of Forms — David Sedley (Royal Institute of Philosophy). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
19. -380 — Plato (428–348 BC). Socrates' student: the Forms, the Republic, the Academy — the fountainhead of Western philosophy.
20. -380 — Plato's Allegory of the Cave (TED-Ed). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
21. -380 — Plato (Philosophize This!). A deep dive into Plato's Forms and the Republic.
22. -375 — Plato's Republic: justice, power & knowledge (Michael Sugrue). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
23. -375 — Is justice for the strong? — Plato's Republic. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
24. -350 — The Butterfly Dream — the Zhuangzi. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
25. -350 — Mencius (372–289 BC). Confucius' great successor, who argued human nature is innately good.
26. -350 — What is a good life? (Crash Course). The ancient question that started it all.
27. -350 — Diogenes the Cynic (c. 412–323 BC). The philosopher in a barrel, searching by daylight with a lamp for an honest man.
28. -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.
29. -340 — Aristotle, Part 1 (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
30. -340 — Aristotle & Virtue Theory (Crash Course). How to be good, the Aristotelian way.
31. -340 — Aristotle (384–322 BC). Logic, biology, ethics, politics, metaphysics — the systematizer who mapped almost every field.
32. -340 — Aristotle (The School of Life). Aristotle on virtue, the golden mean and flourishing.
33. -330 — Aristotle's guide to the good life (Nicomachean Ethics). Eudaimonia and the life well lived.
34. -330 — Aristotle's virtue ethics, eudaimonia & the golden mean. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
35. -300 — The Hellenistic Age: Epicurus (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
36. -300 — The philosophy of Stoicism (TED-Ed). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
37. -300 — Epicurus (341–270 BC). Pleasure rightly understood: the absence of pain and fear, friendship and a quiet garden.
38. -300 — The case against the Stoics (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
39. -300 — Zeno of Citium — the founder of Stoicism. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
40. 0170 — Marcus Aurelius (121–180). The emperor-philosopher whose private "Meditations" became the great handbook of Stoicism.
41. 0170 — Stoic rules for a better life (Marcus Aurelius). The Stoicism of the emperor-philosopher.
42. 0200 — Nagarjuna and the philosophy of emptiness (Madhyamaka). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
43. 0250 — Plotinus, Neoplatonism & the Great Chain of Being. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
44. 0250 — Plotinus — the mystic of the One. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
45. 0400 — Augustine of Hippo (354–430). The Confessions and the City of God — fusing Platonism with Christianity at the close of antiquity.
46. 0400 — Augustine (The School of Life). The Confessions and the turn inward.
47. 0420 — Augustine — City of God. The two cities and Christian political philosophy.
48. 0800 — Adi Shankara (c. 700–750). Advaita Vedanta: the non-dual reality of Brahman behind the world of appearances.
49. 0900 — Al-Farabi (c. 872–950). "The Second Teacher" after Aristotle — logic, the virtuous city, and the synthesis of Greek and Islamic thought.
50. 1000 — The Islamic Golden Age — philosophy & humanities (Kings and Generals). Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes and the flowering of reason.
51. 1010 — Avicenna / Ibn Sina (980–1037). The "Flying Man" and the necessary being — the towering metaphysician of the Islamic Golden Age.
52. 1180 — Averroes / Ibn Rushd (1126–1198). The great commentator on Aristotle whose work reignited reason in medieval Europe.
53. 1190 — Maimonides (1138–1204). The Guide for the Perplexed — reconciling Aristotle with Jewish scripture.
54. 1270 — Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). The Summa Theologica — the grand scholastic synthesis of faith and Aristotelian reason.
55. 1270 — Thomas Aquinas (The School of Life). The scholastic synthesis of faith and Aristotle.
56. 1320 — William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347). Ockham's Razor: do not multiply entities beyond necessity — the edge of medieval thought.
57. 1637 — Descartes pt. 1 — Context (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
58. 1640 — René Descartes (1596–1650). "I think, therefore I am" — radical doubt and the foundation of modern philosophy.
59. 1640 — Descartes' Cogito argument (Wireless Philosophy). The argument that grounds modern certainty.
60. 1640 — René Descartes (The School of Life). Doubt, the cogito, and the method.
61. 1641 — Descartes pt. 2 (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
62. 1651 — Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Leviathan: life in the state of nature "nasty, brutish and short" — and the social contract that ends it.
63. 1670 — Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677). God-or-Nature: a single substance, geometry applied to ethics, freedom through understanding.
64. 1670 — Baruch Spinoza (The School of Life). God-or-Nature and the ethics of understanding.
65. 1675 — Spinoza: a complete guide to life (Then & Now). A deep dive into Spinoza's thought.
66. 1690 — John Locke (1632–1704). The mind as a blank slate, knowledge from experience, and government by consent.
67. 1690 — John Locke's empiricism. The blank slate and knowledge from experience.
68. 1700 — Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716). Monads, the best of all possible worlds, and the calculus — the last universal genius.
69. 1700 — Locke, Berkeley & Empiricism (Crash Course). The British empiricist line.
70. 1748 — Hume and the Problem of Induction. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
71. 1750 — Voltaire (1694–1778). The wit of the Enlightenment: tolerance, reason, and "écrasez l'infâme."
72. 1750 — David Hume (1711–1776). Causation as habit, the is/ought gap, and the most rigorous skepticism of the age.
73. 1750 — David Hume (The School of Life). Skepticism, causation, and the is/ought gap.
74. 1750 — A History of Philosophy: David Hume (Wheaton). A lecture on Hume's empiricism and skepticism.
75. 1762 — Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). The general will, the noble savage, and "man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains."
76. 1781 — Kant: On Metaphysical Knowledge (Wireless Philosophy). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
77. 1781 — Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). The Critique of Pure Reason and the categorical imperative — the hinge on which modern philosophy turns.
78. 1785 — Kant & Categorical Imperatives (Crash Course). Duty, the moral law, and acting on universalizable maxims.
79. 1785 — 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.
80. 1787 — Kant pt. 2 — The Actual Introduction (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
81. 1792 — Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman — Enlightenment reason turned to equality.
82. 1807 — Hegel pt. 1 — Introduction (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
83. 1818 — Schopenhauer pt. 1 — Metaphysics & Love (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
84. 1820 — G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831). The dialectic, the unfolding of Spirit through history, and the system that swallowed everything.
85. 1820 — Hegel: dialectical philosophy (Overthink). Thesis, antithesis, and the unfolding of Spirit.
86. 1820 — Hegel's God (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
87. 1840 — Schopenhauer pt. 2 — Ethics (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
88. 1843 — Kierkegaard on Religion (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
89. 1844 — Marx: Alienation and Private Property (Overthink). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
90. 1845 — Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). The leap of faith, the individual against the crowd — the father of existentialism.
91. 1845 — Kierkegaard — Silence, Obedience and Joy (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
92. 1859 — Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). The World as Will and Representation — blind striving, suffering, and the consolations of art. This photograph dates from 1859.
93. 1870 — John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). On Liberty and utilitarianism refined — the greatest good, and the harm principle. This photograph dates from 1870.
94. 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.
95. 1885 — Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). The death of God, the will to power, the eternal recurrence, and the revaluation of all values.
96. 1885 — Nietzsche (The School of Life). The death of God, the will to power, and self-overcoming.
97. 1887 — Nietzsche: Master & Slave Morality explained. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
98. 1900 — Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). Phenomenology: "to the things themselves" — the rigorous study of consciousness as it appears.
99. 1903 — William James (1842–1910). Pragmatism and the stream of consciousness — truth as what works. This photograph dates from 1903.
100. 1930 — Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). The Tractatus and the Investigations — the limits of language, twice redrawn. This photograph dates from 1930.
101. 1936 — Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). Logic, the theory of descriptions, and a public conscience — a founder of analytic philosophy. This photograph dates from 1936.
102. 1945 — Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980). Existence precedes essence; we are "condemned to be free."
103. 1960 — Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). Being and Time — the question of Being, thrownness, and being-toward-death. This photograph dates from 1960.
104. 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.
105. 1971 — John Rawls (1921–2002). A Theory of Justice: fairness from behind the "veil of ignorance."
106. 1975 — Hannah Arendt (1906–1975). The human condition, totalitarianism, and the banality of evil. This photograph dates from 1975.
107. 1975 — Michel Foucault (1926–1984). Power/knowledge, discipline, and the genealogies of madness, punishment and sexuality.
108. 2010 — Is "Universal Grammar" really wrong? (the debate). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
109. 2015-01-09 — John Rawls (The School of Life). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
110. 2015-05-08 — Ludwig Wittgenstein (The School of Life). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
111. 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.
112. 2016-09-22 — Noam Chomsky — Universal Grammar. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
113. 2018-08-16 — Michel Foucault pt. 1 — Discipline and Punish (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
114. 2018-09-24 — Michel Foucault pt. 3 — Power (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
115. 2019-05-23 — Critical Theory: Adorno, Horkheimer & the culture industry. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
116. 2020-02-07 — The Frankfurt School: from failed revolution to critical theory (Tom Nicholas). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
117. 2020-03-10 — The meaning of life according to Simone de Beauvoir (TED-Ed). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
118. 2020-03-31 — What Pragmatism Means — William James. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
119. 2020-12-11 — Camus's Myth of Sisyphus — the philosophy of the absurd (Eternalised). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
120. 2021-01-24 — Heidegger: Being and Time (Michael Sugrue). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
121. 2022-05-27 — Sartre: Existentialism is a Humanism (Overthink). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
122. 2024-08-23 — Arendt's lessons: the banality of evil & totalitarianism (British Academy). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.

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