Philosophers
This philosopher believed that everything is made of invisible building blocks-atoms, which are immutable. No God, nature mechanical
Democritus
5th Century B.C. From Athens
Used Questions to lead people to discover
Socrates
Criticized the Church. God is all and all is in God.
Baruch Spinoza
Stories about the gods that explain why life is as it is.
Mythology
Belief in many gods.
Polytheism
This philosopher believed that material world changed, but is based on world of ideas.
Plato
4th Century B.C. from Athens, Macedonia
Philosopher and scientist
Aristotle
Agnostic Empiricist. Our impressions of reality lead to ideas based on them.
David Hume
Exercise of reason rather than experience, authority, or spiritual revelation provides primary sources of knowledge.
Rationalism
God isn't involved in daily affairs on earth.
Deism
This philosopher was Bishop of Hippo. He stated that evil is the absence of God. Christianized Plato.
St. Augustine
16th Century from Aquino, Italy
Christianized Aristotle
We perceive phenomena of world through glasses of reason, but knowledge of it comes through our senses.
Immanuel Kant
Belief that all real things derive from concrete substances.
Materialism
Belief that the material universe is all there is, everything operates by natural law-nothing supernatural.
Naturalism
This Augustinian monk man believed man is his own priest. That we have a personal relationship with God.
Martin Luther
15th-16th Century from Rotterdam
Christian humanist
Erasmus
Christian Founder of Existentialism. Everyone determines what is true for himself- there is no objective truth.
Soren Kierkegaard
Belief that all events are predestined.
Fatalism
Economic and political theories of Marx and Engels that wild that human actions and institutions are economically determined, class struggle is needed to create historical change. Capitalism will ultimately be superseded by communism.
Marxism
This philosopher believes that all phenomena (even the soul) consist exclusively go particles of matter.
Thomas Hobbes
17th Century from France
Christian, reason-primary source of knowledge "Cogito ergo sum,"
Rene Descartes
Naturalist, natural selection, survival of the fittest, macroevolution. Philosophy led to huge shift in worldview.
Charles Darwin
Man can't know the truth about the riddles of nature and the universe.
Skepticism
Kierkegaard: Concerned with the existence of the individual.
Sartre: People completely free and responsible for what they make of themselves. Truth is relative to individual.
Existentialism