INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY | Timeline of Western Philosophy #1

The Timeline of Western Philosophy. The Ultimate History to Western Philosophy.

This is the first episode in a multipart series on the history of Western Philosophy. This took a tragically large amount of time to produce and I'm hoping all of you really appreciate it.

In this episode we will explore the origins of philosophy and outline this series intentions. So to serve this end, we’ll split up different philosophers into eras. There’s a good deal of overlap here, especially the closer we get to present day, but there’s definitely something to be gained from telling a certain story about the history of philosophy.

Pre-Socratics
We’ll begin with the beginning, with a group of Greeks and Mediterraneans that started asking the big questions. What’s going on? Who are we? Why? Their ideas might seem primitive at first, but they are the key to everything which follows.

The Ancients
Right after them come the big hitters, the names you’ve probably heard like Plato and Aristotle. These guys are the ones who really created the tradition and set the terms and ideas that would dominate the thousands of years of thinking to follow.

The Prophets
We’ll then take a step back and a few forward by looking at the religious beliefs and thinkers that will completely change the terms of philosophy. During this time, there’s a little guy named Jesus Christ who sorta becomes a big deal.

The Medieval
Such a big deal that his life and the church that followed him would completely determine the Medieval thinkers that came next. These thinkers would use Christianity as a philosophical tool for understanding the universe.
The Reformers and Revolutionaries

After the Dark Ages, comes a burst of light in the reformers and revolutionaries of the Protestant and Scientific revolutions. We’ll see how changes in religion and knowledge permanently change philosophy.

The Moderns
With the world forever changed, Modern men start producing modern thoughts. We’ll explore their beliefs, their thoughts, and their great hairdos.

The Empiricists
Science and modern philosophy expand with a new type of knowledge of the world. We’ll spend most of our time this episode on the British Isles taking a stab at some of the Empiricist thinkers. We won’t forget to make room for tea time.

The Idealists
Trying to solve some of the riddles from their Anglo-Saxon brethren, the continental Germans will transcend the thinker of their day. These idealists would contribute the biggest breakthroughs in philosophy since perhaps the ancient days.

The Analytic
But some of their thoughts and writing are a little loose-goosey and not properly structured. Analytic thinking comes forth trying to solve some of philosophy’s riddles with logic and mathematics.

The Continental
But not everyone will want philosophy to be about logic and linguistics. Thinkers mostly from Continental Europe will start to rethink what it means to be part of the world. Things get pretty existential.

Contemporary
And then finally, we’ll arrive at where we are today. What does modern philosophy look like? Where’s it going?

That about does it for this episode. Next time we will take a look at the group of thinkers that came before Socrates. These thinkers, the Pre-Socratics are responsible for many things, not least of which is the formula we all learn in first year trigonometry. I’ll do my best to make the next episode more interesting than triangles though. No promises.


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Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:30 Why Should You Care?
2:30 What is philosophy?
3:17 Wisdom vs Philosophy
7:00 Adorable Animal Intermission - Hungry Pig
7:43 Timeline of Western Philosophy
11:28 Philosopher King - Socrates
13:47 Movie Moment - Pulp Fiction
15:30 Outro

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