Outline of philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions (such as mysticism, myth, or religion) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument. It involves logical analysis of language and clarification of the meaning of words and concepts.

The word “philosophy” comes from the Greek philosophia (φιλοσοφία), which literally means “love of wisdom”.

Branches of philosophy

The branches of philosophy and their sub-branches that are used in contemporary philosophy.

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is study of the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and the creation of personal kinds of truth

• Applied aesthetics – application of the philosophy of aesthetics to art and culture.

Epistemology

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the source, nature and validity of knowledge.

• Social epistemology – inquiry into the social aspects of knowledge.
• Formal epistemology – the application of formal models to study knowledge.
• Metaepistemology – studying the foundations of epistemology itself.

Ethics

Ethics – study of value and morality.

• Applied ethics – philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of particular issues in private and public life that are matters of moral judgment. It is thus the attempts to use philosophical methods to identify the morally correct course of action in various fields of human life.
  • Environmental ethics – studies ethical issues concerning the non-human world. It exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including environmental law, environmental sociology, ecotheology, ecological economics, ecology and environmental geography.
  • Professional ethics – ethics to improve professionalism
  • Bioethics – study of the typically controversial ethical issues emerging from new situations and possibilities brought about by advances in biology and medicine.
• Descriptive ethics – study of people’s beliefs about morality
• Discourse ethics – discovery of ethical principles through the study of language
• Formal ethics – discovery of ethical principles through the application of logic
• Normative ethics – study of ethical theories that prescribe how people ought to act
• Metaethics – branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and judgments

Logic

Logic – the systematic study of the form of valid inference and reasoning.

• Classical logic
  • Propositional logic
  • First-order logic
  • Second-order logic
  • Higher-order logic
• Non-classical logic
  • Description logic
  • Digital logic
  • Fuzzy logic
  • Intuitionistic logic
  • Many-valued logic
  • Modal logic
    • Alethic logic
    • Deontic logic
    • Doxastic logic
    • Epistemic logic
    • Temporal logic
  • Paraconsistent logic
  • Substructural logic

Metaphysics

Metaphysics – concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it.

• Cosmology – the study of the nature and origins of the universe.

• Ontology – philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.
  • Meta-ontology – study of the ontological foundations of ontology itself.
• Philosophy of space and time – branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology, and character of space and time.

Philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind – studies the nature of the mind, mental properties, consciousness, and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain.

• Philosophy of action – theories about the processes causing willful human bodily movements of a more or less complex kind. This area of thought has attracted the strong interest of philosophers ever since Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Third Book).
• Philosophy of self – The philosophy of self is the study of the many conditions of identity that make one subject of experience distinct from other experiences

Other

• Meta-philosophy
• Philosophy of education
• Philosophy of history
• Philosophy of language
• Philosophy of law
• Philosophy of mathematics
• Philosophy of religion
• Philosophy of science
• Political philosophy
• Environmental philosophy

Philosophic traditions by region

Regional variations of philosophy.

African philosophy

• Africana philosophy
• Ethiopian philosophy
• Ubuntu philosophy

Eastern philosophy

• Buddhist philosophy
• Chinese philosophy
• Indian philosophy
  • Hindu philosophy
  • Jain philosophy
  • Sikh philosophy
• Indonesian philosophy
• Iranian philosophy
• Japanese philosophy
• Korean philosophy
• Vietnamese philosophy

Western philosophy

• American philosophy
• Australian philosophy
• British philosophy
  • Scottish philosophy
• Czech philosophy
• Dutch philosophy
• French philosophy
• German philosophy
• Italian philosophy
• Yugoslav philosophy

History of philosophy

The history of philosophy in specific contexts of time and space.

Timeline of philosophy

• 11th century in philosophy
• 12th century in philosophy
• 13th century in philosophy
• 14th century in philosophy
• 15th century in philosophy
• 16th century in philosophy
• 17th century in philosophy
• 18th century in philosophy
• 19th-century philosophy
• 20th-century philosophy

Ancient and classical philosophy

Philosophies during ancient history.

Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy

• Pre-Socratic philosophy
  • Milesian school
  • Pythagoreanism
  • Ephesian school
  • Eleatics
  • Pluralist school
  • Atomism
  • Sophism
• Classical Greek philosophy
  • Cynicism
  • Cyrenaics
  • Platonism
  • Peripatetic school
  • Megarian school
  • Eretrian school
• Hellenistic philosophy
  • Academic skepticism
  • Epicureanism
  • Neoplatonism
  • Neopythagoreanism
  • Pyrrhonism
  • Stoicism

Classical Chinese philosophy

• Hundred Schools of Thought
  • Confucianism
  • Legalism
  • Taoism
  • Mohism
  • School of Naturalists
  • School of Names
  • School of Diplomacy
  • Agriculturalism
  • Syncretism
  • Yangism

Classical Indian philosophy

• Orthodox schools
  • Samkhya
  • Yoga
  • Nyaya
  • Vaisheshika
  • Mīmāṃsā
  • Vedanta
• Heterodox schools
  • Ajñana
  • Jain philosophy
  • Buddhist philosophy
  • Ājīvika
  • Charvaka

Medieval and post-classical philosophy

Philosophies during post-classical history.

Christian philosophy

• Scholasticism
• Thomism

Islamic philosophy

• Avicennism
• Averroism
• Illuminationism

Jewish philosophy

• Judeo-Islamic philosophies

Post-classical Chinese philosophy

• Neo-Confucianism
• Xuanxue
• Zen

Modern and contemporary philosophy

Philosophies during the modern era.

Renaissance philosophy

• Renaissance humanism
• Renaissance Jewish philosophy
• Machiavellianism
• Neostoicism
• Ramism
• School of Salamanca

Early modern philosophy

• Empiricism
• Rationalism
• Idealism

Contemporary philosophy

• Analytic philosophy
• Continental philosophy
  • Existentialism
  • Phenomenology
• Contemporary Asian philosophy
  • Buddhist modernism
  • New Confucianism
  • Maoism
  • Kyoto School
  • Neo-Vedanta
• Contemporary Islamic philosophy
  • Transcendent theosophy
• Pragmatism
• Traditionalist School

Philosophical schools of thought

Philosophical schools of thought not tied to particular historic contexts.

Aesthetical movements

• Symbolism
• Romanticism
• Historicism
• Classicism
• Modernism
• Postmodernism
• Psychoanalytic theory

Epistemological stances

Ethical theories

• Consequentialism
• Deontology
• Virtue ethics
• Moral realism
• Moral relativism
• Error theory
• Non-cognitivism
• Ethical egoism
• Cultural relativism
• Evolutionary ethics
• Evolution of morality

Logical systems

• Classical logic
• Intermediate logic
• Intuitionistic logic
• Minimal logic
• Relevant logic
• Affine logic
• Linear logic
• Ordered logic
• Dialetheism

Metaphysical stances

Political philosophies

• Anarchism
• Authoritarianism
• Conservatism
• Liberalism
• Libertarianism
• Social democracy
• Socialism
• Communism

Philosophy of language theories and stances

Philosophy of mind theories and stances

Philosophy of religion stances

Philosophy of science theories and stances

Philosophical literature

• Blackwell Companion to Philosophy
• A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
• A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston

Reference works

• Encyclopedia of Philosophy – one of the major English encyclopedias of philosophy. The second edition, edited by Donald M. Borchert, was published in ten volumes in 2006 by Thomson Gale. Volumes 1–9 contain alphabetically ordered articles.
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – free online encyclopedia on philosophical topics and philosophers founded by James Fieser in 1995. The current general editors are James Fieser (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee at Martin) and Bradley Dowden (Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Sacramento). The staff also includes numerous area editors as well as volunteers.
• Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy – encyclopedia of philosophy edited by Edward Craig that was first published by Routledge in 1998 (ISBN 978-0415073103). Originally published in both 10 volumes of print and as a CD-ROM, in 2002 it was made available online on a subscription basis. The online version is regularly updated with new articles and revisions to existing articles. It has 1,300 contributors providing over 2,000 scholarly articles.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely-accessible to internet users. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from many academic institutions worldwide.

Philosophers

Lists of philosophers

• Timeline of Western philosophers
• Timeline of Eastern philosophers