A family tree of philosophy, East and West
Every idea is an answer to an older one. Follow the arguments: who inherited them, who turned against them, and why.
Read → across
Each lane is a tradition and time runs left to right. A block is a school, as long as it lasted.
Follow ⤳ a line
Solid lines carry an idea forward. Dashed red lines argue against it. Dotted blue lines cross between traditions.
Ask ? a question
Put one question to every tradition, and read their answers side by side.
01 · Lineage
The family tree of ideas
Each block is a school, drawn for as long as it lasted. Lines show what passed between them. Select a school to light up where it came from and what it led to.
02 · Thinkers
Who taught, read and argued with whom
Each square is a thinker, placed at about the age of forty. Lines join teachers to students, readers to the books that shaped them, and critics to their targets.
03 · Crossings
Where traditions met
Read a row to see what a tradition gave away, a column to see what it took in. Each square counts the schools and thinkers that crossed; select one to read how.
04 · Questions
One question, many answers
Philosophy is easiest to compare at the level of its questions. Pick one and read how each tradition answered it, in order of time.
05 · Schools
Every school, by tradition
An index of the whole atlas. Each entry opens the school’s page: the question it asked, why it arose, the reasoning behind it, its people and its books.
China & East Asia
c. 500 BCE – todayConfucianismPeople become fully humane through learning, ritual and family relationships, and good government rests on the ruler’s virtue rather than on force.c. 430–200 BCEMohismCare for everyone impartially, and judge every doctrine and practice by whether it benefits the people.c. 4th c. BCE – todayDaoismThe Dao, the nameless way of all things, works without forcing; people flourish by returning to spontaneity and acting through non-action (wuwei).c. 380–250 BCESchool of NamesThe relation between names and reality is puzzling, and careful argument and paradox can show how language carves up the world.c. 350–200 BCELegalismOrder comes not from virtue but from clear public laws, impartial rewards and punishments, and the ruler’s command of power and technique.3rd–5th c. CEXuanxue (“Profound Learning”)Behind the many things lies a formless root, or, as Guo Xiang replied, things simply arise of themselves; the sage combines Confucian conduct with Daoist insight.7th c. – todayChan / Zen BuddhismAwakening is seeing one’s own original nature directly, here and now, not something acquired through scriptures or step-by-step accumulation.11th c. – early 20th c.Neo-Confucianism (Cheng–Zhu school)All things share one principle (li) expressed through material force (qi); by investigating things and cultivating the mind, a person recovers original goodness and can become a sage.12th – late 19th c.School of Mind (Lu–Wang school)Moral principle is not out in things but in one’s own mind; everyone has innate good knowing (liangzhi), and true knowing is inseparable from acting.1911 – todayKyoto SchoolReality is grasped not as an object but through “pure experience” and “absolute nothingness”, a field in which self and world arise together.1920s – todayNew ConfucianismConfucian moral metaphysics can be renewed in dialogue with Western philosophy and can ground a Chinese modernity that includes science and democracy.
India
c. 800–200 BCEVedic & Upanishadic thoughtThe innermost self (ātman) is one with the ultimate reality (Brahman), and knowing this frees a person from the cycle of rebirth.c. 6th c. BCE – c. 14th c. CECārvāka / Lokāyata materialismOnly perception gives reliable knowledge, so only the material world can be affirmed: no soul survives death, and there is no karma or afterlife.c. 6th–5th c. BCE – todayJain philosophyCountless eternal souls are bound by karmic matter and can free themselves through non-violence, restraint and right knowledge; and reality is many-sided (anekāntavāda).c. 5th c. BCE – todayEarly Buddhism & AbhidharmaSuffering comes from craving rooted in ignorance of impermanence and non-self, and it can be ended by following the Eightfold Path.proto-Sāṃkhya c. 4th c. BCE; classical texts c. 4th–5th c. CE – todaySāṃkhya & YogaReality has two irreducible principles—pure consciousness (puruṣa) and active matter (prakṛti)—and liberation is consciousness recognising that it was never matter.c. 2nd c. BCE – 18th c. CEMīmāṃsāThe Veda is eternal and authorless, its injunctions are the only source of knowledge about duty (dharma), and any cognition is valid unless proved otherwise.c. 2nd c. BCE – 18th c. CENyāya–VaiśeṣikaThe world is made of real, knowable categories—substances, qualities, actions, universals—and disciplined reasoning can prove what perception alone cannot, including a creator God.c. 150 CE – todayMadhyamakaNothing has an intrinsic nature (svabhāva), because everything arises dependently; this ‘emptiness’ is the Middle Way between believing in essences and believing in nothing.c. 4th c. CE – todayYogācāraWhat we experience as an outer world is a transformation of consciousness; liberation comes from seeing through the split between perceiving subject and perceived object.c. 480–1200 CE in India; continued in TibetBuddhist epistemology (Pramāṇa school)There are only two valid means of knowledge: perception, which grasps unique particulars, and inference, which works through general concepts.c. 6th c. CE – todayAdvaita VedāntaBrahman, pure consciousness, is the only reality; the self is Brahman, and the world of many things is an appearance produced by ignorance (avidyā).11th c. CE – todayTheistic Vedānta (Viśiṣṭādvaita & Dvaita)Brahman is a personal God (Viṣṇu), souls and the world are real, and liberation comes through loving devotion (bhakti) and God’s grace.late 19th c. – todayNeo-Vedānta & modern Indian thoughtThe Vedāntic insight that all beings share one divine reality should be lived out as practical service, religious tolerance and national renewal.
Greece & Rome
c. 585–525 BCEMilesian schoolEverything is made of one underlying stuff, and nature can be explained by natural causes rather than the whims of gods.c. 530–350 BCEPythagoreanismThe cosmos is an ordered harmony structured by number, and the immortal soul is purified by understanding that order.c. 490–430 BCEEleatic schoolReason shows that what is cannot come to be, change or be many, so the changing world of the senses is an illusion.c. 460–428 BCEPluralistsParmenides was right that nothing comes from nothing, but the world is many unchanging elements whose mixing and separating is what we call change.c. 460–380 BCESophistsHuman beings make their own measures: laws, values and even truths vary between communities, and skilled speech can make any case persuasive.c. 440–370 BCEAtomismReality is nothing but indivisible bodies moving in empty space; everything we perceive arises from their shapes, positions and arrangements.c. 430–399 BCESocratic philosophyThe unexamined life is not worth living: by questioning what we think we know about virtue, we discover our ignorance and begin to live well.c. 400 BCE – 5th c. CECynicismVirtue alone is enough for happiness, and it is found by living simply according to nature, scorning wealth, status and social convention.387 BCE – 6th c. CEPlatonismBeyond the changing world of the senses lie eternal, perfect Forms, such as Justice and Beauty themselves, which only reason can know and which make things what they are.335 BCE – c. 200 CE (and long after)AristotelianismForms are not in a separate heaven but in things themselves; to understand anything is to grasp its matter, form, source of change and purpose.c. 320 BCE – c. 200 CEPyrrhonism & Academic skepticismFor every argument an equally strong opposing argument can be found, so we should suspend judgement, and tranquillity follows.306 BCE – 3rd c. CEEpicureanismThe goal of life is pleasure understood as tranquillity: freedom from bodily pain and mental fear, reached through simple living, friendship and a true understanding of nature.c. 300 BCE – 3rd c. CEStoicismVirtue is the only good; by living in agreement with nature’s rational order and judging events rightly, we can be free and at peace whatever happens.c. 245 – 6th c. CENeoplatonismAll reality flows from a single, ineffable source, the One, through Intellect and Soul down to matter, and the soul’s task is to turn back and return to it.
The Islamic world
8th c. – presentKalām (Muʿtazila & Ashʿarism)Faith must be defended by rational argument; the Muʿtazila made God’s justice and unity the measure, while the Ashʿarites made God’s unlimited power and will the measure.c. 830 – 12th c.Falsafa (Arabic Aristotelianism)Greek philosophy, mainly Aristotle with a Neoplatonic frame, is the highest form of human knowledge, and its demonstrated truths agree with the inner meaning of revelation.9th c. – presentSufi metaphysicsThe deepest knowledge of God comes by tasting and unveiling, not by argument; for Ibn ʿArabī, God alone truly is, and creatures are God’s self-disclosures.1186 – presentIlluminationism & Transcendent TheosophyReality is a gradation of light (Suhrawardī), or of existence itself (Mullā Ṣadrā), and the most basic knowledge is the self’s direct presence to itself.
Medieval Europe
c. 2nd – 8th c. CEPatristic & Augustinian philosophyChristian faith can be understood with the tools of Greek philosophy, above all Platonism: God is the eternal Good, and evil is a lack of good.c. 900 – 15th c.Medieval Jewish philosophyThe Torah, rightly read, agrees with demonstrated reason; much of its language about God is figurative, because God is beyond all human description.c. 1070 – early 17th c.ScholasticismReason, trained by Aristotle’s logic, can prove much of what faith believes and clarify the rest, because truth cannot contradict truth.c. 1260 – 16th c.Latin AverroismPhilosophy should follow Aristotle as read by Averroes wherever the argument leads, even to conclusions that contradict Christian doctrine.c. 1320 – 15th c.Late-medieval nominalismOnly individual things exist; universals like “humanity” are signs in the mind and in language, not real natures shared by things.
Early modern Europe
c. 1350–1600Renaissance humanismThe recovered classics of Greece and Rome show what human beings can become, so learning should centre on human life, language and civic action.1620 – 1776British empiricismAll our ideas and knowledge come from experience, so claims that reach beyond any possible experience deserve doubt.1637 – mid-18th c.RationalismReason alone, reasoning from clear and certain first principles as geometry does, can reveal the basic structure of reality.1642 – late 18th c.Social contract theoryPolitical authority is legitimate only because free and equal individuals would agree, or have agreed, to create it.c. 1685–1800The EnlightenmentHuman reason, freely and publicly used, can criticise tradition and authority and make human life better.1781 – c. 1930 (Neo-Kantianism)Kant’s critical philosophyOur minds do not passively copy the world: space, time and concepts such as cause are forms we bring to all experience.1789 – todayUtilitarianismThe right action is the one that produces the greatest total happiness, with everyone’s happiness counting equally.1790s – 1840sGerman IdealismReality is not a heap of dead things but the self-unfolding activity of reason or spirit, which comes to know itself through nature and history.
Continental
1792 – todayFeminist philosophyThe subordination of women is not natural but made by society and thought, and philosophy must examine how gender shapes knowledge, ethics and politics.c. 1805 – todayHermeneuticsUnderstanding is interpretation: we grasp texts, people and history by moving between parts and whole, always from within a tradition.1840s forerunners; heyday 1940s–1960sExistentialismExistence precedes essence: humans are not born with a fixed nature but make themselves through free choices for which they alone are responsible.1840s – todayMarxismHistory is driven by material production and class struggle, and capitalism, which exploits wage labour, will give way to a classless society.1900 – todayPhenomenologyPhilosophy should begin by describing experience exactly as it is lived, setting aside assumptions about what lies behind it.1916 – 1970sStructuralismMeaning comes not from things in themselves but from their differences within a system, so culture, like language, can be read as structure.1923 – todayCritical theory (Frankfurt School)Social theory should not just describe society but expose the forms of domination it hides, with a view to human emancipation.1950s – todayPostcolonial thoughtColonialism ruled minds as well as lands, so liberation requires undoing the categories through which the West described and governed others.1966 – todayPost-structuralismStructures of meaning and knowledge are never closed or neutral: they shift, exclude and exercise power, so no foundation escapes critique.
Analytic & pragmatist
1870s – todayPragmatismThe meaning and truth of an idea lie in its practical consequences: ideas are tools for coping with experience, tested by how they work.1879 – c. 1930Early analytic philosophyMany philosophical problems come from the misleading surface of language, and can be solved by analysing statements into their true logical form.1920s – 1950sLogical positivism (Vienna Circle)A statement means something only if experience could verify it or logic alone makes it true; traditional metaphysics is therefore literally meaningless.1934 – todayPost-positivist philosophy of scienceScience does not grow by piling up verified facts: theories are tested as wholes, can be refuted but never finally proven, and change through historical upheavals.c. 1945 – 1970Ordinary language philosophyPhilosophical puzzles arise when words are taken out of their everyday use; looking closely at how language is actually used dissolves them.1950s – todayAnalytic philosophy of mindThe mind is studied as part of nature: mental states are explained by what brains do, while consciousness remains the hardest test of that picture.1958 – todayVirtue ethics revivalEthics should ask what kind of person to be and what makes a human life go well, not only which rules or consequences make acts right.1971 – todayLiberal theories of justice (Rawls and after)A just society is one whose basic institutions free and equal people could agree to: protecting basic liberties, and allowing inequalities only when they benefit the worst-off.