Philosophy History

Philosophy (from Greek 'love of wisdom') is the systematic study of fundamental questions: What is real (metaphysics)? What can we know (epistemology)? How should we live (ethics)? What is beautiful (aesthetics)? What is logical (logic)? It originated simultaneously in ancient Greece, India (Upanishads, Buddhism), and China (Confucius, Laozi) in the 'Axial Age' (800-200 BCE). Western philosophy's trajectory: Socrates (ethics, the examined life); Plato (Forms, ideal state); Aristotle (categories, logic, empiricism); Epicurus (pleasure as absence of pain); Stoics (virtue and acceptance); Augustine (Christian philosophy); Aquinas (faith and reason); Descartes (I think therefore I am); Spinoza (pantheism); Locke (liberalism, tabula rasa); Hume (skepticism); Kant (categorical imperative, limits of knowledge); Hegel (dialectics, Spirit); Marx (historical materialism); Nietzsche (will to power, God is dead); Wittgenstein (language as limit of thought).