Most Famous Ancient Greek Philosophers

Philosophers in this tradition

• Aristotle 384 BC – 322 BC · Greek

  Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath born in Stagira in 384 BC. A student of Plato and tutor to Alexander the Great, he founded the Peripatetic school at the Lyceum in...

• Plato 428 BC – 348 BC · Greek

  Plato was an Athenian philosopher and the founder of the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. A student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, ...

• Socrates 470 BC – 399 BC · Greek

  Socrates was a classical Athenian philosopher credited as a founder of Western philosophy. He wrote nothing himself; his ideas survive through the dialogues of his students, chi...

• Epicurus 341 BC – 270 BC · Greek

  Epicurus was a Greek Hellenistic philosopher who founded the school known as the Garden in Athens around 307 BC. His ethics taught that pleasure, properly understood as the abse...

• Democritus c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC · Greek

  Democritus of Abdera was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of the fifth and early fourth centuries BC, regarded with his teacher Leucippus as a co-founder of the atomist traditio...

• Diogenes of Sinope c. 412 BC – 323 BC · Greek

  Diogenes of Sinope was an ancient Greek philosopher and one of the founders of the Cynic school. After his exile from Sinope on the Black Sea coast he settled in Athens, where h...

• Heraclitus c. 535 BC – c. 475 BC · Greek

  Heraclitus of Ephesus was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC, known in antiquity as the Obscure for the difficulty of his sayings. H...

• Pythagoras 570 BC – 495 BC · Greek

  Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher and mathematician born on the island of Samos around 570 BC. He founded a religious and philosophical brotherhood at Croton in southern Italy,...

• Sextus Empiricus c. 160 – c. 210 · Greek

  Sextus Empiricus was a Greek physician and philosopher of the second and early third centuries AD, the principal extant source for ancient Pyrrhonian Skepticism. His major works...

• Parmenides c. 515 BC – c. 460 BC · Greek

  Parmenides of Elea was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC, the founder of the Eleatic school and one of the most influential thinker...

• Pyrrho of Elis c. 360 BC – c. 270 BC · Greek

  Pyrrho of Elis was an ancient Greek philosopher of the late fourth and early third centuries BC, the founder of the philosophical school of Skepticism that bears his name as Pyr...

• Theophrastus c. 371 BC – c. 287 BC · Greek

  Theophrastus of Eresus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the immediate successor of Aristotle as head of the Peripatetic School at the Lyceum in Athens. He directed the schoo...

• Xenophanes 570 BC – 475 BC · Greek

  Xenophanes of Colophon was a Greek philosopher and poet who traveled widely after leaving Ionia and lived to a great age. He produced the earliest sustained critique of anthropo...

• Anaxagoras c. 500 BC – c. 428 BC · Greek

  Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was an ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher of the 5th century BC, born in Ionia and active for many years in Athens, where he was a friend and report...

• Anaximander 610 BC – 546 BC · Greek

  Anaximander was a Greek philosopher of Miletus, a pupil and successor of Thales, born around 610 BC. He is the first known thinker to have written a work of natural philosophy i...

• Anaximenes 585 BC – 528 BC · Greek

  Anaximenes of Miletus was a Greek philosopher and the third of the Milesian school, after Thales and Anaximander. Born around 585 BC, he held that air is the underlying principl...

• Antisthenes c. 445 BC – c. 365 BC · Greek

  Antisthenes of Athens was an ancient Greek philosopher of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, a student of Socrates and traditionally regarded as the founder of the Cynic school of ph...

• Empedocles c. 490 BC – c. 430 BC · Greek

  Empedocles of Acragas was an ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher of the 5th century BC, born in the Greek city of Acragas in Sicily. His doctrine of the four elements, earth,...

• Gorgias 483 BC – 375 BC · Greek

  Gorgias of Leontini was a Greek Sophist and rhetorician who lived to a great age, traveling between Sicily and Athens as a celebrated public speaker. His treatise On Non-Being a...

• Protagoras 490 BC – 420 BC · Greek

  Protagoras of Abdera was a Greek thinker traditionally counted as the first of the Sophists. He traveled widely as a teacher of rhetoric and civic virtue, charging substantial f...

• Thales of Miletus c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC · Greek

  Thales of Miletus was an ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher of the 7th and 6th centuries BC, traditionally regarded as the first philosopher of the Western tradition and a f...

• Zeno of Elea 490 BC – 430 BC · Greek

  Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Parmenides. He defended his teacher's claim that reality is one and unchanging by constructing a series of paradoxes intended...

• Aenesidemus c. 100 BC – c. 40 BC · Greek

  Aenesidemus of Cnossos was a 1st-century BC Greek philosopher who revived the Pyrrhonian school of Skepticism after a period in which Skepticism had been dominated by the New Ac...

• Hipparchia of Maroneia c. 350 BC – c. 280 BC · Greek

  Hipparchia of Maroneia was an ancient Greek Cynic philosopher of the late 4th and early 3rd centuries BC, one of the few women philosophers documented in the historical record f...

• Strato of Lampsacus c. 335 BC – c. 269 BC · Greek

  Strato of Lampsacus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the third head of the Peripatetic School at the Lyceum in Athens, succeeding Theophrastus in 287 BC. Known in antiquity ...