Most Famous Pre-Socratic Philosophers

Philosophers in this tradition

• 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,...

• 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...

• 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,...

• Cratylus c. 460 BC – c. 380 BC · Greek

  Cratylus was a Greek philosopher of late fifth and early fourth century BC Athens, an Heraclitean who carried the doctrine of universal flux to its extreme conclusion. According...

• 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...

• 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...

• Leucippus c. 480 BC – c. 420 BC · Greek

  Leucippus was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and the founder, with his pupil Democritus, of the atomist tradition. Almost nothing survives of his biography or writing...

• 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...

• 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...

• Melissus of Samos c. 470 BC – c. 400 BC · Greek

  Melissus of Samos was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and the last great representative of the Eleatic school founded by Parmenides. Active in the mid-fifth century BC, he comm...

• 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...

• Philolaus 470 BC – 385 BC · Greek

  Philolaus of Croton was a Greek Pythagorean philosopher and the first member of the Pythagorean school whose writings survived into the classical period. His fragments, preserve...

• 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...

• Theano c. 546 BC – c. 470 BC · Greek

  Theano of Croton was a Greek Pythagorean philosopher of the late sixth and early fifth century BC and one of the earliest women in the Western philosophical tradition. According...

• 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...

• Aesara of Lucania c. 350 BC – c. 280 BC · Greek

  Aesara of Lucania was a Pythagorean philosopher of the fourth or third century BC, possibly the daughter of the Pythagorean Aresas, and one of the few female Pythagoreans whose ...

• Alcmaeon of Croton c. 540 BC – c. 460 BC · Greek

  Alcmaeon of Croton was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and physician, sometimes counted among the early Pythagoreans of southern Italy. He is the earliest known author of a Gre...

• Archelaus c. 490 BC – c. 405 BC · Greek

  Archelaus of Athens was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, pupil of Anaxagoras and, according to a strong ancient tradition, the teacher of Socrates. He combined his master's doc...

• Archytas of Tarentum 428 BC – 347 BC · Greek

  Archytas of Tarentum was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, statesman, and friend of Plato, the leading figure of the late Pythagorean tradition. He served as elected general o...

• Diogenes of Apollonia c. 460 BC – c. 390 BC · Greek

  Diogenes of Apollonia was a Greek pre-Socratic natural philosopher of the late fifth century BC and the last great representative of the early Ionian tradition of inquiry into t...

• Hippasus of Metapontum c. 530 BC – c. 450 BC · Greek

  Hippasus of Metapontum was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and Pythagorean of the early fifth century BC, traditionally credited or, in the less friendly versions of the story,...

• Pherecydes of Syros c. 580 BC – c. 520 BC · Greek

  Pherecydes of Syros was a Greek thinker of the early sixth century BC, traditionally counted as the teacher of Pythagoras and the author of the first Greek prose work on the god...

• Phintys of Sparta c. 350 BC – c. 280 BC · Greek

  Phintys of Sparta was a Pythagorean philosopher of the fourth or third century BC, the daughter of the Pythagorean Callicrates of Croton and one of the few female Pythagoreans w...