Outline of philosophy

Last updated February 14, 2025

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.^[1]^[2] It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions (such as mysticism, myth) by being critical and generally systematic and by its reliance on rational argument.^[3] It involves logical analysis of language and clarification of the meaning of words and concepts.

Branches of philosophy
Aesthetics
Epistemology
Ethics
Logic
Metaphysics
Other
Philosophic traditions by region
Africana philosophy
Eastern philosophy
Middle Eastern philosophy
Indigenous American philosophy
Western philosophy
History of philosophy
Timeline of philosophy
Ancient and classical philosophy
Medieval and post-classical philosophy
Modern and contemporary philosophy
Philosophical schools of thought
Aesthetical movements
Epistemological stances
Ethical theories
Logical systems
Metaphysical stances
Political philosophies
Philosophy of language theories and stances
Philosophy of mind theories and stances
Philosophy of religion stances
Philosophy of science theories and stances
Philosophical literature
Reference works
General introduction
Topical introductions
Historical introductions
Lists
See also
References
External links

The word "philosophy" comes from the Greek philosophia (φιλοσοφία), which literally means "love of wisdom".^[4]^[5]^[6]

Branches of philosophy

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

Aesthetics

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

Philosophy of art

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.
- Bioethics – analysis of controversial ethical issues emerging from advances in medicine.
- 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.
- Medical ethics – studies ethical issues concerning medicine and medical research.
- Professional ethics – ethics to improve professionalism.
Discourse ethics – discovery of ethical principles through the study of language.
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.

Also regarded as the separate formal science.

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.

Philosophic traditions by region

Regional variations of philosophy.

Africana philosophy

Eastern philosophy

Middle Eastern philosophy

Indigenous American philosophy

Aztec philosophy

History of philosophy

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

Timeline of philosophy

Ancient and classical philosophy

Philosophies during ancient history.

Classical Chinese philosophy

Hundred Schools of Thought

Classical Indian philosophy

Medieval and post-classical philosophy

Philosophies during post-classical history.

Christian philosophy

Islamic philosophy

Jewish philosophy

Judeo-Islamic philosophies

Post-classical Chinese philosophy

Modern and contemporary philosophy

Philosophies during the modern era.

Renaissance philosophy

Early modern philosophy

Contemporary philosophy

Philosophical schools of thought

Philosophical schools of thought not tied to particular historic contexts.

Aesthetical movements

Ethical theories

Logical systems

Political philosophies

Philosophical literature

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 – a 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.
Chan, Wing-tsit (1963). A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-01964-2.
Huang, Siu-chi (1999). Essentials of Neo-Confucianism: Eight Major Philosophers of the Song and Ming Periods. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-26449-8.
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy by Robert Audi
Edwards, Paul, ed. (1967). The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Macmillan & Free Press.; in 1996, a ninth supplemental volume appeared that updated the classic 1967 encyclopedia.
International Directory of Philosophy and Philosophers . Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
Directory of American Philosophers . Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
Routledge History of Philosophy (10 vols.) edited by John Marenbon
History of Philosophy (9 vols.) by Frederick Copleston
A History of Western Philosophy (5 vols.) by W.T. Jones
History of Italian Philosophy (2 vols.) by Eugenio Garin. Translated from Italian and Edited by Giorgio Pinton. Introduction by Leon Pompa.
Encyclopaedia of Indian Philosophies (8 vols.), edited by Karl H. Potter et al. (first 6 volumes out of print)
Indian Philosophy (2 vols.) by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
A History of Indian Philosophy (5 vols.) by Surendranath Dasgupta
History of Chinese Philosophy (2 vols.) by Fung Yu-lan, Derk Bodde
Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings by Wang Yang-ming by Chan, Wing-tsit
Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy edited by Antonio S. Cua
Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion by Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Kurt Friedrichs
Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy by Brian Carr, Indira Mahalingam
A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy: Sanskrit Terms Defined in English by John A. Grimes
History of Islamic Philosophy edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Oliver Leaman
History of Jewish Philosophy edited by Daniel H. Frank, Oliver Leaman
A History of Russian Philosophy: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Centuries by Valerii Aleksandrovich Kuvakin
Ayer, A.J. et al., Ed. (1994) A Dictionary of Philosophical Quotations. Blackwell Reference Oxford. Oxford, Basil Blackwell Ltd.
Blackburn, S., Ed. (1996)The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Mautner, T., Ed. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. London, Penguin Books.
Runes, D., ed. (1942). The Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: The Philosophical Library, Inc. Archived from the original on 24 April 2014. Retrieved 27 December 2005.
Angeles, P.A., Ed. (1992). The HarperCollins Dictionary of Philosophy. New York, Harper Perennial.
Bunnin, Nicholas; Tsui-James, Eric, eds. (15 April 2008). The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-99787-1.
Hoffman, Eric, Ed. (1997) Guidebook for Publishing Philosophy. Charlottesville, Philosophy Documentation Center.
Popkin, R.H. (1999). The Columbia History of Western Philosophy. New York, Columbia University Press.
Bullock, Alan, and Oliver Stallybrass, jt. eds. The Harper Dictionary of Modern Thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. xix, 684 p. N.B.: First published in England under the title, "The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought". ISBN 978-0-06-010578-5
Reese, W.L. Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1980. iv, 644 p. ISBN 978-0-391-00688-1

General introduction

Aristotle (1941). Richard McKeon (ed.). The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: Random House.
Blumenau, Ralph. Philosophy and Living. ISBN 978-0-907845-33-1
Craig, Edward. Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. ISBN 978-0-19-285421-6
Harrison-Barbet, Anthony, Mastering Philosophy. ISBN 978-0-333-69343-8
Russell, Bertrand. The Problems of Philosophy . ISBN 978-0-19-511552-9
Sinclair, Alistair J. What is Philosophy? An Introduction, 2008, ISBN 978-1-903765-94-4
Sober, Elliott. (2001). Core Questions in Philosophy: A Text with Readings. Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-189869-1
Solomon, Robert C. Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy. ISBN 978-0-534-16708-0
Warburton, Nigel. Philosophy: The Basics. ISBN 978-0-415-14694-4
Nagel, Thomas. What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy. ISBN 978-0-19-505292-3
Classics of Philosophy (Vols. 1, 2, & 3) by Louis P. Pojman
Cottingham, John. Western Philosophy: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2008. Print. Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies.
Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View. ISBN 978-0-345-36809-6

Topical introductions

African

Imbo, Samuel Oluoch. An Introduction to African Philosophy. ISBN 978-0-8476-8841-8

Eastern

A Source Book in Indian Philosophy by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Charles A. Moore
Hamilton, Sue. Indian Philosophy: a Very Short Introduction. ISBN 978-0-19-285374-5
Kupperman, Joel J. Classic Asian Philosophy: A Guide to the Essential Texts. ISBN 978-0-19-513335-6
Lee, Joe and Powell, Jim. Eastern Philosophy For Beginners. ISBN 978-0-86316-282-4
Smart, Ninian. World Philosophies. ISBN 978-0-415-22852-7
Copleston, Frederick. Philosophy in Russia: From Herzen to Lenin and Berdyaev. ISBN 978-0-268-01569-5

Islamic

Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings edited by Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Leaman, Oliver (2000-04-14). A Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy. ISBN 978-0-7456-1960-6.
Corbin, Henry (23 June 2014) [1993]. History Of Islamic Philosophy. Translated by Sherrard, Liadain; Sherrard, Philip. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-135-19888-6.
Aminrazavi, Mehdi Amin Razavi; Nasr, Seyyed Hossein; Nasr, PH.D., Seyyed Hossein (16 December 2013). The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-78105-6.

Historical introductions

General

Oizerman, Teodor (1988). The Main Trends in Philosophy. A Theoretical Analysis of the History of Philosophy (PDF). translated by H. Campbell Creighton, M.A., Oxon (2nd ed.). Moscow: Progress Publishers. ISBN 978-5-01-000506-1. Archived from the original (DjVu, etc.) on 2012-03-06. Retrieved 20 January 2011. First published in Russian as Главные философские направления.
Higgins, Kathleen M. and Solomon, Robert C. A Short History of Philosophy. ISBN 978-0-19-510196-6
Durant, Will, Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers, Pocket, 1991, ISBN 978-0-671-73916-4
Oizerman, Teodor (1973). Problems of the History of Philosophy. translated from Russian by Robert Daglish (1st ed.). Moscow: Progress Publishers. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 20 January 2011. First published in Russian as Проблемы историко-философской науки.

Ancient

Knight, Kelvin. Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre. ISBN 978-0-7456-1977-4

Medieval

The Phenomenology Reader by Dermot Moran, Timothy Mooney
Kim, J. and Ernest Sosa, Ed. (1999). Metaphysics: An Anthology. Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies. Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Husserl, Edmund; Welton, Donn (1999). The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-21273-3.

Modern and contemporary

The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill by Edwin Arthur
European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche by Monroe Beardsley
Existentialism: Basic Writings (Second Edition) by Charles Guignon, Derk Pereboom
Curley, Edwin, A Spinoza Reader, Princeton, 1994, ISBN 978-0-691-00067-1
Bullock, Alan, R.B. Woodings, and John Cumming, eds. The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thinkers, in series, Fontana Original[s]. Hammersmith, Eng.: Fontana Press, 1992 [1983]. xxv, 867 p. ISBN 978-0-00-636965-3
Scruton, Roger. A Short History of Modern Philosophy. ISBN 978-0-415-26763-2
Contemporary Analytic Philosophy: Core Readings by James Baillie
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Thinking it Through – An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, 2003, ISBN 978-0-19-513458-2
Critchley, Simon. Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. ISBN 978-0-19-285359-2

Lists

References

↑ Jenny Teichmann and Katherine C. Evans, Philosophy: A Beginner's Guide (Blackwell Publishing, 1999), p. 1: "Philosophy is a study of problems which are ultimate, abstract and very general. These problems are concerned with the nature of existence, knowledge, morality, reason and human purpose."
↑ A.C. Grayling, Philosophy 1: A Guide through the Subject (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 1: "The aim of philosophical inquiry is to gain insight into questions about knowledge, truth, reason, reality, meaning, mind, and value."
↑ Anthony Quinton, in T. Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 666: "Philosophy is rationally critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world (metaphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). Each of the three elements in this list has a non-philosophical counterpart, from which it is distinguished by its explicitly rational and critical way of proceeding and by its systematic nature. Everyone has some general conception of the nature of the world in which they live and of their place in it. Metaphysics replaces the unargued assumptions embodied in such a conception with a rational and organized body of beliefs about the world as a whole. Everyone has occasion to doubt and question beliefs, their own or those of others, with more or less success and without any theory of what they are doing. Epistemology seeks by argument to make explicit the rules of correct belief formation. Everyone governs their conduct by directing it to desired or valued ends. Ethics, or moral philosophy, in its most inclusive sense, seeks to articulate, in rationally systematic form, the rules or principles involved."
↑ Philosophia, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus
↑ Online Etymology Dictionary
↑ The definition of philosophy is: "1.orig., love of, or the search for, wisdom or knowledge 2.theory or logical analysis of the principles underlying conduct, thought, knowledge, and the nature of the universe". Webster's New World Dictionary (Second College ed.).

External links

Taxonomy of Philosophy – topic outline developed by David Chalmers as the category structure for the table of contents of the PhilPapers academic directory.
PhilPapers – comprehensive directory of online philosophical articles and books.
Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names
Guide to Philosophy on the Internet
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Ism Book
Introducing Philosophy Series. By Paul Newall (for beginners)
Philosophical positions (philosophy, movement, school, theory, etc.)
The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell (links provided to full text)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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[1] Jenny Teichmann and Katherine C. Evans, Philosophy: A Beginner's Guide (Blackwell Publishing, 1999), p. 1: "Philosophy is a study of problems which are ultimate, abstract and very general. These problems are concerned with the nature of existence, knowledge, morality, reason and human purpose."

[2] A.C. Grayling, Philosophy 1: A Guide through the Subject (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 1: "The aim of philosophical inquiry is to gain insight into questions about knowledge, truth, reason, reality, meaning, mind, and value."

[3] Anthony Quinton, in T. Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 666: "Philosophy is rationally critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world (metaphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). Each of the three elements in this list has a non-philosophical counterpart, from which it is distinguished by its explicitly rational and critical way of proceeding and by its systematic nature. Everyone has some general conception of the nature of the world in which they live and of their place in it. Metaphysics replaces the unargued assumptions embodied in such a conception with a rational and organized body of beliefs about the world as a whole. Everyone has occasion to doubt and question beliefs, their own or those of others, with more or less success and without any theory of what they are doing. Epistemology seeks by argument to make explicit the rules of correct belief formation. Everyone governs their conduct by directing it to desired or valued ends. Ethics, or moral philosophy, in its most inclusive sense, seeks to articulate, in rationally systematic form, the rules or principles involved."

[4] Philosophia, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus

[5] Online Etymology Dictionary

[6] The definition of philosophy is: "1.orig., love of, or the search for, wisdom or knowledge 2.theory or logical analysis of the principles underlying conduct, thought, knowledge, and the nature of the universe". Webster's New World Dictionary (Second College ed.).

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