Disputed Statements

Ethics, Branches of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Key Debate

Currently States Whether morality is discovered or made: the Socratic tradition treats the good as an objective target reason can pursue through examined dialogue, while Nietzsche treats inherited morality as a historically contingent human invention, open to revaluation rather than discovery.

A third position denies both horns: J.L. Mackie's error theory holds that ordinary moral discourse commits speakers to objective values and objective prescriptions, but that no such objective moral facts exist at all, so moral claims are not so much discovered, made, or revalued as systematically false; see the attached dissent.

Source Moral Anti-Realism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Ethics, Branches of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Key Debate

Currently States Consequentialism versus deontology, sharpened by the trolley problem: whether the rightness of an action is fixed entirely by its consequences, as consequentialists hold, or by duties and rules that can forbid an act even when it produces the best outcome, as deontologists hold, with trolley cases used to test the two views against shared intuitions.

The trolley problem and its variants have been used since Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson to sharpen, without settling, the older dispute between consequentialist and deontological ethics.

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tier 1

Existentialism, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1943

Existentialism is usually dated to the 1940s, when Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943) and Beauvoir's early work gave the movement its name and its clearest statement, but its philosophical roots are commonly traced to Kierkegaard in the 1840s, so no single start year commands full agreement.

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tier 1

German Idealism, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States 1831

Hegel's death in 1831 is the conventional close of the movement's classical phase; some historians extend German Idealism's afterlife through Schopenhauer and into the 1840s before its eclipse by Marx's materialist reaction and by mid-century positivism.

Source German Idealism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Haydar Amuli, Philosophers

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Birth Year

Currently States 1319

Iranica gives two possible Hijri to CE year equivalents for his birth, 1320 or 1319

Source Encyclopaedia Iranica, AMOLI, SAYYED BAHA-AL-DIN HAYDAR

Heraclitus, Philosophers

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Office Held

Currently States Hereditary title of "king" (basileus) of Ephesus, said to have been relinquished to his younger brother

Rests on a single anecdote transmitted by Diogenes Laertius; treated by scholars as at most suggestive of aristocratic lineage, not a confirmed political office.

Source Heraclitus (Wikipedia) tier 3

Illuminationism, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1170

dated to the mature period of Suhrawardi's writing before his execution in 1191; his birth year is also disputed, given variously as 1154.

Islamic Peripateticism, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 870

dated broadly to al-Kindi's ninth-century work; the tradition developed gradually rather than at one founding moment.

Islamic Peripateticism, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States 1198

marks the death of Averroes, after which the tradition continued mainly through its influence on Latin and Jewish philosophy rather than as a living school within the Islamic world.

Islamic Peripateticism, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Founded Date

Currently States 0870-01-01

870 approximates the school's emergence via al-Kindi, hailed as the first Islamic peripatetic philosopher, whose active career and death in 873 anchor this entity's own start-year fact; the tradition developed gradually rather than at one founding moment, matching this entity's own start-year note.

Source Al-Kindi (Wikipedia) tier 3

Jain Philosophy, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States -599

dates traditionally follow Mahavira's approximate lifespan, itself debated among scholars by roughly a century; systematic philosophical treatises are considerably later, from the early centuries CE onward.

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tier 1

Jain Philosophy, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Founded Date

Currently States 0350-01-01

The DATE column cannot hold the -599 BCE start-year already on record for Mahavira. This instead dates Umasvati's Tattvarthasutra, the first systematic Jain philosophical treatise accepted by all sects per this same article, dated there to between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE; 350 is a representative midpoint of that range.

Source Jain philosophy (Wikipedia) tier 3

Jean Bodin, Philosophers

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Birth Year

Currently States 1530

Sources give 1529 or 1530 for Bodin's birth in Angers; no birth record survives, and his identity is further complicated by other men named Jean Bodin active in the same period and region.

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tier 1

Judah Halevi, Philosophers

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Birthplace

Currently States Toledo or Tudela

Sources disagree whether he was born in Toledo or Tudela.

Source Judah Halevi, Wikipedia

Kyoto School, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1911

1911 marks the publication of Nishida Kitaro's An Inquiry into the Good, which secured his position at Kyoto University and is usually treated as the school's founding work; there was no single formal founding date or charter.

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tier 1

Kyoto School, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Founded Date

Currently States 1911-01-01

1911 marks Nishida Kitaro's An Inquiry into the Good; some accounts instead date the school from his 1913 appointment at Kyoto University.

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tier 1

Laozi, Philosophers

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Description

Currently States A figure traditionally credited as the author of the Tao Te Ching and the founder of philosophical Daoism, said in later legend to have served as an archivist at the Zhou dynasty royal court, to have been an older contemporary of Confucius, and to have ridden west out of China on an ox in old age, pausing at a border pass only long enough to write down his teaching before disappearing. Whether a single historical author lies behind this legend is itself an open scholarly question distinct from the standing of the text: most modern scholars read the Tao Te Ching as a compilation of aphorisms and verses assembled from multiple hands over generations rather than composed at one sitting by one person, though the traditional name remains how the text and the tradition it founds are known.

See the open question recorded on this entity for the historicity debate.

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tier 1

Laozi, Philosophers

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Birth Year

Currently States -604

604 BCE is the traditional legendary date. Most modern textual scholarship doubts a single sixth century BCE author; see the open question recorded on this entity.

Legalism, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns End Year

Currently States -206

Marks the fall of the Qin dynasty, whose collapse discredited Legalism as an explicit state ideology; scholars debate whether this counts as the end of the school or merely the end of its unmixed political dominance, since its legal and administrative machinery persisted inside later, nominally Confucian, dynasties.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica tier 1

Liberation Philosophy, Schools of Philosophy

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Start Year

Currently States 1971

the movement's key early texts and the philosophical congresses associated with its emergence are usually dated to the early 1970s; different founding events are cited by different scholars.

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tier 1