Philosophy Atlas
Claims this atlas currently marks as unsettled or as tested and found false. A debated fact is one scholars hold competing positions on; a debunked one has been checked against the record and found not to hold. Both are kept in view rather than quietly smoothed over, with the reasoning that put each one where it stands.
180 statements.
Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi, Death Year1191
Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi, Philosophers
Standing
Concerns Death Year
Currently States 1191
The most commonly held view places his execution in 1191; other traditions place it as late as 1208.
Source Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi (Wikipedia)
Silhak, Start Year1750
Silhak, Schools of Philosophy
Standing
Concerns Start Year
Currently States 1750
Silhak's roots are traced to seventeenth-century scholars such as Yu Hyong-won, but the movement is usually described as reaching its most developed and organized form in the eighteenth century.
Silhak, End Year1894
Silhak, Schools of Philosophy
Standing
Concerns End Year
Currently States 1894
marks the Gabo Reform period associated with the end of the traditional Joseon scholar-official examination system; Silhak's precise endpoint as a movement is not sharply defined and its influence is often traced further.
Silhak, Founded Date1750-01-01
Silhak, Schools of Philosophy
Standing
Concerns Founded Date
Currently States 1750-01-01
Silhak's roots trace to seventeenth-century scholars such as Yu Hyong-won, but the movement is usually described as reaching its most developed and organized form in the eighteenth century, matching this entity's own start-year note; 1750 approximates that mature period rather than a discrete founding event.
Source Silhak (Wikipedia)
Socrates, Birth Year-470
Socrates, Philosophers
Standing
Concerns Birth Year
Currently States -470
Ancient sources place his birth in 470 or 469 BCE; no contemporary record survives, and the date is reconstructed from later testimony about his age at death in 399 BCE and his recorded military service.
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Sophism, Start Year-450
Sophism, Schools of Philosophy
Standing
Concerns Start Year
Currently States -450
dated broadly to the era of Protagoras's and Gorgias's activity in the mid-fifth century BCE; exact birth dates for these figures are disputed.
Source Sophist (Wikipedia)
Sophism, End Year-380
Sophism, Schools of Philosophy
Standing
Concerns End Year
Currently States -380
marks the broad decline of the sophists' prominence following the fourth-century BCE ascendancy of Socratic and Platonic philosophy, not a precise endpoint.
Stoicism, End Year-150
Stoicism, Schools of Philosophy
Standing
Concerns End Year
Currently States -150
Marks the end of the formal scholarch line that headed the organized Stoic school at Athens (Diogenes of Babylon, mid-2nd century BCE, per the Stanford Encyclopedia). Stoic philosophy itself continued for centuries afterward through Roman Imperial Stoicism (Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius); Wikipedia's own account says the tradition flourished until the 3rd century CE. This date marks institutional headship at Athens, not the end of Stoic philosophizing.
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Structuralism, End Year1970
Structuralism, Schools of Philosophy
Standing
Concerns End Year
Currently States 1970
marks the broad point at which structuralism's dominance in French thought gave way to post-structuralist critique, not a precise endpoint, and structuralist method continued to be used in specific fields afterward.
Tabula Rasa, Origin Year-350
Tabula Rasa, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States -350
Aristotle introduces the unscribed-tablet notion in De Anima, conventionally dated to the middle of the fourth century BCE; the doctrine's modern form is a seventeenth-century development from Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), already recorded in this entity's own description. -350 marks Aristotle's originating text rather than Locke's later popularization, since the description credits Aristotle with introducing the notion first.
Source Tabula Rasa (Wikipedia)
Tao Te Ching, Publication Year-400
Tao Te Ching, Works
Standing
Concerns Publication Year
Currently States -400
Dating estimates for the text's compilation range from the sixth to the fourth century BCE depending on whether a single early author or a later, multi-hand compilation is accepted; see the open question recorded on Laozi.
The Analects, Publication Year-400
The Analects, Works
Standing
Concerns Publication Year
Currently States -400
Compiled in stages by successive generations of disciples over roughly a century after Confucius's death in 479 BCE; no single compilation date is attested, and the text as it now stands is generally dated to the Warring States period.
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Bhagavad Gita, Publication Year-200
The Bhagavad Gita, Works
Standing
Concerns Publication Year
Currently States -200
The Gita's date of composition is one of the most contested questions in the field: most scholars place it between roughly 200 BCE and 200 CE, with individual estimates ranging as early as the 5th to 4th century BCE (Kashi Nath Upadhyaya) to the 2nd century BCE (Jeaneane Fowler) to around 150 BCE (Robert N. Minor); traditional Hindu chronology places the underlying Mahabharata war, and so the Gita, far earlier still, around 3100 BCE. The dating depends heavily on the equally uncertain dating of the larger Mahabharata, into which the Gita may have been inserted after the epic's earliest layers. A final form is generally thought reached by the early Gupta period, around the 4th century CE.
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Book of Lord Shang, DescriptionA foundational Legalist text traditionally attributed to Shang Yang, setting out the case for agriculture and warfare as the twin foundations of state strength, uniform law applied without exception, and the deliberate weakening of private virtue, learning, and commerce in favor of total loyalty to the ranking system of the state. Most scholars now regard it as a composite work, built up by later Legalist compilers around a core of ideas and possibly some material genuinely traceable to Shang Yang, rather than written by him alone.
The Book of Lord Shang, Works
Standing
Concerns Description
Currently States A foundational Legalist text traditionally attributed to Shang Yang, setting out the case for agriculture and warfare as the twin foundations of state strength, uniform law applied without exception, and the deliberate weakening of private virtue, learning, and commerce in favor of total loyalty to the ranking system of the state. Most scholars now regard it as a composite work, built up by later Legalist compilers around a core of ideas and possibly some material genuinely traceable to Shang Yang, rather than written by him alone.
Authorship is debated among sinologists; treated here as traditionally attributed rather than certainly authored.
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Book of Lord Shang, Publication Year-300
The Book of Lord Shang, Works
Standing
Concerns Publication Year
Currently States -300
Scholars including Yuri Pines find the text was compiled over roughly a century, from material contemporary with or shortly after Shang Yang's own lifetime (390-338 BCE) to chapters dated as late as some eighty years after his death; -300 marks a representative point within the third century BCE window Wikipedia gives for the finished text, not a single attested compilation date.
Source The Book of Lord Shang (Wikipedia)
The Nicomachean Ethics, Publication Year-340
The Nicomachean Ethics, Works
Standing
Concerns Publication Year
Currently States -340
As lecture notes rather than a published text in the modern sense, the Nicomachean Ethics carries no firm date of composition; scholars conventionally place it in Aristotle's second Athenian period, after 335 BCE, with 340 BCE used here as a representative approximation.
Source The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
The Republic, Publication Year-375
The Republic, Works
Standing
Concerns Publication Year
Currently States -375
Plato's dialogues were not dated at the time of writing and carry no publication record; scholars place the Republic's composition in Plato's middle period on stylistic and doctrinal grounds, conventionally around 375 BCE, but no more precise date is independently attested.
Source The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
The Ship of Theseus, Origin Year75
The Ship of Theseus, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 75
75 CE marks Plutarch's Life of Theseus, the earliest surviving text to record the puzzle; the underlying question of identity through change is older than Plutarch's own account of it, and no earlier attested source names it explicitly.
Source Ship of Theseus (Wikipedia)
Ubuntu Philosophy, Start Year1980
Ubuntu Philosophy, Schools of Philosophy
Standing
Concerns Start Year
Currently States 1980
as a formally articulated academic philosophical school ubuntu was systematized chiefly from the 1980s and 1990s onward, though it draws on much older pre-colonial Southern African oral ethical traditions whose own origin cannot be dated.
Ubuntu Philosophy, Founded Date1980-01-01
Ubuntu Philosophy, Schools of Philosophy
Standing
Concerns Founded Date
Currently States 1980-01-01
1980 marks Stanlake J. W. T. Samkange's Hunhuism or Ubuntuism, the first publication dedicated to ubuntu as a philosophical concept; ubuntu itself draws on much older pre-colonial oral tradition with no datable origin, matching this entity's own start-year note.
Source Ubuntu Philosophy (Wikipedia)