The Book Timeline: 30 Philosophers, Anchors

30 Phil, Chapter 3: Gargi and the Concept of Holism
Gargi lived in India around 800 BCE, give or take a century, but we do not know her lifespan. We know about her from early Vedic Tradition, specifically from the early Vedas. Gargi is one of the earliest known female philosophers. Although the specifics of her timeline are unclear, she emerged around 800 BCE. Gargi’s life unfolded in the kingdom of Videha, present-day Bihar in eastern India. Her family belonged to the Brahmin caste, who have historically been the custodians of knowledge in Indian society. In this capacity, they played a vital role in the cultural transmission of knowledge.

30 Phil, Chapter 5: Confucius and Confucianism
Confucius is remembered for his practical applied philosophy. His sayings are a reflection of many centuries of common sense sayings making his philosophy deeply Chinese.

My favorite sayings:

• The man who knows he can, and the man who knows he cannot, are both correct.
• Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
• The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.
• You are what you think.
• All people are the same; only their habits differ.
• Roads were made for journeys, not destinations.

• Respect yourself, and others will respect you.

30 Phil, Chapter 7: Heraclitus and Your Worldview
Chapter 7 in part one transitions from Eastern luminaries to their counterparts in the West. The pre-Socratic philosophers, guided by a new rational perspective, challenged the stronghold of mythology, and propelled human thought onto a trajectory marked by reason. Little is known for sure about Heraclitus. Born around 535 BCE, stories indicated he lived about 60 years.

• Everything is in Flux.
• No man ever steps in the same river twice.

Pictured: Bust of an unknown philosopher. Some believe this might be Heraclitus. This bust is in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, but the museum makes no such identity assumption.

30 Phil, Chapter 9: Aristotle and Empiricism
Aristotle was the greatest Greek philosopher and covered nearly all subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, meteorology, geology, and government. His Aristotelian philosophy characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method.

Some of my favorite translated sayings are:

• The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
• Happiness depends upon ourselves.
• Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
• The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.
• Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

30 Phil, Chapter 11: Epicurus and Epicureanism
Epicurus founded Epicureanism in 307 BCE. The goal of Epicureanism is to help people attain a happy (eudaimonic), tranquil life characterized by ataraxia (free from fear) and aponia (free from pain). He authored over 300 books, scrolls, none of which survived the test of time.

Some of my favorite translated sayings attributed to him:

• Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not
• Death is not something experienced in life.
• Fear of death is a waste of time.

My favorite saying is the Epicurean epitaph “Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo.”

• I was not; I was; I am not; I do not mind.

I sometimes refer to myself as an epicurean stoic. A balance between enjoy the journey, and duty to yourself and others. Enjoying the complimentary yin and yang of my journey on Earth.

30 Phil, Chapter 13: Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism
Some of my favorite translated meditations include:

• Learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference.
• The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

• The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.
• Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.
• There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.

30 Phil, Chapter 21: Galileo and the Scientific Revolution
Galileo Galilei, more of a scientist than a traditional philosopher, forever altered our understanding of nature. He was born on February 15, 1564. Galileo was a great scientist in his time. His “way,” his method, of performing science helped push us toward our modern approach. The story of Galileo is also the story of Copernicus, and the story of modern cosmology. This is the era in which humanity started to learn about the fundamental structure of the universe. Galileo’s book “Two New Sciences,” published in 1638, contains his most significant contributions to science, particularly his work on motion and the strength of materials. Galileo was a master mathematician, and his contributions to mathematics were both scientific and philosophical. Galileo’s ideas about the infinitesimal were so clear, within decades, both Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz independently developed calculus. Still under house arrest, he passed away at the age of 78 in January 1642.

Pictured: Portrait circa 1638, Galileo was about 74.

30 Phil, Chapter 23: Roger Williams and Liberalism
Roger Williams was born in England around 1602, in Smithfield, situated at the heart of London. Williams officially founded Providence Plantations in 1636 with an informal agreement with the local Native American leaders. It became the fifth American colony and the second in the New England region. In 1644, he published a series of pamphlets, the more contentious ones anonymously, leading up to penning what would become his magnum opus: “The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution,” or “Bloody Tenet.” More than a historical or religious treatise, the Bloody Tenet is a seminal work. It launched a full-throttle assault on the prevailing norms of religious and political intolerance that plagued both Old and New England. Williams passionately argued for the separation of church and state.

Pictured: No images exist of Roger Williams. This artist impression represents his fond relations with Native Americans.

30 Phil, Chapter 24: Locke and Natural Rights
John was born on August 29, 1632 into a Puritan family in England. During his life, John Locke was focused on empiricism. He goes on to become a key figure in the empiricist revolution, with a dedication to the doctrine that experience is how knowledge is acquired. One of his popular ideas he published under his name was “tabula rasa,” in his work “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” Locke’s “tabula rasa” translates to blank slate, and this idea is central to individual rights and freedoms. 

30 Phil, Chapter 27: Hume and Skeptical Empiricism
The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and historian Hume was a leading exponent of empiricism. The belief that all human knowledge derives solely from experience.

Some of my favorite Hume quotes:

• “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.” -A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739
• “The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”
• “Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”

30 Phil, Chapter 29: Mill and Utilitarianism
John Stuart Mill was born on May 20, 1806, in London, to James Mill, a Scottish-born philosopher and economist, and Harriet Barrow. His Greatest Happiness Principle lies at the core of utilitarianism, advocating for actions that maximize utility, generally understood as producing the greatest well-being for the most people, but how do you measure or evaluate this “utility” or “happiness?” On May 8, 1873, at age 66, surrounded by a few friends and his stepdaughter Helen, John Stuart Mill took his final breaths. 

30 Phil, Chapter 31: Sartre and Existentialism
Jean-Paul Sartre arrived in the Material World on June 21, 1905. Born in Paris to a modest family. Sartre, the chain-smoking existentialist who frequented Parisian cafes, is most remembered as an activist writer and for his idea of “bad faith.”