Philosopher File

The Presocratic philosophers are famously strange and difficult; but of all of them, Anaxagoras, who saw the universe as essentially gunky, is one of the strangest.

Philosopher Anna Ezekiel talks about Karoline von Günderrode, and about the German philosopher's distinctive philosophy of free will, identity and death.

Xenophanes was a wandering philosopher and poet, who was fiercely critical of his contemporaries' views on the nature of the gods.

Jing Jiang is one of the earliest women in Chinese recorded history to engage in philosophical debate. She was a thinker with a keen grasp of politics, and a considerable skill in argument.

Parmenides is one of the most elusive and enigmatic of all early Greek philosophers. Could he really have been arguing that nothing ever changed? And if so, why?

Yājñavalkya is one of the earliest named Indian philosophers. According to traditional accounts, he was a fierce debater, and was preoccupied with the nature of the ātman, or the soul.

The philosopher Anaximander was born in the trading port of Miletus in 610 BCE, and is said to have become a student of the philosopher Thales. His philosophy explored questions of creation and destruction in nature.

Gārgī Vācaknavī was a philosopher who is said to have lived in India around 700 BCE, and whose skill in debate was legendary.

Guan Zhong was one of China's earliest named philosophers. A sharp political operator, he rose from poverty to become Chancellor of the state of Qi. He is associated in particular with the philosophy of legalism.

Pythagoras was the first philosopher to talk about 'philosophia', or 'the love of wisdom.' He set up a philosophical community where he taught the transmigration of souls, and the centrality of mathematics for an understanding of the universe.

Heraclitus's philosophy was based on the idea that the world is in continual flux. He is famous above all for his mysterious comment that 'everything flows.'

One of history's earliest named philosophers was from Africa. He lived 4500 years ago in Egypt, and his name was Ptahhotep.