1.

What are the philosophical periods

The three historical periods are divided
roughly as follows:

Ancient (from 585 BC-400 AD)

Medieval (400 - 1500)

Modern (1500 - 1900)

2. Characteristics of the periods

Ancient Period
The term ancient philosophy encompasses a
variety of thoughts that emerged from the
early stages of various intellectual traditions.
However, not all ideas are considered
philosophies since philosophy includes, as
its primary component, a rational selfrefection and conceptualization of thought.
Major philosophies include: ancient Greek
and Roman philosophy in the West, which
date approximately from the sixth century
B.C.E. through the third century C.E.;
Chinese philosophy including Yin-yang
philosophy, Taoism, Confucianism; Indian
philosophy including Upanishads and Vedic
traditions, Jainism, Buddhist philosophy,
and Hindu philosophy; and ancient Iranian
philosophy including Zoroastrianism.
Ancient philosophy is that of classical
antiquity, which not only inaugurated the
entire European philosophical tradition but
has exercised an unparalleled influence on
its style and content. It is conventionally
considered to start with Thales in the mid
sixth century bc, although the Greeks
themselves frequently made Homer (c.700
bc) its true originator. Officially it is often

regarded as ending in 529 ad, when the

Christian emperor Justinian is believed to
have banned the teaching of pagan
philosophy at Athens. However, this was no
abrupt termination, and the work of Platonist
philosophers continued for some time in
self-imposed exile.
Ancient philosophy was above all a product
of Greece and the Greek-speaking parts of
the Mediterranean, which came to include
southern Italy, Sicily, western Asia and large
parts of North Africa, notably Egypt. From
the first century bc, a number of Romans
became actively engaged in one or other of
the Greek philosophical systems, and some
of them wrote their own works in Latin but
Greek remained the lingua franca of
philosophy. Although much modern
philosophical terminology derives from
Latinized versions of Greek technical
concepts, most of these stem from the Latin
vocabulary of medieval Aristotelianism, not
directly from ancient Roman philosophical
writers.
Medieval Period
The Medieval period of philosophy
represents a renewed flowering of Western
philosophical thought after the intellectual
drought of the Dark Ages. An important
development in the Medieval period was the
establishment of the first universities with
professional full-time scholars. It should
also be noted that there was also a strong
resurgence in Islamic and Jewish philosophy
at this time.
Medieval philosophers are the historical
successors of the philosophers of antiquity,
but they are in fact only tenuously connected

with them. Until about 1125, medieval

thinkers had access to only a few texts of
ancient Greek philosophy (most importantly
a portion of Aristotles logic). This
limitation accounts for the special attention
medieval philosophers give to logic and
philosophy of language. They gained some
acquaintance with other Greek philosophical
forms (particularly those of later Platonism)
indirectly through the writings of Latin
authors such as Augustine and Boethius.
These Christian thinkers left an enduring
legacy of Platonistic metaphysical and
theological speculation. Beginning about
1125, the influx into Western Europe of the
first Latin translations of the remaining
works of Aristotle transformed medieval
thought dramatically. The philosophical
discussions and disputes of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries record later
medieval thinkers sustained efforts to
understand the new Aristotelian material and
assimilate it into a unified philosophical
system.
The most significant extra-philosophical
influence
on
medieval
philosophy
throughout its thousand-year history is
Christianity. Christian institutions sustain
medieval intellectual life, and Christianitys
texts and ideas provide rich subject matter
for philosophical reflection. Although most
of the greatest thinkers of the period were
highly trained theologians, their work
addresses perennial philosophical issues and
takes a genuinely philosophical approach to
understanding the world. Even their
discussion of specifically theological issues
is typically philosophical, permeated with
philosophical ideas, rigorous argument and
sophisticated logical and conceptual
analysis. The enterprise of philosophical

theology is one of medieval philosophys

greatest achievements.
The most influential movements of the
period were Scholasticism and its off-shoots
Thomism and Scotism, and the Islamic
schools of Averroism, Avicennism and
Illuminationism.
Modern Philosophy
The Age of Reason of the 17th Century and
the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th
Century, along with the advances in science,
the growth of religious tolerance and the rise
of liberalism which went with them, mark
the real beginnings of modern philosophy. In
large part, the period can be seen as an
ongoing battle between two opposing
doctrines, Rationalism (the belief that all
knowledge arises from intellectual and
deductive reason, rather than from the
senses) and Empiricism (the belief that the
origin of all knowledge is sense experience).
Major rationalists were Descartes, Baruch
Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Nicolas
Malebranche. The "Empiricists," by
contrast, held that knowledge must begin
with sensory experience. Major figures in
this line of thought are John Locke, George
Berkeley, and David Hume (These are
retrospective categories, for which Kant is
largely responsible.) Ethics and political
philosophy are usually not subsumed under
these categories, though all these
philosophers worked in ethics, in their own
distinctive styles. Other important figures in
political philosophy include Thomas Hobbes
and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In the late eighteenth century Immanuel

Kant
set
forth
a
groundbreaking
philosophical system which claimed to bring
unity to rationalism and empiricism.
Whether or not he was right, he did not
entirely succeed in ending philosophical
dispute. Kant sparked a storm of
philosophical work in Germany in the early
nineteenth century, beginning with German
idealism. The characteristic theme of
idealism was that the world and the mind
equally must be understood according to the
same categories; it culminated in the work
of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who
among many other things said that "The real
is rational; the rational is real."
3. Identify major philosophers on the
periods
Ancient Period
Pythagoras
Parmenides
Anaximander
Zeno
Socrates
Plato

Aristotle
Thales of Miletus
Anaxagoras

Medieval Period
Augustine of Hippo
Boethius
Johannes Scotus Eriugena
Avicenna
Averroes
Thomas Aquinas
Bonaventure
Anselm of Canterbury
Albert the Great
William of Ockham
Modern Period
Rene Descartes
Baruch Spinoza
John Locke
Emmanuel Kant
Karl Marx
Friedrich Nietzsche
Gottfried Leibniz
George Berkeley
J.W. Von Goethe
John Stuart Mill