Socrates

Socrates was the fifth’s century most influential thinker. His careful
dedication to careful reasoning, and the fact that he sought genuine
knowledge rather than victory over an opponent, is what gave him his
title. Socrates embarked on the pursuit of truth, bringing everything into
question and never accepting a less than adequate explanation of the
nature and ways of things make him the first to explore philosophy.

Plato
The son of wealthy and influential Athenian parents, Plato began his
philosophical career as a student of Socrates. When the master died, Plato
travelled to Egypt and Italy, studied with students of Pythagoras, and
spent several years advising the ruling family of Syracuse. Eventually, he
returned to Athens and established his own school of philosophy at the
Academy. For students enrolled there, Plato tried both to pass on the
heritage of a Socratic style of thinking and to guide their progress through
mathematical learning to the achievement of abstract philosophical truth.
The written dialogues on which his enduring reputation rests also serve
both of these aims.

Aristotle
Born at Stagira in northern Greece, Aristotle was the most notable product
of the educational program devised by Plato; he spent twenty years of his
life studying at the Academy. When Plato died, Aristotle returned to his
native Macedonia, where he is supposed to have participated in the
education of Philip's son, Alexander (the Great). He came back to Athens
with Alexander's approval in 335 and established his own school at the
Lyceum, spending most of the rest of his life engaged there in research,
teaching, and writing. Although the surviving works of Aristotle probably
represent only a fragment of the whole, they include his investigations of
an amazing range of subjects, from logic, philosophy, and ethics to
physics, biology, psychology, politics, and rhetoric. Aristotle appears to
have thought through his views as he wrote, returning to significant issues
at different stages of his own development.

Diogenes
Diogenes was one of the few men to ever publicly mock Alexander the
Great and live. He intellectually humiliated Plato and was the only pupil
ever accepted by Antisthenes, whom he saw as the true heir of Socrates.
Diogenes taught his philosophy of Cynicism to Crates. Exiled from his
native city for defacing the currency, he moved to Athens and declared
himself a cosmopolitan (in defiance of the prevailing city-state system).
He became a disciple of Antisthenes, and made a virtue of extreme
poverty, famously begging for a living and sleeping in a tub in the
marketplace. He became notorious for his provocative behavior and
philosophical stunts such as carrying a lamp in the daytime, claiming to
be looking for a human being. He regularly argued with Plato, disputing
his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaging his lectures.

The Cynics
The Cynics were a group of Greek philosophers who believed in cynicism.