The history of Philosophy in the west begins with the Greeks, and particularly with a group of philosophers commonly called the pre-Socratics. This is not to say that there were not other pre-philosophical rumblings in Egyptian, Semitic, and Babylonian cultures. Certainly there were great thinkers and writers in each of these cultures, and there is evidence that some of the earliest Greek philosophers may have had contact with at least some of the products of Egyptian and Babylonian thought. However, the early Greek thinkers add at least one element which differentiates their thought from all those who came before them. For the first time in history, we discover in their writings something more than dogmatic assertions about the way the world is ordered -- we find reasoned arguments for various beliefs about the world.
As it turns out nearly all of the various cosmologies proposed by the early Greek philosophers are profoundly and demonstrably false, but this does not diminish their importance. For, even if later philosophers summarily rejected the answers they provided, they could not escape their questions.
Pre-Socratic philosophers are often very hard to pin down, and it is sometimes very difficult to determine the actual line of argument they used in supporting their particular views. This problem arises not from some defect in the men themselves or in their ideas, but is simply the result of their separation from us in history. While most of these men produced significant texts, we have no complete versions of any of those texts. All we have is quotations by later philosophers, historians, and the occasional textual fragment.
Xenophanes, Parmenides, and the other Eleatic philosophers
Leucippus, Democritus and the other Atomists
Protagoras and the Sophists
The Neo-Platonists: Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Iamblichus)
The spread of Christianity through the Roman world ushers in the end of the Helinistic philosophy and ushered in the beginnings of Mediaeval Philosophy.
"Whence all creation had its origin, he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not, he, who surveys it all from highest heaven, he knows--or maybe even he does not know."
In the Vedic view, creation is ascribed to the self-consciousness of the primeval person (Purusha). This leads to the inquiry of the one being that underlies the diversity of empirical phenomena and the origin of all things. Cosmic order is termed rta and causal law by karma. Nature (prakriti) is taken to have three qualities (sattva, rajas, and tamas).
What is the ontological nature of consciousness?
How is cognition itself experienced?
Is mind (chit) intentional or not?
Does cognition have its own structure?
The six schools of Indian philosophy are:
Chinese philosophy -- Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism
Buddhist philosophy arose in India but contributions to it were made in China, Japan, and Korea also.