I. The Ancient Period
From Way Back -- several hundred years
BCE -- till about 300 AD
This period includes:
The Greek philosophers: Presocratics, Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, and many others (See a
few significant dates in the Greek period)
The Hebrew
wisdom writings, including Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes
The Roman philosophers: Seneca, Epicurus,
stoics and hedonists, etc
II. The Medieval Period
From the 300s to late 1400s, AD
It is usually said to include philosohers
like Augustine, the deserf fathers, Bonventure, Benedict, Anselm,
and Thomas Aquinas
III. The Modern Period
From 1500s to late 1700s, AD
This period includes one school of philosophers
usually referred to as rationalists,René Descartes, Benedictus
de Spinosa and Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz, and another school of philosophers usually referred
to as empiricists, including Francis Bacon, John
Locke, George
Berkeley and David Hume (See
also a few significant dates in the Modern
period)
IV. Contemporary Period
This period, usually said to date from
the publication of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in
1781, includes Kant,
Hegel, Schopenhauer, Swedenborg,
and countless others