The shortest introduction to the history of Western thought.

September 2025

The Greeks discovered secular thought. They abandoned myth narratives and try to describe real-life phenomena, like saying "maybe the sun is a hot rock."

Christianity becomes popular. Middle Ages. Renaissance (i.e. the rediscovery of Greek thought). Enlightenment (i.e. the discovery of science and the move to modern philosophy). Descartes declares everything can be doubted, but the doubting self.

Kant's self-declared Copernican revolution of philosophy states the mind shapes reality, and we can't know things-in-themselves.

Before Kant, the rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) searched for foundational truths to build philosophy upon, while the empiricists (Locke’s blank slate to Hume’s radical critique of reason) say everything comes from experience.

Hegel comes up with a confusing way of understanding the history of everything as a progression to absolute knowledge where the universe understands itself.

Kierkegaard hates this, but loves Jesus. He becomes the godfather of existentialism. Says Christianity is meaning making by connecting the infinite and the finite, the mind and the body.

Darwin describes a scientifically plausible creation story (i.e. killing God, maybe indirectly).

Nietzsche declares God is dead. Heidegger recreates Christianity but super secular.

The Americans enter the game with Pierce and William James creating a theory of truth that clears up centuries of debate.

Freud creates psychoanalysis. Jung and Lacan do it better.

The French create a class of famous, fashionable intellectuals who write for the fame. Sartre, Camus, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze.

Wittgenstein shows that language isn't built for describing reality but it's a tool mostly built to persuade that follows certain rules like a game. The linguistic turn of philosophy ensues.