01
4th c. BCE
Aristotle
OntologyCategories, substance, and four causes organize a systematic inquiry into beings.
Categories; MetaphysicsIncomplete by design.
Traceable by principle.
This is not a complete representation of world philosophy. It is a navigational route through three turns, with every node pointing to a problem and a text rather than just a famous name.
02
11th century
Avicenna
Ontology ↔ EpistemologyDistinguishes essence from existence and uses the Flying Man to probe self-awareness.
The Book of Healing03
1641
Descartes
EpistemologyMethodic doubt seeks an indubitable starting point and moves the conditions of knowledge to philosophy’s center.
Meditations on First Philosophy04
1781
Kant
Epistemology ↔ OntologyAsks not only what the world is, but how the conditions of cognition structure possible experience.
Critique of Pure Reason05
1879–1892
Frege
LanguageModern logic and the sense–reference distinction reshape inquiry into meaning, truth, and thought.
Begriffsschrift; On Sense and Reference06
1921 / 1953
Wittgenstein
LanguageMoves from a logical picture of language and world to use, rules, and forms of life.
Tractatus; Philosophical Investigations07
1927
Heidegger
OntologyDistinguishes the meaning of Being from particular beings and reopens the question through being-in-the-world.
Being and Time08
1962–present
Social and Practical Turns
Three Threads CrossScientific communities, speech acts, gender, technology, and institutions enter philosophy’s explanatory core.
Kuhn, Austin, Fricker, and othersEDITORIAL NOTE
Future editions will add independent routes through Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and African traditions—not as supplements to a Western timeline, but as traditions with their own problems and internal histories.