c. 500 – 1400
Middle Ages
Faith, logic and the long copying of knowledge
Scholars across Europe, the Islamic world and Asia preserved, argued with and extended the inheritance of antiquity.
Augustine of Hippo
354 – 430 CE
After surviving artwork
A restless North African rhetorician who turned the examination of his own mind into philosophy.
PhilosophyTheology
Boethius
c. 477 – 524 CE
Interpretive portrait
A Roman senator who wrote the most-read philosophy book of the Middle Ages while awaiting execution.
PhilosophyLogic
Al-Farabi
c. 872 – 950 CE
Interpretive portrait
The philosopher later Arabic writers simply called the Second Teacher, after Aristotle.
PhilosophyPolitical theoryMusic theory
Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
c. 980 – 1037 CE
After surviving artwork
A physician and philosopher whose medical canon was taught in Europe for six hundred years.
PhilosophyMedicine
Maimonides
1138 – 1204 CE
After surviving artwork
A Jewish jurist and court physician in Cairo who tried to reconcile revelation with Aristotle.
PhilosophyTheologyMedicine
Thomas Aquinas
1225 – 1274 CE
After surviving artwork
A Dominican friar who rebuilt Christian theology on Aristotle, objection by objection.
PhilosophyTheology
Dante Alighieri
1265 – 1321 CE
After surviving artwork
An exiled Florentine who wrote the age's cosmology, ethics and politics as a poem.
PoetryPolitical theoryPhilosophy
Christine de Pizan
c. 1364 – c. 1430
After surviving artwork
Europe's first woman to earn her living as a writer, and the first to argue her sex's case in print.
PhilosophyPolitical theoryLiterature