6-5-2020 The History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

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C O N C E P T, R E S E A R C H , D E S I G N
Deniz Cem Önduygu

INTERACTION DEVELOPMENT
Hüseyin Kuşçu

P R O G R A M M I N G F O R S TAT I C
VERSION
Eser Aygün

https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/ 1/12
6-5-2020 The History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

Daniel Dennett
@danieldennett

Here's a surprisingly useful thinking

tool for anybody interested in the
history of Western philosophy: a
sort of garden of forking paths of
argument.
denizcemonduygu.com/philo/
1,443 3:51 AM - Oct 9, 2018

627 people are talking about this

Oxford Philosophy
@OUPPhilosophy

A stunning, interactive visualization

of the history of philosophy by
@denizcemonduygu, showing the
positive and negative connections
between some of the key ideas and
arguments from philosophers
bit.ly/2y8JOEK
295 2:06 PM - Oct 9, 2018

160 people are talking about this

Sean Carroll
@seanmcarroll

Love this interactive timeline of

philosophical ideas. Not only to you
get the ideas, but linkages showing
who agreed/disagreed with
whom.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/
browse/
1,030 11:25 PM - Oct 9, 2018

413 people are talking about this



https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/ 2/12
6-5-2020 The History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

F E AT U R E D I N

This is my summary of the history of

Western philosophy showing the
positive/negative connections
between some of the key
ideas/arguments/statements of the
philosophers. It is not an automated
text analysis project; the content and
the connections are the result of my
years of reading and taking notes, so
it’s a never-ending work-in-
progress. It started with Bryan Magee’s
The Story of Philosophy and Thomas
Baldwin’s Contemporary Philosophy as 

https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/ 3/12
6-5-2020 The History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

the main references but it keeps

expanding with dozens of others. (The
reference is noted with the book icon
that appears when you click on a
statement.)

First off, let me announce that though I

read my share of philosophy and have a
good grasp of the elds/philosophers
I’m interested in, I’m not a historian
of philosophy. This is a purely
personal project that I’m doing in my
own time, with my limited knowledge,
for myself; and I’m sharing it to get
feedback and to make it accessible to
those who are interested. As much as I
nd this way of looking at philosophy
productive (and fun) for many reasons,
I’m not proposing that this is the right
way to look at it; it is just one version
that I like to see – an organized
collection of notes, reminding the
arguments and letting me see how they
developed, from a distance.

I believe I’m not alone when I say that I

understand an
idea/argument/concept better when
I see it along with others that are
similar to it and in contrast with it.
Accordingly, I like to think that this is
not just a historical project, useful for
people speci cally interested in the
history of the eld; what is also
valuable here is the ability to see, by

clicking on a sentence and displaying
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6-5-2020 The History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

its connections, what different things

can be said on a subject (how many
perspectives there can be, which are
hard to be all dreamed of by a single
person) independently of who said
them and when – independently of a
direct interest in the history of
philosophy. In this respect, it can
function as a thinking tool that helps
people think through these ideas by
showing different formulations and
negations of them. (It can also function
as a preliminary academic tool that
provides entry points to the literature
by listing some of the relevant names
and texts.)

What exactly am I doing? When I’m

reading the texts, I’m summarizing
argumentations with isolated
sentences. In the next step, I’m
optimizing them so as to include all of
their ideas with the minimum number
of ef cient sentences, in a meaningful
order. (I usually shorten/paraphrase the
sentence if it’s coming from a
secondary source like a book of history
of philosophy, but I try to quote it as it
is – as long as it’s not too long – if it’s
from the philosopher.) Then I’m noting
the positive/negative connections to
other statements, putting all this
information in a spreadsheet in a
machine-readable format, going
through everything to look for further

possible connections, and nally
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6-5-2020 The History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

feeding it to the visualization. If there

is an agreement or similarity
between two statements, they’re
connected with a green line. If there
is disagreement or contrast between
the statements, they’re connected
with a red line. Some of these
connections are explicitly described
by the philosophers or the
historians, some of them are drawn
by me.

Maybe you can complain that I have

low standards for a connection in
general. The question always arises:
“Clearly these two statements are
talking about the same thing, but did
he really read that old guy, or did he
come up with it all by himself?” Except
for a few speci c cases, I ignored this
question for two reasons. First, most
philosophers read most people
before themselves and they don’t
always add extensive lists of
names/references for every argument
they produce; so I usually assume there
may be a direct connection even though
it’s not written somewhere. (You could
make a version with only the
connections con rmed by the
philosophers/historians, but that would
be too boring for my taste.) Secondly,
and more importantly, the fact that
there may not be a direct reference
(written or not) doesn’t spoil my

concept of connection here: when I’m
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6-5-2020 The History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

drawing a line I’m not always claiming

that the philosopher directly took the
idea from the connected philosopher.
The lines here do not always depict a
direct transfer between two people; I
think of them as tracing the
development and the diversi cation
of ideas throughout time,
connecting different perspectives on
a subject. This choice is also evident in
the non-directionality of the
connection lines: the direction of a
possible direct transfer is obvious when
there are dozens of years between two
philosophers, but for those who live
and write during the same years, it is
quite possible that they take ideas from
each other, get in conversations, etc. In
that broad sense I’m con dent that
these connections make sense but I
may of course be mistaken with some
of them; please warn me if you think
so.

I am of course aware that not

everybody is here and the
arguments-connections of the
included philosophers aren’t
exhaustive. I am also aware that the
level of detail isn’t the same for
every philosopher. The content for
some philosophers are more beginner-
level because they come from books
intended for general audiences, and
some philosophers have more detailed

and extensive content because I had
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6-5-2020 The History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

the opportunity to concentrate on

them by reading multiple documents,
sometimes including their own output.
My goal is to slowly go through
everybody so as to keep a somewhat
homogeneous depth overall – this is a
continuous effort which will proceed in
parallel with the work of adding new
names. (I’m fully open to corrections
and suggestions from philosophers or
historians of philosophy.) I don’t think
this project can ever be “completed”,
but I will be expanding it by adding
information from everything I read –
maybe until I die – in the hope of
making it as complete as I can. And yes,
I may be prioritizing
philosophers/schools/subjects I like in
the process. I’ll also be adding more
thinkers who aren’t strictly
philosophers but had considerable
effect on philosophy (like Darwin,
Freud, Turing, etc.) and philosophers
from other traditions. So please don’t
get angry if your favorite
philosophers or ideas aren’t here:
this is not a nished product, and
they probably are in my to-add list.
You can see the list of updates on the
Updates page where you can also
subscribe to get noti cation emails
when I add new content or make
interface upgrades.

One warning: Browsing this visual


summary cannot substitute reading
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6-5-2020 The History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

a good book of history of

philosophy, let alone reading the
original texts by the philosophers.
These sentences are dry summaries of
long, intricate argumentations and
some of them are not even
comprehensible if you’re not already
familiar with the subject/philosopher.
Some of these ideas are best
understood within the
historical/political context, as they are
presented in books of history of
philosophy. So no, you shouldn’t
expect to learn philosophy by just
using this summary. As I wrote in the
beginning, this is mainly an organized
collection of notes to myself, and I
believe it can function as a
thinking/research tool for some other
people as well. (I also believe it can
function as a teaser for people who
aren’t familiar with the eld, making
them feel curious about an
idea/discussion and start reading about
that.) As Baldwin reminds,

“[C]ontemporary philosophy is
dialectical in its method: new
arguments necessarily make
reference back to earlier positions
which provide the background for
understanding the commitments
which the arguments seek to
challenge. (…) The relation of
present arguments to past debate

provides by itself good enough
https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/ 9/12
6-5-2020 The History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

reasons for regarding the

continuation of such debates as the
only way of improving our
understanding.”

I conceived this project in

February 2012 while organizing my
notes from my readings (“There should
be a global and systematic way to see
all these relations! How about…”) and
started working on it in February 2014.

I am deeply thankful to Hüseyin

Kuşçu who offered his programming
skills for the interactive version on the
Browse page.

I also thank my friend Eser Aygün for

writing the program that automatized
to a great degree the transition
between the spreadsheet that I ll in
and the visual end-product for the
static version in the beginning of this
project.

And here are the names of nice people

who offered content corrections or
improvements that I was able to apply
so far: Sedat Hasoğlu, Jakub Rudnicki,
Matheus Schneider, César Tomé López,
Sylvia Wenmackers, Miguel Mateo La
Salle, Juan Antonio Ricci, Simo Raittila,
Stephen Laudig. 

https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/ 10/12
6-5-2020 The History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized

— Deniz Cem Önduygu

Follow @denizcemonduygu

Note: This print is from an old version;

it had a lot less content than the
current one which is beyond being
printable and hangable on a wall.

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