Major Movements and Schools

Literary movements are a way to divide literature into categories of similar philosophical, topical, or aesthetic features, as opposed to divisions by genre or period. 

 

A philosophical movement is the appearance of (or the increased popularity of) a specific school of philosophy, an identifiable tradition of philosophy, or a marked change in philosophical thought on a particular subject. A school is a group of people, especially philosophers, artists, or writers, whose thought, work, or style demonstrates a common origin or influence or unifying belief. These are the famous “-isms” of philosophy. 

A movement or school may represent the broad views of many individual philosophers, even if they may not agree entirely in all respects, so it is more a diffusely organized or heterogeneous group of philosophers tending toward or favoring a generalized common goal. It may also consist of intellectual thought by several individuals on several related ideas or doctrines, and the distinction between schools or movements, and doctrines or theories is sometimes blurred.

For convenience, the major movements and schools can be classified under three main sub-headings:     Ancient                     Medieval                      Modern 

Within these, the major movements and schools include:

Ancient:	Modern:
Aristotelianism	Analytic Philosophy
Atomism	British Empiricism
Cynicism	Continental Philosophy
Eleatic School	Deconstructionism
Ephesian School	Existentialism
Epicureanism	German Idealism
Hedonism	Hegelianism
Milesian School	Humanism
Neo-Platonism	Kantianism
Platonism	Logicism
Pluralism	Logical Positivism
Pythagoreanism	Marxism
Skepticism	Modernism
Sophism	Ordinary Language Philosophy
Stoicism	Phenomenology
	Positivism
Medieval:	Post-Modernism
Averroism	Post-Structuralism
Avicennism	Pragmatism
Illuminationism	Rationalism
Scholasticism	Romanticism
Scotism	Structuralism
Thomism	Transcendentalism
	Utilitarianism