Jenny Teichmann and Katherine C. Evans, Philosophy: A Beginner's Guide（Blackwell Publishing, 1999）, p. 1: "哲学研究那些终极、抽象和非常基本的问题。这些问题聚焦在存在、知识、道德、理性和人生的意义。"
Anthony Quinton. The ethics of philosophical practice. T. Honderich, ed (编). 牛津哲学指南（The Oxford Companion to Philosophy）. 牛津大学出版社. 1995: 666 [2014-05-02]. ISBN 978-0-19-866132-0. （原始内容存档于2020-09-24）. 哲学是一种理性的批判性思维，或多或少对自然世界进行系统化（形而上学或存在论），信仰辩护（认识论或知识论），和人生引导（伦理学或价值理论）。上述列表中的三个元素都有一个非哲学的副本，区别在于哲学那理性批判的程序和其系统性。每个人对自己所生活的自然世界都有自己的基本观念。形而上学替代那些未加辩论的假设归纳出这么一个作为一个整体理性地组织世界的概念。每个人都在某种情境下会在对他们在做的事并没有任何理论认识的情况下质疑自己或他人的信仰并伴随着或多或少的成功。认识论寻求通过辩论来明确正确信仰形成的规则。每个人通过把行为引导到期望的或有价值的目标来支配自己的行为。伦理学或道德哲学在其最包容的意义下旨在阐明在理性的系统化情境下包含的规则或原则。
Smith, Robin. Aristotle’s Logic. Zalta, Edward N. (编). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Summer 2019. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2019 [2020-04-22]. （原始内容存档于2020-05-19）.
例如，多作者的牛津西方哲学史把这门学科分为八卷：古典，中世纪，文艺复兴，两卷内容覆盖了1600–1750年，另两卷内容覆盖了1750–1945年，还有一卷内容覆盖了1945年后的分析哲学。安东尼·肯尼的New History of Western Philosophy分为四卷：古典，中世纪，近代前期（1500–1830年），近代后期（1830年至今）。更专业的剑桥哲学史把话题分为九个时期：前亚里士多德希腊哲学、希腊化时期哲学、后希腊时期和早期中世纪哲学、晚期中世纪、文艺复兴、三卷为17–19世纪，最后一卷包含1870–1945年的内容。
西塞罗, 图斯库卢姆辩论（英语：Tusculan Disputations）, 5.3.8–9 = 赫拉克利德斯·彭提乌斯（英语：Heraclides Ponticus） fr. 88 Wehrli, 第欧根尼·拉尔修1.12, 8.8, 杨布里科斯VP 58. Burkert attempted to discredit this ancient tradition, but it has been defended by C.J. De Vogel, Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism（1966）, pp. 97–102, and C. Riedweg, Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, And Influence（2005）, p. 92.
弗雷德里克·科普斯顿, 哲学史，卷II:从奥古斯丁到司各脱（Burns & Oates, 1950）, p. 1,”中世纪哲学恰当的时间范围是从八世纪的加洛林文艺复兴到十四世纪结束，即使它包括了先驱者奥古斯丁和教父们。“德斯蒙德·保罗·亨利（英语：Desmond Paul Henry）, in Paul Edwards（ed.）, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy（Macmillan, 1967）, vol. 5, pp. 252–257,”从奥古斯丁开始直到十四世纪末的尼克尔·奥里斯姆为止。“David Luscombe, Medieval Thought（牛津大学出版社, 1997），”中世纪哲学的时间从君士坦丁312年皈依起至1520年代的宗教改革为止。“Christopher Hughes, in A.C. Grayling（ed.）, Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject（牛津大学出版社, 1998），包括从奥古斯丁起至奥坎的哲学家。荷黑·格拉西亚（英语：Jorge Gracia），in Nicholas Bunnin and E.P. Tsui-James（eds.）, The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed.（Blackwell, 2003）, p. 620，”标识中世纪哲学为从奥古斯丁至17世纪的约翰·波音索特（英语：John of St. Thomas）。“安东尼·肯尼, A New History of Western Philosophy，卷二II:中世纪哲学（牛津大学出版社, 2005）,”从奥古斯丁开始至1512年的拉特朗会议。“
弗雷德里克·科普斯顿, A History of Philosophy, Volume III: From Ockham to Suarez（The Newman Press, 1953）p. 18: "When one looks at Renaissance philosophy ... one is faced at first sight with a rather bewildering assortment of philosophies."
Brian Copenhaver and Charles Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy（牛津大学出版社, 1992）, p. 4: "one may identify the hallmark of Renaissance philosophy as an accelerated and enlarged interest, stimulated by newly available texts, in primary sources of Greek and Roman thought that were previously unknown or partially known or little read."
Jorge J.E. Gracia in Nicholas Bunnin and E.P. Tsui-James（eds.）, The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed.（Blackwell, 2002）, p. 621: "the humanists ... restored man to the centre of attention and channeled their efforts to the recovery and transmission of classical learning, particularly in the philosophy of Plato."
Copleston, ibid.: "The bulk of Renaissance thinkers, scholars and scientists were, of course, Christians ... but none the less the classical revival ... helped to bring to the fore a conception of autonomous man or an idea of the development of the human personality, which, though generally Christian, was more 'naturalistic' and less ascetic than the mediaeval conception."
Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner（eds.）, The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 61 and 63: "From Petrarch the early humanists learnt their conviction that the revival of humanae literae was only the first step in a greater intellectual renewal" [...] "the very conception of philosophy was changing because its chief object was now man—man was at centre of every inquiry".
"Machiavelli appears as the first modern political thinker" Williams, Garrath. Hobbes: Moral and Political Philosophy. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [2014-05-06]. （原始内容存档于2011-07-05）.. "Machiavelli ought not really to be classified as either purely an "ancient" or a "modern," but instead deserves to be located in the interstices between the two." Nederman, Cary. Niccolò Machiavelli. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [2014-05-06]. （原始内容存档于2013-10-14）.
Donald Rutherford, The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy（Cambridge University Press, 2006）, p. xiii, defines its subject thus: "what has come to be known as "early modern philosophy"—roughly, philosophy spanning the period between the end of the sixteenth century and the end of the eighteenth century, or, in terms of figures, Montaigne through Kant." Steven Nadler, A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy（Blackwell, 2002）, p. 1, likewise identifies its subject as "the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries". Anthony Kenny, The Oxford History of Western Philosophy（Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1994）, p. 107, introduces "early modern philosophy" as "the writings of the classical philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe".
Steven Nadler, A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, pp. 1–2: "By the seventeenth century [...] it had become more common to find original philosophical minds working outside the strictures of the university—i.e., ecclesiastic—framework. [...] by the end of the eighteenth century, [philosophy] was a secular enterprise."
安东尼·肯尼, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3（Oxford University Press, 2006）, p. xii: "To someone approaching the early modern period of philosophy from an ancient and medieval background the most striking feature of the age is the absence of Aristotle from the philosophic scene."
Donald Rutherford, The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy（Cambridge University Press, 2006）, p. 1: "epistemology assumes a new significance in the early modern period as philosophers strive to define the conditions and limits of human knowledge."
Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3, p. 211: "The period between Descartes and Hegel was the great age of metaphysical system-building."
Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, vol. 3, pp. 179–180: "the seventeenth century saw the gradual separation of the old discipline of natural philosophy into the science of physics [...] [b]y the nineteenth century physics was a fully mature empirical science, operating independently of philosophy."
Nadler, A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, pp. 2–3: "Why should the early modern period in philosophy begin with Descartes and Bacon, for example, rather than with Erasmus and Montaigne? [...] Suffice it to say that at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and especially with Bacon and Descartes, certain questions and concerns come to the fore—a variety of issues that motivated the inquiries and debates that would characterize much philosophical thinking for the next two centuries."
Hobbes: Moral and Political Philosophy. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [2014-05-06]. （原始内容存档于2011-07-05）.: "Hobbes is the founding father of modern political philosophy. Directly or indirectly, he has set the terms of debate about the fundamentals of political life right into our own times."
Cudd, Ann; Eftekhari, Seena. Contractarianism. Edward N. Zalta (编). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2021. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2021 [2022-06-11]. （原始内容存档于2023-01-27）.: "Contractarianism [...] stems from the Hobbesian line of social contract thought"
Rutherford, The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, p. 1: "Most often this [period] has been associated with the achievements of a handful of great thinkers: the so-called 'rationalists'（Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz）and 'empiricists'（Locke, Berkeley, Hume）, whose inquiries culminate in Kant's 'Critical philosophy.' These canonical figures have been celebrated for the depth and rigor of their treatments of perennial philosophical questions..."
Nadler, A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, p. 2: "The study of early modern philosophy demands that we pay attention to a wide variety of questions and an expansive pantheon of thinkers: the traditional canonical figures（Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume）, to be sure, but also a large 'supporting cast'..."
Bruce Kuklick, "Seven Thinkers and How They Grew: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz; Locke, Berkeley, Hume; Kant" in Rorty, Schneewind, and Skinner（eds.）, Philosophy in History（Cambridge University Press, 1984）, p. 125: "Literary, philosophical, and historical studies often rely on a notion of what is canonical. In American philosophy scholars go from Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey; in American literature from James Fenimore Cooper to F. Scott Fitzgerald; in political theory from Plato to Hobbes and Locke [...] The texts or authors who fill in the blanks from A to Z in these, and other intellectual traditions, constitute the canon, and there is an accompanying narrative that links text to text or author to author, a 'history of' American literature, economic thought, and so on. The most conventional of such histories are embodied in university courses and the textbooks that accompany them. This essay examines one such course, the History of Modern Philosophy, and the texts that helped to create it. If a philosopher in the United States were asked why the seven people in my title comprise Modern Philosophy, the initial response would be: they were the best, and there are historical and philosophical connections among them."
Religious thinkers were among those influenced by Kierkegaard. Christian existentialists include Gabriel Marcel, Nicholas Berdyaev, Miguel de Unamuno, and Karl Jaspers（although he preferred to speak of his "philosophical faith"）. The Jewish philosophers Martin Buber and Lev Shestov have also been associated with existentialism.
艾伦·布洛克, R. B. Woodings, and John Cumming, eds. The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thinkers, in series, Fontana Original[s]. Hammersmith, Eng.: Fontana Press, 1992, cop. 1983. xxv, 867 p. ISBN 978-0-00-636965-3
艾伦·布洛克, and Oliver Stallybrass, jt. eds. The Harper Dictionary of Modern Thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. xix, 684 p. N.B.: "First published in England under the title, The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought." ISBN 978-0-06-010578-5
Julia, Didier. Dictionnaire de la philosophie. Responsible éditorial, Emmanuel de Waresquiel; secretariat de rédaction, Joelle Narjollet. [Éd. rev.]. Paris: Larousse, 2006. 301, [1] p. + xvi p. of ill. ISBN 978-2-03-583309-9
Reese, W. L.Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1980. iv, 644 p. ISBN 978-0-391-00688-1
入门
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Thinking it Through – An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, 2003, ISBN 978-0-19-513458-2
Think: philosophy for everyone （页面存档备份，存于互联网档案馆） Lively and accessible articles written by philosophers pre-eminent in their fields, for a broad audience. Free articles are available online.
Kim, J. and Ernest Sosa, Ed.（1999）. Metaphysics: An Anthology. Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies. Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
The Oxford Handbook of Free Will（2004）edited by Robert Kane
Husserl, Edmund and Donn Welton (1999). The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-21273-3
Cottingham, John. Western Philosophy: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2008. Print. Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies.
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