Disagreement Table in Philosophy

Philosophical Divide	Philosopher (Side A)	Philosopher (Side B)	Branch of Philosophy	Core Point of Disagreement
Change vs. Permanence	Heraclitus	Parmenides	Metaphysics	Is reality fundamentally flux or unchanging being?
World of Forms vs. Empirical Substances	Plato	Aristotle	Metaphysics / Epistemology	Whether intelligible Forms or sense particulars ground knowledge and existence
Rationalism vs. Empiricism	René Descartes	John Locke	Epistemology	Are ideas innate and grasped by reason, or derived from sensory experience?
Skepticism vs. Transcendental Critique	David Hume	Immanuel Kant	Epistemology / Metaphysics	Can certain knowledge of causation and metaphysics be secured?
State-of-Nature Pessimism vs. Optimism	Thomas Hobbes	Jean-Jacques Rousseau	Political Philosophy	Human nature and the extent/ground of political authority
Natural-Rights Liberalism vs. Authoritarian Contract	John Locke	Thomas Hobbes	Political Philosophy	Whether individuals retain inalienable rights against the sovereign
Separation of Powers vs. Legislative Primacy	John Locke	Montesquieu	Political Philosophy	Optimal institutional design: mixed monarchy/parliament vs. tripartite separation
Duty-Based Ethics vs. Consequentialism	Immanuel Kant	John Stuart Mill	Normative Ethics	Categorical duty vs. greatest-happiness principle as moral criterion
Pleasure vs. Virtue	Epicurus	Zeno of Citium (Stoics)	Ethics	Is the highest good tranquil pleasure or living virtuously in accord with nature?
Moderate Realism vs. Nominalism	Thomas Aquinas	William of Ockham	Metaphysics	Ontological status of universals (real in things vs. mere names)
Immaterialism vs. Materialism	George Berkeley	Baron d’Holbach	Metaphysics / Ontology	Whether matter exists independently of perception
Dialectical Idealism vs. Existential Individualism	G. W. F. Hegel	Søren Kierkegaard	Metaphysics / Existentialism	Primacy of collective Spirit vs. individual subjective truth
Central Planning vs. Spontaneous Order	Karl Marx	Friedrich Hayek	Political Philosophy / Economics	Mechanism of economic coordination and justice
Justice as Fairness vs. Entitlement Theory	John Rawls	Robert Nozick	Political Philosophy	Patterned distributive justice vs. historical ownership rights
Fixed Logical Meaning vs. Deconstruction	Early Ludwig Wittgenstein	Jacques Derrida	Philosophy of Language	Stability vs. indeterminacy of linguistic meaning
Idealism vs. Common-Sense Realism	George Berkeley	G. E. Moore	Metaphysics / Epistemology	Does esse est percipi, or do ordinary objects exist independently?
Mind–Body Dualism vs. Physicalism	René Descartes	J. J. C. Smart	Philosophy of Mind	Are mind and matter distinct substances or is everything physical?
Compatibilism vs. Hard Determinism	Daniel Dennett	Galen Strawson	Philosophy of Action	Can free will coexist with causal determinism?
Foundationalism vs. Coherentism	René Descartes	W. V. O. Quine	Epistemology	Must knowledge rest on indubitable foundations or web-like mutual support?
Virtue Ethics vs. Deontological Ethics	Aristotle	Immanuel Kant	Normative Ethics	Character-based excellence vs. universal moral duties
Ethical Egoism vs. Utilitarian Altruism	Ayn Rand	Peter Singer	Ethics	Should moral agents maximize self-interest or total welfare?
Logical Positivism vs. Philosophical Hermeneutics	A. J. Ayer	Hans-Georg Gadamer	Epistemology / Philosophy of Language	Verificationist meaning vs. historically situated interpretation
Scientific Realism vs. Instrumentalism	Karl Popper	Bas van Fraassen	Philosophy of Science	Do scientific theories aim at truth or merely empirical adequacy?
Essentialism vs. Anti-Essentialism (Gender)	Simone de Beauvoir	Judith Butler	Social Philosophy / Metaphysics	Are gender traits fixed essences or socially constructed performances?
Objective Truth vs. Post-modern Relativism	Karl Popper	Richard Rorty	Epistemology	Is truth an objective correspondence or a contingent, pragmatic construction?