This puzzle requires you to identify a philosopher of each classification whose surname/mononym is “capped” by a word (some quantity of its consecutive first letters welded to some quantity of its consecutive last letters) that satisfies the rest of the clue. The flavortext provides an example of “scholastic blues”, referring to the famous scholasticist [Thomas] AQU(in)AS, where AQUAS = a“blues”. I did my best to be inclusive of both genders, a mix of religions, and a blend of Eastern and Western philosophers, but had to fit the extraction mechanism limitations.

The blanks in front of each clue indicate the length of the capping word, and the ? represents a letter to extract.

Most if not all of the names used can be found very handily in the time-ordered Wikipedia List of Western Philosophers and List of Eastern Philosophers. Any others were added with a quick Google search by religion + philosophy. The solver should have noted that the answers were being assembled alphabetical order, making the hunt for philosophers a lot more efficient.

For the second step, put the philosophers in birth date (era) order (or just follow the given order in the Wikipedia pages identified above), and the extracted "?" letters yield the final message:

This philosophic message clues NI(ETSZ)CHE, giving NICHE as the final cap-word answer. This is disambiguated from NIETSZCHE as the final answer by the fact that my blanks for the rest of the puzzle only enumerate the endcap words.

Note: It is not mere coincidence that Nietszche would be last on the ordered list based on his birth date. I was simply being a conformist.