Ethical Philosophers

SOCRATES

470 BCE

Socrates was a classical Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and as being the first moral philosopher of the Western ethical tradition of thought. His most important contribution to Western thought is his dialectic method of inquiry, known as the Socratic Method which he largely applied to the examination of key moral concepts such as the Good and Justice. His method has often been considered as a defining element of American legal education.

PLATO

428 BCE

Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. And he was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy. Plato appears to have been the founder of Western political philosophy, with his Republic, and laws among other dialogues, providing some of the earliest extant treatments of political questions from a philosophical perspective.

ARISTOTLE

384 BCE

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist. Along with Plato, he is considered the "Father of Western Philosophy". He wrote two ethical treatises: the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics. He was the founder of formal logic, devising for it a finished system that for centuries was regarded as the sum of the discipline; and he pioneered the study of zoology, both observational and theoretical, in which some of his work remained unsurpassed until the 19th century.

AUGUSTINE

354 BCE

Saint Augustine of Hippo was a Roman African, early Christian theologian and philosopher from Numidia whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He also helped formulate the doctrine of Original Sin and made seminal contributions to the development of Just War theory. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa and is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Period.

THOMAS AQUINAS

1225

Saint Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology at the peak of Scholasticism in Europe, and the founder of the Thomistic school of philosophy and theology. His most important and enduring works are the "Summa Theologica", in which he expounds his systematic theology of the "quinquae viae" (the five proofs of the existence of God), and the "Summa Contra Gentiles".

FRANCIS BACON

1561

Francis Bacon is one of the founders of the concept of natural essence of morality. The subject of the study of ethics philosopher considered the will of man, which directs and organizes his mind that triggers the emotions. Bacon has been called the "Father of Empiricism". His works argued for the possibility of scientific knowledge based only upon inductive reasoning and careful observation of events in nature.

RENE DESCARTES

1596

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and writer of the Age of Reason. He is generally considered one of the most notable intellectual figures of the Dutch Golden Age. He has been called the "Father of Modern Philosophy" and he is responsible for one of the best-known quotations in philosophy: "Cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am").

JOHN LOCKE

1632

John Locke was an English philosopher and a physician whose works lie at the foundation of modern philosophical Empiricism and Political Liberalism. His political thought was grounded in the notion of a social contract between citizens and in the importance of toleration, especially in matters of religion. Much of his advocacies in the realm of politics was accepted in England after the Glorious Revolution and in the United States after the country’s declaration of independence in 1776.

IMMANUEL KANT

1724

Immanuel Kant was a German philosoper and was one of the foremost thinkers of the Enlightenment and arguably one of the greatest philosophers of all time. He drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposition that worldly objects can be intuited a priori ("beforehand"), and that intuition is therefore independent from objective reality. He wrote 3 ground breaking critiques, The Critique of Pure Reason, The Critique of Practical Reason, and The Critique of Judgement.

GEORGE WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

1770

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher and an important figure of German idealism. He achieved wide recognition in his day and—while primarily influential within the continental tradition of philosophy—has become increasingly influential in the analytic tradition as well. In addition to epitomizing German idealist philosophy, Hegel boldly claimed that his own system of philosophy represented an historical culmination of all previous philosophical thought.

CHARLES DARWIN

1809

Charles Darwin, in full Charles Robert Darwin, English naturalist whose scientific theory of evolution by natural selection became the foundation of modern evolutionary studies. The biologization of ethics started with the publication of The Descent of Man by Darwin (1809-1882) in 1871. Almost immediately after the publication of On the Origin of Species, an immense interest arose in the moral implications of Darwinism and whether the truth of Darwinism would undermine traditional ethics.

JOHN DEWEY

1859

Dewey is one of the primary figures associated with the philosophy of Pragmatism and is considered one of the fathers of Functional Psychology . Aside from being well-known public intellectual, he was also a major voice of progressive education and liberalism. He was a major educational reformer for the 20th century.