Ethical Philosophers

Socrates

470 BCE

He is a Greek philosopher whose way of life, character, and thought exerted a profound influence on ancient and modern philosophy. Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the fields of ethics and epistemology. It is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus.

Plato

428 BCE

He is one of the ancient Greek philosophers, student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence. Plato introduced the idea that their mistakes were due to their not engaging properly with a class of entities he called forms, chief examples of which were Justice, Beauty, and Equality. He is widely considered the pivotal figure in the development of Western philosophy.

Aristotle

384 BCE

He was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy. He believed all concepts and knowledge were ultimately based on perception. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.

Augustine

354

He was one of the Latin Fathers of the Church and perhaps the most significant Christian thinker after St. Paul. Augustine’s adaptation of classical thought to Christian teaching created a theological system of great power and lasting influence. Augustine has been cited as both a champion of human freedom and an articulate defender of divine predestination, and his views on sexuality were humane in intent but have often been received as oppressive in effect.

Thomas Aquinas

1225

Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican priest and Scriptural theologian. He took seriously the medieval maxim that “grace perfects and builds on nature; it does not set it aside or destroy it.” Therefore, insofar as Thomas thought about philosophy as the discipline that investigates what we can know naturally about God and human beings, he thought that good Scriptural theology, since it treats those same topics, presupposes good philosophical analysis and argumentation.

Francis Bacon

1561

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. Most importantly, he argued this could be achieved by use of a sceptical and methodical approach whereby scientists aim to avoid misleading themselves. After a magisterial survey, urgently advocated new ways by which man might establish a legitimate command over nature for the relief of his estate.

Rene Descartes

1596

Because he was one of the first to abandon scholastic Aristotelianism, because he formulated the first modern version of mind-body dualism, from which stems the mind-body problem, and because he promoted the development of a new science grounded in observation and experiment, he has been called the father of modern philosophy. Descartes refused to accept the authority of previous philosophers. He frequently set his views apart from those of his predecessors.

John Locke

1632

He was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism". He offered an empiricist theory according to which we acquire ideas through our experience of the world. The mind is then able to examine, compare, and combine these ideas in numerous different ways. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy.

Immanuel Kant

1724

He was a German philosopher who is a central figure in modern philosophy. Kant believed that reason is the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant’s theory is an example of a deontological moral theory–according to these theories, the rightness or wrongness of actions does not depend on their consequences but on whether they fulfill our duty. Kant believed that there was a supreme principle of morality, referred as The Categorical Imperative.

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1770

He was a German philosopher who developed a dialectical scheme that emphasized the progress of history and of ideas from thesis to antithesis and thence to a synthesis. His principal achievement was his development of a distinctive articulation of idealism, sometimes termed absolute idealism, in which the dualisms of, for instance, mind and nature and subject and object are overcome. His philosophy of spirit conceptually integrates psychology, the state, history, art, religion and philosophy.

Charles Darwin

1809

He was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. His proposition that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors is now widely accepted, and considered a foundational concept in science. Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.

John Dewey

1859

John Dewey was a leading proponent of the American school of thought known as pragmatism, a view that rejected the dualistic epistemology and metaphysics of modern philosophy in favor of a naturalistic approach that viewed knowledge as arising from an active adaptation of the human organism to its environment. Dewey is one of the primary figures associated with the philosophy of pragmatism and is considered one of the fathers of functional psychology.