Major Ethical Philosophers

  • 469 BCE

    SOCRATES

    SOCRATES
    Socrates worked to critically examine the foundational beliefs that were common in Greece during his time, and encouraged other citizens to do so as well.
    He think otherwise: people only did wrong when at the moment tge perceived benefits seemed to outweigh the costs.
    He called the development of personal ethics as 'the art of measurement' correcting the distortions that skew one's analyses of benefit and cost.
  • Period: 469 BCE to 399 BCE

    SOCRATES

  • Period: 428 BCE to 348 BCE

    PLATO

  • 384 BCE

    ARISTOTLE

    ARISTOTLE
    Aristotle being concerned with action, not as being right in itself irrespective of any other consideration, but with actions conductive to man's good.As Copleston say Aristotle sets himself to discover what this good is and what thr science corresponding to it is.
    Aristotle even argued that virtues are good habits that we acquire, which regulate our emotions and virtues that fall at a mean between extreme character traits.
  • Period: 384 BCE to 322 BCE

    ARISTOTLE

  • 428

    PLATO

    PLATO
    Plato held that moral values are objective in the sense that they exist in a spirit-like realm beyond subjective human conventions. He held that they are absolute, or eternal in that they never change, and also that they are universal insofar as they apply to all rational creatures around the world and throughout time.
    Plato's concern is to challenge the perspective about goodness. For it is here that they go disastrously wrong in trying to live happy lives.