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He believes “the unexamined life is not worth living.” One must seek knowledge and wisdom before private interests. -
Birth and Death of Socrates
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Plato maintains a virtue-based eudaemonistic conception of ethics. That is to say, happiness or well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues (aretê: 'excellence') are the requisite skills and dispositions needed to attain it. -
Birth and Death of Plato
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Aristotle emphasized that virtue is practical, and that the purpose of ethics is to become good, not merely to know. Aristotle also claims that the right course of action depends upon the details of a particular situation, rather than being generated merely by applying a law. -
Birth and Death of Aristotle
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Augustine argues that to become righteous, wise and holy in eternity like God, man must seek to grow in virtue, knowledge and love now by submitting his intellect and will, disordered by sin, to God's perfect Charity. -
Birth and Death of Augustine of Hippo
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Aquinas believes that we should always follow our conscience, even when it is wrong or causes great harm. Since we have no way of knowing whether our consciences are wrong, they are the best guide we have as to what is the moral thing to do. -
Birth and Death of Thomas Aquinas
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Machiavelli's moral precepts are rooted in his conception of human agency as “bounded” and responsible: he posits that human nature generates a capacity for choice and action that permits people to overcome external forces (such as “fortune”) in order to realize tangible moral goods. -
Birth and Death of Niccolo Machiavelli
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Hobbes argued that the fundamental principles of morality, or laws of nature, require us to try to establish peace: he says this can only be established through the institution of an absolute sovereign. He contended that the sovereign alone is empowered to make laws regulating our actions. -
Birth and Death of Thomas Hobbes
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Descartes is committed to the view that virtue is sufficient for happiness, that is, a “perfect contentment of mind and inner satisfaction.” At the same time, he denies that virtue has value only as a means to happiness. -
Birth and Death of René Descartes
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It is the science, Locke says, of using the powers that we have as human beings in order to act in such a way that we obtain things that are good and useful for us. As he says: ethics is “the seeking out those Rules, and Measures of humane Actions, which lead to Happiness, and the Means to practice them” -
Birth and Death of John Locke
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He rejects the rationalist conception of morality whereby humans make moral evaluations, and understand right and wrong, through reason alone. In place of the rationalist view, Hume contends that moral evaluations depend significantly on sentiment or feeling. -
Birth and Death of David Hume
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Kant's ethics are organized around the notion of a “categorical imperative,” which is a universal ethical principle stating that one should always respect the humanity in others, and that one should only act in accordance with rules that could hold for everyone. -
Birth and Death of Immanuel Kant
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The father of utilitarianism, a moral theory that argues that actions should be judged right or wrong to the extent they increase or decrease human well-being or 'utility'. -
Birth and Death of Jeremy Bentham
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The ethical theory of John Stuart Mill is most extensively articulated in his classical text Utilitarianism. Its goal is to justify the utilitarian principle as the foundation of morals. This principle says actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote overall human happiness. -
Birth and Death of John Stuart Mill
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In Foundations of Ethics, Ross suggests that the duties of beneficence, self-improvement, and justice could be subsumed under a single duty to promote intrinsic values (that is, things that are intrinsically good). Doing this would reduce the number of prima facie duties from seven to five. -
Birth and Death of W.D Ross
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Stevenson's major contribution to philosophy was his development of emotivism, a theory of ethical language according to which moral judgments do not state any sort of fact, but rather express the moral emotions of the speaker and attempt to influence others. -
Birth and Death of C.L Stevenson
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Rawls argued that only under a "veil of ignorance" could human beings reach a fair and impartial agreement (contract) as true equals not biased by their place in society. They would have to rely only on the human powers of reason to choose principles of social justice for their society. -
Birth and Death of John Rawls