The Classical Philosophers and their Philosophies

By KAIZA RUTH ARGUTA
  • 469 BCE

    SOCRATES

    SOCRATES
    Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher often regarded as the primary wellspring of Western thinking. He was sentenced to death for his Socratic questioning style.
    He tried to construct an ethical philosophy based on human reason as opposed to theological theology.
    Socrates observed that human decision was driven by a desire for happiness. Knowing oneself is the ultimate source of wisdom.
  • 428 BCE

    PLATO

    PLATO
    Plato was Socrates' student and Aristotle's teacher. According to Plato's Theory of Forms, the physical world is not the true world; rather, ultimate reality exists beyond our physical world.
    Plato's philosophy divides the world into two realms: the physical and the spiritual. The World of Forms is the name Plato gave to this spiritual realm. The physical realm, according to Plato's Theory of Forms, is simply a shadow, or image, of the ultimate reality of the Realm of Forms.
  • 384 BCE

    ARISTOTLE

    ARISTOTLE
    Aristotle is considered as a towering figure in Greek philosophy, having contributed significantly to logic, criticism, rhetoric, physics, biology, psychology, mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, and politics.
    According to his ideas, all other beings must be derived from a separate and unchanging essence. According to his ethics, becoming magnificent is the only way to achieve eudaimonia, a state of happiness or blessedness that marks the highest form of human existence.

  • MORAL POSITIVISM

    MORAL POSITIVISM
    Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, physicist, and historian most known for his political theory, which he stated in the book Leviathan (1651).
    The notion that there is no necessary relationship between law and moral principles is known as moral positivism. Moral positivism, according to Hobbes, marked a significant break with common law study. Within wider conceptions of social order, positivism arose as an explanation of the basis of law's power.

  • UTILITARIANISM

    UTILITARIANISM
    In normative ethics, utilitarianism is a tradition originating with the late 18th and early 19th-century English philosophers and economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism says an action is right if it tends to promote happiness or pleasure and wrong if it produces unhappiness or pain. It is a subset of consequentialism, which says acts (or categories of actions) should be judged based on their outcomes.