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Period: 469 BCE to 399 BCE
Socrates
His philosophy states that people only did wrong when at the moment the perceived benefits seemed to outweigh the costs. Personal ethics is what he called "The art of measurement. His philosophy was to move intellectual pursuits away from the focus on `physical science'. -
Period: 428 BCE to 348 BCE
Plato
He held that values are objective and that they are absolute, eternal, in that they never change and they apply to all rational creatures. Challenging the views most people have about goodness. He states that only by being virtuous that we can hope to be happy. -
Period: 384 BCE to 322 BCE
Aristotle
Aristotle argued that virtues are good habits that we acquire, which regulate our emotions. Most virtues will fall at a mean between extreme character traits. His principle states that to be happy, live a life of moderation. In everything that we do, we must avoid extremes. -
Period: to
Thomas Hobbes (Moral Positivism)
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. -
Period: to
Jeremy Bentham (Utilitarianism)
Many of the central concepts and defining terms of utilitarian philosophy had been articulated by earlier moralists, most notably John Gay, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Claude-Adrien Helvétius, and Cesare Beccaria. However, it was Bentham who rendered the theory in its instantly recognizable secular and systematic form. It is best explained by the maxim, "Do whatever produces the greatest good for the greatest number".