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Period: 551 BCE to 479 BCE
Confucius
Confucius was a Chinese philosopher, poet and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who was traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Confucius's teachings and philosophy formed the basis of East Asian culture and society. Confucius’ ethics basically asserts that filial piety and fraternal love are the roots of humaneness, the foundation and origin of human morality; all social goods are extensions of family ethics. -
Period: 470 BCE to 399 BCE
Socrates
Socrates was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as a founder of Western philosophy. An enigmatic figure. The ultimate aim of Socrates' philosophical method is always ethical. Socrates believed that if one knows what the good is, one will always do what is good. Thus if one truly understands the meaning of courage, self-control, or justice, one will act in a courageous, self-controlled and just manner. -
Period: 384 BCE to 322 BCE
Aristotle
Aristotle's ethics builds upon earlier Greek thought, particularly that of his teacher Plato and Plato's teacher, Socrates. Aristotle's ethics, or study of character, is built around the premise that people should achieve an excellent character (a virtuous character, "ethikē aretē" in Greek) as a pre-condition for attaining happiness or well-being (eudaimonia). -
Period: 1225 to 1274
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas was an Italian, Dominican friar, philosopher, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. An immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism, he is also known within the latter as the Doctor Angelicus, Aquinas’s ethical theory involves both principles – rules about how to act – and virtues – personality traits which are taken to be good or moral to have. People trying to use Aquinas to develop a virtue ethics. -
Period: 1469 to 1527
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher, and historian who lived during the Renaissance. Machiavelli’s Ethics challenges the most entrenched understandings of Machiavelli, arguing that he was a moral and political philosopher who consistently favored the rule of law over that of men, that he had a coherent theory of justice, and that he did not defend the “Machiavellian” maxim that the ends justify the means. -
Period: to
René Descartes
René Descartes, 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650 was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and lay Catholic. Some of Descartes' ethics that attributed to him, the supreme good consists in virtue, which is a firm and constant resolution to use the will well; happiness is the supreme contentment of mind which results from exercising virtue; virtue presupposes knowledge of metaphysics and natural philosophy; happiness is the supreme contentment of mind which results from exercising virtue. -
Period: to
John Locke
John Locke FRS 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". 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” -
Period: to
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Hume's ethical thought grapples with questions about the relationship between morality and reason, the role of human emotion in thought and action, the nature of moral evaluation, human sociability, and what it means to live a virtuous life. -
Period: to
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant is the central figure in modern philosophy. He synthesized early modern rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy. 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. -
Period: to
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882),[7] who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He believes that society is anathema to the Ethics of Authenticity, what he calls “self-reliance,” believing, trusting, relying on oneself to lead the life one wants. Emerson writes, Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. -
Period: to
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He claimed that in the aesthetic life, one is ruled by passion. In the ethical life, one is ruled by societal regulations. In the religious life, one is ruled by total faith in God. Kierkegaard claims that the only way to make life worthwhile is to embrace faith in God, and that faith necessarily involves embracing the absurd. -
Period: to
Michel Foucalt
Paul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Ethics, Foucault says, is the form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection, and by this he means that freedom consists in reflectively informed ascetic practices or practices of self. These informed practices are imbued with an attitude, ethos, or relationship to one’s ethical substance that Foucault understands as the activity of freedom.