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469 BCE
Socrates (469-399 BC)
One great paradox of his was whether weakness of will, where doing wrong when you are aware of what is right, truly existed.The creation of personal ethics was what he called "the art of measurement" wherein it corrects the distortions of an individual's analysis of benefit and cost. -
428 BCE
Plato (428-348 BC)
According to him, moral values are objective as they only exist in a spirit-like realm beyond subjective human conventions. They are absolute, eternal, and universal as they apply to all rational creatures around the world and throughout time. -
384 BCE
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Aristotle’s basic thought is that happiness (eudaimonia)—living well—depends on a creature’s perfecting its natural endowments. It follows that the good life for man involves the attainment of virtue or excellence in reason. In general, his claim is that the virtues of character and intellect are ways of perfecting reason and hence indispensable to the good human life. However, he does not neglect the importance of friends, wealth, and social status in a good life.
