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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. -
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. ... Aquinas, in contrast, believes that moral thought is mainly about bringing moral order to one's own action and will. -
Thomas Hobbes was the first great figure in modern moral philosophy. His main grounding in philosophy was on the basis of materialism, believing that everything that happens is a result of the physical world and that the soul, as previous philosophers discussed it, does not exist. -
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” (Essay, IV. -
His unique metaphysics motivated an intriguing moral philosophy. Spinoza was a moral anti-realist, in that he denied that anything is good or bad independently of human desires and beliefs. -
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. -
Kant's moral philosophy is a deontological normative theory, which is to say he rejects the utilitarian idea that the rightness of an action is a function of how fruitful its outcome is. He says that the motive (or means), and not consequence (or end), of an action determines its moral value. -
Dewey's ethics replaces the goal of identifying an ultimate end or supreme ethical principle with the goal of identifying a method for improving our value judgments. Dewey argued that ethical inquiry is the use of reflective intelligence to revise our judgments in light of the consequences of acting on them. -
In his later years, whilst continuing to staunchly defend individual rights and freedoms, he became more critical of economic liberalism and his views on political economy moved towards a form of liberal socialism. Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. -
John Rawls (b. 1921, d. 2002) was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition. His theory of justice as fairness describes a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an egalitarian economic system.
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