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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.
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Happiness or well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues (aretê: 'excellence') are the requisite skills and dispositions needed to attain it.
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His 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).
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Teaches that the greatest good is to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquillity, freedom from fear ("ataraxia") and absence from bodily pain ("aponia").
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Taught that the Logos (Universal Reason) was the greatest good in life and living in accordance with reason was the purpose of human life.
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Regards ethics as an enquiry into the Summum Bonum: the supreme good, which provides the happiness all human beings seek.
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Believes that moral thought is mainly about bringing moral order to one's own action and will.
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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.
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His 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.
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Was a philosopher, economist, jurist, and legal reformer and the founder of modern utilitarianism, an ethical theory holding that actions are morally right if they tend to promote happiness or pleasure (and morally wrong if they tend to promote unhappiness or pain) among all those affected by them.
