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Ethical Philosophers and their Ethical Philosophies

  • Aristotle
    384 BCE

    Aristotle

    "Virtue Theory"
  • Period: 384 BCE to 322 BCE

    Aristotle

    Student of Plato who was himself a student of Socrates, one of the founders of Western philosophy. Aristotle spent about twenty years at Plato’s Academy in Athens, first as a student and then as an associate. Aristotle introduced the concept of what is usually referred to as the golden mean of moderation. He believed that every virtue resides somewhere between the vices of defect and excess. That is, one can display either too little or too much of a good thing, or a virtue.
  • Thomas Aquinas
    1225

    Thomas Aquinas

    "Natural Theology"
  • Period: 1225 to 1274

    Thomas Aquinas

    Thomas Aquinas was a 13th century Dominican friar, theologian and Doctor of the Church. His beliefs holds that the existence of God is verified through reason and rational explanation, as opposed through scripture or religious experience. This ontological approach is among central premises underpinning modern Catholic philosophy and liturgy. He adhered to the Platonic/Aristotelian principle of realism, which holds that certain absolutes exist in the universe, including the the universe itself.
  • René Descartes

    René Descartes

    "Cartesian Dualism"
  • Period: to

    René Descartes

    French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher. Erected new epistemic foundations on the basis of the intuition that, when he is thinking, he exists; this he expressed in the dictum “I think, therefore I am”. Descartes’s metaphysics is rationalist, based on the postulation of innate ideas of mind, matter, and God but his physics and physiology based on sensory experience are mechanistic and empiricist.
  • Immanuel Kant

    Immanuel Kant

    "Deontology"
  • Period: to

    Immanuel Kant

    Kant taught philosophy at the University of Königsberg for several years. The term deontology stems from the Greek deon—duty, obligation, or command. It is the radical opposite of utilitarianism in that it holds the consequences of a moral decision are of no matter whatsoever. What is important are the motives as to why one has acted in the way that one has. So an action may have beneficial results, but still be unethical if it has been performed for the wrong reasons.
  • Jeremy Bentham

    Jeremy Bentham

    "Utilitarianism"
  • Period: to

    Jeremy Bentham

    An attorney, became what we would today call a consultant to the British Parliament in the late-eighteenth century. Utilitarianism as an ethical system today, when making moral decisions we're advised to select action which produces the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. If the balance of good or usefulness outweighs that of evil or harm then the choice is a moral one. On the other hand, if the balance of evil outweighs that of good, then the choice is immoral.
  • John Stuart Mill

    John Stuart Mill

    "Second Generation of Utilitarianism"
  • Period: to

    John Stuart Mill

    He became a leader of the second generation of utilitarians. Mill refined the political applications of utilitarianism and in doing so, laid the foundation for the political movement of libertarianism. He introduced the no-harm rule. By this, Mill proposed that no individual be deprived of his or her right to act in any fashion, even a self-destructive one, provided that his or her action does not impinge physically on others.
  • John Rawls

    John Rawls

    "Justice Theory"
  • Period: to

    John Rawls

    Rawls is a uniquely American political philosopher. He labeled his ethics to be “justice as fairness”. Rawls insisted, human justice must be centered on a firm foundation comprising a first and second principle. First is that “each person is to have equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with similar liberty for others. The second consisted of two sub-points: first is the Difference Principle and the second is Fair Equality of Opportunity.

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