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Socrates was predominantly interested in ethics. He said that self-knowledge is a sufficient condition for the good life. Socrates identifies knowledge with virtue. If knowledge can be learned, so can virtue. Thus, he states that virtue can be taught. One must seek knowledge and wisdom before any interests. This way, knowledge is sought as a means to ethical action. What one knows dictates one's conscience or soul: these ideas form the philosophy of Socrates' Paradox. -
Socrates believed that "the unexamined life is not worth living." Additionally, Socrates believed that happiness is promoted by doing what's right and that no one chooses evil; no one chooses to act in ignorance. This is evidently supported by how parents raise their children by their goodwill and not wanting to do anything evil that may spoil their child's welfare.
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Plato is one of the world’s best-known and most widely read and studied philosophers. He was the student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle, and he wrote in the middle of the fourth century B.C.E. in ancient Greece.
Virtue ethics says that the reasoning of what is moral is decided by the person instead of by rules or consequences. YOU decide what’s moral and right, not by what will happen. -
“Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.” Plato believed that the human soul is divided into three parts.
Reason: our thinking ability to judge
Spirit: our emotional ability to feel empathy
Appetite: our desires According to Plato, we should balance these three parts of our souls to make good decisions and moral choices. Letting one take too much control of our minds is not good for us and leads to bad decisions. This is observed in our daily decisions. -
Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, who made important contributions to logic, criticism, rhetoric, physics, biology, psychology, mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, and politics. He was known as "The first teacher" and "The Philosophy." He was a student of Plato for twenty years.
The ethics of Aristotle is concerned with action, not as being right in itself irrespective of any other consideration, but actions conducive to one's good. -
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit"
In the concept of happiness, one has to know the nature of virtue, for understanding the nature of virtue one has to determine the soul or spirit. One of the best examples is the development of habits that eventually leads to becoming a routine lifestyle. May it be in a bad way or a good way, these habits lead our life to how it will turn out -- from ourselves to our undertakings in life. -
An English philosopher Thomas Hobbes is best known for his political thought, and deservedly so. His vision of the world is strikingly original and still relevant to contemporary politics. His main concern is the problem of social and political order: how human beings can live together in peace and avoid the danger and fear of civil conflict. He believes that human beings are basically selfish creatures who would do anything to improve their position.
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"Governments are created to protect people from their own selfishness and evil."
Hobbes heavily gives emphasis on the importance of abidance by a set of laws that will govern a place. This is so we can avoid chaotic outcomes from daily endeavors. However, he was also aware of the consequences of having a bad and wicked government. This is very prevalent in some governments of today -- corrupt, selfish, and unjust. -
He was born in 1748 to a wealthy family. A child prodigy, his father sent him to study at Queen’s College, Oxford University, aged 12. According to Bentham himself, it was in 1769 he came upon “the principle of utility”, inspired by the writings of Hume, Priestley, Helvétius, and Beccaria.1 This is the principle at the foundation of utilitarian ethics, as it states that any action is right insofar as it increases happiness, and wrong insofar as it increases pain.
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"Do whatever producer the greatest good for the greatest number." For Bentham, happiness simply meant pleasure and the absence of pain and could be quantified according to its intensity and duration. Famously, he rejected the idea of inalienable natural rights—rights that exist independent of their enforcement by any government—as “nonsense on stilts”. This happens in conscious democratic decisions that center on the welfare of the many as an action.
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He is considered the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. He defended the freedom of individuals against absolute state power. He was also an outspoken feminist. In addition to being a philosopher, he was also a political economist and politician. Mill was a child prodigy, raised studying the tenets of utilitarian philosophy with his father and the founder of the movement (Jeremy Bentham).
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"In the long run, the best proof of a good character is good actions." A central theme throughout Mill’s work is the notion that individuals should strive to improve the common good, bettering the lives of all people. The greatest example of this is when we will do things for others s.a. cooking, cleaning, etc.
