-
Socrates' ethical intellectualism has an eudaemological character. Socrates presupposes reason is essential for the good life. One's true happiness is promoted by doing what is right. -
Plato maintains a virtue-based eudaemonistic conception of ethics. That is to say, happiness or well-being is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues are the requisite skills and dispositions needed to attain it. -
Aristotle's ethics, or study of character, is built around the premise that people should achieve an excellent character
as a pre-condition for attaining happiness or well-being. -
Hobbes argued that the fundamental principles of morality, or laws of nature, require us to try to establish peace: he says this can only be established through the institution of an absolute sovereign. He contended that the sovereign alone is empowered to make laws regulating our actions. -
Locke wrote that all individuals are equal in the sense that they are born with certain "inalienable" natural rights. -
Kant's deontological philosophy stemmed from his belief that humans possess the ability to reason and understand universal moral laws that they can apply in all situations. -
Sidgwick argued that “It is evident to me that as a rational being I am bound to aim at good generally, – so far as it is attainable by my efforts, – not merely at a particular part of it”. -
According to Ross, there will always be one duty that will have a greater urgency or priority than the others, and that will be the right thing to do. -
The utilitarian idea, as Rawls confronts it, is that society is to be arranged so as to maximize (the total or average) aggregate utility or expected well-being.