Major Ethical Philosophers

  • Period: 469 BCE to 399 BCE

    Socrates

    "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
  • Period: 427 BCE to 347 BCE

    Plato

    "Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?"
  • Period: 384 BCE to 322 BCE

    Aristotle

    "...Virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence."
  • Period: 1225 to Mar 7, 1274

    Thomas Aquinas

    For those with faith, no evidence is necessary; for those without it, no evidence will suffice.
  • Period: to

    René Descartes

    “We cannot ever practice any virtue—that is to say, do what our reason tells us we should do—without receiving satisfaction and pleasure from doing so”
  • Period: to

    Jeremy Bentham

    "The said truth is that is it the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of the right and wrong."
  • Period: to

    Immanuel Kant

    "Do the right thing because it is right."
  • Period: to

    John Stuart Mil

    "A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inactions\, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury."
  • Period: to

    Karl Marx

    "The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people."
  • Period: to

    Friedrich Nietzsche

    "Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose."
  • Period: to

    W. D. Ross

    "But to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome,"
  • Period: to

    Jean-Paul Sartre

    “So long as one believes in God, one has the right to do the Good in order to be moral.”
  • Period: to

    C.L. Stevenson

    "moral judgments do not state any sort of fact, but rather express the moral emotions of the speaker and attempt to influence others."
  • Period: to

    John Rawls

    “The sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind.”
  • Alasdair MacIntyre

    “At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.”