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A philosopher renowned as one of the legendary Seven Wise Men, or Sophoi, of antiquity, who have left maxims containing general principles, norms and advice regarding the moral aspects of human life.
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He was the first philosopher to attempt a completely naturalist, mechanistic model of the universe. He argued that the world behaved like a human society, according to laws. These laws ensured that any significant disharmony would not last long, as the laws balance out all of nature.
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A Greek philosopher of nature and one of three thinkers of Miletus traditionally considered to be the first philosopher in the Western world. He made the common analogy between the divine air that sustains the universe and human air, or soul, that animates people. Such a comparison would also permit him to maintain a unity behind diversity as well as to reinforce the view of his overcoming principle regulating all life and behaviour.
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His philosophy is called Pythagoreanism which prescribed a highly structured way of life and espoused the doctrine of metempsychosis or the transmitigation of the soul after death into a new body, human, or animal.
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He maintains a virtue-based eudaemonistic conception of ethics. It says that the 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.
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He regards ethics as an enquiry into the Summun Bonum: the supreme good, which provides the happiness that all human beings seek. For him, happiness consists in the enjoyment of God, a reward granted in the afterlife for virtue in this life.
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He 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.
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His philosophy was a complete and interdependent system, involving a view of the goal of human life(happinness), an empiricist theory of knowledge(sensations), a description of nature based on atomistic materialism, and a naturalistic account of evolution, from the formation of the world to the emergence of human societies.
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He believes that we should always follow our conscience, even when it is wrong or causes great harm. Since we have no way of knowing whether our conscience are wrong, they are the best guide we have as to what is the moral thing to do.
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His ethics are organized around the notion of a "categorical imperative", which is 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. He also argued that the moral law is a truth of reason, and hence, that all rational creatures are bound by the same moral law.
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He address justice on the basis of fairness and puts forth that fairness is achieved when each and every individual has access to the services he/she needs. The important aspect of his view is that justice can be achieved not by absolute equity but by fairness.
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His moral theory is called discourse ethics. It is designed for contemporary societies where moral agents encounter pluralistic notions of the good and try to act on the basis of publicalky justified principles.