Philosophers

Major Ethical Philosophers

  • Plato
    428 BCE

    Plato

    Plato held that moral values are objective in the sense that they exist in a spirit-like realm beyond subjective human conventions
  • Aristotle
    384 BCE

    Aristotle

    Aristotle argued that virtues are good habits that we acquire, which regulate our emotions.
  • Augustine
    354

    Augustine

    St. Augustine's ethic is primarily an ethic of live: it is by the will that man reaches out toward God and finally takes possession of and enjoys Him.
  • Thomas Aquinas
    1225

    Thomas Aquinas

    His moral philosophy involves a merger of at least two apparently disparate traditions: Aristotelian eudaimonism and Christian theology.
  • Immanuel Kant

    Immanuel Kant

    Kantian ethics emphasizes a single principle of duty. He agreed that we have moral duties to oneself and other.