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470 BCE
Socrates
Socrates is a Greek philosopher and logician. The ultimate aim of Socrates’ philosophical method is always ethical. Socrates believed that if one knows what the good is, one will always do what is good. Thus if one truly understands the meaning of courage, self-control, or justice, one will act in a courageous, self-controlled and just manner. -
428 BCE
Plato
He is an ancient Greek philosopher who was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle. Plato maintains a virtue-based eudaemonistic conception of ethics. That is to say, happiness or well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues (aretê: ‘excellence’) are the requisite skills and dispositions needed to attain it. His conception of happiness is elusive and his support for a morality of happiness seems somewhat subdued. -
384 BCE
Aristotle
He is one of the greatest intellectual figures of Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy. Aristotle's ethics, or study of character, is built around the premise that people should achieve an excellent character (a virtuous character, "ethikē aretē" in Greek) as a pre-condition for attaining happiness or well-being (eudaimonia). -
345 BCE
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo is a fourth-century philosopher whose revolutionary philosophy infused Christian doctrine with Neoplatonism. Augustine ethic was called the typical ethic that is eudaemonistic in character, which proposes an end for human conduct namely happiness. But this happiness is can only be found in God. The ethic of Augustine is primarily in the ethics of Love. -
341 BCE
Epicurus
Epicurus is a Greek philosopher of the Hellenistic period. He was the founder of the old Greek philosophical school of epicureans, whose main purpose was to lead a happy and peaceful life, characterized by the absence of pain and fear, by the culture of friendship, freedom, and of an analyzed life. -
334 BCE
Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium, a Hellenistic thinker who founded the Stoic school of philosophy, which influenced the development of philosophical and ethical thought in Hellenistic and Roman. Zeno’s philosophical system included logic and theory of knowledge, physics, and ethics—the latter being central. He taught that happiness lay in conforming the will to the divine reason, which governs the universe. -
1225
St. Thomas Aquinas
St. Thomas Aquinas Christianized the philosophy of Aristotle. He agreed that the natural (moral) law, which is God's eternal law as it is applied to man on earth, is apprehended by us in the dictates of our conscience and practical reasoning, which guide us to our natural goal, happiness on earth. -
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes was the first great figure in modern moral philosophy. His main grounding in philosophy was on the basis of materialism, believing that everything that happens is a result of the physical world and that the soul, as previous philosophers discussed it, does not exist. -
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant developed the Kantian ethics or the deontological ethical theory. it is the radical opposite of utilitarianism in that it holds that the consequences of a moral decision are of no matter whatsoever. What is important are the motives as to why one has acted in the way that one has. -
Jeremy Bentham
He is a philosopher, economist, jurist, and legal reformer and the founder of modern utilitarianism, an ethical theory holding that actions are morally right if they tend to promote happiness or pleasure (and morally wrong if they tend to promote unhappiness or pain) among all those affected by them. -
John Rawls
John Rawls was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition. His theory of "justice as fairness" recommends equal basic rights, equality of opportunity, and promoting the interests of the least advantaged members of society. -
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is the founder of Discourse Theory of Morality. Habermas's discourse ethics is his attempt to explain the implications of communicative rationality in the sphere of moral insight and normative validity. It is a complex theoretical effort to reformulate the fundamental insights of Kantian deontological ethics in terms of the analysis of communicative structures.
