1. Philosophers & Ethics

2. Confucius (551—471BC) Goal of virtuous living is to cultivate oneself and those around you
-lived in tumultuous time in China with warring dynasties
-saw the solution as a basic return to order and harmony through virtue and ethics
-ideas collected by his students in The Analects
-theory is all relational in that the individual discovers their role in society and performs that role to the best of their ability
-duty to improve yourself and those around you each day

3. Plato (427-347BC) Balance is the key to a virtuous life
Main ethics work, The Republic
-Ethics is not relative, it is absolute
-By attaining ethics in the individual, society attains justice.
-The state cannot be just without ethics in the individuals
-The four main virtues that must be balanced in the individual are: temperance, wisdom, courage, justice

4. Aristotle (384-322BC) Virtues are habits
-led Plato’s school, The Academy
-formed his own school, The Lyceum
-famous ethics work, Nicomachean Ethics
-believed that ethics/virtues are habits we cultivate to become a successful person
-individual must cultivate habits in association with the virtues of human excellence for happiness to occur in society

5. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) Contract Theory
-English philosopher born in great unrest in England
-greatest work, The Leviathan, argued for a novel, secular approach to morality and the necessary supremacy of a strong monarch
-without “civilization” humanity’s natural state is to be at war with one another and dissolve into chaos
-without laws/order people’s lives will be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short”
-people must join together under a social contract with the king to improve this condition
-by giving their rights to the king, their lives become better and individual ethics become possible
-thought to be the beginnings of modern democratic state philosophy

7. David Hume (1711-1776) Morals don’t stem from reason, but from emotion
-Scottish philosopher, famous skeptic
-famous work, A Treatise on Human Nature, covers knowledge, reality, language, and ethics
-attacks the supremacy of reason
-moral judgments don’t stem from reason, but from feelings
-reason does not evaluate things as good or bad
-reason sorts through facts and feelings determine/reveal what is good
-“reason is the slave of the passions”
-human nature has the built in capacity for altruism and sympathy
-you derive pleasure from the success of your friends, etc

8. John Calvin (1509-1564): Religious Reform
-important Theologian, took over where Martin Luther left off in the Protestant Reformation
-rejected Catholic rule and doctrine
-emphasized the sovereignty of the scriptures and divine predestination, a doctrine holding that God chooses those who will enter Heaven based on His omnipotence and grace.
-known for his intellectual, unemotional approach to faith
-credited as the most important figure of the second generation of the Protestant Reformation after Martin Luther

9. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): Being Ethical makes you free
lived his whole life in Konigsberg, Prussia
(what is now Russia)
-went from being a lowly tutor to one of the most influential philosophers of all time
-main ethics work, Critique of Practical Reason, Metaphysics of Morals
-believed we could create a balancing system of animal passions and human reason by creating an ethical system that each person takes on for him/herself.
-he thought there was a deep connection between ethical principles and the freedom of the will.
-If you are doing what’s right, you are doing what makes you free.

10. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) : Maximize Utility
-English philosopher, famous for political and ethical philosophy
-father was a good friend of Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the modern version of utilitarianism called hedonism.
-Mill was a great defender of utilitarianism
-main work, On Liberty, and Utilitarianism
- he argued that we need to maximize the general good for the greatest number of people
-unlike Bentham, Mill argued that not all pleasures are equal and they are worth more if they’re associated with reason, deliberation, or socially valuable emotion

11. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) : Connecting Morals and Power
German philosopher famous for his attacks on traditional morality
-Genealogy of Morals, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
- felt traditional morality emphasized and glorified weakness and crowd thinking over real power and individuality
-traditional morality turns people into drones
-his response is to pull away from the crowd and do your own thing
-see who you are as an individual and value your strength without a need to seek approval from the crowd

12. John Rawls (1921-2002) : Looking out for the Less Fortunate
-American philosopher, fought in WWII, then
became a professor at Cornell and Harvard
-major work, A Theory of Justice
-a Kantian view of politics, tried to resist the utilitarianism view of politics
-Rawls proposed a method called original position, where just principles for governing society could be constructed
-policies should promote liberty while directing benefits from any inequalities to those who are the least well off in society
-the poor would benefit from those with the good luck to have been born into advantage
-develop ways that diverse peoples could live in stability

13. Peter Singer (1946-): currently teaching at Princeton University
-on the news occasionally
-a utilitarian, like Mill, he is best known for his application of utilitarianism to animal rights and global poverty
-book, Animal Liberation, is considered one of the most important works in the animal rights movement
-essay, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” is considered the most influential piece in fighting global poverty
-challenges people to cut back on material goods to help poorer countries meet basic needs.
-praise from his supporters, constant death threats from detractors