The historical development of ethical thought from ancient Greek ethics through modern moral philosophy.
34 cards · basic cards · AI-written, checked twice. Edit anything.
- Who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and sought truth through dialogue with Athenians?
- Socrates
- What did Socrates believe was the highest human good and the basis of all virtue?
- Knowledge (or understanding)
- What was Plato's name for the ultimate, unchanging reality that underlies all physical things?
- The Form of the Good (or the Good itself)
- According to Aristotle, what is the highest human good and the goal of ethics?
- Eudaimonia (often translated as happiness or flourishing)
- What did Aristotle call the middle ground between two extremes of behavior?
- The golden mean (or mean)
- Which ancient Greek school of thought taught that virtue is the highest good and the only true path to happiness?
- Stoicism
- What did Epicurus argue was the goal of life, contrary to popular misconception?
- Pleasure, but understood as freedom from pain and fear, especially through simple living
- What natural law theory did Augustine develop that connected ethics to divine order?
- The idea that moral law reflects God's eternal law and can be known through reason
- Which medieval philosopher synthesized Aristotelian ethics with Christian theology?
- Thomas Aquinas
- According to Hobbes, what is the natural human condition without a social contract?
- A state of war of all against all, where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
- What did Hobbes argue people rationally agree to create in order to escape the state of nature?
- An absolute sovereign authority (the Leviathan)
- What theory of ethics did David Hume develop that emphasized emotion over reason?
- Sentimentalism (or moral sentiment)
- What did Immanuel Kant call the fundamental principle of all moral action?
- The categorical imperative
- What is the name of Kant's ethical theory based on duty and universal rational principles?
- Deontological ethics (or deontology)
- Who founded utilitarianism as an ethical theory focused on the greatest happiness for the greatest number?
- Jeremy Bentham