The History of Ethics in Western Philosophy

1
Part I

• The History of Ethics in Western Philosophy

Jeremy Neill
2
Overview

• The Greeks (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle)
• Hellenistic and Roman Ethics (Epicurus,
  Epictetus, Cicero)
• Early Christian Ethics (Augustine, Aquinas)
• Modern Moral Philosophy (Hobbes, Hume, etc.)

3
Greek Moral Philosophy

4
Early Greek History
Pre-Greek "aboriginal settlements
c 4,000BC
c 3,100
Anatolian Migrations
Bronze
Age
c 2,000
Minoan Period (Crete)
Achean Migrations
c 1,600 - 1,150
(Myceanaen Period)
Dorian Migrations
c 1,150 - 1,000
(Dark Ages)
The Great Rhetra
(c 770)
Geometric
c 1,000 - 700
Homer (c 750)
Period
Hesiod (c 725)
First Law Givers (c 635)
Solon -- 594
First Tyrants (c 610)
The Peisistratide --
c 700 - 500
c 546-528/7 527-510
Rise of Ionia (c 550)
Cleisthenes (c 507)
The democratization of Athens
5
Athenian History

6
The Pre-Socratics
Thales (c 575)
Ionian
c 575
Anaximenes (c550)
Physicalists
Anaximander (c550)
Pythagoras the Pythagorians
c 530
Parmenides (The
Principle of Being)
c 490
Heraclitus (The
Principle of Becoming)
c 450
The Sophists (Protagoras, Gorgias)
7
Map of Ancient Greece
8
Socrates

• Interested in the Sphere of Values
• Dialectical Search for Definitions
• Socratic Elenchus

(469 - 399 BCE)
9
Socrates

• Virtue is Knowledge
• Socratic Virtues Justice, Courage, Wisdom,
  Moderation
• The same body of knowledge knowledge of the
  whole of what is and is not good for human
  beings, and why it is so or not must at least
  underlie the allegedly separate virtues
• Socratic Ignorance / Socratic Wisdom

10
Plato

• A justification of the Life of Socrates
• Revaluation of Greek Values The Gorgias
• Metaphysical Grounding of all Values The Theory
  of the Forms

(427 - 347 BC)
11
The Gorgias

• Socrates vs. Gorgias
• Socrates vs. Polus
• The life of Socrates vs. the life of Archelaus
• It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong
• If one has done wrong, it is better to be justly
  punished than to escape and thrive
• Socrates vs. Callicles
• The Good is not the same as the Pleasurable
• The mythos of Judgment

12
Platos Theory of the FormsThe Divided Line
Intellection
The Forms
The Changeless
Knowledge
Thought
Mathematicals
Trust
Sensible Things
The Changing
Opinion
Imagination
Images

• The Forms provide a foundation for knowledge
• Knowledge of the Form of Justice allows us to
  judge whether a particular act is just or not
• The highest Form is the Form of the Good

13
Platos Theory of the FormsThe Allegory of the
Cave

• The cave represents an image of the human
  condition
• We are chained to opinions and illusion
• With great effort some can turn around and begin
  an ascent toward knowledge (of the Forms)
• After seeing the brightness of the Sun, those
  who would return to the cave would seem strange
  (mad) even threatening to those chained

14
Platos Theory of the FormsThe Republic

• The problem of Justice is approached by viewing
  it from the perspective of the polis
• The most ordered city is one in which the
  parts work together this is required by the
  Form of Justice
• Money-makers (craftsmen, etc), auxiliaries and
  guardians, and a ruler who knows the Form of
  Justice
• No property and eugenic marriages assure
  stability
• A person is just when his parts work together
  and mind their own business (desire,
  spiritedness, and reason)
• An unjust man, like an unjust city, is out of
  order a tyrannical man in whom desire rules
  over reason and chaos reigns

15
Aristotle

• Aristotle criticized the belief in a separate
  realm of Forms. He argued that rational beings
  can discover the essences of things and that a
  beings essence is its potential fulfillment
• The essence of being human is rationality and,
  ultimately, a life of contemplation (philosophy)
  is the best kind of life if leisure abounds.

(384 - 322 BC)
16
The Nicomachean EthicsThe Human Good

• All human activity aims at some good
• Everyone seeks happiness (well being), but in
  different ways (lives of physical gratification,
  political activity, honor, wealth, philosophy)
• Happiness is that which is aimed at for itself
  and is the goal of our actions
• So true happiness is tied to the purpose or end
  (telos) of human life
• The function of human beings will show what the
  best good is

17
The Nicomachean EthicsThe Function (Ergon)
Argument

• The essence of human beings (that which separates
  and distinguishes them as a species) is reason
• Not nutrition, growth, or sense-perception,
• But reason as an activity of the soul guiding
  appetite and thought
• Human good is the (rational) activity of the soul
  that expresses virtue (excellence)
• qua appetite moral virtues (e.g., moderation,
  courage)
• qua thought intellectual virtues (e.g.,
  science, art, practical wisdom, theoretical
  wisdom)

18
The Nicomachean EthicsThe Happy Life

• Reason is employed in achieving happiness (the
  human telos)
• The expression of the virtues (in a full life)
  leads to human flourishing well or happiness
• Happiness is an activity of the soul expressing
  complete virtue
• Note Bene It is the mark of an educated man to
  look for precision in each class of things just
  so far as the nature of the subject admits

19
The Nicomachean EthicsThe Doctrine of the Mean
Human flourishing requires an understanding of
its virtues and the appropriate application of
virtue guided perceptions to a particular course
of action
For example, the virtue of courage is a mean
between a vice of excess (rashness) and a vice of
deficiency (cowardice)
20
The Nicomachean EthicsThe Moral Virtues

• Courage (in the face of battle)
• Moderation/Temperance (concerning bodily
  pleasures)
• Virtues concerned with money
• Liberality and Magnificence
• Greatness of Soul (concerned with honor)
• Virtues of social interactions
• Friendliness, Straightforwardness, Wittiness

21
The Nicomachean EthicsJustice As

• What is lawful universal
• Natural (e.g. no murder) vs. Conventional (e.g.
  legal) Justice
• Equity as a corrective to the generality of the
  law
• What is fair particular
• Distributive Justice distribution of honors and
  wealth among citizens
• Geometrical Setting up the proper ratio of goods
  to each person
• Respects the mean between giving more to A than
  is due to giving more to B than is due
• Remedial Justice rectifying of wrongs done
• Arithmetical AC, B-C is rectified by giving C
  back to B

22
Hellenistic and Roman Ethics
23
Greek and Judeo-Christian History
c. 1,800 BC
Abraham/El-Shaddai
(Migrations - Cannan - Egypt)
c. 1,250
Moses/Yahweh (Exodus)
c. 1,000
Yahweh vs. Baal
Troy
c. 1,200
Rise of the prophets ("protestors")
(Homeric Age)
Elijah (1,000)
c. 750

Homer (The Iliad)
Amos (760)

493/2-478
Persian Wars
Isaiah (742)
612
Deutronomic Reform
461-429
Age of Pericles
c. 597-586
Babylonian Conquest of Jerusalem
Peloponnesian War
431-401
c. 538-438
Restoration Period
399
Death of Socrates
429-347
Plato
387-322
Aristotle
Alexander the Great
353-323
c. 332
Greek Conquest
24
Hellenistic and Roman Trends

• Monistic
• One Universe, One Reason, and One Truth
• Epicureanism (the Garden)
• All humans by nature seek a pleasant life
• The best way to the pleasant life is through a
  life of moderate satisfaction
• Stoicism (the Porch)
• The world is independent of our will A life
  detached from the events of life will be calmer
  and less troubled than a life bound up with
  desires for worldly things
• Virtue, the expiration of the passions, and the
  citadel of the self

25
Epicureanism

• Strip away the corruptions of society we can
  imagine a childlike understanding of our true
  nature and see that pleasure is to be pursued
  and pain avoided

Epicurus 106 - 43 BC
26
Epicureanism

• There are three types of human desires
• Natural (e.g, seeking food, drink, shelter,
  medicine, friendship and happy memories)
• Natural but not necessary (intercourse/aphrodisia
  distinguished from love/eros)
• An agonizing desire prone to led to an empty
  desire
• Empty (caused by society, infected by the falsity
  of the evaluative beliefs that ground them and
  bound to be self-defeating)
• religious superstitions, love stories,
  conversations glorifying wealth and power

27
Epicureanism

• Hedonism Desire of the right pleasures
• Static Pleasure - absence of pain
• Kinetic Pleasure the process of stimulation
• Must be carefully regulated
• Ethics The therapeutic process of achieving
  ataraxia (freedom from disturbance and anxiety)
  in the soul and freedom from bodily pain
• Achieved through philosophic logos aimed at
  correcting/treating the pupils false view of
  things

28
The Stoics

• The world is independent of our will
• Devaluation of the emotions
• Tension between determinism and humanism
• The Divine Logos is everywhere men, women,
  slaves all partake in it
• The method of oikeisis
• The Brotherhood of Man
• The guide for the natural law of the world

Zeno of Citium (334 - 262 BC)
29
The Stoics

• Moral goodness is the only good from which it
  follows that happiness depends on moral goodness
  and nothing else whatever (Cicero, Discussions
  at Tusculum)
• Virtue alone is good vice alone is bad all else
  are indifferent
• Desire the life of a virtuous Socrates who
  recognizes a responsibility to participate in the
  world around him and who also recognizes that
  the world is independent of his will
• The consequences of this for practical living
  clarification of what is important and within our
  reach this is the way to attain the tranquility
  that accompanies the virtuous life

30
Cicero

• In theory, an Academic Skeptic
• There are only probabilities
• In practice, a Stoic
• Our life and laws should model natural law
• Investigates Case-Based Moral Reasoning
• Merchant/Villa Case Studies

(106 - 43 BC)
True law is Reason Neither the Senate nor the
Assembly can exempt us from its demands... There
will not be one law at Rome and one at Athens, or
one now and another later, but all nations will
be subject to this one changeless and everlasting
law
31
Early Christian Ethics
32
Roman and Middle Judeo-Christian History
Roman History
Judeo-Christian Tradition
Rise of the
c. 200 BC
Roman Empire
Syrian Supression/
165 BC
Maccabeian Rebellion
63
Roman Control
4
Birth of Jesus
c. 27/30 AD
Death of Jesus
70
Dispersion of
the Jews
Augustine
354-430
The Apostolic
c. 50-150
383
Age
Christianity as Imperial State Religion
150 - 1054
Ancient Catholic Church
Decline of the Roman Empire
410
Sack of Rome
Fall of the Roman Empire
476
Schism between Eastern
1054
and Western Church
33
AugustineInherits Platonism from Plotinus

• Platos Form of the Good
• Plotinus The One
• Augustine God
• The Immortal Soul
• Reincarnation
• The Divided Line

(354 - 430 AD)
34
AugustineChristianizes Plato

• The Gorgias Judgment, Heaven, and Hell
• Unity of the Virtues in Love of God
• Temperance love keeping itself whole and
  incorrupt for God
• Courage love bearing everything readily for the
  sake of God
• Evil as a Lacking Do bad from lack of knowledge
• Example of suicide

35
AugustineChristianizes Plato

• The Divided Line
• The dichotomy between the world of natural
  desires and the realm of divine order
• We see then that the two cities were created by
  two kinds of love the Earthly City was created
  by self-love reaching the point of contempt for
  God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried
  as far as contempt of self
• Allegory of the Cave
• We must endeavor to do good to all those we can
  reach

36
Augustine

• Added the concepts of sin, free will, and a
  personal God
• The world becomes the testing ground for future
  reward and punishment

37
Aquinas

• Translates Aristotle into the Christian worldview
• The ultimate beatitude of man consists in the
  use of his highest function, which is the
  operation of his intellect... Hence... the
  blessed see the essence of God.

(1225 - 1274 AD)
38
Aquinas

• Embraces Aristotles Virtue Ethics
• Adds the spiritual virtues of Faith, Charity,
  Hope
• These theological virtues are infused in us by
  God
• They are not the mean between two vices

39
Aquinas

• Distinguishes between
• Eternal Law issued from Gods will and wisdom
• Natural Law that part of eternal law dealing
  with fundamental precepts of ethics and morality
• Human Law conventional laws of nations
• Divine Law those laws revealed in scripture
• Natural Law is grasped through reason and
  conscience

40
Aquinas

• Two notions of Conscience
• The ancients did relate conscience to morality
• In Greek synderesis
• Murmurs against sin, and correctly contemplates
  and wants that which is good without
  qualifications
• Supplies the moral laws which are intellectually
  self-evident
• In Latin conscientia
• The conjunction of synderesis and free choice
• The application of the moral laws to particular
  situations

41
Modern Moral Philosophy
42
The Renaissance

• Invention of Printing
• Humanism and Perspective in Art
• Copernicus challenges Ptolemy
• Galileo challenges Aristotle
• Expansion abroad and the rise of the money-based
  economy

"New Birth" for the
Arts and Sciences
c 14th - 16th Centuries
43
Reformation

• Attack against Indulgences
• Simple Faith Replaces the Power of the Papacy
• Schism and Real World Politics Confront the
  Once Universal Church

1517 Luther publishes his 95 Theses
44
Thomas Hobbes

• Links the laws of motion to the actions of men
• Knowing and willing are merely the appearance
  of subtle motions
• What moves us are desires and aversions and the
  force behind these is self-preservation

(1588 - 1679)
45
Hobbes Scientific Analysis of Political
Philosophy

• The passions of man, driven by
  self-preservation are revealed in the State of
  Nature
• Radical equalities of strength (to kill or be
  killed) and prudence/ability (if one applies
  oneself)
• These lead to equality of hope (of gain through
  conflict) driving competition and natural enmity
  only heightened by a desire for glory
• This is the war of all against all
• Life is beastly, brutal, and short

46
Hobbes Scientific Analysis of Political
Philosophy

• Self-interest prescribes that we avoid this life
  in the State of Nature
• Reason, working with the passions of fear (of
  death), desire (for comfort), and hope (for
  peace), seeks to overcome he desires for glory
  and power
• The rules of reason serve self-preservation
  (the right of nature) in a natural way by
  seeking to secure peace
• Self-interest, rather than self-restraint,
  becomes the driving force for limiting ones
  actions and transcending the State of Nature

47
The Leviathan

• A transfer of power through a Social Contract
  creates the condition for a possibility of peace
• We transfer our collective strength to a
  sovereign authority (a Leviathan)
• It is a covenant that creates Civil Society
• The sovereign power of government serves to
  enforce the peace and is the source of justice
  and right and wrong
• This is best seen in the laws and rules laid down
  by an absolute monarchy

The Leviathan (1661)
48
David Hume

• Criticizes a Mechanistic Egoism
• Egoism seems to violate common sense
• There seem to be actions that are truly selfless
  (love and friendship)
• Distinction between the acts and the motives

(1711 - 1776)
49
David Hume

• Moral Sentiment Informs Us of Good and Evil
• We disposed to speak of people as being good or
  bad
• We feel pleasure and displeasure with certain
  traits of others
• Method Explore the empirical aspects of
  Personal Merit
• Qualities Useful to Others and Ourselves
• Qualities Agreeable to Others and Ourselves
• Posits a Principle of Humanity as the Source of
  Morality
• Based in sympathy feeling others weal and woe
  as being our own
• There are certain natural virtues which
  transcend all cultures e.g., compassion,
  friendship, gratitude, and courage