history of ethics

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece was the birthplace of Western philosophical ethics. The ideas of Socrates (c. 470–399 bce), Plato (428/427–348/347 bce), and Aristotle (384–322 bce) will be discussed in the next sections. The sudden flowering of philosophy during that period was rooted in the ethical thought of earlier centuries. In the poetic literature of the 7th and 6th centuries bce, there were, as in other cultures, moral precepts but no real attempts to formulate a coherent overall ethical position. The Greeks were later to refer to the most prominent of these poets and early philosophers as the seven sages, and they are frequently quoted with respect by Plato and Aristotle. Knowledge of the thought of this period is limited, for often only fragments of original writings, along with later accounts of dubious accuracy, remain.

Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500 bce), whose name is familiar because of the geometric theorem that bears his name, is one such early Greek thinker about whom little is known. He appears to have written nothing at all, but he was the founder of a school of thought that touched on all aspects of life and that may have been a kind of philosophical and religious order. In ancient times the school was best known for its advocacy of vegetarianism, which, like that of the Jains, was associated with the belief that after the death of the body, the human soul may take up residence in the body of an animal (see reincarnation). Pythagoreans continued to espouse this view for many centuries, and classical passages in the works of writers such as Ovid (43 bce–17 ce) and Porphyry (234–305) opposing bloodshed and animal slaughter can be traced to Pythagoras.

Ironically, an important stimulus for the development of moral philosophy came from a group of teachers to whom the later Greek philosophers—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—were consistently hostile: the Sophists. This term was used in the 5th century bce to refer to a class of professional teachers of rhetoric and argument. The Sophists promised their pupils success in political debate and increased influence in the affairs of the city. They were accused of being mercenaries who taught their students to win arguments by fair means or foul. Aristotle said that Protagoras (c. 490–c. 420 bce), perhaps the most famous of the Sophists, claimed to teach how “to make the weaker argument the stronger.”

The Sophists, however, were more than mere teachers of rhetorical tricks. They regarded themselves as imparters of the cultural and intellectual qualities necessary for success, and their involvement with argument about practical affairs naturally led them to develop views about ethics. The recurrent theme in the views of the better-known Sophists, such as Protagoras, Antiphon (c. 480–411 bce), and Thrasymachus (flourished late 5th century bce), is that what is commonly called good and bad or just and unjust does not reflect any objective fact of nature but is rather a matter of social convention. Protagoras is the apparent author of the celebrated epigram summing up this theme, “Man is the measure of all things.” Plato represents him as saying, “Whatever things seem just and fine to each city, are just and fine for that city, so long as it thinks them so.” Protagoras, like Herodotus (died 430–420 bce), drew a moderate conclusion from his ethical relativism. He argued that, while the particular content of the moral rules may vary, there must be rules of some kind if life is to be tolerable. Thus, Protagoras stated that the foundations of an ethical system needed nothing from the gods or from any special metaphysical realm beyond the ordinary world of the senses.

Thrasymachus appears to have taken a more radical approach—if Plato’s portrayal of his views is historically accurate. He explained that the concept of justice means nothing more than obedience to the laws of society, and, since these laws are made by the strongest political group in its own interest, justice represents nothing but the interest of the stronger. This position is often represented by the slogan “Might makes right.” Thrasymachus was probably not saying, however, that whatever the mightiest do really is right; he is more likely to have been denying that the distinction between right and wrong has any objective basis. Presumably he would then encourage his pupils to follow their own interests as best they could. He is thus an early representative of moral skepticism and perhaps ethical egoism, the view that the right thing to do is to pursue one’s own interest (see below Ethical egoism).

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It is not surprising that, with ideas of this sort in circulation, other thinkers should react by probing more deeply into ethics to see whether the potentially destructive conclusions of some of the Sophists could be resisted. This reaction produced works that have served ever since as the cornerstone of the entire edifice of Western ethics.

Socrates

Socrates, who once observed that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” must be regarded as one of the greatest teachers of ethics. Yet, unlike other figures of comparable importance, such as the Buddha (flourished c. 6th–4th century bce) or Confucius (551–479 bce), he did not tell his audience how they should live. What Socrates taught was a method of inquiry. When the Sophists or their pupils boasted that they knew what justice, piety, temperance, or law was, Socrates would ask them to give an account, which he would then show was entirely inadequate. Because his method of inquiry threatened conventional beliefs, Socrates’ enemies contrived to have him put to death on a charge of corrupting the youth of Athens. For those who thought that adherence to the conventional moral code was more important than the cultivation of an inquiring mind, the charge was appropriate. By conventional standards, Socrates was indeed corrupting the youth of Athens, though he himself considered the destruction of beliefs that could not stand up to criticism as a necessary preliminary to the search for true knowledge. In this respect he differed from the Sophists, with their ethical relativism, for he thought that virtue is something that can be known and that the virtuous person is the one who knows what virtue is.

It is therefore not entirely accurate to regard Socrates as contributing a method of inquiry but as having no positive views of his own. He believed that virtue could be known, though he himself did not profess to know it. He also thought that anyone who knows what virtue is will necessarily act virtuously. Those who act badly, therefore, do so only because they are ignorant of, or mistaken about, the real nature of virtue. This belief may seem peculiar today, in large part because it is now common to distinguish between what people ought to do and what is in their own interest. Once this assumption is made, it is easy to imagine circumstances in which people know what they ought to do but proceed to do something else—what is in their own interest—instead. Indeed, how to provide self-interested (or merely rational) people with motivating reasons for doing what is right has been a major problem for Western ethics. In ancient Greece, however, the distinction between virtue and self-interest was not made—at least not in the clear-cut manner that it is today. The Greeks believed that virtue is good both for the individual and for the community. To be sure, they recognized that living virtuously might not be the best way to prosper financially; but then they did not assume, as people are prone to do today, that material wealth is a major factor in whether a person’s life goes well or ill.

Plato

Socrates’ greatest disciple, Plato, accepted the key Socratic beliefs in the objectivity of goodness and in the link between knowing what is good and doing it. He also took over the Socratic method of conducting philosophy, developing the case for his own positions by exposing errors and confusions in the arguments of his opponents. He did this by writing his works as dialogues in which Socrates is portrayed as engaging in argument with others, usually Sophists. The early dialogues are generally accepted as reasonably accurate accounts of the views of the historical Socrates, but the later ones, written many years after Socrates’ death, use the latter as a mouthpiece for ideas and arguments that were in fact original to Plato.

In the most famous of Plato’s dialogues, Politeia (the Republic), the character Socrates is challenged by the following example: Suppose a person obtained the legendary ring of Gyges, which has the magical property of rendering the wearer invisible. Would that person still have any reason to behave justly? Behind this challenge lies the suggestion, made by the Sophists and still heard today, that the only reason for acting justly is that one cannot get away with acting unjustly. Plato’s response to this challenge is a long argument developing a position that appears to go beyond anything the historical Socrates asserted. Plato maintained that true knowledge consists not in knowing particular things but in knowing something general that is common to all the particular cases. This view is obviously derived from the way in which Socrates pressed his opponents to go beyond merely describing particular acts that are (for example) good, temperate, or just and to give instead a general account of goodness, temperance, or justice. The implication is that one does not know what goodness is unless one can give such a general account. But the question then arises, what is it that one knows when one knows this general idea of goodness? Plato’s answer is that one knows the Form of the Good, a perfect, eternal, and changeless entity existing outside space and time, in which particular good things share, or “participate,” insofar as they are good.

It has been said that all of Western philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato. Certainly the central issue around which all of Western ethics has revolved can be traced to the debate between the Sophists, who claimed that goodness and justice are relative to the customs of each society—or, worse still, that they are merely a disguise for the interest of the stronger—and the Platonists, who maintained the possibility of knowledge of an objective Form of the Good.

But even if one could know what goodness or justice is, why should one act justly if one could profit by doing the opposite? This is the remaining part of the challenge posed by the tale of the ring of Gyges, and it is still to be answered. For even if one accepts that goodness is something objective, it does not follow that one has a sufficient reason to do what is good. One would have such a reason if it could be shown that goodness or justice leads, at least in the long run, to happiness; as has been seen from the preceding discussion of early ethics in other cultures, this issue is a perennial topic for all who think about ethics.

According to Plato, justice exists in the individual when the three elements of the soul—intellect, emotion, and desire—act in harmony with each other. The unjust person lives in an unsatisfactory state of internal discord, trying always to overcome the discomfort of unsatisfied desire but never achieving anything better than the mere absence of want. The soul of the just person, on the other hand, is harmoniously ordered under the governance of reason, and the just person derives truly satisfying enjoyment from the pursuit of knowledge. Plato remarks that the highest pleasure, in fact, comes from intellectual speculation. He also gives an argument for the belief that the human soul is immortal; therefore, even if a just individual who lives in poverty or suffers from illness will not be neglected by the gods in the next life but will have the greatest rewards of all. In summary, then, Plato asserts that we should act justly because in doing so we are “at one with ourselves and with the gods.”

Today, this may seem like a strange conception of justice and a far-fetched view of what it takes to achieve human happiness. Plato does not recommend justice for its own sake, independent of any personal gains one might obtain from being a just person. This is characteristic of Greek ethics, which refused to recognize that there could be an irresolvable conflict between the interest of the individual and the good of the community. Not until the 18th century did a philosopher forcefully assert the importance of doing what is right simply because it is right, quite apart from self-interested motivation (see below Kant). To be sure, Plato did not hold that the motivation for each and every just act is some personal gain; on the contrary, the person who takes up justice will do what is just because it is just. Nevertheless, he accepted the assumption of his opponents that one could not recommend taking up justice in the first place unless doing so could be shown to be advantageous for oneself as well as for others.

Although many people now think differently about the connection between morality and self-interest, Plato’s attempt to argue that those who are just are in the long run happier than those who are unjust has had an enormous influence on Western ethics. Like Plato’s views on the objectivity of goodness, the claim that justice and personal happiness are linked has helped to frame the agenda for a debate that continues even today.

Aristotle

Plato founded a school of philosophy in Athens known as the Academy. There Aristotle, Plato’s younger contemporary and only rival in terms of influence on the course of Western philosophy, went to study. Aristotle was often fiercely critical of Plato, and his writing is very different in style and content, but the time they spent together is reflected in a considerable amount of common ground. Thus, Aristotle holds with Plato that the life of virtue is rewarding for the virtuous as well as beneficial for the community. Aristotle also agrees that the highest and most satisfying form of human existence involves the exercise of one’s rational faculties to the fullest extent. One major point of disagreement concerns Plato’s doctrine of Forms, which Aristotle rejected. Thus, Aristotle does not argue that in order to be good one must have knowledge of the Form of the Good.

Aristotle conceived of the universe as a hierarchy in which everything has a function. The highest form of existence is the life of the rational being, and the function of lower beings is to serve this form of life. From this perspective Aristotle defended slavery—because he considered barbarians less rational than Greeks and by nature suited to be “living tools”—and the killing of nonhuman animals for food and clothing. From this perspective also came a view of human nature and an ethical theory derived from it. All living things, Aristotle held, have inherent potentialities, which it is their nature to develop. This is the form of life properly suited to them and constitutes their goal. What, however, is the potentiality of human beings? For Aristotle this question turns out to be equivalent to asking what is distinctive about human beings; and this, of course, is the capacity to reason. The ultimate goal of humans, therefore, is to develop their reasoning powers. When they do this, they are living well, in accordance with their true nature, and they will find this the most rewarding existence possible.

Aristotle thus ends up agreeing with Plato that the life of the intellect is the most rewarding existence, though he was more realistic than Plato in suggesting that such a life would also contain the goods of material prosperity and close friendships. Aristotle’s argument for regarding the life of the intellect so highly, however, is different from Plato’s, and the difference is significant because Aristotle committed a fallacy that has often been repeated. The fallacy is to assume that whatever capacity distinguishes humans from other beings is, for that very reason, the highest and best of their capacities. Perhaps the ability to reason is the best human capacity, but one cannot be compelled to draw this conclusion from the fact that it is what is most distinctive of the human species.

A broader and still more pervasive fallacy underlies Aristotle’s ethics. It is the idea that an investigation of human nature can reveal what one ought to do. For Aristotle, an examination of a knife would reveal that its distinctive capacity is to cut, and from this one could conclude that a good knife is a knife that cuts well. In the same way, an examination of human nature should reveal the distinctive capacity of human beings, and from this one should be able to infer what it is to be a good human being. This line of thought makes sense if one thinks, as Aristotle did, that the universe as a whole has a purpose and that human beings exist as part of such a goal-directed scheme of things, but its error becomes glaring if this view is rejected and human existence is seen as the result of a blind process of evolution. Whereas the distinctive capacity of a knife is a result of the fact that knives are made for a specific purpose—and a good knife is thus one that fulfills this purpose well—human beings, according to modern biology, were not made with any particular purpose in mind. Their nature is the result of random forces of natural selection. Thus, human nature cannot, without further moral premises, determine how human beings ought to live.

Aristotle is also responsible for much later thinking about the virtues one should cultivate. In his most important ethical treatise, the Nicomachean Ethics, he sorts through the virtues as they were popularly understood in his day, specifying in each case what is truly virtuous and what is mistakenly thought to be so. Here he applies an idea that later came to be known as the Golden Mean; it is essentially the same as the Buddha’s middle path between self-indulgence and self-renunciation. Thus, courage, for example, is the mean between two extremes: one can have a deficiency of it, which is cowardice, or one can have an excess of it, which is foolhardiness. The virtue of friendliness, to give another example, is the mean between obsequiousness and surliness.

Aristotle does not intend the idea of the mean to be applied mechanically in every instance: he says that in the case of the virtue of temperance, or self-restraint, it is easy to find the excess of self-indulgence in the physical pleasures, but the opposite error, insufficient concern for such pleasures, scarcely exists. (The Buddha, who had experienced the ascetic life of renunciation, would not have agreed.) This caution in the application of the idea is just as well, for while it may be a useful device for moral education, the notion of a mean cannot help one to discover new truths about virtue. One can determine the mean only if one already has a notion of what is an excess and what is a defect of the trait in question. But this is not something that can be discovered by a morally neutral inspection of the trait itself: one needs a prior conception of the virtue in order to decide what is excessive and what is defective. Thus, to attempt to use the doctrine of the mean to define the particular virtues would be to travel in a circle.

Aristotle’s list of the virtues and vices differs from lists compiled by later Christian thinkers. Although courage, temperance, and liberality are recognized as virtues in both periods, Aristotle also includes a virtue whose Greek name, megalopsyche, is sometimes translated as “pride,” though it literally means “greatness of soul.” This is the characteristic of holding a justified high opinion of oneself. For Christians the corresponding excess, vanity, was a vice, but the corresponding deficiency, humility, was a virtue.

Aristotle’s discussion of the virtue of justice has been the starting point of almost all Western accounts. He distinguishes between justice in the distribution of wealth or other goods and justice in reparation, as, for example, in punishing someone for a wrong he has done. The key element of justice, according to Aristotle, is treating like cases alike—an idea that set for later thinkers the task of working out which kinds of similarities (e.g., need, desert, talent) should be relevant. As with the notion of virtue as a mean, Aristotle’s conception of justice provides a framework that requires fleshing out before it can be put to use.

Aristotle distinguished between theoretical and practical wisdom. His conception of practical wisdom is significant, for it involves more than merely choosing the best means to whatever ends or goals one may have. The practically wise person also has the right ends. This implies that one’s ends are not purely a matter of brute desire or feeling; the right ends are something that can be known and reasoned about. It also gives rise to the problem that faced Socrates: How is it that people can know the difference between good and bad and still choose what is bad? As mentioned earlier, Socrates simply denied that this could happen, saying that those who did not choose the good must, appearances notwithstanding, be ignorant of what the good is. Aristotle said that this view was “plainly at variance with the observed facts,” and he offered instead a detailed account of the ways in which one can fail to act on one’s knowledge of the good, including the failure that results from lack of self-control and the failure caused by weakness of will.