Ethics

Diogenes of Sinope “Diogenes the dog” (kynikós) — refoundaer and principal figure of Cynicism. He lived in a barrel in Athens, reduced his needs to a minimum, and despised all social convention. He said he sought “an honest man” walking with a lantern lit in broad daylight. When Alexander the Great offered to grant him any desire, he asked only that he step out of his sunlight. He embodied radical anticultural philosophy: virtue requires total self-sufficiency, not abstract philosophy. ...

Elizabeth Anscombe Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (1919–2001) was one of the most original analytic philosophers of the twentieth century. A student and close friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge, she became one of his literary executors and translated his Philosophical Investigations (1953) into English — a rendering that remains canonical. A devout Catholic, she fused the rigour of the analytic tradition with an Aristotelian-Thomist sensibility that shaped her entire body of work. Her monograph Intention (1957) is widely regarded as the founding text of contemporary philosophy of action, while her essay “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958) is commonly identified as the starting point of the virtue ethics revival in the Anglophone world. She taught at Oxford and, from 1970, held the chair of philosophy at Cambridge once occupied by Wittgenstein. ...

Emmanuel Lévinas Lithuanian-French philosopher, one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. He introduced Husserl and Heidegger to France, but later critically surpassed them. A Holocaust survivor, he developed a philosophy where ethics is first philosophy — prior to ontology. Key Concepts The Face (le visage): the manifestation of the Other that addresses me and demands a response — not a physical face, but an ethical presence that says “thou shalt not kill”; the point from which all moral responsibility emerges Ethics as first philosophy: against Heidegger, for whom ontology (being) is the foundation of everything — for Lévinas, the ethical relation with the Other precedes and grounds all ontology Radical alterity (autrui): the Other cannot be reduced to the same, cannot be fully understood or assimilated — this irreducibility is the fundamental ethical fact Totality and Infinity: Western philosophy tends toward “totalization” — engulfing the different within the same. The Infinite breaks into this totality through the face of the Other, resisting capture Infinite responsibility: I am responsible for the Other asymmetrically and without reciprocity — “I am responsible even for what I did not do”; responsibility precedes freedom Il y a (there is): the experience of anonymous, impersonal, threatening being — the murmur of being before any existent; the night in which being becomes unbearable Saying and Said (le Dire / le Dit): “Saying” is ethical exposure to the Other, the act of address; the “Said” is propositional content — ethics resides in the Saying, which the Said always betrays Influenced by Husserl — phenomenology (was his student and translator) Heidegger — fundamental ontology (later critically surpassed) Bergson — philosophy of duration and life Jewish tradition (Talmud, Rosenzweig, Buber) Influenced Derrida — deconstruction and ethics (debate on violence and metaphysics) Habermas — ethics and recognition of the other Judith Butler — vulnerability and ethical responsibility Contemporary Christian and Jewish theology Postcolonial studies and recognition theory Works Existence and Existents (1947); Totality and Infinity (1961); Otherwise than Being (1974); Ethics and Infinity (1982). ...

Enrique Dussel Born in Mendoza, Argentina, in 1934, Enrique Dussel had a cosmopolitan formation — he studied in Argentina, Spain, France, and Germany, and also researched the history of the Church in Latin America. After a bomb attack on his home, he went into exile in Mexico in 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen and lived until his death, in 2023. He is the leading name of Latin American Liberation Philosophy and a central reference of decolonial thought. ...

Epictetus Phrygian ex-slave; the Stoic who most lived what he preached. His central distinction structures all Stoic ethics: what depends on us (eph’ hêmin: thoughts, impulses, judgments, desires) vs. what does not depend on us (ouk eph’ hêmin: body, fame, wealth, health). Inner freedom is absolute and cannot be taken by any master. “Bear and forbear” (anékhou kai apékhou). Key Concepts Dichotomy of control: what depends on us vs. what does not depend on us Inner freedom as the only true freedom Prohairesis: the faculty of rational choice — sole complete good Philosophy as a way of life, not abstract theory Influenced by Zeno of Citium — Stoic doctrine Socrates — self-examination Influenced Marcus Aurelius — Meditations are notes of Stoic practice inspired by Epictetus Contemporary cognitive psychology (rational-emotive therapy by Ellis) Works He did not write. Arrian (disciple) recorded: Enchiridion (Manual); Discourses (8 books, 4 preserved). ...

Epicurus Born on the island of Samos around 341 BCE, Epicurus founded in Athens, in 307 BCE, the school known as the Garden (Kepos) — a community of friends that, remarkably for its time, welcomed women and slaves. He lived simply and in seclusion, and died around 270 BCE, facing with serenity the pains of a kidney ailment. His philosophy, heir to Socrates in the ideal of philosophy as an art of living, has a therapeutic aim: to free the human being from what disturbs their peace. ...

G.E. Moore British philosopher, co-founder — alongside Russell and Frege — of analytic philosophy. His critique of British idealism and his work in ethics decisively influenced the entire analytic tradition of the 20th century. Key Concepts Naturalistic fallacy: the error of defining the good in terms of natural properties (pleasure, evolution, desire). The good is simple, indefinable, and non-natural — it cannot be reduced to any empirical property. A central critique of utilitarianism and ethical naturalism Open question argument: for any natural property X, it always makes sense to ask “Is X good?” — if the good were identical to X, the question would be absurd. This proves that good ≠ X Moral intuitionism: fundamental moral values are known by direct intuition, not by inference or definition. Ethics is an autonomous science, not reducible to natural sciences Common sense realism: against the idealism of Berkeley and Hegel — the external world exists independently of the mind. Defense of common sense realism as the philosophical starting point Proof of the external world: “here is a hand, here is another” — he argues that we can prove the existence of the external world with more certainty than any abstract philosophical premise that denies it Conceptual analysis: the central task of philosophy is analysis — decomposing complex concepts into their simpler, more precise components; the program that defines analytic philosophy Intrinsic goods: certain states are good in themselves (friendship, beauty, knowledge) — independently of any consequence. A critique of hedonistic utilitarianism Influenced by Kant — deontological ethics and moral autonomy Russell — analytic program (mutual influence) Sidgwick — British moral intuitionism Influenced Russell and Wittgenstein — analytic philosophy Bloomsbury Group (Virginia Woolf, Keynes) — ethics and aesthetics Contemporary metaethics (intuitionism, moral realism) Karl Popper — theory of knowledge Works Principia Ethica (1903); Ethics (1912); Philosophical Studies (1922); Some Main Problems of Philosophy (1953). ...

Immanuel Kant Born in Königsberg, in East Prussia, in 1724, and never having strayed from his native city, Immanuel Kant led the methodical life of a university professor — so regular, tradition holds, that his neighbors set their clocks by his daily walk. It was, in his own words, the reading of Hume that “awakened him from his dogmatic slumber” and led him into a long decade of silence, at the end of which, already 57 years old, he published the monumental Critique of Pure Reason (1781). His work both closes and refounds Modernity, mediating the dispute between the rationalism of Descartes and the empiricism of Hume. ...

Jeremy Bentham Founder of Utilitarianism. English jurist and philosopher; radical social reformer. His skeleton (Auto-Icon) is displayed at University College London, in accordance with his will. Key Concepts Principle of Utility: every action should be judged by its result — the greatest happiness for the greatest number Psychological hedonism: nature has placed mankind under two sovereign masters — pleasure and pain Felicific Calculus (felicific calculus): measuring pleasures and pains by intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, extent Panopticon: circular prison where a guard can observe all without being seen — model of social control through surveillance Reform of legislation: laws must be calculated to maximize public utility Influenced by Hume — sentiments of pleasure/pain as criterion Helvétius — social happiness as the end of legislation Locke — empiricism Influenced John Stuart Mill — disciple who qualified utilitarianism Foucault — analysis of the Panopticon in Discipline and Punish Contemporary law and politics Works Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789); writings on the Panopticon. ...

John Stuart Mill Born in London in 1806, John Stuart Mill was subjected by his father, James Mill, to an extraordinarily precocious and rigorous education — designed by Bentham’s circle to form a utilitarian thinker: he learned Greek at the age of three and devoured the classics and economics in childhood. At twenty he suffered a profound existential crisis, from which he recovered partly through Romantic poetry — an experience that led him to correct the arid utilitarianism in which he had been raised. He was also an economist, a Member of Parliament, and the intellectual companion of Harriet Taylor. He became the most influential liberal of the nineteenth century. ...

Kwame Anthony Appiah Kwame Anthony Appiah was born on 8 May 1954 in London, to a Ghanaian father (Joe Appiah, lawyer and politician) and a British mother (Peggy Cripps). He grew up in Kumasi, Ghana, and studied philosophy at Cambridge (BA and PhD). He has taught at Yale, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, and Princeton; he is currently professor at New York University. Appiah is one of the most versatile and influential philosophers in the contemporary anglophone world, with contributions to ethics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, racial theory, and political philosophy. He is one of the thinkers who has most systematically challenged the presuppositions of “racialism” — the belief that human races exist as biological entities endowed with moral and intellectual essences. ...

Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius Antoninus ruled Rome from 161 to 180 CE and is remembered as the last of the “Five Good Emperors” and as the most celebrated example of the ancient ideal of the philosopher-king. Adopted into the line of succession by Antoninus Pius, he received a careful education and turned early to Stoicism, above all through reading Epictetus, to whom he had been introduced by his teacher Junius Rusticus. His reign, far from peaceful, was beset by wars on the Danube frontier, by revolts, and by the devastating Antonine Plague — circumstances in which his philosophy proved less a doctrine than a discipline of inner survival. ...

Mencio Note on sources: The dates of Mencius (孟子 Mèngzǐ, “Master Meng”; personal name Kē 軻) are conventional estimates — c. 372–289 BCE — based on traditional historical chronologies. The text Mèngzǐ (孟子), compiled in 7 books (piān), is considered more unified than Confucius’s Analects, although it also involved contributions from disciples in its final redaction. Mencius is honored in the Confucian tradition as the “Second Sage” (Yàshèng 亞聖), immediately below Confucius. ...

Philippa Foot Philippa Foot (1920–2010) was one of the most influential British moral philosophers of the twentieth century and a central figure in the revival of virtue ethics. Educated and long based at Oxford, she also taught for extended periods in the United States. Her intellectual career amounts to a sustained challenge to the non-cognitivism and emotivism that dominated post-war Anglophone metaethics: against the thesis of a radical separation between fact and value, Foot sought to show that moral judgements have cognitive content and are rooted in facts about human life. Her work culminates in the neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism of Natural Goodness (2001). She was also a figure of civic conscience: she was among the founders of Oxfam, the organisation devoted to fighting hunger and poverty. ...

Robert Nozick was an American political philosopher and professor at Harvard, whose Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) became the most systematic and rigorous libertarian response to John Rawls’s theory of justice, reorienting anglophone political-philosophical debate for decades. Beyond political philosophy, he made original contributions to epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Key Concepts Rights as Side Constraints (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974): Nozick holds that individual rights are side constraints on action — not factors to be maximised within a calculation, but limits that cannot be violated even when violation would produce better outcomes for the greatest number. Individual dignity prohibits using persons as mere means to others’ ends. ...

Seneca Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born in Corduba, in Hispania, around 4 BCE, the son of Seneca the Elder, a renowned teacher of rhetoric. He was the most influential — and also the most controversial — of the Roman Stoics: a wealthy and powerful senator, he endured exile in Corsica under the emperor Claudius and, on his return to Rome, became tutor and later advisor to the young Nero, whom he sought to restrain in the early years of his reign. Accused of taking part in the Pisonian conspiracy, he was forced by Nero to take his own life in 65 CE — a death that, according to Tacitus’s account, he faced with the serenity his philosophy preached. ...

Simone de Beauvoir French philosopher; intellectual companion of Sartre. Founder of existentialist feminism. The Second Sex is one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Key Concepts “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”: the feminine is a social and historical construction, not a biological given Woman is the Other in relation to man as universal subject — a structure of oppressive alterity Existentialist freedom applied to gender: woman must recognize herself as a free subject, not as an object or complement to man Ethics of ambiguity: human freedom is ambiguous — we are free and situated; ethics demands assuming this ambiguity and acting in solidarity Influenced by Sartre — existentialism; radical freedom Hegel — master/slave dialectic (applied to gender) Husserl and Heidegger — phenomenology of situation Influenced Second-wave feminism (Betty Friedan, Kate Millett) Judith Butler — performativity of gender Queer theory Works The Second Sex (1949); The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947); The Mandarins (novel, 1954, Prix Goncourt). ...

Socrates Socrates is the pivot of Greek philosophy: his figure divides the tradition between the pre-Socratics, concerned with the investigation of nature (physis), and the Socratics, who shifted the focus to the human being, the soul, and ethics. An Athenian of the fifth century B.C., son of the sculptor Sophroniscus and the midwife Phaenarete, he lived through the Peloponnesian War — serving as a hoplite at Potidaea, Delium, and Amphipolis — and turned the streets and gymnasia of Athens into the setting for an entirely oral philosophy. He left no writings: everything we know comes from others, above all the dialogues of Plato and the writings of Xenophon, alongside the comic caricature of Aristophanes (The Clouds). The difficulty of separating the historical Socrates from the literary character is what scholars call the “Socratic problem.” ...

Thomas Aquinas Born around 1225 in Roccasecca, near Aquino, in southern Italy, Thomas belonged to the high nobility, which firmly opposed his entry into the mendicant order of the Dominicans — even confining him for about a year. He studied under Albert the Great in Paris and Cologne and became a master of theology at the University of Paris. Despite the nickname “the dumb ox,” he proved to be the greatest genius of Scholasticism. After an intense experience in 1273, he ceased writing, saying that all he had produced seemed to him like “straw”; he died the following year, on his way to the Council of Lyon. Canonized in 1323, he is “the Angelic Doctor,” and Thomism remains the official reference of Catholic philosophy. ...

Thomas Nagel Thomas Nagel is one of the most respected contemporary philosophers working in philosophy of mind, ethics, and political philosophy. Born in 1937, he is a professor at New York University (NYU). His work returns obstinately to a single theme: the difficulty of reconciling the inner, subjective perspective of each conscious being with the external, impersonal, objective perspective that science and reason strive for. Known for his lucid prose and the intellectual honesty with which he exposes the limits of his own solutions, Nagel resists both easy reductions and mysticism, holding that certain philosophical problems are genuine and should not be dissolved prematurely. ...