Download The Foundations of Ethics in Western Philosophy

The Foundations of Ethics
in Western Philosophy
“How should I live?”
This is the central question of
ethics (or moral philosophy).
But this was not the first kind of inquiry that
preoccupied the early philosophers. The earliest
Greek philosophers concerned themselves with this
question: “What is the nature of the universe?”
Ancient Philosophy
Western philosophy began in the country called Greece.
The Pre-Socratic Philosophers
The earliest Greek philosophers are referred to as the pre-Socratic philosophers.
They are also called cosmologists because they saw the world as a cosmos.
Cosmos means the world (or the universe)
as an ordered whole. The pre-Socratic
philosophers introduced a systematic
approach in explaining the cosmos.
 Where did everything come from?
 What is everything made of?
These were the questions that they asked.
The Milesians
 The Milesian school was a school of thought founded
in the 6th century BC. The Milesian philosophers were
from the town of Milesia in Greece.
 These philosophers defined all things by what they
thought was the first or basic stuff from which
everything was made of: arche.
 The arche was the source of everything. In Greek, it
means “first” or “beginning.”
1. Thales of Miletus
 Thales was the first of the Milesian
philosophers.
 According to him, the arche was water.
Thales shared his views with Milesians.
His philosophy attracted many students,
one of who was Anaximander.
2. Anaximander
 Anaximander disagreed with Thales. He
thought, if everything was made of water,
where did dust particles come from?
 The arche must be an unobservable,
undefined element. It must be something
which is infinite and boundless, something
that has no characteristics of its own but is
capable of becoming many things.
 He called this infinite and boundless
substance the apeiron.
3. Anaximenes
 Anaximenes is the last of the three
philosophers from Miletus.
 For him, Anaximander’s idea of the
indefinite apeiron is vague and
almost nonsensical. How could
things come from an indefinite and
boundless substance?
 Anaximenes suggested that the
arche must be air.
Aside from the three Milesian philosophers, there were other Pre-Socratic
thinkers who contributed to the history of philosophy. Like the Milesians,
these thinkers were also concerned with cosmology.
Pythagoras
 Pythagoras rejected the idea of arche
that was suggested by the Milesian
thinkers.
 He looked to mathematics to explain
the cosmos. He said that numbers can
be used to explain reality.
 To Pythagoras, mathematics
calculations can be used to discover
harmony in the universe.
Heraclitus
 Heraclitus is the philosopher who is known
for his doctrine of change.
 For him, reality consists in the very process
of change. To illustrate this, he used the
image of fire.
“You cannot step on the same
river twice.”
Parmenides
 Parmenides was a philosopher from the town
of Elea.
 He disagreed with Heraclitus, saying genuine
change is impossible.
 For him, what basically exists is being itself.
What does not exist is not being. He observed
that being is everywhere because things exist
everywhere.
Empedocles
 This philosopher is remembered for
being the origin of the theory which
claims that there are four elements:
earth, air, fire and water.
 According to him, the four basic
elements make all things in the
world.
 These elements cannot be
destroyed and cannot be changed.
 They are the “roots”.
The old Greeks used to explain their
natural environment using what they
believed to be the actions of gods
and godesses. In contrast, the PreSocratic philosophers provided
rational and prescientific
explanations of the natural world. As
such, they provided the very
beginning of what developed in
history as a discipline called
“science”.
The Sophists
 In the second half of the 5th century BC, a group of teachers who
were known as “sophists” gained popularity in Greece.
 These teachers traveled from one city to another to teach rhetorics.
Most of them taught Greek students for a price.
 They preached that there was no absolute truth. What is true for one
group of persons may not hold true for another group. Everything is
relative.
 The first among the sophists – and the most popular – was
Protagoras, who said, “Man is the measure of all things.”
The Sophists explored one of the three major branches of philosophy:
metaphysics, which deals with the principles of reality. They also led
to the development of another branch known as epistemology, which
is concerned with knowledge. In addition, their teachings led other
philosophers to axiology, the philosophy of ethics.
Socrates:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”