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The list begins, of course, with Plato and Aristotle. Plato’s <i>Republic</i> and Aristotle’s <i>Nichomachean Ethics</i> have truly stood the test of time, remaining the seminal hallmarks of Western ethics. The dialogue in the <i>Republic</i> is in regards to justice and ultimately seeks to explore why one should want to be just. The <i>Nichomachean Ethics</i> provides a systematic approach to answering what the ethical life consists in, beginning with a teleological discussion of happiness, or <i>eudaimonia</i>, and continuing with a consideration of the moral and intellectual virtues. All ethical thought post Plato and Aristotle is in many ways indebted to these two thinkers. I also included the Latin Stoic, Seneca, as his ethical thought and framework was particularly influential in early Christian ethics and scholastic theology going into the medieval period. Stoic ethics is famously marked by 1) an aversion to strong emotion which, ultimately, is linked to bad action and 2) a surrender of control over those things which are out of our control. It reads more or less like a modern self-help tutorial.
As a medieval philosopher, I am tempted to include several more thinkers from that period; however, Aquinas is fairly representative of ethics during that era. Of course, there are several competing factions and ethical systems during the middle ages, particularly the high middle ages, but because Aquinas’s philosophy became particularly favored in the Catholic Church, it had a lasting influence that many of Aquinas’s contemporaries did not enjoy. One of Aquinas’ Aquinas’s major contributions to the field of ethics was synthesizing Aristotle and Christianity in an impressively systematic way. However, This can be seen from what I have chosen to include here is : Aquinas’s <i>Treatise on Law </i> in a translation that also includes some other excerpts from the <i>Summa Theologiae</i> wherein he discusses the role of conscience and synderesis (distinctly Christian ethical developments) and , most famously: , the natural law. Though Aquinas did not create natural law theory, he certainly gives it the most detailed and coherent treatment.
Once the Enlightenment takes off and the process of secularization begins in the West, philosophers are trying to understand ethical action apart from the Christian foundations it was intimately tied to during the long middle ages. John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism and Kant’s deontology are both byproducts of this movement. For Mill, we determine what sorts of actions should be done according to their utility--the overall sum of aggregate pleasure they produce. Thus, no action is intrinsically bad or good. For Kant, through application of the categorical imperative we autonomously discern which actions are bad and good and are obliged to act in accordance with that discernment. In other words we have a duty to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because God legislates some action to be done or because we fear some punishment or hope for some reward. Once Nietzsche comes on the scene he gives a substantial critique of secular ethics as being obviously dependent upon it’s Christian language and foundations while simultaneously urging that Christian morality is a mere ploy to control the masses. Consequently, if we ditch both systems we are not left with much of a value system that purports any <i>real value</i>, which is precisely what he aims to show in <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>.
