User:Tradereddy/Ancient ethics

Ancient ethics

Ancient ethics is the collection of systems of appropriate conduct from the time between the beginning of recorded human history to the Postclassical Era. Ancient ethics concerns itself predominately with normative ethics and early religious ethics.

Distinction between ethics and morality

The ancient articulation of conduct was shaped, "not with what we take to be morality, but with something different, an alternative which can be labelled ethics." That which can be labelled ethics is the concern toward virtue, happiness (eudaimonia), and the soul.

This can be highlighted etymologically. Ethics is derived from the Greek ἦθος, ethos, which means "custom, habit". Thus, ethics, operating parallel to natural law, is a metaphysical and universal term. While morality, comes from the Latin moralitas, meaning "manner, character, proper behavior". Therefore, morality falls closer toward positive law or social norms.

Cicero, however, dissolves the distinction within his work De Fato, maintaining that both are the same. He begins the work by writing: "that branch of philosophy which, because it relates to manners, the Greeks usually term ethics [ἦθος], the Latins have hitherto called the philosophy of manners [moralem]."

Ethics in Ancient Greece

Ethics in Ancient Greece was first formerly established within its literary canon, specifically through the works of Homer, Aesop and the Ancient Greek tragedy writers: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Common reoccurring themes within these works include arete, the virtue of excellence, and hubris, the vice of extreme pride.

From this tradition, the Pre-Socratics gave occasional reflections on ethics. Heraclitus thought that injustice appears only in the eyes of men, and that a divine perspective would show that everything is just. Pythagoras founded a sect in which metempsychosis, reincarnation or the transmigration of the soul, was to be attained through following certain ascetic practices. Democritus proposed cheerfulness as the supreme goal of life.

After the Pre-Socratics, Sophism became popular. The Sophists were hired educators who were said to be able to teach what is ethical. This movement, under Protagoras, became the first in Western thought to formulate relativism. During the height of Sophism, Socrates became a vocal opposition to their teachings. Socrates, a man who only knew that he knew nothing, established the field of ethics through his constant questioning, which became known as the Socratic method. These conversation would normally end up in aporia, a state of uncertainty as to how to proceed or logical impasse. Along the way, certain questions of ethics would arise, such as the Euthyphro dilemma.

In Thucydides

Within the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides writes to examine the "course of human things", as in the analysis of the human condition and its ethics. He expressess interest "with the relationship between human intelligence and judgment", alongside the forces of Fortune and Necessity. In this inquiry, he views of human nature in a manner that does not imply innate evil, and, therefore, subject to a personally cultivated ethic. He goes on to explictly say that evil is brought by the desire for power, originating in avarice and ambition.

See also

• Ethics
• History of Ethics

References

Category:Ethics Category:Classical Greek philosophy Category:History of philosophy