Philosophers including William of Ockham ( c. 1287–1347), St Augustine (354–430), Duns Scotus ( c. 1265–1308), and John Calvin (1509–1564) have presented various forms of divine command theory. The theory generally teaches that moral truth does not exist independently of God and that divine commands determine morality.
Contents
Which philosopher talked about morality?
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is an illustrative case. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant divides moral philosophy into two domains, that of justice or law on the one hand (the Doctrine of Right), and that of ethics or virtue on the other (the Doctrine of Virtue).
Did Socrates believe in morality?
Instead, Socrates taught that decisions should be made based on what was right or wrong, or good or bad, standards you can achieve through discussion and moral guidance.
What did Aristotle believe about morality?
Aristotle defines moral virtue as a disposition to behave in the right manner and as a mean between extremes of deficiency and excess, which are vices. We learn moral virtue primarily through habit and practice rather than through reasoning and instruction.
What did Plato believe about morality?
Like most other ancient philosophers, Plato maintains a virtue-based eudaemonistic conception of ethics. That is to say, happiness or well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues (aretê: ‘excellence’) are the requisite skills and dispositions needed to attain it.
What was David Hume’s philosophy?
Hume was an Empiricist, meaning he believed “causes and effects are discoverable not by reason, but by experience“. He goes on to say that, even with the perspective of the past, humanity cannot dictate future events because thoughts of the past are limited, compared to the possibilities for the future.
What is Kant’s view on morality?
Kant believed that the shared ability of humans to reason should be the basis of morality, and that it is the ability to reason that makes humans morally significant. He, therefore, believed that all humans should have the right to common dignity and respect.
What does Thomas Aquinas say about God?
For Aquinas, the statement God exists is self-evident in itself since existence is a part of God’s essence or nature (that is, God is his existence—a claim to which we’ll turn below). Yet the statement is not self-evident to us because God’s essence is not something we can comprehend fully.
What was Socrates philosophy?
Philosophy. Socrates believed that philosophy should achieve practical results for the greater well-being of society. He attempted to establish an ethical system based on human reason rather than theological doctrine. Socrates pointed out that human choice was motivated by the desire for happiness.
How different are Socrates and Plato’s ethical views from Aristotle?
To Aristotle, wisdom was a goal achieved only after effort, and unless a person chose to think and act wisely, other virtues would remain out of reach. Socrates believed that happiness could be achieved without virtue, but that this happiness was base and animalistic.
What was Kant known for?
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the foremost thinkers of the Enlightenment. His comprehensive and systematic work in epistemology (the theory of knowledge), ethics, and aesthetics greatly influenced all subsequent philosophy, especially the various schools of Kantianism and idealism.
Were John Locke’s ideas accepted?
Much of what he advocated in the realm of politics was accepted in England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 and in the United States after the country’s declaration of independence in 1776.
Was Descartes a rationalist?
Rationalists, such as Descartes, have claimed that we can know by intuition and deduction that God exists and created the world, that our mind and body are distinct substances, and that the angles of a triangle equal two right angles, where all of these claims are truths about an external reality independent of our …
What is Plato’s rationalism?
Plato is an example of a rationalist. He says that sense experience fails to provide us with any guarantee that what we experience is, in fact, true. The information we get by relying on sense experience is constantly changing and often unreliable.
Was Aristotle a rationalist?
Plato’s successor Aristotle (384–322 bce) conceived of the work of reason in much the same way, though he did not view the forms as independent. His chief contribution to rationalism lay in his syllogistic logic, regarded as the chief instrument of rational explanation.
Was Kant a rationalist?
Kant’s philosophy has been called a synthesis of rationalism and empiricism. From rationalism he takes the idea that we can have a priori knowledge of significant truths, but rejects the idea that we can have a priori metaphysical knowledge about the nature of things in themselves, God, or the soul.
Was Locke a rationalist?
Whereas rationalist philosophers such as Descartes held that the ultimate source of human knowledge is reason, empiricists such as John Locke argued that the source is experience (see Rationalism and empiricism).
Does Immanuel Kant believe in God?
He conceives of the God of rational theology as the causal author and moral ruler of the world. He considers himself a theist rather than a deist because he is committed to a free and moral “living God,” holy and just, as well as omniscient and omnipotent, as a postulate of practical reason (Lectures, pp.
What did Immanuel Kant say?
Kant’s ethics are organized around the notion of a “categorical imperative,” which is a universal ethical principle stating that one should always respect the humanity in others, and that one should only act in accordance with rules that could hold for everyone.
What did Gilbert Ryle believe in?
In its place, Ryle saw a tendency of philosophers to search for objects whose nature was neither physical nor mental. Ryle believed, instead, that “philosophical problems are problems of a certain sort; they are not problems of an ordinary sort about special entities.” Ryle analogizes philosophy to cartography.
What is self according to Paul Churchland?
Rather than dualism, Churchland holds to materialism, the belief that nothing but matter exists. When discussing the mind, this means that the physical brain, and not the mind, exists. Adding to this, the physical brain is where we get our sense of self.
What is Enlightenment Immanuel Kant summary?
According to Immanuel Kant, enlightenment was man’s release from “self-incurred tutelage.” Enlightenment was the process by which the public could rid themselves of intellectual bondage after centuries of slumbering.
What is Enlightenment Michel Foucault summary?
It is an attitude, an ethos, by which is meant simply “a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task”.
What does Kant believe must be present for man to pursue Enlightenment?
Kant argues that two things must be present in order for people to reach enlightenment: complete freedom in the public use of reason, while at the same time restricting the private use of reason.
Related posts:
Do human thoughts interact with matter?
Why should I trust experts – and what’s the place of experts in a democracy?
What fallacy would be appropriate?
What is the basis of the belief that institutions should pursue only their own goals and disregard moral aspects of their actions’ wider consequences?
How can we differentiate between change and progress in the area of arts and natural sciences?
Why is invasion of privacy necessarily a bad thing?
What is the Kantian reason to release a slave?
Just what is negation in Sartre’s philosophy?
Quantum Mechanics and Logic?
Why did Socrates not believe in democracy?