Four Phases of Morals: Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, Utilitarianism

“Is it not strange, Hippias, said Socrates, that {91} when a man wishes to have his son taught shoemaking or carpentry or any trade, he has no difficulty in finding a master to...

This is not the tone certainly which any accused person anxious to save his life in pleading before a democratic jury would have adopted, whether at Athens or New York. By the m...

We now proceed to place before the reader a short statement of the most striking characteristics of the ethical philosophy of Aristotle as they are set forth in that compact lit...

To state the matter more articulately, the view of the philosopher’s guilt taken by his accusers and the {105} majority of the jury who condemned him, may be comprised under the...

So much for the strictly metaphysical part of the empirical doctrine. Let us now consider shortly its application to morals. “Moral principles,” says Mr. Locke (i. 3), “are even...

The next great division of our subject leads us to consider, what is by no means a matter of secondary importance, the peculiar and characteristic manner in which Socrates incul...

DEAR SIR,--As the substance of this book was originally delivered in the form of Lectures before the Royal Institution, London, I was naturally led, in giving my notes a more ex...

This passage will make it plain that Socrates was no mere idle speculator or subtle talker, such as might be found in ancient Athens or in any modern German university by scores...

We have now finished our notice of those who are entitled to be called the founders of the Utilitarian school; those who follow, as the mere inheritors of principles already lar...

This may seem perhaps a sufficiently condemnatory sentence; but it does not by any means follow {334} that Utilitarianism has proved utterly useless in the world, or that its po...

These two propositions may appear to many persons now-a-days to contain nothing that is not very vague and very cheap; nevertheless, when looked into accurately and followed out...

There are two points generally discussed in ethical treatises, which belong most naturally to our present rubric; _first_, whether moral judgments are performed by a separate fa...

Pride, indeed, is not only the sin by which Lucifer falls in Christian angelography, but it peoples Tartarus also in heathen legends; and the boastful Salmoneus, whose insane am...

The Utilitarian school, therefore, judged by its name, and by its favourite shibboleth, has no distinctive character; and its chosen appellation merely shows an utter deficiency...

The first, and in its epiphany one of the earliest and most wide-spread excesses of Christian morality, was ASCETICISM. The temptation to this lies very near, in the practice of...

So far well. But there is another view which, if we honestly take, we shall find it impossible to acquit the Aristotelian morals of a very serious defect. This defect is the wan...

It remains now only shortly to indicate how Christian ethics has suffered from the admixture of adulterating elements. These are notably three: INTELLECTUALISM, RITUALISM, and S...

Another notable peculiarity of the Socratic method is, that, while in the majority of cases the discussion seems to end in unveiling the ignorance of pretenders to knowledge, an...

The extreme meagreness of the Utilitarian doctrine as thus produced from the propositions of its great progenitor, is something so remarkable that one is naturally driven to loo...

Let us now make a few remarks on the theological argument, or the argument from design, here sketched {78} in such broad and masterly lines. It is an argument, when taken in the...

“Again, it is obvious that the great-minded man, if he is worthy of the greatest consideration, must be not only a good man, but one of the very best; for always the better a ma...

It does not seem necessary, after what has been said, to expatiate largely on the obvious deduction of the other cardinal virtues from the Socratic principle of Reason or Truth....

Let us now cast a glance on that most characteristic and most widely bruited of all the Christian virtues, viz., LOVE; which under the name of Charity (not Ἔρως, the old satelli...

And this brings us to the second important point in the original attitude of Christianity, and the manner in which it moved the moral world. This point is the historical foundat...

There is one marked peculiarity about Christian Ethics, growing directly out of a religious root, and closely connected with certain theological doctrines, which, though indicat...

But it is not only in the phases of individual character and the experiences of personal life that the validity of the Aristotelian standard of well-being is strongly asserted....

What Aristotle enunciated therefore was merely the most commonplace wisdom; and so much the better. Commonplace wisdom is the best kind of wisdom for common needs and every-day...

Before attempting to set forth in its great salient points the ethical system of Aristotle, it will be at once interesting and useful to sketch shortly the leading events of his...

[305.1] From a letter written in 1734.--Burton’s _Life of Hume_, i. p. 35. In Sect. I. of the “Inquiry into the Principles of Morals,” he says, “The ancient philosophers, though...