THINKER’S DIGEST

EDEN IAS
ETHICS

70 Thinkers - 70 Thoughts
A BRIEF SUMMARY ON MORAL LEADERS,
THINKERS AND PHILOSOPHER FROM
WORLD & INDIA

Edited by
Tirthankar Roychowdhary
 Message For The Aspirants...

Dear Aspirants,

It is common knowledge and an open secret that GS Paper-IV (Ethics, integrity and aptitude) is
perhaps the most intriguing and rewarding aspect of the Civil Services (Main) Examination. It is
the performance in GS Paper-IV that separates the “Best from the Rest”. Nearly all aspirants un-
derstand the significance of GS Paper-IV yet a select few are able to translate their appreciation
of the subject into performance during the Examination.

This inability stems largely from the ethical hollowness that often surrounds the arguments
that are presented by the aspirants in the answers and case studies of GS Paper-IV. Among other
reasons, it is the absence of moral philosophical interpolations and thoughts that add fuel to
such ethical hollowness. Unless the arguments are backed by moral philosophies they appear
very generic. Further there are several questions that create moral and ethical dilemma, and in
such questions, no arguments can be presented without sacrificing some moral or ethical space.
During such situations moral philosophies not only come to rescue but also add more credence
to the adopted line of thought. Hence the preparation of GS Paper-IV is incomplete without an
appreciation of different moral stances taken by thinkers and philosophers from all over the
world and India.

To help the aspirants in such endeavour, this digest has been created. It is a brief summary of all
important moral thinkers, their thoughts and philosophies. A diligent and industrious reading of
this digest will definitely improve the content of the answers in GS Paper-IV.

Regards
Tirthankar Roychowdhary
(Director, EDEN IAS)
Thinkers Digest -”70 Thinkers 70 Thoughts”
 LIST OF MORAL LEADERS, THINKERS AND PHILOSOPHERS

1. Socrates___________________________01 32. Karl Marx________________________52 63. Mahatma Gandhi______________102

2. Plato_______________________________03 33. Montesquieu____________________53 64. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar____________104
3. Aristotle___________________________05 34. Niccole Machiavelli_____________54 65. Baba Amte_____________________106
4. Jeremy Bentham__________________08 35. Ralph Cudworth________________56 66. Jotiba Phule____________________107
5. John Stuart Mill___________________10 36. Auguste Comte__________________58 67. Aurobindo Ghosh______________108
6. Thomas Hobbes__________________11 37. Francis Bacon___________________59 68. Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay_____109
7. John Locke________________________13 38. Voltaire__________________________61 69. Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya___111
8. John Rawls________________________15 39. George Berkeley________________63 70. Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam_________113
9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau___________17 40. Samuel Clarke___________________64
10. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon________19 41. Cicero____________________________65
11. Immanuel Kant__________________20 42. Lao Tzu__________________________66
12. W.D. Ross________________________22 43. Henry David Thoreau__________67
13. St. Thomas Aquinas_____________24 44. Max Weber______________________69
14. Robert Nozick___________________26 45. Abraham Lincoln_______________71
15. David Hume_____________________28 46. Martin Luther King Jr._________ 72
16. G.E. Moore_______________________29 47. Nelson Mandela_________________74
17. A. J. Ayer_________________________30 48. Gautama Buddha_______________76
18. Charles Stevenson_______________31 49. Vardhamana Mahavira_________78
19. R. M. Hare________________________32 50. Kautilya__________________________80
20. Herbert Spencer_________________33 51. Adi Shankaracharya____________82
21. Ayn Rand________________________35 52. Guru Ravidas____________________83
22. Friedrich Nietzsche_____________36 53. Guru Nanak______________________84
23. Schopenhauer___________________38 54. Sant Kabir Das__________________86
24. Peter Singer_____________________39 55. Thiruvalluvar____________________88
25. Lawrence Kohlberg_____________41 56. Rama Krishna Paramahansa___90
26. Carol Gilligan____________________43 57. Swami Vivekananda____________92
27. Jean Paul Sartre_________________44 58. Jiddu Krishnamurti_____________94
28. Confucius________________________46 59. Raja Ram Mohun Roy___________96
29. René Descartes__________________48 60. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar____97
30. Democritus______________________49 61. Rabindranath Tagore___________98
31. Adam Smith_____________________50 62. Swami Dayanand Saraswati__100
 Socrates-Quick Facts
Socrates (c. 469 - 399 B.C.) was a Greek philosopher
from the Classical period (often known as the Socra-
tic period in his honor).

Socrates is considered as one of the founders of

western philosophy and is widely popular as the First
Moral Philosopher of the Western ethical tradition
of thought.

Socrates made no writings, and is known chiefly

through the accounts of classical writers writing after
his lifetime, particularly his students Plato and Xeno-
phon. Socrates
In 399 B.C.E., Socrates — the father of Greek philoso-
phy — was put on trial for impiety and corrupting
the youth of Athens

Socrates made important and lasting contributions in

the fields of Ethics, Epistemology and Logic, and par-
ticularly in the methodology of philosophy known as
the Socratic Method or “elenchus”.

The “Socratic Method” or “elenchus”

Perhaps Socrates’ most important and endur- At its simplest, the Socratic Method is used to solve
ing single contribution to Western thought is his di- a problem by breaking the problem down into
alectical method of inquiry, which he referred to a series of questions, the answers to which grad-
as “elenchus”(roughly, “cross-examination”) but ually distill better and better solutions. Both the
which has become known as the Socratic Method
questioner and the questioned explore the impli-
or Socratic Debate (although some commentators
have argued that Protagoras actually invented the cations of the other›s positions, in order to stimu-
“Socratic” method). late rational thinking and illuminate ideas. Thus,
Socrates would counter any assertion with a coun-
The Socratic Method, also known as method of elen- terexample which disproves the assertion (or at
chus, elenctic method, or Socratic debate, is a form
least shows it to be inadequate). This would lead to
of cooperative argumentative dialogue between
individuals, based on asking and answering ques- a modified assertion, which Socrates would then
tions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out test again with another counterexample. Through
ideas and underlying presuppositions. It is a dialec- several iterations of this kind, the original asser-
tical method, involving a discussion in which the tion is continually adjusted and becomes more and
defense of one point of view is questioned; one par- more difficult to refute, which Socrates held meant
ticipant may lead another to contradict themselves that it was closer and closer to the truth.
in some way, thus weakening the defender’s point.

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 Socrates and skepticism It also makes some sense to suspect that our beliefs
about right and wrong influence our decisions. If
we believe it is right to help a drowning child, then
Socrates often claimed that his wisdom was limited
it would be fairly shocking to decide not to do so—
to an awareness of his own ignorance, (although and it would less surprising when we decide to help
he did claim to have knowledge of “the art of love”). the child.
Thus, he never actually claimed to be wise, only
to understand the path a lover of wisdom must Socrates believed that the life of virtue was al-
take in pursuing it. His claim that he knew one and ways in a person’s best interest. To him, knowl-
edge of the good was similar to the enlightened
only one thing, that he knew nothing, may have in-
state. He believed that everyone is ultimately
fluenced the later school of Skepticism. seeking happiness and no happiness could be at-
tained without moral knowledge which accord-
Skepticism holds that one should refrain from ing to him is nothing but cultivation of virtues.
making truth claims, and avoid the postulation Virtues are good traits of character and must be
of final truths. This is not necessarily quite the same deliberately inculcated, believed Socrates.
as claiming that truth is impossible (which would
itself be a truth claim), but is often also used to cover
the position that there is no such thing as certain-
ty in human knowledge (sometimes referred to Socrates-Famous Quotes
as Academic Skepticism).

 An unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates-A Virtue Ethicist  True knowledge exists in knowing that you
know nothing.
During his life Socrates was predominantly interest-
ed in ethics. Self-knowledge is a sufficient condi-  When the debate is over, slander becomes
tion to the good life. Socrates identifies knowl- the tool of the loser.
edge with virtue. If knowledge can be learned,
 Education is the kindling of a flame, not the
so can virtue. Thus, Socrates states virtue can be
filling of a vessel.
taught. He believes “the unexamined life is not
worth living.” One must seek knowledge and  There is only one good, knowledge, and one
wisdom before private interests. In this manner, evil, ignorance.
knowledge is sought as a means to ethical action.
What one truly knows is the dictates of one’s  He is richest who is content with the least,
conscience or soul: these ideas form the philoso- for content is the wealth of nature.
phy of the Socratic Paradox.
Socrates thought that knowledge is virtue and
virtue leads to happiness. It makes sense to think
that moral people know what morality is. If you
know right from wrong, then you might be able to
choose to do what you know to be right.

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 Plato-Quick Facts
Plato was an Athenian philosopher from the
Classical period of Greece

Plato was a disciple of Socrates and is widely

considered as the pivotal figure in the history of
Ancient Greek and Western philosophy, along with
his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous stu-
dent, Aristotle.

Plato was the founder of the famous Academy in

Athens, the first institution of higher learning
in the western world. The philosophical school
which he developed at the Academy was known as
Platonism.
Plato
Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue
and dialectic forms in philosophy.

Plato’s Ethical Views

Like most other ancient philosophers, Plato main- Plato helps us understand why some people do
tains a virtue-based eudaemonistic conception what they know to be wrong—because our emo-
of ethics. That is to say, happiness or well-be- tions can side with our appetites—but he does
ing (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral not make it entirely clear why some people are
thought and conduct, and the virtues (‘excel- (relatively) wise and are able to passionately
lence’) are the requisite skills and dispositions value the right things, but others are unwise and
needed to attain it. passionately value superficial things. Platonian
Ethics are virtue ethics which is best expressed in
Plato thought that we have three major parts: the Platonian Cardinal Principles
the intellect, the emotions, and the appetites. We
have the intellect to reason and learn emotions to be
motivated, and the appetites to know when we are
in need of something (food, water, etc.) Wise peo-
ple use their emotions to motivate them to do
what the intellect finds valuable, but the unwise
use their emotions to motivate them to overin-
dulge the appetites. To over-indulge the appetites
is to be immoderate and addictive, but the intellect
should learn to value fulfilling our appetites in a
healthy way.

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Plato’s Doctrine of Cardinal Virtues Plato-Famous Quotes

Plato’s doctrine of cardinal virtues is based on

• Knowledge which is acquired under compul-
his concept of virtue. According to Plato, goodness
sion obtains no hold on the mind.
consists of the natural and proper functioning
of human nature. Besides, man is social by nature; • We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of
therefore, society is a normal background of moral the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men
life of human beings. For Plato, good life is the life are afraid of the light.
of virtues; Plato has described four important vir- • The price good men pay for indifference to
tues in his theory of Morality- public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
• Good people do not need laws to tell them to
1) Wisdom
act responsibly, while bad people will find a
2) Courage way around the laws.
3) Temperance • Human behavior flows from three main
4) Justice sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.
• Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.
According to him the cultivation of these four
virtues constitutes a morally good life, Later on; • Excellence is not a gift, but a skill that takes
these four virtues came to be called ‘Cardinal vir- practice. We do not act ‘rightly’ because we
are ‘excellent’; in fact we achieve ‘excellence’
tues’. The term ‘cardinal’ is derived from the word
by acting ‘rightly.’
Cardo.’ Cardo’ means a hinge or a hook which sup-
ports the door, and on which the door turns. The • An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so
four virtues are cardinal because they support they that have the least wit are the greatest
moral life of man in society. They are fundamen- babblers.
tal virtues. Other virtues depend upon them and • Good actions give strength to ourselves and
are therefore subordinate to them. inspire good actions in others.
• Do not train a child to learn by force or harsh-
ness; but direct them to it by what amuses
their minds, so that you may be better able
to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent
of the genius of each.

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 Aristotle-Quick Facts
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath
during the Classical period in Ancient Greece.
His writings cover many subjects – including physics,
biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, esthet-
ics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology,
linguistics, economics, politics and government.

He is one of the most important founding figures in

Western Philosophy, and the first to create a com-
prehensive system of philosophy, encompassing
Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics, Metaphysics, Log-
ic and science.

Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander the Great and

Aristotle
he encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest.

Aristotelian ethics is popularly known as the Nico-

machean Ethics.

Aristotle’s Ethical Views

According to Aristotle if we can just focus on be- Aristotle argues that it is not about God’s plan
ing good people the right actions will follow ef- but nature has built into us the desire to be
fortlessly. According to Aristotle knowledge, cour- virtuous. Aristotle says that having virtue just
age, bravery, and perseverance by themselves do means doing the right thing, at the right time, in
not make a morally good character or man. Their the right way, in the right amount, toward the
ethical significance depends or the motives and right people.
the values to which they are related. Aristotle,
therefore, rightly distinguishes the moral vir- Aristotle understood virtue as a robust character
tues from the intellectual virtues. trait that once developed would lead to predictably
good behaviour. The doctrine of the golden mean
Aristotle aims to identify the highest good for human is central in Aristotle’s concept of character vir-
beings. Aristotle feels that the HIGHEST GOOD tues.
must be something that is consistent with our
faculties as a human being. Aristotle argues that
a person who lives a good life also acts rightly
and develops the appropriate state of character.
While intellectual virtues are acquired as a re-
sult of learning, character virtues such as cour-
age, temperance, generosity etc are acquired as
a result of habituation (habits).

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 Aristotle’s Doctrine of Golden Mean

Virtue is the mid-point between two vices (extremes). Virtue, arete, or excellence is defined as a
mean between two extremes of excess and defect in regard to a feeling or action as the practically wise
person would determine it.

The mean is relative to the individual and circumstances. For example, consider the following traits

Aristotle’s conception of good character

People have a natural capacity for good character, and

it is developed through practice. The capacity does not
come first--it’s developed through practice.

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 Aristotle-Famous Quotes

 The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead

 Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

 I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the
hardest victory is over self.

 We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

 The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

 One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief
time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

 The law is reason, free from passion.

 Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

 It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

 It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.

 You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind
next to honor.

 Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right
degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within
everybody’s power and is not easy.

 The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

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 Jeremy Bentham-Quick Facts

Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher, ju-

rist, and social reformer and is regarded as the
founder of modern utilitarianism.
He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American phi-
losophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas in-
fluenced the development of welfarism.
He advocated individual and economic freedoms,
the separation of church and state, freedom of
expression, equal rights for women, the right to
divorce, and (in an unpublished essay) the de-
criminalising of homosexual acts.
He called for the abolition of slavery, capital pun-
Jeremy Bentham
ishment and physical punishment, including that
of children. He has also become known as an early
advocate of animal rights

Jeremy Bentham’s Ethical Views

In 1776, Jeremy Bentham first announced him- Jeremy Bentham saw human behaviour as he-
self to the world as a proponent of utility and donistic. Jeremy Bentham view is known as act
declared utility as the guiding principle of con- utilitarianism. Bentham claimed that all human
duct and law. The underlying principle of utilitari- beings seek pleasure and try to avoid pain. Ben-
anism is that an action is right if it produces great-
tham believes that all pleasures are alike. Plea-
est good for the greatest number. sures do not have qualitative differences. Pleasures
have only quantitative differences i.e. they are more
Utilitarianism is the universalistic form of Ethi- or they are less. Hence Benthamite utilitarianism
cal Hedonism {where Hedonism argues that plea- is often called as quantitative utilitarianism.
sure is the highest good and the supreme ideal of
life) Utilitarianism maintains that the supreme
ideal of life is pleasure - not the individual plea-
sure but universal or general happiness. Utili-
tarianism is a normative-consequentialist eth-
ical theory that places the locus of right and
wrong solely on the outcomes (consequences)
of choosing one action/policy over other ac-
tions/policies.

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 Jeremy Bentham’s Hedonic Calculus

Bentham devised the Hedonic Calculus to calculate pleasure and pain. Based on this calculus one
can weigh-out the pleasure and pain of flowing from an action in a given situation by focusing on
seven things.
• Its intensity: How strong it is?
• Its duration: How long it is?
• Its certainty: How likely it could be?
• Its propinquity: When it could arrive?
• Its fecundity: If it could cause further pleasure?
• Its purity: How free from pain it is?
• Its extent: How many people are affected?
By looking at all of this we can find the right action that we should choose under any given circum-
stance. The idea is to promote the most pleasure to the most people.

Jeremy Bentham-Famous Quotes

 As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell
where it ends.

 The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?

 The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of
right and wrong.

 The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

 Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.

 Every law is an infraction of liberty.

 The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.

 Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.

 The age we live in is a busy age; in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection.

 The schoolmaster is abroad! And I trust to him armed with his primer against the soldier in full
military array.

 No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or arti-
cle of belief on the subject of religion.

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 John Stuart Mill-Quick Facts

J. S. Mill was a British philosopher, political econ-

omist, and civil servant.
One of the most influential thinkers in the history of
classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social
theory, political theory, and political economy.
Dubbed “the most influential English-speaking
philosopher of the nineteenth century”, Mill’s
conception of liberty justified the freedom of the
individual in opposition to unlimited state and so-
cial control.
Educated by his father James Mill who was a close
friend to Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill be-
John Stuart Mill
came a proponent of utilitarianism.

John Stuart Mill’s Ethical Views John Stuart Mill-Famous Quotes

Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethi-  A person may cause evil to others not only by his
cal theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy actions but by his inaction, and in either case he
Bentham. Mill fully accepted Bentham’s devo- is justly accountable to them for the injury.
tion to greatest happiness principle as the basic  We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon
statement of utilitarian value. Mill believed that our unfavorable opinion of anyone, not to the op-
the aim of Utilitarianism is to promote happiness pression of his individuality, but in the exercise
for maximum people and in order to promote hap- of ours.
piness we must maximise pleasure and eliminate  War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.
pain for the greatest number of people but he made The decayed and degraded state of moral and pa-
distinction between quantitative and qualita- triotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth
tive pleasures. war is much worse.

John Stuart Mill’s version of utilitarianism is  Bad men need nothing more to compass their
ends, than that good men should look on and do
known as Rule-Utilitarianism. According to Mill
nothing.
some kinds of pleasure experienced by human
beings also differ from others in qualitative  One person with a belief is equal to a force of
ways. This establishes the moral worth of promot- ninety-nine who have only interests.
ing higher (largely intellectual) pleasures among  Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only
sentient beings even when their momentary in- things desirable as ends.
tensity may be less than that of alternative lower  No great improvements in the lot of mankind
(largely bodily) pleasures. He declares that more are possible until a great change takes place in
valuable pleasures are those which employ the fundamental constitution of their modes of
“higher faculties”. thought.
Mill argued that:  Everyone who receives the protection of society
owes a return for the benefit.
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a
 The most cogent reason for restricting the inter-
pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied ference of government is the great evil of adding
than a fool satisfied” unnecessarily to its power.

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 Thomas Hobbes-Quick Facts

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, and

is considered to be one of the founders of mod-
ern political philosophy.
Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Levia-
than, which expounded an influential formula-
tion of social contract theory.
In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also
contributed to a diverse array of other fields, includ-
ing history, jurisprudence, geometry, the physics
of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy.

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbe’s Ethical Views

Social contract is the idea that the people give So, individuals implicitly agree to a social con-
up some rights to a government and/or other tract with a state or authority in return for pro-
authority in order to receive, or jointly preserve, so-
tection from harm and a more functional society.
cial order. Plato in his Socratic dialogue “Crito” first
For Hobbes, however, as detailed in his “Levia-
pointed out that members within a society implicit- than” of 1657, it is important that this social contract
ly agree to the terms of a kind of social contract byinvolves an absolute government that does not
their choice to stay within the society. rule by consent (effectively Totalitarianism), since
in his view people cannot be trusted. He rejected
But it was Thomas Hobbes who took the theory the doctrine of separation of powers, arguing
forward in a more explicit way. He argued that, in that the sovereign must control civil, military, ju-
dicial and ecclesiastical powers, which some have
a primitive unstructured social order (a “state of
seen as a justification for authoritarianism and
nature”), individuals have unlimited natural free- even Totalitarianism
doms and their words or actions are bound only by
their consciences. However, this general autonomy
also includes the freedom to harm all who threaten
one›s own self-preservation (and for others to
harm in their own interests), and Hobbes was of the
opinion that humans are by their very nature nas-
ty and mean. It is therefore, he argued, in an indi-
vidual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily sub-
jugate his freedom of action in order to obtain
the benefits provided by the formation of social
structures and civil rights.

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 Thomas Hobbes-Famous Quotes

 The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for
the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.
 During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that con-
ditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.
 It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.
 Leisure is the mother of philosophy.
 In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.
 The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the
power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.
 Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
 He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still
an enemy.
 The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.

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 John Locke-Quick Facts

John Locke was an English philosopher and phy-

sician, widely regarded as one of the most influen-
tial of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known
as the “Father of Liberalism”.
His work greatly affected the development of epis-
temology and political philosophy. His writings
influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the
American revolutionaries.
His contributions to classical republicanism and
liberal theory are reflected in the United States
Declaration of Independence John Locke

John Locke’s Ethical Views

John Locke was also a Contractarian and believer He is sometimes referred to as the “Philosopher
of the Social Contract Theory. John Locke devel- of Freedom”, and his political views influenced
oped the theory further, arguing that this contract is both the American and French Revolutions.
only legitimate to the extent that it meets the gen- Locke believed that human nature allowed people
eral interest. Therefore, when failings are found in to be selfish. Locke also advocated governmental
the contract, we effectively renegotiate it to change separation of powers and believed that revolu-
the terms, using methods such as elections and leg- tion is not only a right but an obligation in some
islature. Since rights come from agreeing to the circumstances. These ideas would come to have
contract and accepting responsibility for following profound influence on the Declaration of Indepen-
its rules, then those who simply choose not to fulfill dence and the Constitution of the United States.
their contractual obligations (e.g. by committing
crimes), deserve to lose their rights, and the rest
of society can be expected to protect itself against
them by the threat of punishment.

In effect, society works by “mutual coercion, mutu-

ally agreed upon”. In the event of a contract leading
to tyranny (the exercise of prerogative power to the
detriment of the ends of the people), Locke saw the
right of rebellion as a justifiable response. Locke’s
conception of the social contract was in the individ-
ualist liberal tradition, and was very influential in
the development of classical Liberalism and modern
democracy, and in the theoretical underpinnings of
the American Revolution of 1775 - 1783.

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 John Locke-Famous Quotes

 The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the
states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.
 We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who
are around us.
 Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.
 Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.
 No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.
 What worries you, masters you.
 Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.
 The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.
 All wealth is the product of labor.
 Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

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 John Rawls-Quick Facts

John Bordley Rawls was an American moral and

political philosopher in the liberal tradition.
It is generally accepted that the recent rebirth of
normative political philosophy began with the
publication of John Rawls’s “A Theory of Justice” in
1971.
Rawls’s theory of “justice as fairness” recom-
mends equal basic rights, equality of opportunity,
and promoting the interests of the least advan-
taged members of society.
Rawls’s argument for these principles of social
justice uses a thought experiment called the
John Rawls
“original position” and “Veil of Ignorance”

John Rawl’s Ethical Views

Rawls thinks a just society will conform to rules Rawls argues that if we do not know, in this
that everyone would agree to in the original po- sense, who we will be and what options would
sition. be available to us in the future society, we will be
likely to support a decision about the rules and
The original position is a hypothetical situation: organisation of that future society which would
Rawls asks what social rules and institutions people be fair for all the members. Under the veil of ig-
norance, people don’t know their personal cir-
would agree to, not in an actual discussion, but un-
cumstances and hence the deliberations yield fair
der fair conditions, where nobody knows whether and just results.
they are advantaged by luck. Fairness is achieved
through the veil of ignorance, an imagined device
where the people choosing the basic structure of
society (‘deliberators’) have morally arbitrary fea-
tures hidden from them: since they have no knowl-
edge of these features, any decision they make can’t
be biased in their own favour.

Deliberators aren’t ignorant about everything

though. They know they are self-interested, i.e.,
want as much as possible of what Rawls calls
primary goods (things we want, no matter what
our ideal life looks like). They are also motivated
by a minimal ‘sense of justice’: they will abide by
rules that seem fair, if others do too. They also know
basic facts about science and human nature.

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 John Rawls- Principles of Justice John Rawls-Famous Quotes

John Rawls conception of a fair society gives rise to  Many of our most serious conflicts are con-
his first principle justice flicts within ourselves. Those who suppose
their judgements are always consistent are
1st Principle: - “All people have equal claims to unreflective or dogmatic.
as much freedom as is consistent with everyone
else having the same level of freedom.”  A just society is a society that if you knew ev-
erything about it, you’d be willing to enter it
Rawls further claims that, because their ignorance in a random place.
includes an ignorance of probabilities, deliberators
would be extremely cautious, and apply what he  The fairest rules are those to which everyone
calls a ‘maximin’ principle: they will aim to ensure would agree if they did not know how much
power they would have.
that the worst possible position they could end up
in is as good as possible in terms of primary goods.  The natural distribution is neither just nor
unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born
2nd Principle: - The second principle has two
into society at some particular position.
parts: These are simply natural facts. What is just
First, people in the original position will tolerate and unjust is the way that institutions deal
inequalities only if the jobs that pay more aren’t with these facts.
assigned unfairly. This gives us the ideal of fair  The principles of justice are chosen behind a
equality of opportunity. veil of ignorance.

Second, since their reasoning is governed by the  The bad man desires arbitrary power. What
‘maximin’ principle, deliberators will only tolerate moves the evil man is the love of injustice.
inequalities that benefit the worst off: since, as far  An injustice is tolerable only when it is nec-
as they know, they might be the worst off; this max- essary to avoid an even greater injustice.
imizes the quality of their worst possible outcome.
 A society regulated by a public sense of jus-
This is called the difference principle.
tice is inherently stable.
 The intolerant can be viewed as free-riders,
as persons who seek the advantages of just
institutions while not doing their share to
uphold them.

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 Jean-Jacques Rousseau -Quick Facts

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philoso-

pher, writer and composer.
His political philosophy influenced the progress of
the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as
aspects of the French Revolution and the develop-
ment of modern political, economic and educa-
tional thought.
His Discourse on Inequality and the Social Con-
tract are cornerstones in modern political and
social thought. Rousseau based his political phi-
losophy on contract theory and his reading of
Hobbes Jean-Jacques

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Ethical Views

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his 1762 treatise “Du the human power of reason) into “amour-propre”
contrat social” (“The Social Contract”, outlined (a kind of artificial pride which forces man to com-
a much less individualist (and much more col- pare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted
lectivist) version of contract theory, based on the fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain
conception of popular sovereignty (the belief that or weakness of others).
the legitimacy of the state is created by the will
or consent of its people, who are the source of all Rousseau’s version of the social contract is the
political power), and on his advocacy of direct de- one most often associated with the term «social
mocracy. contract» itself. His theories had a strong influ-
ence on both the 1789 French Revolution and the
He argued that, as an individual, the subject can subsequent formation of the Socialist movement.
be egoist and decide that his personal interest
should override the collective interest. However,
as part of a collective body, the individual sub-
ject puts aside his Egoism to create a “general
will” (the persistence of equality and freedom in
the society). Rousseau goes so far as to indicate
that people who do not obey the general will must
be “forced to be free”.

For Rousseau, society’s negative influence on men

centers on its transformation of “amour de soi” (a
positive self-love which he saw as the instinctive
human desire for self-preservation, combined with

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 Jean-Jacques Rousseau -Famous Quotes

 Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.

 What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
 No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
 The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
 Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
 Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.
 People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
 Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
 Childhood is the sleep of reason.
 It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
 Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.
 The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the rich-
est experiences.
 Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.
 God made me and broke the mold.

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 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon -Quick Facts

Pierre Joseph Proudhon was a French politician

and the founder of mutualist philosophy.
He was the first person to declare himself an anar-
chist, using that term and is widely regarded as one
of the ideology’s most influential theorists. Proudhon
is even considered by many to be the “father of anar-
chism”.
He became a member of the French Parliament af-
ter the Revolution of 1848, whereafter he referred
to himself as a federalist.

Pierre-Joseph
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s
Ethical Views
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a proponent of anar- ing each other, while maintaining complete individual
chism. sovereignty, resulting in a non-aggressive, utopian
state of Anarchism.
Anarchism is a political philosophy and move-
ment that rejects all involuntary, coercive forms
of hierarchy. It radically calls for the abolition of the
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon-
state which it holds to be undesirable, unnecessary Famous Quotes
and harmful. As an anti-authoritarian, anti-statist
and libertarian form of socialism, anarchism ad-
 When deeds speak, words are nothing.
vocates for the replacement of the state with state-
less societies or other forms of free associations.  The great are only great because we are on our
knees. Let us rise!
The timeline of anarchism stretches back to prehisto-
ry when people lived in anarchistic societies long be-  All parties without exception, when they seek
fore the establishment of formal states, kingdoms or for power, are varieties of absolutism.
empires. With the rise of organised hierarchical bod-
 I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the
ies, skepticism towards authority also rose, but it was abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the
not until the 19th century a self-conscious political reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the
movement was formed. During the latest half of 19th alpha and omega of my argument: to others I
and the first decades of 20th century, the anarchist leave the business of governing the world.
movement flourished to most parts of the world and
had a significant role in worker’s struggles for eman-  Communism is the exploitation of the strong
cipation. by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes
from placing mediocrity on a level with excel-
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809 - 1865) advocated lence.
a conception of social contract which did not involve
 Communism is inequality, but not as proper-
an individual surrendering sovereignty to others.
ty is. Property is exploitation of the weak by
He argued that the contract was not between indi-
the strong. Communism is exploitation of the
viduals and the state, but rather between individu- strong by the weak.
als themselves refraining from coercing or govern-

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 Immanuel Kant-Quick Facts

Immanuel Kant was an influential German philos-

opher in the Age of Enlightenment.
Modern deontological ethics was introduced by
Immanuel Kant in the late 18th Century, with his
theory of the Categorical Imperative.
Kant was an exponent of the idea that perpetual
peace could be secured through universal democ-
racy and international cooperation.
He believed that this would be the eventual out-
come of universal history, although it is not ratio-
nally planned
Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant’s Ethical Views

Immanuel Kant’s ethics is based on deontolog- His major contribution to Ethics was the theory
ical moral theory–according to these theories, of the Categorical Imperative, an absolutely uni-
the rightness or wrongness of actions does not versal, non-negotiable moral law which holds
depend on their consequences but on whether up regardless of context. According to Kant cat-
they fulfill our duty. Kant believed that there egorical imperatives command unconditionally.
was a supreme principle of morality and he re-
ferred to it as The Categorical Imperative. The According to Kant morality must be based on
Categorical Imperative determines what our the categorical imperative because morality is
moral duties are. such that you are commanded by it, and is such
that you cannot opt out of it or claim that it does
Kant, unlike Mill, believed that certain types not apply to you. The categorical imperative is
of actions (including murder, theft, and lying) the central philosophical concept in the deonto-
were absolutely prohibited, even in cases where logical moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
the action would bring about more happiness
than the alternative. For Kantians, there are two
questions that we must ask ourselves whenev-
er we decide to act: (i) Can I rationally will that
everyone act as I propose to act? If the answer
is no, then we must not perform the action. (ii)
Does my action respect the goals of human be-
ings rather than merely using them for my own
purposes? Again, if the answer is no, then we
must not perform the action. (Kant believed
that these questions were equivalent).

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 Immanuel Kant’s- Three formulations and morality

1) The First Formulation: Formula of Universality and the Law of Nature

Immanuel Kant

2) The Second Formulation: The Formula of Humanity

Immanuel Kant

3) The Third Formulation: The Formula of Autonomy

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant-Famous Quotes

 Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of  Experience without theory is blind, but the-
imagination. ory without experience is mere intellectual
play.
 A categorical imperative would be one which
represented an action as objectively neces-  Live your life as though your every act were
sary in itself, without reference to any other to become a universal law.
purpose.
 Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.
 He who is cruel to animals becomes hard
also in his dealings with men. We can judge  All our knowledge begins with the senses,
the heart of a man by his treatment of ani- proceeds then to the understanding, and
mals. ends with reason. There is nothing higher
than reason.
 Thoughts without content are empty, intu-
itions without concepts are blind.  Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is sel-
dom got by honest and lawful means. But
 Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is seek the testimony of few; and number not
organized life. voices, but weigh them.
 Give me matter, and I will construct a world  By a lie, a man, annihilates his dignity as a
out of it! man.

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 W.D. Ross-Quick Facts

Sir William David Ross was a Scottish philosopher

who is known for his work in ethics.
W.D. Ross is perhaps best known for developing a
pluralist, deontological form of intuitionist ethics
in response to G. E. Moore’s consequentialist form
of intuitionism.
W. D. Ross was a moral realist, a non-naturalist,
and an intuitionist. His greatest contribution to
the world of ethics is his formulation of Pluralistic
Deontology

W.D. Ross

W. D. Ross’ Ethical Views

W. D. Ross argues that there are seven prima facie duties which need to be taken into consider-
ation when deciding which duty should be acted upon:

• Duty of beneficence (to help other people to increase their pleasure, improve their character, etc).

• Duty of non-maleficence (to avoid harming other people).

• Duty of justice (to ensure people get what they deserve).

• Duty of self-improvement (to improve ourselves).

• Duty of reparation (to recompense someone if you have acted wrongly towards them).

• Duty of gratitude (to benefit people who have benefited us).

• Duty of promise-keeping (to act according to explicit and implicit promises, including the implicit
promise to tell the truth).

In some circumstances, there may be clashes or conflicts between these duties and a decision must be
made whereby one duty may “trump” another, although there are no hard and fast rules and no fixed
order of significance.

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 Rossian- Duty Based Ethics

W. D. Ross suggested that it would be helpful to look at two kinds of duty:

Prima facie duties

• They are self-evident and obvious duties (prima facie is a Latin expression meaning ‘on first appearanc-
es’ or ‘by first instance’)
• They can be known to be correct if a person thinks about them and understands them.
•They should be promoted, “all things considered”
•They can be outweighed by other prima facie duties.

Actual duties

This is the duty people are left with after they have weighed up all the conflicting prima facie duties that
apply in a particular case.

Ross listed seven prima facie duties:

• Fidelity
• Reparation
• Gratitude
• Justice
• Beneficence
• Self-improvement
• Non-maleficence (avoiding actions that do harm)

W.D. Ross-Famous Quotes

 “But to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man,
but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome,”
 Utilitarianism is simplistic and reductive it overlooks or conflates the complicated ways in
which human beings stand in relation, and thus in moral obligation, to one another.

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 St. Thomas Aquinas-Quick Facts
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was an Italian
philosopher and Catholic priest.
The name Aquinas identifies his ancestral origins
in the county of Aquino in present-day Lazio, Italy.
He was the foremost classical proponent of natural
theology and the father of Thomism; of which he
argued that reason is found in God.
His influence on Western thought is considerable,
and much of modern philosophy developed or op-
posed his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics,
natural law, metaphysics, and political theory.
His “Summa Theologica” is often considered second St. Thomas Aquinas
only to the Bible in importance to the Roman Catho-
lic Church, and arguably one of the most influential
philosophies of all time.

St. Thomas Aquinas’ Ethical Views

The moral philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas involves a merger of at least two apparently disparate
traditions: Aristotelian Eudaimonism and Christian theology.
On the one hand, Aquinas follows Aristotle in thinking that an act is good or bad depending on
whether it contributes to or deters us from our proper human end—the telos or final goal at which
all human actions aim. That telos is eudaimonia, or happiness, where “happiness” is understood in
terms of completion, perfection, or well-being. Achieving happiness, however, requires a range of
intellectual and moral virtues that enable us to understand the nature of happiness and motivate
us to seek it in a reliable and consistent way.
On the other hand, Aquinas believes that we can never achieve complete or final happiness in this
life. For him, final happiness consists in beatitude or supernatural union with God. Such an end lies
far beyond what we through our natural human capacities can attain. For this reason, we not only
need the virtues, we also need God to transform our nature.

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 St. Thomas Aquinas- Doctrine of Double Effect

Thomas Aquinas is credited with introducing 2. that the good effect and not the evil effect be
the principle of double effect in his discussion intended;
of the permissibility of self-defense in the Sum-
ma Theologica. Killing one’s assailant is justified, 3. that the good effect be not produced by means
he argues, provided one does not intend to kill him. of the evil effect;
In contrast, Augustine had earlier maintained that
4. that there be a proportionately grave reason
killing in self-defense was not permissible, arguing
for permitting the evil effect”
that “private self-defense can only proceed from
some degree of inordinate self-love.” Aquinas ob- The fourth condition, the proportionality condition
serves that “Nothing hinders one act from having is usually understood to involve determining if the
two effects, only one of which is intended, while the extent of the harm is adequately offset by the mag-
other is beside the intention. nitude of the proposed benefit.
A person may licitly perform an action that he
foresees will produce a good effect and a bad
effect provided that four conditions are verified
at one and the same time:
1. that the action in itself from its very object be
good or at least indifferent;

St. Thomas Aquinas -Famous Quotes

 To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is pos-
sible.
 The things that we love tell us what we are.
 There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.
 Beware of the person of one book.
 Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.
 Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely
to contemplate.
 Wonder is the desire for knowledge.
 Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.
 Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know
what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.
 Reason in man is rather like God in the world.

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 Robert Nozick -Quick Facts

Robert Nozick was an American philosopher. He

was one of the most important and influential politi-
cal philosophers, along with John Rawls, in the An-
glo-American analytic tradition.
His most celebrated book is “Anarchy, State, and
Utopia”.
Rawls’ influential book is a systematic defense of
egalitarian liberalism, but Nozick’s Anarchy, State,
and Utopia is a compelling defense of free-market
libertarianism.
Anarchy, State, and Utopia is, together with Rawls’s
A Theory of Justice, generally regarded as one of the
Robert Nozick
two great classics of twentieth-century analytic politi-
cal philosophy.

Robert Nozick’s Ethical Views

Libertarianism is a political philosophy holding importantly, for Nozick, unlike other social con-
that the role of the state in society ought to be tract theorists, individual rights do not result
severely limited. Nozick’s main defense of lib- from, but exist prior to, any social contract, and
ertarianism is a moral one. According to him the put severe constraints on the shape such a con-
strongest reason to advocate a libertarian society tract can take. Furthermore, the parties to the con-
is simply that such advocacy follows from a seri- tract in Nozick’s conception are to be imagined very
ous respect for individual rights. Nozick takes his much on the model of human beings as we know
position to follow from a basic moral principle them in “real life,” rather than along the lines of the
associated with Immanuel Kant and enshrined in highly abstractly conceived rational agents deliber-
Kant’s second formulation of his famous Categor- ating behind a “veil of ignorance” in Rawls’s “orig-
ical Imperative: “Act so that you treat humanity, inal position” thought experiment.
whether in your own person or in that of anoth-
er, always as an end and never as a means only.”

Nozick’s conception of the origins of the state is

reminiscent of the social contract tradition in
political thought represented by Hobbes, Locke,
Rousseau, and, in contemporary thought, Rawls.

The details of the state-originating process in

Nozick’s account are very different from those of
other social contract accounts, however; and, most

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 Robert Nozick’s-Utopia
The minimal state constitutes in Nozick’s view The minimal state thus constitutes a “frame-
a kind of utopia. For, among all models of politi- work for utopia” – an overarching system within
cal order, it alone makes possible the attempt to the boundaries of which any number of social,
realize every person’s and group’s vision of the moral, and religious utopian visions may be
good society. It is often thought that libertari- realized. It thereby provides a way for people
anism entails that everyone must live according even of radically opposed points of view – so-
to a laissez faire capitalist ethos, but this is not cialists and capitalists, liberals and conserva-
so; it requires only that, whatever ethos one is tives, atheists and religious believers, whether
committed to, one not impose it by force on any- Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus –
one else without his consent. If some individu- to make a go of implementing their conceptions
als or groups want to live according to socialist of how life ought to be lived, within their own
or egalitarian principles, they are free to do so communities, while living side by side in peace.
as far as Nozick is concerned; indeed, they may This gives us, in Nozick’s view, a further reason
even establish a community, of whatever size, to endorse it.
within the boundaries of the minimal state, and
require that everyone who comes to live within
it must agree to have a portion of his wealth re-
distributed. All they are forbidden from doing is
forcing people to join or contribute to the estab-
lishment of such a community who do not want
to do so.

Robert Nozick -Famous Quotes

 Certainly the emphasis I place in this chapter on coordination of behavior and cooperation to
mutual benefit is something that ought to be very congenial to people in the libertarian tradi-
tion.
 The fundamental question of political philosophy, one that precedes questions about how the
state should be organized, is whether there should be any state at all. Why not have anarchy?
 And although it might be best of all to be Socrates satisfied, having both happiness and depth,
we would give up some happiness in order to gain the depth

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 David Hume-Quick Facts

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian,

economist, and essayist known especially for his
philosophical empiricism and skepticism
Taking the scientific method of the English physicist
Sir Isaac Newton as his model and building on the
epistemology of the English philosopher John Locke,
Hume tried to describe how the mind works in acquir-
ing what is called knowledge.
David Hume was a cognitive non-naturalist who
believed that moral statements can’t be reduced to
natural statements. David Hume’s is-ought prob-
lem is his greatest contribution to moral philoso-
phy or ethics.
David Hume

David Hume’s Ethical Views

The is–ought problem, as articulated by the Scottish properties. This so-called naturalistic fallacy stands
philosopher and historian David Hume (1711–76), in contrast to the views of ethical naturalists.
states that many writers make claims about what
ought to be, based on statements about what is. This
problem is found within our understanding of David Hume -Famous Quotes
morality. How can we know what ought to be by
assuming knowledge of what is. According to Hume
we cannot derive our moral values from non-moral  Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
natural facts. passions, and can never pretend to any other
office than to serve and obey them.
In simple words we cannot make moral value
 A wise man proportions his belief to the evi-
judgements by only observing facts. How can we
dence.
derive how we ought to act based on what is. So
when we make ‘oughts’or moral claims based  Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
upon ‘is’ or natural facts (or facts about the world)
there is a gap in our reasoning. We somehow be-  Custom is the great guide to human life.
lieve that we are drawing moral knowledge from nat-
 Beauty in things exists in the mind which con-
ural facts but the two are not linked in anyway. Hume
templates them.
found that there seems to be a significant differ-
ence between descriptive statements (about what  Be a philosopher but, amid all your philoso-
is) and prescriptive or normative statements phy be still a man.
(about what ought to be), and that it is not obvious
how one can coherently move from descriptive state-  And what is the greatest number? Number one.
ments to prescriptive ones. The “is–ought” problem
 The corruption of the best things gives rise to
is also known as Hume’s law, Hume’s guillotine or
the worst.
fact–value gap.
 The heights of popularity and patriotism are
A similar view is defended by G. E. Moore’s
still the beaten road to power and tyranny.
open-question argument, intended to refute any
identification of moral properties with natural

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 G.E. Moore-Quick Facts

George Edward Moore was an English philosopher.

His influential work Principia Ethica is one of the
main inspirations of the movement against ethical
naturalism and is partly responsible for the twen-
tieth-century concern with meta-ethics.
Moore’s views on ethical subjects are closely relat-
ed to David Hume’s “is-ought” gap.
Moore expressed his ethical views through terms
like “naturalistic fallacy” , the Open question argu-
ment and intuitionism.
G.E. Moore
G.E. Moore’s Ethical Views

Moore argued that we cannot equate moral terms ident propositions which recommend themselves
to natural terms and when one does try to do to moral reflection, but which are not susceptible
so they are committing a Naturalistic Fallacy. to either direct proof or disproof), a view often de-
Moore’s reasoning for this was based upon David scribed as Ethical Intuitionism.
Hume’s “is-ought” problem.
In the “Principia Ethica”, Moore argued that most
other philosophers working in Ethics made a G.E. Moore’s Ethical Views
mistake he called the “Naturalistic Fallacy” when
they tried to prove an ethical claim by appealing
to a definition of the term «good» in terms of one  The lot of critics is to be remembered by
or more natural properties (e.g. “pleasant”, “de- what they failed to understand.
sired”, etc). According to Moore, the term “good” (in  It does not matter how badly you paint so
the sense of intrinsic value) is in fact indefinable, long as you don’t paint badly like other peo-
because it names a simple, non-natural prop- ple.
erty, and cannot be analyzed in terms of any oth-
er property. His argument (often called the Open  All moral laws are merely statements that
Question Argument) is that the question “What is certain kinds of actions will have good ef-
good?” is an open one, because «good» cannot be fects.
defined in terms of any natural property like “blue”
 “A great artist is always before his time or be-
or “rough” or “smooth” or “smelly”: it lacks natu-
hind it.”
ral properties. Thus, when a Hedonist, for exam-
ple, claims “Anything that is pleasant is also good”,  “Moral conduct, or duty, is defined as the
it is always possible to counter with «That thing is obligation to select that action which will
pleasant, but is it good?” achieve more good than any alternative ac-
tion....”
Moore further argued that, once arguments based
on the naturalistic fallacy had been discarded, ques-  “For it is the business of Ethics, I must insist,
tions of intrinsic goodness could only be settled by ap- not only to obtain true results, but also to
peal to what he called “moral intuitions” (self-ev- find valid reasons for them.”

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 A. J. Ayer-Quick Facts

Sir Alfred Jules Ayer was a 20th Century English

philosopher in the Analytic Philosophy tradition,
mainly known for his promotion of Logical Positiv-
ism.
He saw himself as continuing in the British Empir-
icist tradition of Locke and Hume.
Logical Positivists believe that a statement is only
truth-apt if it is either an analytic statement or a
synthetic statement. This is known as the Verifica-
tion-Principle. A. J. Ayer is popular for his ethical
work called emotivism
A. J. Ayer

A. J. Ayer’s Ethical Views

A.J. Ayer argued that since moral statemnets are can never be resolved. How can two people think
not truth-apt. All moral statements are just an that they are morally right and yet never agree on
expression of a person’s belief, desires, approv- what that is (e.g. Abortion)
al or disapproval. Hence all moral statements are
just feelings or emotions towards a certain situa- A. J. Ayer -Famous Quotes
tion. So if someone says stealing is wrong, all they
are saying is “I believe/feel stealing is wrong”.
However stealing as a statement is neither true or  “The traditional disputes of philosophers are,
false, it is a meaningless statement. for the most part, as unwarranted as they
are unfruitful”
A. J. Ayer’s Emotivism does not suffer from  “No morality can be founded on authority,
Moore’s open question argument. According even if the authority were divine.”
to the open question argument any attempt to re-
duce moral statements to natural statements is a  “No moral system can rest solely on author-
mistake and morality cannot be defined in natural ity.”
terms (Naturalistic Fallacy). Emotivism does not
 “The ground for taking ignorance to be re-
attempt to say that moral statements are equiv-
strictive of freedom is that it causes people
alent to natural statements as they are just a
to make choices which they would not have
person’s feelings there is no truth or falsity at-
made if they had seen what the realization of
tached. Further Moore argued from a Cognitive
their choices involved.”
position, he claimed that moral statements can
still be known through our moral intuition.  “The only possible basis for a sound morality
is mutual tolerance and respect: tolerance of
But according to Ayer a moral intuition does
one another’s customs and opinions; respect
not meet the verification principle. So we have
for one another’s rights and feelings; aware-
no basis to believe in it. Also emotivism further
ness of one another’s needs.”
explains why we have moral disagrements that

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 Charles Stevenson-Quick Facts

Charles Leslie Stevenson was a mid-Twentieth Cen-

tury American philosopher best known for his pio-
neering work in the field of metaethics
He is a central figure along with A. J. Ayer in the
development of emotivism. He gave the most so-
phisticated defense of emotivism in the post-war
period.
In his papers “The Emotive Meaning of Ethi-
cal Terms” (1937) and “Persuasive Definitions”
(1938), and his book Ethics and Language (1944),
he developed a theory of emotive meaning; which
he then used to provide a foundation for his theory
of a persuasive definition.
Charles Stevenson

Charles Stevenson’s Ethical Views

Charles Stevenson argued that moral state- When we use the terms ‘good’ and ‘right’, we express
ments are deeply held beliefs (Moral Stements= our approval. The whole point of ethics is to influ-
Deeply held beliefs). Charles Stevenson argues ence how we behave. We use moral judgements to
that moral words have emotive meanings. The sen- express our feelings and to influence the feelings
tence ‘You stole that money’ has a purely descrip- and actions of other people. Words with emotive
tive meaning, viz. that you took money that did not meaning do just that. Emotivism connects caring,
belong to you without permission from the owner. approving, disapproving, with the very meaning of
But it can be used with an emotive meaning (‘you ethical words.
stole that money!’), a meaning that expresses
disapproval. Many moral terms (‘steal’, ‘hones-
ty’, ‘respect’) have both descriptive and emotive
meanings. The central ones, though, ‘right’, ‘wrong’,
‘good’, and ‘bad’ only have emotive meanings.

Charles Stevenson-Famous Quotes

 Moral disagreements may arise from different fundamental attitudes, different moral beliefs about spe-
cific cases, or both.

 Persuasion depends on the sheer, direct emotional impact of words—on emotive meaning, rhetorical
cadence, apt metaphor, stentorian, stimulating, or pleading tones of voice, dramatic gestures, care in
establishing rapport with the hearer or audience, and so on. … A redirection of the hearer’s attitudes is
sought not by the mediating step of altering his beliefs, but by exhortation, whether obvious or subtle,
crude or refined

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 R.M. Hare-Quick Facts

Richard Mervyn Hare was an English moral philos-

opher.
His meta-ethical theories were influential during
the second half of the twentieth century.
Hare is best known for his development of pre-
scriptivism as a meta-ethical theory, the analysis
of formal features of moral discourse justifying
preference utilitarianism.
Hare was greatly influenced by the emotivism of A.
J. Ayer and Charles L. Stevenson
R.M. Hare

R.M. Hare’s Ethical Views

R. M. Hare argued that one makes moral state- There is a difference of emphasis between ‘good
ment they are not just expressing their belief but action’ and ‘right action’: ‘good action’ com-
they are prescribing or recommending a course mends the action without necessarily com-
of action-A way one should behave! So accord- manding it – we are saying it should be praised,
ing to R.M. Hare when someone says “Murder is but not necessarily that you have to do it to be a
wrong”. He is not only saying that I dislike or di- good person. If we say an action is the ‘right ac-
approve of murder but also saying that “No one tion’, then we are commanding it – it is a guide-
should ever murder”. line for behaviour that people should follow.
This difference of prescriptivism from emotiv-
ism, he claimed, allows a greater role for reason
in moral discussion. Presciptivism works like
commands, also known as imperatives. Hare ar-
gued that if I say ‘Eating meat is wrong’, I am say-
ing ‘Don’t eat meat’. We use the word ‘good’, says
Hare, when we want to commend something to
someone.

R.M. Hare-Famous Quotes

 “Our ultimate moral principles can become so completely accepted by us, that we treat them,
not as universal imperatives but as matters of fact; they have the same obstinate indubitabili-
ty.”
 “The ordinary man so very rarely questions the principles in which he has been brought
up, that he is usually willing, whenever he has a feeling that he ought to do ‘x’, to say on this
ground that he ought to do ‘x’.”

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 Herbert Spencer -Quick Facts

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biol-

ogist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent
classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian
era
As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of
subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology,
economics, political theory, philosophy, literature,
astronomy, biology, sociology, and psychology.
During his lifetime he achieved tremendous au-
thority, mainly in English-speaking academia. “The
only other English philosopher to have achieved
anything like such widespread popularity was
Bertrand Russell, and that was in the 20th century.”
Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer’s Ethical Views

Herbert Spencer is best known for the expres- Beginning with the ‘laws of life’, the conditions
sion “survival of the fittest”, which he coined of social existence, and the recognition of life as
in Principles of Biology (1864), after reading a fundamental value, moral science can deduce
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. This what kinds of laws promote life and produce
term strongly suggests natural selection, yet as happiness. Spencer’s ethics and political philoso-
Spencer extended evolution into realms of so- phy, then, depends on a theory of ‘natural law,’ and
ciology and ethics. it is because of this that, he maintained, evolution-
ary theory could provide a basis for a comprehen-
Spencer saw human life on a continuum with, but sive political and even philosophical theory.
also as the culmination of, a lengthy process of evo-
lution, and he held that human society reflects the
same evolutionary principles as biological organ-
isms do in their development. Society–and social
institutions such as the economy–can, he be-
lieved, function without external control, just as
the digestive system or a lower organism does
(though, in arguing this, Spencer failed to see
the fundamental differences between ‘higher’
and ‘lower’ levels of social organization). For
Spencer, all natural and social development reflect-
ed ‘the universality of law’.

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 Spencer’s egoism
In general, however, ‘happiness’ is the surplus of Society, however, is (by definition, for Spencer)
pleasure over pain, and ‘the good’ is what contrib- an aggregate of individuals, and change in society
utes to the life and development of the organism, or– could take place only once the individual members
what is much the same–what provides this surplus of that society had changed and developed. Indi-
of pleasure over pain. Happiness, therefore, reflects viduals are, therefore, ‘primary,’ individual devel-
the complete adaptation of an individual organism opment was ‘egoistic,’ and associations with others
to its environment–or, in other words, ‘happiness’ largely instrumental and contractual.
is that which an individual human being naturally
The general theory of normative egoism does
seeks. not attempt to describe human nature direct-
ly, but asserts how people ought to behave. It
For human beings to flourish and develop, Spen- comes in two general forms: rational egoism and
cer held that there must be as few artificial re- ethical egoism.
strictions as possible, and it is primarily free-
dom that he saw as promoting human happiness.
While progress was an inevitable characteristic
of evolution, it was something to be achieved
only through the free exercise of human facul-
ties.

Herbert Spencer-Famous Quotes

 “Ethics has to recognize the truth, recognized in unethical thought that egoism comes before
altruism.”
 “Unless each duly cares for himself, his care for all others is ended in death, and if each thus
dies there remain no others to be cared for.”

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 Ayn Rand-Quick Facts

Ayn Rand was a Russian-American writer and phi-

losopher.
Rand published her best-known work, the novel
Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, she turned to non-fic-
tion to promote her philosophy
Rand advocated reason as the only means of ac-
quiring knowledge and rejected faith and religion.
She supported rational and ethical egoism and
rejected altruism. In politics, she condemned the
initiation of force as immoral and opposed collec-
tivism and statism as well as anarchism, instead
supporting laissez-faire capitalism, which she de-
fined as the system based on recognizing individu-
Ayn Rand
al rights, including property rights.

Ayn Rand’s Ethical Views Ayn Rand-Famous Quotes

Ayn Rand was sharply critical of most philoso-  The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who
phers and philosophical traditions known to is going to stop me.
her, except for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and  I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will
classical liberals. never live for the sake of another man, nor ask
another man to live for mine.
The greatest and most provocative proponent of
rational egoism is Ayn Rand, whose The Virtue of  The smallest minority on earth is the individual.
Selfishness outlines the logic and appeal of the the- Those who deny individual rights cannot claim
ory. Rand argues that: first, properly defined, self- to be defenders of minorities.
ishness rejects the sacrificial ethics of the West’s
Judaic-Christian heritage on the grounds that it is  We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the
consequences of evading reality
right for man to live his own life; and, Rand argues
that, second, selfishness is a proper virtue to pur-  A creative man is motivated by the desire to
sue. That being said, she rejects the “selfless self- achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
ishness” of irrationally acting individuals: “the ac-
tor must always be the beneficiary of his action and  To say ‘I love you’ one must first be able to say
that man must act for his own rational self-interest.” the ‘I.’
To be ethically selfish thus entails a commitment  Throughout the centuries there were men who
to reason rather than to emotionally driven whims took first steps, down new roads, armed with
and instincts. nothing but their own vision.

In the strong version of rational egoism defended  Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.
by Rand, not only is it rational to pursue one’s own  Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever
interests, it is irrational not to pursue them. you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

 Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think

you are facing a contradiction, check your prem-
ises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

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 Friedrich Nietzsche-Quick Facts

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th Century

German philosopher and philologist.

He is considered an important forerun-

ner of Existentialism movement (although he does not
fall neatly into any particular school), and his work has
generated an extensive secondary literature within
both the Continental Philosophy and Analytic
Philosophy traditions of the 20th Century.

He challenged the foundations of Christianity and tra-

ditional morality, famously asserting that “God is
dead”, leading to (generally justified) charges of Athe-
ism, Moral Skepticism, Relativism and Nihilism.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ethical Views

In Ethics, Nietzsche called himself an “immoral- In the absence of God, then, all values, truths and
ist” and harshly criticized the prominent moral standards must be created by us rather than merely
schemes of his day, including Christianity, Kan- handed to us by some outside agency, which Ni-
tianism and Utilitarianism. However, rather than de- etzsche (and the Existentialists who later embraced
stroying morality, Nietzsche wanted a re-evalua- this idea) as a tremendously empowering, even if
tion of the values of Judeo-Christianity, preferring not a comforting, thing. His solution to the vacuum
the more naturalistic source of value which he left by the absence of religion was essentially to “be
found in the vital impulses of life itself. In his “Be- yourself”, to be true to oneself, to be uninhibited,
yond Good and Evil” in particular he argued that to live life to the full, and to have the strength of
we must go beyond the simplistic Christian idea mind to carry through one’s own project, regard-
of Good and Evil in our consideration of morality. less of any obstacles or concerns for other people,
Nietzsche saw the prevailing Christian system of the weak, etc. This was his major premise, and also
faith as not only incorrect but as harmful to so- the goal towards which he thought all Ethics should
ciety, because it effectively allowed the weak to be directed.
rule the strong, stifled artistic creativity, and, crit-
ically, suppressed the “will to power” which he
saw as the driving force of human character. He
had an ingrained distrust of overarching and
indiscriminate rules, and strongly believed that
individual people were entitled to individual
kinds of behavior and access to individual areas
of knowledge.

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 Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Will to Power”
An important element of Nietzsche’s philosophical less important than the desire to expand one’s
outlook is the concept of the “will to power”, which power. He even went so far as to posit matter itself
provides a basis for understanding motivation in as a center of the will to power. In Nietzsche›s view,
human behavior. His notion of the will to power again in direct opposition to Schopenhauer, the will
can be viewed as a direct response and challenge to power was very much a source of strength and
to Schopenhauer’s “will to live”. Schopenhau- a positive thing.
er regarded the entire universe and everything
in it as driven by a primordial will to live, resulting He contrasted his theory with several of the other
in the desire of all creatures to avoid death and popular psychological views of his day, such
to procreate. He also saw this as the source of as Utilitarianism (which claims that all people
all evil and unhappiness in the world. Nietzsche, on want fundamentally to be happy, an idea Nietzsche
the other hand, appeals to many instances in which merely laughed at) and Platonism (which claims
people and animals willingly risk their lives in that people ultimately want to achieve unity with
order to promote their power (most notably in the good or, in Christian Neo-Platonism, with God).
instances like competitive fighting and warfare). He In each case, Nietzsche argued that the “will to power”
suggested that the struggle to survive is a second- provides a more useful and general explanation of
ary drive in the evolution of animals and humans, human behavior.

Friedrich Nietzsche -Famous Quotes

 To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

 He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

 When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.

 That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

 He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze
for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

 When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

 Without music, life would be a mistake.

 Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.

 There are no facts, only interpretations.

 One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

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 Schopenhauer-Quick Facts
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher
and an important figure in the German Idealism
and Romanticism movements in the early 19th
Century.

Often considered a gloomy and thoroughgoing pessi-

mist, Schopenhauer was actually concerned with ad-
vocating ways (via artistic, moral and ascetic forms
of awareness) to overcome a frustration-filled and
fundamentally painful human condition.

He believed that the “will-to-life” (the force driving

Schopenhauer
man to survive and to reproduce) was the driving
force of the world and that the pursuit of happi-
ness, love and intellectual satisfaction was essen-
tially futile and anyway secondary to the innate
imperative of procreation.

Schopenhauer’s Ethical Views Schopenhauer -Famous Quotes

Schopenhauer was very much an atypical philosopher.  All truth passes through three stages. First, it
He was genuinely interested and knowledgeable about is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.
Hinduism and Buddhism, and the only major Western Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
philosopher to draw serious parallels between Western
 A man can do what he wants, but not want
and Eastern Philosophy. He was the first major philoso-
what he wants.
pher to be openly atheist, and was unusual in placing the
arts and Aesthetics so highly.  Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius
hits a target no one else can see.
Schopenhauer called himself a Kantian, and his
starting point was certainly Kant’s division of the  Compassion is the basis of morality.
universe into the phenomenal (things as they ap-  To live alone is the fate of all great souls.
pear, and which can be perceived using our senses)  Life swings like a pendulum backward and for-
and the noumenal (the “thing-in-itself”, which is in-
ward between pain and boredom.
dependent of us and which can only be thought or
imagined by humans).  Every man takes the limits of his own field of
vision for the limits of the world.
Schopenhauer then expanded on what this Will ac-
tually was, deriving his arguments from the main  After your death you will be what you were be-
traditions of Western Philosophy, but arriving at a fore your birth.
kind of Voluntarism almost entirely consistent with
 Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
the Hindu Vedanta traditions in the Upanishads, which
he knew well. He believed that the “will-to-life” (the  Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every
force driving man to remain alive and to reproduce) was reunion a hint of the resurrection.
the inner content and the driving force of the world, and
that Will and desire were ontologically prior to thought
and the intellect (and even to being). He also sub-
scribed to the Contractarianism of Thomas Hobbes,
and deemed the state (and state violence) necessary to
check the destructive tendencies innate to our species.

Thinkers Digest -”70 Thinkers 70 Thoughts” Page-38

 Peter Singer-Quick Facts

Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian moral

philosopher.

He specialises in applied ethics and approaches

ethical issues from a secular, utilitarian perspec-
tive.

He is known in particular for his book Animal Lib-

eration (1975), in which he argues in favour of veg-
anism, and his essay “Famine, Affluence, and Mo-
rality”, in which he argues in favour of donating to
help the global poor.

For most of his career, he was a preference util-

itarian, but he stated in The Point of View of the
Peter Singer
Universe (2014), coauthored with Katarzyna de
Lazari-Radek, that he had become a hedonistic util-
itarian.

Peter Singer’s Ethical Views

Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics (1979) analyzes uted to the rise of effective altruism. He argues
why and how living beings’ interests should be that people should not only try to reduce suffer-
weighed. His principle of equal consideration ing, but reduce it in the most effective manner
of interests does not dictate equal treatment of possible.
all those with interests, since different interests He popularised the term “speciesism”, which had
warrant different treatment. All have an interest been coined by English writer Richard D. Ryder
in avoiding pain, for instance, but relatively few have to describe the practice of privileging humans over
an interest in cultivating their abilities. Not only other animals, and therefore argues in favour of
does his principle justify different treatment for dif- the equal consideration of interests of all sentient
ferent interests, but it allows different treatment for beings. In Animal Liberation, Singer argues in
the same interest when diminishing marginal utility favour of veganism and against animal experi-
is a factor. For example, this approach would priv- mentation.
ilege a starving person’s interest in food over the
same interest of someone who is only slightly hun-
gry. Ethical conduct is justified by reasons that go
beyond prudence to “something bigger than the
individual”, addressing a larger audience. Singer
thinks this going-beyond identifies moral reasons
as “somehow universal”, specifically in the injunc-
tion to ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’, interpreted by
him as demanding that one give the same weight to
the interests of others as one gives to one’s own in-
terests. Singer regards Kantian universalisation
as unjust to animals. Singer’s ideas have contrib-

Thinkers Digest -”70 Thinkers 70 Thoughts” Page-39

 Peter Singer-Famous Quotes

 All the arguments to prove man’s superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the an-
imals are our equals.

 If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his
or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?

 What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks
back on what the first did.

 If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing any-
thing of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.

 Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied
by a degrading state of powerlessness.

 We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet- for the sake of hamburgers

 Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not
to support it – is.

 If we are prepared to take the life of another being merely in order to satisfy our taste for a par-
ticular type of food, then that being is no more than a means to our end.

 It is a mistake to assume that the law should always enforce morality.

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 Lawrence Kohlberg -Quick Facts

Lawrence Kohlberg was an American psychologist

best known for his theory of stages of moral devel-
opment.

He served as a professor in the Psychology Depart-

ment at the University of Chicago and at the Graduate
School of Education at Harvard University.

Even though it was considered unusual in his era,

he decided to study the topic of moral judgment,
extending Jean Piaget’s account of children’s mor-
al development. Kohlberg followed the development
of moral judgment beyond the ages originally studied
earlier by Piaget who claimed that logic and morality
Lawrence Kohlberg
develop through constructive stages.

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Ethical Views

Lawrence Kohlberg expanded on the earlier work formal operational thought is attained), which only
of cognitive theorist Jean Piaget to explain the a few fully achieve. Each level of morality contains
moral development of children. Kohlberg believed two stages, which provide the basis for moral de-
that moral development, like cognitive develop- velopment in various contexts. Kohlberg defined
ment, follows a series of stages. He used the idea three levels of moral development: precon-
of moral dilemmas—stories that present conflict- ventional, conventional, and postconventional.
ing ideas about two moral values—to teach 10 to Each level has two distinct stages. Each level is
16 year-old boys about morality and values. The associated with increasingly complex stages of
best known moral dilemma created by Kohlberg is moral development.
the “Heinz” dilemma, which discusses the idea
of obeying the law versus saving a life. Kohlberg
emphasized that it is the way an individual rea-
sons about a dilemma that determines positive
moral development.

After presenting people with various moral dilem-

mas, Kohlberg reviewed people’s responses and
placed them in different stages of moral reasoning.
According to Kohlberg, an individual progresses
from the capacity for pre-conventional morali-
ty (before age 9) to the capacity for conventional
morality (early adolescence), and toward attaining
post-conventional morality (once Piaget’s idea of

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 Lawrence Kohlberg’s “Levels of Moral Development”

Level 1: Preconventional- Throughout the pre- Level 3: Postconventional-Throughout the post-

conventional level, a child’s sense of morality is conventional level, a person’s sense of morality
externally controlled. is defined in terms of more abstract principles
and values. People now believe that some laws
• Stage 1: Obedience-and-Punish- are unjust and should be changed or eliminated.
ment Orientation

• Stage 2: Instrumental Orientation • Stage 5: Social-Contract Orientation

• Stage 6: Universal-Ethical-Principal Ori-

Level 2: Conventional-Throughout the conven- entation
tional level, a child’s sense of morality is tied to
personal and societal relationships.

• Stage 3: Good Boy, Nice Girl Orientation

• Stage 4: Law-and-Order Orientation

Lawrence Kohlberg -Famous Quotes

 For the first time in human history, there seems to be a radical increase in the proportion reach-
ing principled morality.

 All individuals in all cultures use the same thirty basic moral categories, concepts, or principles,
and all individuals in all cultures go through the same order or sequence of gross stage devel-
opment, though they vary in rate and terminal point of development.

 The normative theoretical claim that a higher stage is philosophically a better stage is one nec-
essary part of a psychological explanation of sequential stage movement.

 The first meaning of ‘cognitive’ for us is that observations of others are made phenomenolog-
ically: i.e., by attempting to take the role of the other, to see things from his or her conscious
viewpoint.

 It seems obvious that moral stages must primarily be the products of the child’s interaction
with others rather than the direct unfolding of biological or neurological structures.

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 Carol Gilligan -Quick Facts

Carol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist and

psychologist best known for her work on ethical
community and ethical relationships and certain
subject-object problems in ethics.

In 1982, Carol Gilligan, published a now famous book

called ‘In a Different Voice’. In this book, she laid out
the outcomes of research about the different ways in
which way in which different people approach think-
ing about ethical issues.

Gilligan argued that women approached ethical prob-

lems differently than men and thus ethics needs to be
reinterpreted from a woman’s point of view. She pro- Carol Gilligan
pounded the concept of “Ethics of Care”

Carol Gilligan’s Ethical Views

Carol Gilligan-Famous Quotes
According to Carol Gilligan, there are two kinds of
moral voices:  “Caring requires paying attention, seeing, lis-
Masculine:-The masculine voice is “logical and indi- tening, responding with respect. Its logic is
vidualistic” meaning that the emphasis in moral de- contextual, psychological. Care is a relational
cisions is protecting the rights of people and making ethic, grounded in a premise of interdepen-
sure justice is upheld. dence. But it is not selfless.”
Feminine:- The feminine voice places more empha-  “Speaking and listening are a form of psychic
sis on protecting interpersonal relationships and breathing.”
taking care of other people. This voice focuses on
 “Our ability to communicate our own feelings,
the “care perspective,” which means focusing on the
and to pick up the feelings of others and thus
needs of the individual in order to make an ethical
to heal fractures in connection, threatens the
decision.
structures of hierarchy. Feelings of empathy
According to Gilligan under the ethics of justice, men and tender compassion for another’s suffer-
judge themselves guilty if they do something wrong. ing or humanity make it difficult to maintain
Whereas under the ethic of care, women are reluctant or justify inequality.”
even to judge the action. This reluctance to judge itself
may be the indicative of the care and concern for others.  In the different voice of women lies the truth
Thus women not only define themselves in a context of of an ethic of care, the tie between relation-
human relationship but also judge themselves in terms ship and responsibility, and the origins of ag-
of ‘care and concern’. As a result of this a woman’s gression in the failure of connection.
judgement, her moral deliberations become very differ-  Both love and democracy depend on voice
ent, Gilligan thus brings out the distinction between ‘eth- -- having a voice and also the resonance that
ics of care’ and ‘ethics of justice’. Women also tend to makes it possible to speak and be heard.
see moral issues as a problem of conflicting responsibil-
ities rather than competing rights. According to Gilligan
women’s morals are centered around the understanding
of responsibilities and relationship whilst men’s moral
is instead centered around the understanding of morali-
ty of fairness, which is tied to rights and rules.

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 Jean Paul Sartre-Quick Facts

Jean Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, play-

wright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, bi-
ographer, and literary critic

He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of

existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the
leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy
and Marxism.

His work has also influenced sociology, critical theory,

post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and contin-
ues to influence these disciplines.

Jean Paul Sartre

Jean Paul Sartre’s Ethical Views

Jean Paul Sartre is regarded as the father of Ex- The ’ethics of authenticity’ is at the very heart of
istentialist philosophy. Existentialism is widely existentialism. It emphasises the absolute charac-
considered to be the philosophical and cultural ter of the free commitment by which every man re-
movement which holds that the starting point alizes himself in realizing a type of humanity. Sartre
of philosophical thinking must be the individu- very emphatically states that “Freedom,” “Choice”,
al and the experiences of the individual. Existen- and “Self-Commitment.”, are the three pillars
tialists generally believe that traditional systematicon which the ethic of authenticity is erected. It is
or academic philosophies are too abstract and away often taken to mean that one has to create oneself”
from concrete human experience. and then live in accordance with this self. What is
meant by authenticity is that in acting, one should
A central proposition of existentialism is that act as oneself, not as “one”’ acts or as ‘”one’s genes’
“existence precedes essence”, which means that or any other essence requires. The authentic act is
the most important consideration for the indi- one that is in accordance with one’s freedom.
vidual is the fact that he or she is an individu-
al— an independently acting and responsible
conscious being (’existence “) — rather than
what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or
other preconceived categories the individual
fits (“’essence’). The actual life of the individual
is what constitutes what could be called his or her
“true essence” instead of there being an arbitrarily
“attributed essence” used by others to define him
or her. Thus, human beings, through their own ‘con-
sciousness” create their own values and determine
a meaning to their life.

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 Jean Paul Sartre -Famous Quotes

 Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for ev-
erything he does.

 When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.

 Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

 If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.

 Commitment is an act, not a word.

 Life begins on the other side of despair.

 Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by
chance.

 Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

 Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.

 Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

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 Confucius-Quick Facts

Confucius was a Chinese philosopher and politi-

cian of the Spring and Autumn period. (Spring and
Autumn period was a period in Chinese history from
approximately 771 to 476 BC).

The philosophy of Confucius, also known as Confu-

cianism, emphasized personal and governmental mo-
rality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kind-
ness, and sincerity.

Confucius is widely considered as one of the most im-

portant and influential individuals in shaping human
history. His teaching and philosophy greatly impacted
people around the world and remains influential today. Confucius

Confucius’s Ethical Views

A common way to understand Confucian eth- righteousness for the sake of righteousness. Con-
ics is that it is virtue ethics. One of the deepest fucius’s political thought is based upon his ethical
teachings of Confucius may have been the supe- thought. He argued that the best government
riority of personal exemplification over explicit is one that rules through “rites” and people’s
rules of behavior. His moral teachings empha- natural morality, and not by using bribery and
sized self-cultivation, emulation of moral exem- coercion. He explained that this is one of the most
plars, and the attainment of skilled judgment important analects: “If the people be led by laws,
rather than knowledge of rules. Confucian eth- and uniformity sought to be given them by pun-
ics may, therefore, be considered a type of vir- ishments, they will try to avoid the punishment,
tue ethics. His teachings rarely rely on reasoned but have no sense of shame. If they be led by vir-
argument, and ethical ideals and methods are tue, and uniformity sought to be given them by
conveyed indirectly, through allusion, innuendo, the rules of propriety, they will have the sense
and even tautology. His teachings require exam- of the shame, and moreover will become good.”
ination and context to be understood. While he supported the idea of government ruling
by a virtuous king, his ideas contained a number of
One of his teachings was a variant of the Golden elements to limit the power of rulers. He argued for
Rule, sometimes called the “Silver Rule” owing to its representing truth in language, and honesty was of
negative form: - “What you do not wish for your- paramount importance.
self, do not do to others.” A virtuous disposition
without knowledge is susceptible to corruption,
and virtuous action without sincerity is not true
righteousness. Cultivating knowledge and sincerity
is also important for one’s own sake; the superior
person loves learning for the sake of learning and

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 Confucius-Famous Quotes

 Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.

 It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

 Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.

 Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.

 I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

 Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

 Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.

 Death and life have their determined appointments; riches and honors depend upon heaven.

 Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

 Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

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 René Descartes-Quick Facts

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathe-

matician, scientist and writer of the Age of Reason’
He has been called the “Father of Modern Philoso-
phy”, and much of subsequent Western philosophy can
be seen as a response to his writings.

He is responsible for one of the best-known quota-

tions in philosophy: “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think,
therefore I am”).
He was a pioneer and major figure in 17th Century
Continental Rationalism (often known as Cartesian-
ism)
René Descartes
René Descartes’ Ethical Views
At the heart of Descartes’ philosophical method was
his refusal to accept the authority of previous phi- René Descartes-Famous Quotes
losophers, and even of the evidence of his own senses
and to trust only that which was clearly and distinctly
seen to be beyond any doubt (a process often referred
to as methodological skepticism or Cartesian  It is not enough to have a good mind; the
doubt or hyperbolic doubt). Only then did he allow main thing is to use it well.
himself to reconstruct knowledge (piece by piece, such  The greatest minds are capable of the great-
that at no stage was the possibility of doubt allowed est vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
to creep back in) in order to acquire a firm foundation  Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is
for genuine knowledge and to dispel any Skepticism. feasible and necessary to resolve it.
He outlined four main rules for himself in his thinking:
 Perfect numbers like perfect men are very
• Never accept anything except clear and distinct rare.
ideas.  The reading of all good books is like a con-
• Divide each problem into as many parts are need- versation with the finest minds of past cen-
ed to solve it. turies.
• Order your thoughts from the simple to the complex.  Except our own thoughts, there is nothing
absolutely in our power.
• Always check thoroughly for oversights.
 If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is
Descartes dismissed the senses and perception as un-
necessary that at least once in your life you
reliable, and to demonstrate this he used the so-
doubt, as far as possible, all things.
called Wax Argument. This revolves around the idea that
a wax object, which has certain properties of size, color,  In order to improve the mind, we ought less
smell, temperature, etc, appears to change almost all of to learn, than to contemplate.
these properties when it is melted, to the extent that it  Everything is self-evident.
appears to our senses to be a completely different thing.
 It is only prudent never to place complete
However, we know that it is in fact still the same piece
confidence in that by which we have even
of wax. Descartes concluded from this that the senses
once been deceived.
can be misleading and that reason and deduction is the
only reliable method of attaining knowledge, which is
the essence of Rationalism.

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 Democritus -Quick Facts
Democritus as an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic phi-
losopher primarily remembered today for his for-
mulation of an atomic theory of the universe.

Along with his teacher, Leucippus, he was the founder

of the Greek philosophical school of Atomism and de-
veloped a Materialist account of the natural world.
Although he was a contemporary of Socrates, he usu-
ally considered Pre-Socratic in that his philosophy
and his approach were more similar to other Pre-
Socratic thinkers than to Socrates and Plato.

Democritus
Democritus’ Ethical Views
Democritus’ philosophical views can be summarized ful ones, and through conforming to conventional
into one word called Atomism. Atomism is the theory morality. He is quoted as saying, “The brave man is
that all of reality and all the objects in the universe he who overcomes not only his enemies but his plea-
are composed of very small, indivisible and inde- sures”.
structible building blocks known as atoms (from
the Greek «atomos», meaning «uncuttable»).
Democritus-Famous Quotes
There is no room in this theory for the con-
cept of a God, and essentially Atomism is a type
of Materialism or Physicalism, as well as being athe-  Nothing exists except atoms and empty space;
istic and deterministic in its outlook. However, everything else is opinion.
Democritus did allow for the existence of the human  Happiness resides not in possessions and not
soul, which he saw as composed of a special kind in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.
of spherical atom, in constant motion, and he ex-
plained the senses in a similar manner.  Everything existing in the universe is the fruit
of chance and necessity.
In Epistemology, Democritus distinguished two  By desiring little, a poor man makes himself
types of knowledge: “bastard” (subjective and rich.
insufficient knowledge, obtained by perception  The wrongdoer is more unfortunate than the
through the senses), and “legitimate (genuine man wronged.
knowledge obtained by the processing of this
unreliable “bastard” knowledge using inductive rea-  It is greed to do all the talking but not to want
soning). to listen at all.
 Our sins are more easily remembered than
In the field of Ethics, Democritus pursued a type of ear- our good deeds.
ly Hedonism or Epicureanism. He was one of the earli-
est thinkers to explicit posit a supreme good or goal,  Tis hard to fight with anger, but the prudent
which he called cheerfulness or well-being (see the man keeps it under control.
section on Eudaimonism) and identified with the un-  Hope of ill gain is the beginning of loss.
troubled enjoyment of life. He saw this as achiev-
 Throw moderation to the winds, and the great-
able through moderation in the pursuit of pleasure,
est pleasures bring the greatest pains.
through distinguishing useful pleasures from harm-

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 Adam Smith-Quick Facts

Adam Smith was a Scottish philosopher and polit-

ical economist of the Age of Enlightenment. He is
widely cited as the father of modern economics, and
sometimes as the father of modern Capitalism, and
his magnum opus, “The Wealth of Nations”, is consid-
ered the first modern work of classical economics.

His metaphor of the invisible hand of the free mar-

ket has been of untold influence in the development of
laissez faire economics and modern Capitalism and
Individualism, but Smith’s work has been almost as
influential in other areas of Political Philosophy, in-
cluding Utilitarianism, Liberalism and Libertarian-
ism
Adam Smith

Adam Smith’s Ethical Views

“The Theory of Moral Sentiments” was Smith’s “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
first published work, but he himself considered it Wealth of Nations”, published in 1776, is a clear-
his most important, and he continued to revise the ly written account of political economy at the
dawn of the Industrial Revolution. In it, he ex-
work throughout his life. It provided the ethical, phil-
osophical, psychological and methodological un- pands on three main concepts that together
derpinnings to his later works, and it was actually form the foundation of free market econom-
in this work that Smith first referred to the “invisi- ics and Capitalism: the division of labor, the pur-
ble hand” to describe the apparent benefits to so- suit of self interest and freedom of trade. He ar-
ciety of people behaving in their own interests. In gued in the “Wealth of Nations” that, while human
the book, he critically examined the moral thinking motives are often selfishness and greed, the
of the time, with the aim of explaining how mankind competition in the free market would tend to
can form moral judgments in spite of its natural in- benefit society as a whole by keeping prices low,
clination toward self-interest. while still building in an incentive for a wide va-
riety of goods and services. He further argued
He concluded that conscience arises from so- that a division of labor would affect a great in-
cial relationships, and proposed a theory crease in production which will bring common
of “sympathy” in which the act of observing happiness.
others makes people aware of themselves and
of the morality of their own behavior. While
at first glance this Altruism seems to contra-
dict the Egoism and Individualism found in his later
works (the so-called “Adam Smith Problem”), it
should be noted that he was also suggesting that in-
dividuals would actually find it in their own self-in-
terest to develop this sympathy.

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 Adam Smith -Famous Quotes

 It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner,
but from their regard to their own interest.
 The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.
 All money is a matter of belief.
 Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with
another.
 Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
 Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of
conscience.
 No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.
 Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
 Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the
safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.

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 Karl Marx-Quick Facts

Karl Heinrich Marx (1818 - 1883) was a Ger-

man philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary
of the 19th Century. Both a scholar and a political ac-
tivist, Marx is often called the father of Communism,
and certainly his Marxist theory provided the intellec-
tual base for various subsequent forms of Communism.

His work was in direct opposition to the Smithian

views. Although a relatively obscure figure in his own
lifetime, his ideas began to exert a major influence on
workers› movements shortly after his death, especially
with the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx’s Ethical Views
According to Marx, it is class struggle (the evolving that one should view reality (and history) dialectical-
conflict between classes with opposing interests) ly. Marx has been described as one of the most influ-
that is the means of bringing about changes in a ential figures in human history, and his work has been
society›s mode of production, and that structures both lauded and criticised
each historical period and drives historical change.
He believed that the Capitalist mode of production Karl Marx -Famous Quotes
enables the bourgeoisie (or owners of capital) to ex-
ploit the proletariat (or workers) , and that a so-
cialist revolution must occur in order to establish  The history of all previous societies has been the
a “dictatorship of the proletariat” with the ultimate history of class struggles.
goal of public ownership of the means of production,
distribution, and exchange, and the self-emancipa-  The philosophers have only interpreted the
tion of the working class. world, in various ways. The point, however, is to
change it.
In 1867, the first volume of his masterwork “Das  The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who
Kapital” (“Capital”) was published, which ana- sold us the rope.
lyzed the capitalist process of production (arguing
 History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as
that the alienation of human work and the
farce.
resulting “commodity fetishism” was the defining
feature of Capitalism), and in which he elaborat-  There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter
ed his labor theory of value and his conception of Communism.
of surplus value and exploitation (which he argued  Men make their own history, but they do not
would ultimately lead to a falling rate of profit and make it as they please.
the collapse of industrial Capitalism). Volumes II and
 Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.
III remained mere manuscripts upon which Marx
continued to work for the rest of his life, and which  Revolutions are the locomotives of history.
were edited and published posthumously by Engels.  The production of too many useful things results
in too many useless people.
Marx’s view of history, which came to be called his-
torical materialism (controversially adapted as the  Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to
philosophy of dialectical materialism by Engels and lose but your chains.
Lenin), certainly shows the influence of Hegel’s claim

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 Montesquieu-Quick Facts

Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de

Montesquieu was a French Political philosopher
He is the principal source of the theory of separation
of powers, which is implemented in many constitu-
tions throughout the world.
Montesquieu’s two most important works are the Per-
sian Letters and the Spirit of the Laws. His spirit of
Laws influenced the founding fathers of the consti-
tution of the United States of America.
His Persian letters criticized the lifestyle and liber-
ties of the wealthy French men as well as the church Montesquieu
Montesquieu’s Ethical Views
Montesquieu is among the greatest philosophers of three independent powers in every nation: for leg-
liberalism. According to Montesquieu, political lib- islation, administration, and jurisdiction; In simple
erty is “a tranquillity of mind arising from the opin- words the judiciary, the legislature and the executive
ion each person has of his safety”. should be separated from each other and all these
powers should not be vested in one authority.
According to Montesquieu liberty is not the freedom to
do whatever we want: if we have the freedom to harm Montesquieu-Famous Quotes
others, for instance, others will also have the freedom
to harm us, and we will have no confidence in our own
safety. Liberty involves living under laws that protect us  The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so
from harm while leaving us free to do as much as possi- dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of
ble, and that enable us to feel the greatest possible confi- a citizen in a democracy.
dence that if we obey those laws, the power of the state  To become truly great, one has to stand with peo-
will not be directed against us. ple, not above them.
 Power ought to serve as a check to power.
Montesquieu holds that there are three types of gov-
ernments: republican governments, which can take  Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
either democratic or aristocratic forms; monarchies;  There is no greater tyranny than that which is
and despotisms. Unlike, for instance, Aristotle, Mon- perpetrated under the shield of the law and in
tesquieu does not distinguish forms of government the name of justice.
on the basis of the virtue of the sovereign. The dis-
 Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws
tinction between monarchy and despotism, for in-
permit.
stance, depends not on the virtue of the monarch,
but on whether or not he governs “by fixed and es-  We should weep for men at their birth, not at
tablished laws”. Each form of government has a princi- their death.
ple, a set of “human passions which set it in motion”  The love of democracy is that of equality.
and each can be corrupted if its principle is undermined
 If the triangles made a god, they would give him
or destroyed.
three sides.
Montesquieu, however, is most renowned for his  In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state
concept called trias politica. “Ttrias politica” is the shape its institutions; later the institutions
philosophy that calls for a strict separation between shape the chiefs of state.

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 Niccole Machiavelli -Quick Facts

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469 - 1527)

was an Italian philosopher, political theorist, diplomat,
musician and writer of the Renaissance period.
He was a central figure in the political scene of the
Italian Renaissance, a tumultuous period of plots,
wars between city states and constantly shift-
ing alliances. He is best known today for two main
works, the well-known “The Prince” (a treatise on
political realism and a guide on how a ruler can retain
control over his subjects), and the “Discourses on
Livy” (the most important work on republicanism in
the early modern period).
Niccole Machiavelli
Niccole Machiavelli’s Ethical Views

Although he never considered himself a philosopher over all other considerations, whether morality or the
(and often overtly rejected philosophical inquiry good of citizens–as evidence that he was received by
as irrelevant), many subsequent political his near-contemporaries as a theorist of the state. Ev-
philosophers have been influenced by his ideas. ery action must be considered in light of its effect on
His name has since passed into common usage to the state, not in terms of its intrinsic moral value.
refer to any political move that is devious or cun-
ning in nature, although this probably represents a Niccole Machiavelli’s –Views on
more extreme view than Machiavelli actually took.
In The Prince, Machiavelli concentrates on those Human Nature
techniques a successful politician must use if he is to
achieve his political ends, without regard to the moral Machiavelli asserts that a number of traits are inher-
justification of the means thereby employed. ent in human nature. People are generally self-inter-
ested, although their affection for others can be won
Machiavelli considers how best a leader can achieve
and lost. They are content and happy so long they
his ends once he has determined that the ends he has
are not victims of something terrible. They may be
identified are worthwhile. Machiavelli thinks there
trustworthy in prosperous times, but they will quick-
are three primary political ‘goods’ viz. national se-
curity, national independence, and a strong consti- ly turn selfish, deceitful, and profit-driven in times of
tution. adversity. People admire honor, generosity, courage,
and piety in others, but most of them do not exhib-
Machiavelli defines virtues as the range of capacities it these virtues themselves. Ambition is commonly
that each citizen needs to possess: the capacities that found among those who have achieved some power,
enable them to serve the common good, thereby to but most common people are satisfied with the status
uphold the freedom of their community, and its conse- quo and therefore do not yearn for increased status.
quence to ensure its rise to greatness as well as their
own liberty. He describes virtues as the qualities that The people’s goodwill is always the best defense
are praised by others, such as generosity, compassion, against both domestic insurrection and foreign ag-
and piety. However, he is of the view that vices should gression. Machiavelli warns against doing things that
not be pursued for their own sake, just as virtue might result in hatred. People will naturally feel a
should not be pursued for its own sake: virtues and sense of obligation after receiving a favor or service,
vices should be conceived as means to an end. and this bond is usually not easily broken. Neverthe-
less, loyalties are won and lost, and goodwill is never
Machiavelli believed in “reason of state” – the doc- absolute.
trine that the good of the state itself takes precedence

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 Niccole Machiavelli –“The idea of a Leader”

A successful Machiavellian leader consists of five crucial characteristics and traits. These traits are the
deciding factor in whether or not the leader will be successful.

These necessary characteristics include:

• Being feared or loved but not hated,

• Having the people’s support,
• Convincingly displaying virtues,
• Using one’s own arms, and
• Intelligence

Niccole Machiavelli -Famous Quotes

 Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel.
Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.
 It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
 Politics have no relation to morals.
 If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
 He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.
 Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.
 Never was anything great achieved without danger.
 One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.
 The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.
 There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.

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 Ralph Cudworth-Quick Facts

Ralph Cudworth was an English Anglican clergy-

man, theologian and philosopher, and a leading fig-
ure among the Cambridge Platonists.
Reared as a Puritan, Cudworth eventually adopt-
ed such Nonconformist views as the notion that
church government and religious practice should
be individual rather than authoritarian.
In 1678, Cudworth published The True Intellectual
System of the Universe: the first part, wherein all
the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted
and its impossibility demonstrated,
Ralph Cudworth

Ralph Cudworth’s Ethical Views

In ethics, Cudworth’s outstanding work is A Trea- tion. In addition, Calvinists were Fatalists, rejecting
tise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morali- the concept of human free will. If free will existed,
ty, directed against Puritan Calvinism, against the they would argue, an individual would have more
divine omnipotence discussed by René Descartes, power over their own actions than had God. This
and against the Hobbesian reduction of morali- would compromise God’s absolute power. Human
ty to civil obedience. Cudworth stressed the natural actions would also be contingent, and thus, unpre-
good or evil inherent in an event or an act in dictable. This would compromise His omniscience.
contrast to the Calvinist-Cartesian notion of divine Neither compromise was acceptable to the Calvin-
law or to Hobbes’s concept of a secular sovereign. ists, so they restricted all agency to the omnipotence
“Things are what they are,” he wrote, “not by Will of the Supreme Being. Finally, Calvinism taught that,
but by Nature.” This premise led Cudworth to as a result of Original Sin, man’s nature was totally
develop an ethical system emphasizing the rational, depraved, and irremediable through human efforts.
spontaneous, disinterested, and public-spirited Unable to control his fate, man was wholly depen-
character of the good life. dent on God for his moral status. Neither his reason,
nor his will could improve his character.
Orthodox Calvinists are voluntarists. To them,
God is primarily omnipotent, and nothing, not
even logic, can restrain Him. As a consequence,
Calvinists are also Enthusiasts, to whom all theo-
logical knowledge came to man through divine rev-
elation. Man’s rational powers, bound to logic, are
simply useless with reference to God. Believing that
theology is the only acceptable grounding for eth-
ics, this implies, to Calvinists that ethical standards
are similarly dependent on divine fiat and revela-

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 Ralph Cudworth–“Platonist Responses”

The Cambridge Platonists unanimously rejected all ical positions. Education and rational persuasion
of the positions held by Calvinists. Cudworth called are the only methods required to correct differenc-
them “the theory of the arbitrary deity.” Their goal es that exist between good people on fundamental
was to vindicate the power of the human intel- matters. Because man’s theological and ethical
lect, and human moral responsibility. To do oth- deliberations were capable of yielding some re-
erwise, in their eyes, rendered any conception of sults, he must be, at least to the limited extent
God’s wisdom and goodness meaningless. that his finite reasoning faculty allows, capable
of taking some remedial steps towards his own
Instead, they supported a natural theology which salvation.
could prove the existence of God. Beyond these
basic points, disputes between individuals with This position is formally known as “Latitudinar-
different beliefs could and should be settled with ianism.” It would dominate Cudworth’s writings
debate, when this was possible. When this meth- and sermons, beginning with A Sermon before
od failed to produce a definitive resolution, they the House of Commons.
argued, differences between belief systems should
be tolerated in the spirit of humility. If humanity
really needed to understand something, God,
as a rational and benevolent entity, would al-
low it the information required to develop an
understanding. Thus, all people who make an
honest effort to understand God, should and, in
fact, did, come up with the same basic theolog-

Ralph Cudworth-Famous Quotes

 Knowledge is not a passion from without the mind, but an active exertion of the inward strength,
vigor and power of the mind, displaying itself from within.

 Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else
but a participation of that one eternal, immutable and increased wisdom of God.

 The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity
at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.

 Sense is a line, the mind is a circle. Sense is like a line which is the flux of a point running out
from itself, but intellect like a circle that keeps within itself.

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 Auguste Comte-Quick Facts

Auguste Comte was a French philosopher and pro-

to-sociologist of the early Modern period.
Although perhaps best known for coining the terms “so-
ciologie” («sociology») and “altruisme («altruism»),
his most lasting contribution to philosophy is as
the founder of the 19th Century Positivism movement,
which was based around the belief that the only authen-
tic knowledge is knowledge based on actual sense ex-
perience and strict application of the scientific meth-
od

Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte’s Ethical Views

Comte’s main legacy is his influential theory of Positiv- For Comte, the goal of Positivism had always been
ism, the idea that the only authentic knowledge is sci- moral order and the reformation of the social order
entific knowledge. He saw the scientific method as it would bring, rather than material advances or af-
replacing Metaphysics and theology in the history fluence.
of thought, and believed that Metaphysics should be
replaced by a hierarchy of sciences, from mathe- Auguste Comte-Famous Quotes
matics at the base to sociology at the top.

Comte developed his theory of a universal law, which  The dead govern the living.
was at work in all societies and sciences, and through
which progress is inevitable and irreversible. He  Each department of knowledge passes through
called this the Law of Three Phases, the three phases three stages. The theoretic stage; the theolog-
being: ical stage and the metaphysical or abstract
stage.
• the theological (the pre-Enlightenment phase
in which man›s place in society was referenced  Men are not allowed to think freely about
to God or nature, in which the divine will subsume chemistry and biology: why should they be
human rights, and man blindly believed in allowed to think freely about political philos-
whatever he was taught by his ancestors); ophy?

• the metaphysical (the post-Enlighten-  The only real life is the collective life of the
ment humanist phase, referenced to explanations race; individual life has no existence except as
by impersonal abstract thought, and where an abstraction.
the universal rights of humanity are most
 Every science consists in the coordination of
important); facts; if the different observations were entire-
• the positive (the final scientific stage in which the ly isolated, there would be no science.
search for absolute knowledge is abandoned, sci-  Know yourself to improve yourself.
entific explanation is based on observation,
experiment and comparison, and individual  To understand a science, it is necessary to
rights are considered more important than the know its history.
rule of any one person).

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 Francis Bacon-Quick Facts

Sir Francis Bacon was an English philosopher,

statesman, essayist and scientist of the late Renais-
sance period
He was an astute and ambitious politician in the
turbulent and poisonous political climate of Elizabe-
than and Jacobean England.

His major contribution to philosophy was his applica-

tion of inductive reasoning (generalizations based
on individual instances), the approach used by mod-
ern science, rather than the a priori method of
medieval Scholasticism and Aristotelianism. He was
an early proponent of Empiricism and the scientific Francis Bacon
method.

Francis Bacon’s Ethical Views

For Bacon, the only knowledge of importance to man In Ethics, he distinguished between duty to the
was empirically rooted in the natural world, and community (an ethical matter) and duty to God (a
a clear system of scientific inquiry would assure religious matter). He believed that any moral action
man›s mastery over the world. He had a great rev- is the action of the human will (which is governed
erence for Aristotle, although he found Aristote- by belief and spurred on by the passions), that good
lian philosophy barren, disputatious and wrong in habit is what aids men in directing their will toward
its objectives. the good, but that no universal rules can be made,
as both situations and men›s characters differ. One
Bacon argued that, while philosophy at the time gen- of his many aphorisms was that «a little philosophy
erally used the deductive syllogism (see the section inclineth man’s mind to Atheism; but depth in
on Logic) to interpret nature, it should instead pro- philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion”.
ceed through inductive reasoning, from fact to ax-
iom to law. However, he cautioned that before be-
ginning this induction, the philosopher must free
his mind from certain false notions or tendencies
which distort the truth, which he characterized as
the four Idols: “Idols of the Tribe” (common to the
race); “Idols of the Den” (peculiar to the individual);
“Idols of the Marketplace” (from the misuse of lan-
guage); and “Idols of the Theatre” (from the abuse
of authority).

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 Francis Bacon-Famous Quotes

 Knowledge is power
 Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
 Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
 Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and dis-
course; but to weigh and consider.
 Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep;
moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
 Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.
 In charity there is no excess.
 Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.
 A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
 There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by
not trying.

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 Voltaire-Quick Facts

Voltaire (real name François-Marie Arouet) (1694

- 1778) was a French philosopher and writer of the
Age of Enlightenment.

His intelligence, wit and style made him one of

France’s greatest writers and philosophers, despite
the controversy he attracted. He was an outspoken
supporter of social reform (including the defense
of civil liberties, freedom of religion and free trade),
despite the strict censorship laws and harsh penalties
of the period, and made use of his satirical works to
criticize Catholic dogma and the French institu-
tions of his day. Voltaire
Along with John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, his works and ideas influenced
important thinkers of both the American and French
Revolutions.

Voltaire’s Ethical Views

He is remembered and honored in France as a cou- ing that it was in the monarch’s rational interest to
rageous polemicist who indefatigably fought improve the power and wealth of his subjects and
for civil rights (the right to a fair trial, freedom kingdom. While not an atheist as such, he was
of speech and freedom of religion) and who de- however, opposed to organized religion. Certainly,
nounced the hypocrisies and injustices of the An- he was highly critical of the prevailing Catholi-
cien Régime, which involved an unfair balance cism. Voltaire is known for many memorable aph-
of power and taxes between the First Estate (the orisms, although they are often quoted out of con-
clergy), the Second Estate (the nobles), and text. “If God did not exist, it would be necessary
the Third Estate (the commoners and middle class, to invent Him”.
who were burdened with most of the taxes). Voltaire
saw the French bourgeoisie as too small and
ineffective, the aristocracy as parasitic and corrupt,
the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and
the church as a static force useful only to provide
backing for revolutionaries.
Although he argued on intellectual grounds for the
establishment of a constitutional monarchy in
France, suggesting a bias towards Liberalism, he
actually distrusted democracy, which he saw
as propagating the idiocy of the masses. He saw
an enlightened monarch or absolutist (a benevo-
lent despotism, similar to that advocated by Pla-
to), advised by philosophers like himself, as the
only way to bring about necessary change, argu-

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 Voltaire-Famous Quotes

 Common sense is not so common.

 The best is the enemy of the good.
 Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
 I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.
 We must cultivate our garden.
 Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
 If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.
 A witty saying proves nothing.
 Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
 It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

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 George Berkeley -Quick Facts

George Berkeley was an Irish philosopher of the Age

of Enlightenment, best known for his theory of Im-
materialism, a type of Idealism (he is sometimes con-
sidered the father of modern Idealism).

Along with John Locke and David Hume, he is also a ma-

jor figure in the British Empiricism movement. He was
a brilliant critic of his predecessors, particularly Des-
cartes, Malebranche, Locke and Hobbes.
He also had some minor influence on the development
of mathematics (and calculus in particular).

George Berkeley
George Berkeley’s Ethical Views

In 1710, still only 25 years old, his “Treatise perceptions or qualities) sent from God and not
concerning the Principles of Human Knowl- the things themselves, and he effectively chose
edge” was published, his first exposition of the then to make knowledge of self and knowledge of
revolutionary theory that objects exist only as per- God specific exceptions from the Empiricist mantra
ception and not as matter separate from perception, that experience is the source of all knowledge.
summed up in his dictum «Esse est percipi” (“To be
is to be perceived”). The work is beautifully writ-
ten and dense with cogent arguments, no matter
how counter-intuitive the system may appear at George Berkeley-Famous Quotes
first sight.
He called the theory Immaterialism (conceived as it  Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.
was in opposition to the prevailing Materialism of
the time), although it was later referred to by  The same principles which at first view lead
others as Subjective Idealism. The theory pro- to skepticism, pursued to a certain point,
pounds the view that reality consists exclusively bring men back to common sense.
of minds and their ideas, and that individuals can  That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor
only directly know sensations and ideas, not the ideas formed by the imagination, exist with-
objects themselves. The position that the mind is out the mind, is what everybody will allow.
the only thing that can be known to exist (and that
 Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight
knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjus-
about liberty, and make an outward pretence
tified) is known as Solipsism, and forms the root of
the later doctrine of Phenomenalism. It can also be to it; but the free-thinker alone is truly free.
seen as an extreme type of Empiricism, whereby  He who says there is no such thing as an hon-
any knowledge of the empirical world is to be ob- est man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
tained only through direct perception.  All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth
In that respect, then, he was an Empiricist, although - in a word, all those bodies which compose
he differed from Locke or Hume in believing that the frame of the world - have not any subsis-
what we were «experiencing» were only ideas (or tence without a mind.

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 Samuel Clarke-Quick Facts

Samuel Clarke was an English philosopher and An-

glican clergyman. He is considered the major British
figure in philosophy between John Locke and George
Berkeley
Clarke sided with Locke and Newton against Descartes
in denying that we have knowledge of the essence of
substances, even though we can be sure that there are
at least two kinds of substances (mental and material)
because their properties (thinking and divisibility) are
incompatible. Through his association with Newton,
Clarke was the de facto spokesperson for Newtonian-
ism in the first half the eighteenth century, not only ex-
plaining the natural science but also providing a meta-
physical support and theological interpretation for it.
Samuel Clarke

Samuel Clarke’s Ethical Views

Clarke adopted some form of rationalism in In his philosophical writings, he argues that
metaphysics, ethics, and theology, as exhibited freedom of the will involves a libertarian power
in his methodology, his account of ethical truths, of self-determination. However, in the sermon
and in his acceptance of a fundamental rational- “Of the Liberty of Moral Agents,” he claims that
ist principle, the principle of sufficient reason. the “True liberty of a Rational and Moral Agent”
is “being able to follow right Reason only, with-
Clarke is also an ethical rationalist. Ethical truths out Hindrance or Restraint”.
are discoverable through reason and correspond to
necessary and eternal relations among things in the Clarke’s primary defense of libertarian freedom
world. He also calls ethical truths “truths of rea- involves clarifying the relationship between the
son.” His theology is also rationalist, in that through will and the judgment. In order to will, one must
reason one can discover the many truths contained have a judgment about what to do and the pow-
in natural religion. er to choose in accordance with that judgment.
Clarke attached great importance to the issue of
free will and he may have introduced the mod-
ern philosophical meaning of the term “agency”.

Samuel Clarke-Famous Quotes

 The difficulty over the question of eternal torments lies in how it is irreconcilable with the
Goodness of God
 There are eternal and necessary differences (or “reasons”) of things, from which “necessarily
arises an agreement or disagreement of some things with others, or a fitness or unfitness of the
application of different things or different relations one to another”
 God wills to act according to eternal reasons of things

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 Cicero-Quick Facts

Marcus Tullius Cicero (usually known simply as Ci-

cero) (106 - 43 B.C.) was a Roman philosopher, orator
and statesman of the Roman period.
He was a central political figure during the turbulent
reign of Julius Caesar, and politics was always the
most important thing in his life, but he still managed
to produce six influential books on rhetoric and eight
on philosophy (much of it during enforced periods
of exile). While perhaps not an exceptional or orig-
inal thinker, he was instrumental in introducing the
Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy,
and was declared a “righteous pagan” by the early
Catholic Church (meaning that many of his works were
deemed worthy of preservation - St. Augustine and
Cicero
others quoted liberally from his works).

Cicero’s Ethical Views

Cicero sought to reinstate (and, if possible, improve) Among those who at least understood that duty is
what he thought of as the “golden age” of the Roman something more than utility, he identified the Sto-
Republic, ruled by a selfless nobility of successful in- ics, the Academicians (followers of Plato), and the
dividuals. Cicero subordinated philosophy to politics, Peripatetics (followers of Aristotle).
so it should not surprise us to discover that his philos-
ophy had a political purpose: the defense, and if pos-
sible the improvement, of the Roman Republic. The
politicians of his time, he believed, were corrupt and Cicero-Famous Quotes
no longer possessed the virtuous character that had
been the main attribute of Romans in the earlier days  If you have a garden and a library, you have ev-
of Roman history. This loss of virtue was, he believed,
erything you need.
the cause of the Republic’s difficulties. He hoped that
the leaders of Rome, especially in the Senate, would  Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse,
listen to his pleas to renew the Republic. This could front its blows with brave hearts.
only happen if the Roman elite chose to improve their  A room without books is like a body without a
characters and place commitments to individual vir- soul.
tue and social stability ahead of their desires for fame,
wealth, and power.  While there’s life, there’s hope.
 The sinews of war are infinite money.
Cicero, therefore, tried to use philosophy to bring
about his political goals. Like most intellectual  The life of the dead is placed in the memory of
endeavors in Cicero’s time, philosophy was an ac- the living.
tivity in which Greece (and especially Athens) still  Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.
held the lead. The Romans were more interested
in practical matters of law, governance, and mili-  No one can give you better advice than your-
tary strategy than they were in philosophy and art. self.
Cicero considered that those who pretended to re-  The more laws, the less justice.
duce duty to utility had no claim to teach ethics at  Peace is liberty in tranquillity.
all, since they misunderstood the nature of duty.

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 Lao Tzu-Quick Facts
Lao Tzu was an ancient Chinese philosopher and
writer. He is considered to be the father of Taoism.

Lao Tzu was a senior contemporary of Confucius, who

was said to have consulted him (Confucius) on certain rit-
ual matters; however, their respective philosophies, Tao-
ism and Confucianism, were two distinct responses to the
social and political conditions of life in China during that
time.
While Confucianism addresses conduct, social rela-
tionships and society, Taoism deals more with indi-
vidualistic character and a spiritual, nature-centered

Lao Tzu
approach to life.

Lao Tzu’s Ethical Views

Lao Tzu is best known for penning the book Tao Te and affected the way the kings treated the masses. Thus
Ching. Like various ancient Chinese philosophers, Lao in a subtle way, Taoism took shape of a political philos-
Tzu made use of rhyme and rhythm, paradoxes and in- ophy.
teresting analogies to get his point across in Tao Te Ching.
In reality, the entire book can be considered as one great
Lao Tzu-Famous Quotes
analogy.
 Do the difficult things while they are easy and
The ‘Tao Te Ching’, literally meaning ‘The Way and do the great things while they are small. A
Its Power’ presents the idea of ‘Tao’ as being the end journey of a thousand miles must begin with a
all and be all of existence. The book intends to guide single step.
people on how to return to the laws and ways of na-
ture to maintain the balance of the Tao.  Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness
in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in
Lao Tzu’s philosophy was a simple one. He was giving creates love.
against putting effort and striving, as he thought  Love is of all passions the strongest, for it at-
struggle is not only futile but also hinders produc- tacks simultaneously the head, the heart and
tivity. In his theory of ‘wu-wei’, he advises to simply the senses.
do nothing. By this he means not to go against the
forces of nature, wait for the gush of events nature  Being deeply loved by someone gives you
brings to you and dive right in. He advised not to strength, while loving someone deeply gives you
struggle to change the natural order of things, but to courage.
bring spontaneity to one’s actions as one holds on to  If you do not change direction, you may end up
the nature’s way of life. Followers of Taoism believe where you are heading.
that striving for nothing will never lead them to fail-  When I let go of what I am, I become what I
ure. The one who has never failed is always success- might be.
ful, thus becoming powerful.
 When you are content to be simply yourself
By understanding this principle, Taoist debates against and don’t compare or compete, everybody will
Confucianism and its endeavors at domination and stan- respect you.
dardization of all aspects of life, and strives for a lone,  Silence is a source of great strength.
deep meditation among nature. Taoists believed that
through contemplation, nature will grant them the keys  To lead the people, walk behind them.
unlocking the powers of the universe. The logic of ‘doing  A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not
nothing and achieving everything’ reached the rulers intent on arriving.

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 Henry David Thoreau-Quick Facts

Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) was an Ameri-

can philosopher, naturalist, writer and political ac-
tivist of the early Modern period.
Although relatively unknown to the general public
during his own lifetime, the influence of his philosophy
of civil disobedience and non-violent resistance has
been specifically credited by such later figures as Leo
Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
He adhered to no recognizable political position, but
his work to some extent influenced later generations
of Anarchists, Marxists and Existentialists.
His writings on natural history anticipated the Henry David Thoreau
methods and findings of modern ecology and envi-
ronmentalism.

Henry David Thoreau’s Ethical Views

Along with his friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Em- Contrary to popular opinion, Thoreau neither re-
erson, and others in the group of American Tran- jected civilization nor fully embraced wilderness.
scendentalists who formed around Emerson, Tho- Instead, he sought a middle ground, the pastoral
reau dedicated his life, skills and classical learning realm that integrates both nature and culture. He
to the call for the creation of an original American dedicated much of his life to the exploration of na-
literature and philosophy, in an era when “writ- ture, not just as a backdrop to human activity but
er” was not yet a specialized profession. Thoreau as a living, integrated system of which humanity
and the Transcendentalists believed that there is simply a part. His “nature writing” progressed
was more to reality than what a person could from the poetic symbolism of “Walden” to the sci-
experience with their senses, and more knowledge entific method in his later journals (involving
than what a person could discover through human observation and information-gathering, the
reason. They encouraged intuition, self-examina- stating of a hypothesis, and the verification of the
tion, individualism and exploration of the beauty of hypothesis by testing), anticipating many of the
nature and humankind. methods and findings of modern ecology and envi-
ronmentalism.

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 Henry David Thoreau–“Civil Disobedience”

His essay “Civil Disobedience” of 1849 has been Thoreau was a committed anti-slavery activist and,
perhaps the most influential of his works because despite his deep-rooted Individualism, he was
of its overt political implications. He boldly as- readily moved to activism against injustice. The
serted that “the only obligation which I have a right well-known essay “Civil Disobedience” was not
to assume is to do at any time what I think right”. Thoreau›s final word on resistance against injustice
He believed that radical social reforms (such as and oppression: his strongest critiques of American
the abolition of slavery, for example) could be society lay in his later public addresses, “Slavery in
effected only when each right-minded individu- Massachusetts”, “Life without Principle” and “A
al takes direct action on his own part. This form Plea for Captain John Brown”.
of “peaceful revolution” could be achieved by
an individual withdrawing his allegiance «in Like Karl Marx, he sought to some extent to dis-
person and property» from the government that mantle existing institutions in an attempt to
supports or permits the abuse in question (such as, provide full human satisfaction.
for example, refusing to pay taxes). This philoso-
phy of civil disobedience and non-violent resis-
tance has been specifically credited by such later
figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Mar-
tin Luther King Jr.

Henry David Thoreau-Famous Quotes

 Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.

 Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

 The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

 Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

 Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

 That government is best which governs least.

 It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

 Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

 Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

 In wildness is the preservation of the world.

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 Max Weber-Quick Facts

Maximilian Karl Emil Weber was a German sociolo-

gist, philosopher, jurist, and political economist. He
is one of the most important theorists on the develop-
ment of modern Western society.
His ideas profoundly influenced social theory and so-
cial research. Max Weber is known as a principal archi-
tect of modern social science along with Karl Marx and
Emil Durkheim
Weber’s main intellectual concern was understanding
the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and

Max Weber
“disenchantment”, which he associated with the rise of
capitalism and modernity. Weber also made a variety
of other contributions in economic history, as well as
economic theory and methodology.

Max Weber’s Ethical Views

Against Marx’s historical materialism, Weber em- er humanity has gone through three distinct types
phasised the importance of cultural influences em- of powers. The older society operated as per “Tra-
bedded in religion as a means for understanding the ditional Authority”. Then came the age of “Char-
genesis of capitalism. Max Weber, in The Protes- ismatic authority” (in this phase leaders like
tant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, held that Napolean rose to power); but now, as per We-
the Protestant ethic was an important factor in ber, we have entered the third phase namely the
the economic success of Protestant groups in “Bureaucratic authority”. According to Weber
the early stages of European capitalism; because Bureaucrats achieve their power by knowledge.
worldly success could be interpreted as a sign of If change is desired it has to come through the
eternal salvation, thus it was vigorously pursued bureaucracy.
(Protestant ethics declared all work as holy). Thus
capitalism was not the outcome of steam power but
an outcome of a set of ideas that derived its core
from the Protestant ethics.
In Protestant ethic the value attached to hard
work, thrift, and efficiency in one’s worldly
calling, which, especially in the Calvinist view,
were deemed signs of an individual’s election,
or eternal salvation. Thus Weber’s views are di-
rectly in contrast to Marx’s views on religion. Ac-
cording to Marx religion was used by capitalists
to maintain capitalism (As Marx said religion
is the opium of the masses) while according to
Weber Protestant ethics encouraged ideas that
gave birth to capitalism. According to Weber pow-

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 Max Weber–“Bureaucratic Model”
Max Weber’s bureaucratic theory or model is some- 8. Impersonal authority (e.g., office bearer
times also known as the “rational-legal” model. The does not bring the office with him)
model tries to explain bureaucracy from a rational 9. Political neutrality
point of view via nine main characteristics or prin-
ciples. As Weber noted, real bureaucracy is less optimal
and effective than his ideal-type model. Each of
1. Specialized roles Weber’s principles can degenerate—and more so,
2. Recruitment based on merit (e.g., tested when they are used to analyze the individual lev-
through open competition) el in an organization. But, when implemented in a
group setting in an organization, some form of effi-
3. Uniform principles of placement, promo- ciency and effectiveness can be achieved, especially
tion, and transfer in an administrative with regard to better output. This is especially true
system when the Bureaucratic model emphasizes qualifica-
4. Careerism with systematic salary struc- tion (merits), specialization of job-scope (labour),
ture hierarchy of power, rules and discipline
5. Hierarchy, responsibility and account-
ability
6. Subjection of official conduct to strict
rules of discipline and control
7. Supremacy of abstract rules

Max Weber-Famous Quotes

 The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all,
by the disenchantment of the world.
 It is not wise to apply to public administration the sort of moral and ethical norms we apply to
matters of personal conscience. It is important to realize that the state bureaucracy might pos-
sess its own independent bureaucratic morality.
 The ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility are not opposites. They are complemen-
tary to one another.
 Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not
a causal explanation.
 A highly developed stock exchange cannot be a club for the cult of ethics.
 Within the confines of the lecture hall, no other virtue exists but plain intellectual integrity.
 One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of
responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

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 Abraham Lincoln-Quick Facts

Abraham Lincoln was an American statesman and

lawyer who served as the 16th president of the Unit-
ed States (1861–1865). Lincoln led the nation through
its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis in
the American Civil War.
He preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strength-
ened the federal government, and modernized the
U.S. economy.
Lincoln was primarily self-educated, with intermittent
formal schooling from travelling teachers of less than

Abraham Lincoln
12 months aggregate; he became an avid reader and re-
tained a lifelong interest in learning. He was not only
a statesman and political leader but a moral force
that changed the way Americans viewed social re-
lations.

Abraham Lincoln’s Ethical Views Abraham Lincoln-Famous Quotes

Abraham Lincoln was a self-made man in a way that  “Whatever you are, be a good one.”
we no longer use the term “self-made.” When we use it,  “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them
we usually have in mind a businessperson, and we use my friends?”
it to mean they have achieved upward social mobility,
specifically in financial terms. If we go back to Lincoln’s  “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you
time, we find the term “self-made” used in a different, want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
much more comprehensive way, one that does not ex-  “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I
clude success in business, but is by no means restricted feel bad. That’s my religion.”
to it.
 “Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it
Moral integrity occupied the core of the kind of person not for themselves”
Lincoln made himself. Financial honesty represented  “I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.”
one important aspect of this integrity. When his part-
ner in a grocery business, William Berry, died in 1835,  “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot
leaving behind serious debts, Lincoln worked long and and hang on.”
hard to pay off not only his own share but Berry’s as  “Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then
well, going beyond his legal obligation in doing so. stand firm.”
There are many examples of Lincoln’s extraordinary  “I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a
intellectual honesty in his political career. Lincoln evil somebody.”
opposed slavery not only on political grounds but on  “The best way to predict your future is to create
moral grounds. He considered every human being has it.”
worth which is expressed through dignity. Lincoln
modeled the balance between moral certainty and  Always bear in mind that your own resolution to
moral humility. He was certain enough about his beliefs succeed is more important than any other.
to act on them, but humble enough about his beliefs to  The best thing about the future is that it comes
acknowledge at least the possibility he might be wrong. one day at a time.
On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth assassinated
President Abraham Lincoln while he was watching Our
American Cousin at Ford Theater in Washington, D.C.

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 Martin Luther King Jr-Quick Facts

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American activist who

became the most visible spokesperson and leader in
the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assas-
sination in 1968. King is best known for advancing civ-
il rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience,
inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent
activism of Mahatma Gandhi.
In 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for com-
bating racial inequality through nonviolent resis-
tance. King was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis,
Tennessee.
King was posthumously awarded the Presiden- Martin Luther King Jr
tial Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold
Medal.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ethical Views

The life and philosophy of Martin Luther King, ior towards others. King calls upon us not only to
Jr. provides a text for learning how to under- see others in a different light but also to try to see
stand and live in a world of conflict and change ourselves and the world through the eyes of others
without creating conflict or be-coming a passive (especially our opponents). By seeing the world
victim of the negative conflict and violence. He and ourselves through the eyes of the opponent, we
was able to create a psychological framework, phil- can pinpoint the change we want to make to cre-
osophical understanding and a theological position ate that “Beloved Community.” Nonviolence is not
to establish an effective strategy to respond to the only standing against what is wrong, but also
surrounding violence in a way that trans-formed standing for what is right. For King the “Beloved
the violence rather than conform to it. Community” is not a distant geography in the
sky, but rather a day to day existence of revolv-
He taught that refusal to retaliate to violence ing relationships with loved ones and ones to be
was not an act of cowardness, but could be an loved. Dr. King focused on systemic change rather
act of strength or even courage. King insisted than replacing individuals and leaving the condi-
that to practice his philosophy courage was re- tions in place
quired. Courage in the face of violence is a form of
resistance. He was a non-conformist. The strength
that King acquired from taking courageous stands
against injustice came as a result of his vision of
a “Beloved Community.” He was acting in a way to
show others his vision of a new kind of communi-
ty, a new way of life, a new relationship that was
possible with one another as people in the global
society. For him the “Beloved Community” was
a destination that required a pilgrimage, which
involved change. First, it requires change of our-
selves. How we see ourselves influences how we
see others. How we see others impacts our behav-

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 Martin Luther King Jr.-Famous Quotes

 The time is always right to do what is right.

 Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only
love can do that.
 Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
 Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?
 Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.
 I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
 The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience,
but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
 The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence
plus character - that is the goal of true education.
 In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
 The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.

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 Nelson Mandela-Quick Facts

Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apart-

heid revolutionary, political leader, and philanthropist
who served as President of South Africa from 1994
to 1999. He was the country’s first black head of
state and the first elected in a fully representa-
tive democratic election. His government focused
on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by
tackling institutionalised racism and fostering
racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African na-
tionalist and socialist, he served as the president
of the African National Congress (ANC) party from
1991 to 1997.
Nelson Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize in
1993 for his life long struggle for human rights
Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela’s Ethical Views

Never before in history was one human being Self-awareness is a sign of great leadership.
so universally acknowledged in his lifetime as Madiba understood that if he was going to lead his
the embodiment of magnanimity and reconcili- nation out of racial discrimination and into a peace-
ation as Nelson Mandela was. He set aside the bit- ful democracy he would have to “be the change.”
terness of enduring 27 years in apartheid prisons Madiba understood that this difference starts with
— and the weight of centuries of colonial division, who we are and how we land on others as lead-
subjugation and repression — to personify the spir- ers. His joyful and infectious character sparked
it and practice of ubuntu, or human kindness. He hope for millions of people who want to dream
perfectly understood that people are dependent on big and pursue their dreams without oppres-
other people in order for individuals and society to sive limitations, who want to live in a world of
prosper. That was his dream for South Africa, and tolerance, inclusion and hope.
the hope that he represented the world over.

According to Mandela Passion produces perse-

verance and all changes in status quo are diffi-
cult to achieve without perseverance. Mandela’s
world view is that of forgiveness and reconcilia-
tion, he holds these values very dear. Strong-willed
and determined, Nelson Mandela never cowered.
He vehemently fought for what he believed in, but
he was also humble and kind. “You mustn’t com-
promise your principles, but you mustn’t hu-
miliate the opposition,” he said. “No one is more
dangerous than one who is humiliated” believed
Madiba.

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 Nelson Mandela-Famous Quotes

 Live life as though nobody is watching, and express yourself as though everyone is listening.
 One of the most difficult things is not to change society — but to change yourself.
 As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
 Difficulties break some men but make others. No axe is sharp enough to cut the soul of a sinner
who keeps on trying, one armed with the hope that he will rise even in the end.
 Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and
passionate about what they do.
 A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.
 Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
 To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances
the freedom of others.
 Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.
 If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his
language, that goes to his heart.
 If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he be-
comes your partner.
 There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you
are capable of living.
 It always seems impossible until it’s done.
 We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
 Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.
 Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.
 When people are determined they can overcome anything.
 I never lose. I either win or learn.
 Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear. That is why it is such a powerful weapon.
 A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.
 While poverty persists, there is no true freedom
 I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
 Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond
measure.
 Action without vision is only passing time, vision without action is merely day dreaming, but
vision with action can change the world.
 Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.
 People respond in accordance to how you treat them.

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 Gautama Buddha-Quick Facts

Gautama Buddha also known as Siddhartha Gauta-

ma, and Śākyamuni, was a philosopher, mendicant,
meditator, spiritual teacher, and religious leader
thought to have lived in India from 563 B.C. to 483
B.C.
He is known as the light of Asia and contributed to
many areas of philosophy, including epistemology,
metaphysics and ethics.
The Buddha’s teaching formed the foundation for
Buddhist philosophy initially developed in South Asia,
then later in the rest of Asia. Buddhism and Buddhist
philosophy now have a global following.
Gautama Buddha

Gautama Buddha’s Ethical Views

Buddha seeks a middle way between the ex- The core of Buddhist teachings is encapsulated
tremes of dogmatism and skepticism, empha- in the four noble truths. The truths are:
sizing personal experience, a pragmatic attitude,
and the use of critical thinking toward all types 1) Dukkha (suffering, incapable of satisfying,
of knowledge. In ethics, the Buddha proposes a painful) is an innate characteristic of existence
threefold understanding of action: mental, ver- with each rebirth;
bal, and bodily.
2) Samudaya (origin, cause) of this dukkha is the
The Buddha defined his teaching as “the mid- “craving, desire or attachment”;
dle way”. In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta,
3) Nirodha (cessation, ending) of this dukkha can
this is used to refer to the fact that his teachings
be attained by eliminating all “craving, desire,
steer a middle course between the extremes of
and attachment”;
asceticism and bodily denial (as practiced by
the Jains and other ascetic groups) and sensual 4) Magga (path, Noble Eightfold Path) is the means
hedonism or indulgence. Many sramanas of the to end this dukkha.
Buddha’s time placed much emphasis on a denial of
the body, using practices such as fasting, to liberate
the mind from the body. The Buddha, however, re-
alized that the mind was embodied and causally de-
pendent on the body, and therefore that a malnour-
ished body did not allow the mind to be trained and
developed. Thus, Buddhism’s main concern is
not with luxury or poverty, but instead with the
human response to circumstances.

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 Buddhist–“Noble Truths & the Eightfold Path”

Gautama Buddha-Famous Quotes

 Do not dwell in the past; do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
 Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
 Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be short-
ened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
 The mind is everything. What you think you become.
 You only lose what you cling to.
 We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the
world.
 All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
 Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
 No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
 You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

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 Vardhamana Mahavira-Quick Facts
Vardhamana Mahavira was the twenty-fourth and
last Jain Tirthankara according to the Jain philos-
ophy.
A Tirthankara is an enlightened soul who is born as a
human being and attains perfection through intense
meditation.
Jain tradition holds that Mahavira was born in the early
part of the 6th century BCE into a royal Kshatriya Jain
family in present-day Bihar, India. He abandoned all
worldly possessions at the age of about 30 and left home
in pursuit of spiritual awakening, becoming an as-
cetic. Mahavira practiced intense meditation and se- Vardhamana Mahavira
vere austerities for 12 years, after which he is believed
to have attained Kevala Jnana (omniscience). He was
perhaps a contemporary of Gautama Buddha

Vardhamana Mahavira’s Ethical Views

Three metaphysical and five ethical principles • Ahiṃsā (Non-violence)

are the foundation of Mahavira’s philosophy. • Satya (Truth)
Like the philosophies of other great saints in In-
dia, the objective of Mahavira’s philosophy was • Asteya (Non-stealing)
to raise the quality of life. Also, while attaining • Brahmacharya (Chastity)
spiritual excellence one should maintain ethi- • Aparigraha (Non-possession)
cal behavior. Most of his teachings were based
on those of his predecessors. Jainism emphasises that ratnatraya (triple gems
of Jainism) — the right faith (Samyak Darshana),
Lord Mahavira devoted his entire life in right knowledge (Samyak Gyana) and right con-
preaching spiritual freedom. Jain ethical duct (Samyak Charitra) — constitutes the path to
code prescribes two dharmas or rules of conduct. liberation. These are known as the triple gems (or
One for those who wish to become ascetic and an- jewels) of Jainism (Ratnatraya)
other for the śrāvaka (householders). Five funda-
mental vows are prescribed for both votaries. These
vows are observed by śrāvakas (householders)
partially and are termed as anuvratas (small vows).
Ascetics observe these fives vows more strictly and
therefore observe complete abstinence. These five
vows are:

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 Vardhamana Mahavira-Famous Quotes

 Live and allow others to live; hurt no one; life is dear to all living beings.
 All are my friends. I have no enemies.
 Don’t accumulate if you do not need. The excess of wealth in your hands is for the society, and
you are the trustee for the same.
 Start the practice of self-control with some penance; begin with fasting.
 Do not deprive someone of his livelihood. This is a sinful tendency.
 Anger begets more anger, and forgiveness and love lead to more forgiveness and love.
 Soul is the central point of spiritual discipline.
 The most important principle of environment is that you are not the only element.
 One who neglects or disregards the existence of earth, air, fire, water and vegetation disregards
his own existence which is entwined with them.
 By sincerity, a man gains physical, mental and linguistic straightforwardness, and harmonious
tendency; that is, congruence of speech and action.

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 Kautilya-Quick Facts
Kautilya or Vishnugupta was an Indian teacher,
philosopher, economist, jurist and royal advisor
He is best known as Chanakya. A wise man who
was much ahead of his time, Chanakya had made
important observations about ethics and statecraft.
Kautilya was the most important minister in the
Court of Chandragupta Maurya during 317 – 293
B.C. He has been considered as one of the shrewd-
est ministers of the times and has explained his
views on State, War, Social Structures, Diplomacy,
Ethics, Politics and Statecraft very clearly in his
book called Arthashastra.
Kautilya

Kautilya’s Ethical Views

Kautilya was known for his sharp opinion on a) Open war: War fought between states
each of the four dimension framework of: war
and peace, human rights, international econom- b) Concealed war: It is fought on the lines of
ic justice and world order. He proposed welfare guerrilla warfare
state but encouraged war for preserving the
c) Silent war: It is fought continuously in-
power of the state. He strongly believed that a
side the kingdom itself
king should constantly struggle to augment his
power. This coincides with Weber’s view that He gave great importance to property rights and
international politics has no morals and states protection of wealth. He puts great stress on hu-
must be at war at all times. man rights and on how the invaded ruler and
his ministers should be treated. He emphasiz-
He also advocated that science is a great source
es criminal justice and war justice. He showed
of power. He further believed that ‘power is
mercy towards people who were defeated in
strength and it is the strength which changes
war. In regards of punishments he believed that
the mind. This view has its parallels with Thom-
punishment is a means to an end and needs to
as Hobbes viewpoints. He is thus a realist and
prevent the commission of the crime. He strong-
stresses on ethics of responsibility. He strong-
ly said that all foreign policy and diplomacy are
ly believes that for any king to have power he
practiced as long as the self-interest of the state
should focus on creation of wealth, have sound
is served.
armies and should be able to conquer more
kingdoms to enlarge the size of his state. In a
war-like situation both Kautilya and Machia-
velli share the same reasoning. Both propagate
that a king should be closely involved in the sci-
ence of war. Kautilya has proposed three types
of war:

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 Kautilya-Famous Quotes

 A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

 A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed
first.

 Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the
beauty and the youth.

 As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.

 There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-inter-
ests. This is a bitter truth.

 The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

 Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such friendships will
never give you any happiness.

 God is not present in idols. Your feelings are your god. The soul is your temple.

 Once you start a working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it. People
who work sincerely are the happiest.

 Do not reveal what you have thought upon doing, but by wise council keep it secret being deter-
mined to carry it into execution.

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 Adi Shankaracharya-Quick Facts
Adi Shankaracharya was an early 8th century Indi-
an philosopher and theologian who consolidated
the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta.
His works in Sanskrit discuss the unity of the Atman
and Nirguna Brahman “brahman without attri-
butes”.
Shankara travelled across India and other parts of
South Asia to propagate his philosophy through dis-
course and debates with other thinkers. He was a major
proponent of the Vedanta tenet that “Lord Brahma and
men are of one essence and every individual should try
to develop this vision of oneness.” Adi Shankaracharya

Adi Shankaracharya’s Ethical Views

According to Shankara, the one unchanging entity sented the timeless truths of Vedanta so that every man,
(Brahman) alone is real, while changing entities do woman and child would appreciate and live its high val-
not have absolute existence. The key source texts for ues. His contribution to Indian philosophy, in fact hu-
this interpretation, as for all schools of Vedānta, are manity, is so great and lasting that all the later philoso-
the Prasthanatrayi–the canonical texts consisting of phers have only tried to refute or elucidate his ideas. All
the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma over the world, Indian philosophy has come to be iden-
Sutras. tified with the Vedanta that Adi Shankaracharya spoke
of. He symbolizes the great rishi-culture, prevalent in In-
So great was Shankara’s thirst for the Truth that he took dia, whose foremost exponent he was. Through his life,
sannyasa when he was eight years old. By age 16, he had Shankara taught us to live by the Truth. He stands for
not only mastered but also written commentaries on the a thorough knowledge of reality through direct realisa-
Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gita and other prominent Vedic tion, which is an actual experience. Advaita philosophy
texts. These commentaries known as bhashyas stand at promotes universal unity and eclectic thinking ris-
the pinnacle of Indian philosophical writing. Shankara ing above all narrow considerations in society. Adi
traveled the entire country with his disciples. He de- Shankaracharya’s eternal message of humanity and
stroyed the false notions of religion and spirituality non-dualism assumes great relevance in the current
that people had come to believe and enlightened the world gripped in various problems including terror-
nation with his insightful analyses and logic. He pre- ism.

Adi Shankaracharya-Famous Quotes

 “When our false perception is corrected, misery ty. Seeking the Self everywhere be amiable and
ends.” equal-minded towards all, treating all alike.

 “When the Great Reality is not known the study  Even after the Truth has been realised, there re-
of the scriptures is fruitless; when the Great Re- mains that strong, obstinate impression that one
ality is known the study of the scriptures is also is still an ego - the agent and experiencer. This
fruitless.” has to be carefully removed by living in a state
of constant identification with the supreme
 Do not look at anybody in terms of friend or foe, non-dual self. Full Awakening is the eventual
brother or cousin; do not fritter away your men- ceasing of all the mental impressions of being an
tal energies in thoughts of friendship or enmi- ego.

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 Guru Ravidas-Quick Facts

Guru Ravidas was one of the most spiritual Indian

mystic poet-saint of the Bhakti Movement during
the 15th to 16th century CE.
The great saint is well-known by many other names
such as Raidas, Rohidas, and Ruhidas. He was
idolized as a teacher (Guru) in the region of Punjab,
Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Madhya
Pradesh. He was a renowned poet-saint, social re-
former, and a spiritual figure.
Ravidas taught removal of social divisions of caste and
gender, and promoted unity in the pursuit of personal
spiritual freedoms.
Guru Ravidas
Guru Ravidas’ Ethical Views

Teachings of Ravidas represent an offshoot of the his community, namely the leather tanners. His
bhakti movement of the fifteenth century, a reli- tremendous pride in his caste identity and its as-
gious renaissance in India. Ravidas taught the fol- sociated work was meant to dismiss the abhorrent
lowing principles: notion of any work being hierarchised as inferior
or superior. He espoused sahaj bhao, or principle
• The oneness, omnipresence and omnipotence of of equanimity and forgiveness, to impress people
God. not with his high philosophy but with an earthy,
• The human soul is a particle of God. persuasive gentleness.
• The rejection of the notion that God cannot be met
by lower castes. Guru Ravidas-Famous Quotes
• To realize God, which is the goal of human life, man
should concentrate on God during all rituals of life.
 “If your heart is pure, the water in your bath tub
• The only way of meeting with God (moksha) is to is holy water. You need not go anywhere to take
free the mind from duality. a holy dip”
Ravidas’ philosophy and songs were popular  Surrender yourself to the lord with your heart
across class, caste and community. The Rajput prin- and soul. You will enjoy peace and pleasure.
cess Mirabai, for instance, was one of his disciples. Rav-
idas was non-combative, gentle and non-judgmental  ‘You are me, and I am you-what is the difference
and had the magnanimity to take everybody with him. between us? We are like gold and the bracelet, or
In spite of his proximity to princely states, Ravidas water and the waves.’
continued to emphasise the sacredness of work  ‘That family, into which a holy person is born,
or kirat. By doing so, he was inverting the prevalent whether of high or low social class, whether rich
caste hierarchy of occupation that favoured mental or poor, shall have its pure fragrance spread all
over manual labour. In his verses one finds persistent over the world.’
critique of caste hierarchy. Ravidas demonstrated,
and was recognised for, his exceptional spiritual,  ‘The calf has contaminated the milk in the teats.
cognitive superiority. Yet, to drive the message The bumble bee has contaminated the flower,
and to critique the prevalent dehumanised logic and the fish the water.’
of caste, he insisted on practising the vocation of

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 Guru Nanak-Quick Facts
Guru Nanak also referred to as Baba Nanak was the
founder of Sikhism and the first of the ten Sikh Gu-
rus
Nanak travelled far and wide teaching people the mes-
sage of one God who dwells in every one of His cre-
ations and constitutes the eternal Truth.
He set up a unique spiritual, social, and political
platform based on equality, fraternal love, good-
ness, and virtue
Nanak’s words are registered in the form of 974
poetic hymns in the holy text of Sikhism the Guru
Granth Sahib.
Guru Nanak

Guru Nanak’s Ethical Views

Nanak’s religious ideas draw on both Hindu and Truth is high but higher still is truthful living is
Islamic thought, but are far more than just a syn- the percept of Nanak which gives great impor-
thesis. Nanak was an original spiritual thinker tance to individual conduct. Guru Nanak asked
and expressed his thoughts in extraordinary his followers to transform the “Five Thieves”
poetry that forms the basis of Sikh scripture. (lust, rage, greed, attachment, and ego) to lead
an ethical life.
Based on the belief in one God, Guru Nanak rec-
ognizes the equality of all human beings and
is marked by the rejection of idolatry, ritual-
ism, caste and asceticism. The ten Sikh Gurus
preached a simple message of truth, devotion to
God and universal equality.
Guru Nanak’s philosophy is not world negating
but is world reaffirming. He preached the middle
path and considered that one can make spiritual
progress even when he is a householder. This
message broke down the artificial barrier created
between spirituality and duty.
His preaching’s are based on equality of sta-
tus of all human beings which he emphasized
through sangat and pangat which means com-
munity kitchen and eating together by sitting
on the floor. The emphasis on honest living and
sharing one’s earning with others laid the foun-
dation of an egalitarian order.

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 Guru Nanak-Famous Quotes

 I am not the born; how can there be either birth or death for me?
 Death would not be called bad, O people, if one knew how to truly die.
 Whatever kind of seed is sown in a field, prepared in due season, a plant of that same kind,
marked with the peculiar qualities of the seed, springs up in it.
 I am neither a child, a young man, nor an ancient; nor am I of any caste.
 Even Kings and emperors with heaps of wealth and vast dominion cannot compare with an ant
filled with the love of God.
 The production of children, the nurture of those born, and the daily life of men, of these matters
woman is visibly the cause.
 Speak only that which will bring you honor.
 He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God.
 If the people use the wealth bestowed on them by God for themselves alone or for treasuring it,
it is like a corpse. But if they decide to share it with others, it becomes sacred food.
 Let God’s grace be the mosque, and devotion the prayer mat. Let the Quran be the good conduct.
 He who regards all men as equals is religious.
 Through shallow intellect, the mind becomes shallow, and one eats the fly, along with the sweets.

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 Sant Kabir-Quick Facts
Sant Kabir Das was a 15th-century Indian mystic
poet and saint, whose writings influenced Hindu-
ism’s Bhakti movement and his verses are found in
Sikhism’s scripture Guru Granth Sahib.
His early life was in a Muslim family, but he was strong-
ly influenced by his teacher, the Hindu bhakti leader
Ramananda.
Kabir is known for being critical of both Hinduism
and Islam. When he died, both Hindus and Muslims
he had inspired claimed him as theirs. Kabir’s legacy
survives and continues through the Kabir panth.
Sant Kabir

Kabir’s Ethical Views

Kabir suggested that Truth, which he often He emphasized that love was the only medium
called Raam, is with the person who is on the which could bind the entire human kind in an
path of righteousness, considered all creatures unbreakable bond of fraternity. Kabir detested
on earth as his own self, and who is passively de- the frivolities and rituals in Hinduism and Islam for
tached from the affairs of the world. as per Kabir, these could never bind together man-
kind. Hence he advised all to give up hatred and
To know the Truth, suggested Kabir, drop the “I” perpetuate love for one and all. Soul according
or the ego. Kabir’s poetry is a reflection of his to him was life, breath and knowledge. It was a
philosophy about life. His writings were mainly part of the ‘ultimate knowledge’. Liberation ac-
based on the concept of reincarnation and karma. cording to him was a state of “fearlessness”
Kabir’s philosophy about life was very clear-cut. He
believed in living life in a very simplistic manner. He
had a strong faith in the concept of oneness of God.
He advocated the notion of Koi bole Ram Koi
Khuda…. The basic idea was to spread the message
that whether you chant the name of Hindu God or
Muslim God, the fact is that there is only one God
who is the creator of this beautiful world.
He was against the caste system. Kabir’s philosoph-
ical tenets were extremely simple. He was known
as the guiding spirit of the Bhakti Movement. He
preached Bhakti or ‘Devotion’ through the medium
of his ‘Dohas’.

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 Sant Kabir Das-Famous Quotes

 Many have died; you also will die. The drum of death is being beaten. The world has fallen in
love with a dream. Only sayings of the wise will remain.

 All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.

 If you want the truth, I’ll tell you the truth: Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is
inside you.

 The river that flows in you also flows in me.

 Love does not grown on trees or brought in the market, but if one wants to be “LOVED” one must
first know how to give (unconditional) LOVE.

 What is God? He is the breath inside the breath.

 Wherever you are is the entry point

 Listen, my friend. He who loves understands.

 “Lift the veil that obscures the heart, and there you will find what you are looking for.

 The Kazi is searching the words of the Koran, and instructing others: but if his heart be not
steeped in that love, what does it avail, though he be a teacher of men?

 Kabir says, only they are pure who’ve completely cleansed their thinking.

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 Thiruvalluvar-Quick Facts
Thiruvalluvar commonly known as Valluvar was
a celebrated Tamil poet and philosopher. He is best
known as the author of Thirukkuṛaḷ, a collection of
couplets on ethics, political and economical mat-
ters, and love. The text is considered an exceptional
and widely cherished work of the Tamil literature.
He has long been venerated as a great sage, and his
literary works a classic of Tamil culture. Valluvar
has influenced a wide range of scholars down the ages
since his time across the ethical, social, political, eco-
nomical, religious, philosophical, and spiritual spheres

Thiruvalluvar

Thiruvalluvar’s Ethical Views

The first part of the Kural, Aram (dharma), deals “The military, citizenry, resources, advisers,
with various aspects of leading a righteous do- friends and fortresses: who owns these six is a
mestic life and ascetic life (if one chooses to do lion amongst kings.”
so). According to Valluvar, dharma is a simple and
straightforward concept: Valluvar’s economic and political views are appli-
cable even in the modern context today, probably
“Righteousness is all about removing the four in the form of management training, leadership
flaws – envy, desire, anger and harsh words.” workshops, human resource management train-
ing and so on. According to Valluvar, life is worth
Removing the negativity within oneself and imbib- living and gathering wealth is essential for life:
ing the positive values in one’s life is what dhar-
ma is all about. Love, compassion, use of pleasant “Accumulate wealth; it will destroy the arrogance
words, having good conduct, forbearance and of your foes; there is no weapon sharper than that.”
honesty are the positive qualities that one should
cultivate and maintain in order to erase blemish- Gathering wealth through honest and righteous means
es from one’s mind. Aside from providing us with the is strongly emphasized by Valluvar. In fact, Valluvar is
virtues associated with living a happy domestic life, very strong in his position regarding unrighteousness
Valluvar also describes the qualities to cultivate if one or adharma:
was to choose to take up asceticism. According to Val- “One should not act in a way the wise men would
luvar, following an ascetic way of life is optional and condemn even if one’s mother is starving.”
even if one were to follow such a life style, one would
still have to eliminate the blemishes of his mind and “Amassing a lot of wealth and eating alone without
pursue the positive qualities mentioned above. sharing, is worse than the act of asking for alms”, is
worst according to Valluvar. As per Valluvar “Love is
The second part of the Kural deals with Porul, or the quintessence of life; without it, a man is but a
“wealth” as translated in English. During Vallu- frame of bones covered with skin.”
var’s time period, the type of government that was
prevalent was monarchy. Therefore, the context of
this section is to be considered as suitable for an
emperor. For example, the first couplet of this sec-
tion describes the qualities of a ruler:

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 Thiruvalluvar-Famous Quotes
 “Make foes of bowmen if you must, never of penmen.”

 “It is compassion, the most gracious of virtues, which moves the world.”

 “Those who have wisdom have all; Fools with all have nothing.”

 “When the rare chance comes, seize it, to do the rare deed.”

 “Although an act of help done timely might be small in nature, it is truly larger than the world
itself.”

 “To reprove a harm-doer, put him to shame by doing a good deed in return.”

 “The wound made by hurting with fire will heal but the wound created by harsh words uttered
using out tongue leaves an indelible scar.”

 “Reasoning with a drunkard is like Going under water with a torch to seek for a drowning man.”

 “Just as the earth that bears the man who tills and digs it, to bear those who speak ill of them, is
a quality of the highest respect.”

 “Great wealth, like a crowd at a concert, Gathers and melts.”

 “Folded hands may conceal a dagger -Likewise a foe’s tears.”

 “Virtue alone is happiness; all else is else, and without praise.”

 “Conquer with forbearance, the excesses of insolence.”

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 Rama Krishna Paramahansa
-Quick Facts
Rama Krishna Paramahansa is a famous nine-
teenth-century Bengali Hindu mystic and Philoso-
pher.
Ramakrishna’s main teachings included God realiza-
tion as the supreme goal of life, renunciation of Ka-
ma-Kanchana, Harmony of Religions and Jiva is Shiva.
Key concepts in Ramakrishna’s teachings included the
oneness of existence and the unity and truth of all re-
ligions.

Rama Krishna
He is the Guru of Swami Vivekananda, the famous
philosopher saint from India.

Paramahansa

Rama Krishna Paramahansa’s Ethical Views

Ramakrishna taught that the primal bond- Ramakrishna’s proclamation of jatra jiv tatra Shiv
age in human life is Kama-Kanchana (lust and (wherever there is a living being, there is Shiva)
gold). Devotees believe that Ramakrishna’s real- stemmed from his Advaitic perception of Reali-
isation of nirvikalpa samadhi also led him to an ty. This taught his disciples that kindness to living
understanding of the two sides of maya, or illusion, beings, and serving the living being is like serving
to which he referred as Avidyamaya and Vidya- Shiva Himself). Vivekananda derived his inspi-
maya. He explained that avidyamaya represents ration from this message and took initiative in
dark forces of creation (e.g. sensual desire, evil social activities like famine relief, maintenance
passions, greed, lust and cruelty), which keep peo- of orphanages, opening of training centers, ed-
ple on lower planes of consciousness. These forc- ucational institutions, dispensaries and the
es are responsible for human entrapment in the like—”Where should you go to seek for God? Are
cycle of birth and death, and they must be fought not all the poor, the miserable, the weak, God? Why
and vanquished. Vidyamaya, on the other hand, not worship them first?...Let these people be your
represents higher forces of creation (e.g. spiri- God...” declared Ramakrishna Paramahansa.
tual virtues, enlightening qualities, kindness, puri-
ty, love, and devotion), which elevate human beings
to the higher planes of consciousness. Ramakrish-
na recognised differences among religions but
realised that in spite of these differences, all
religions lead to the same ultimate goal, and
hence they are all valid and true.

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 Rama Krishna Paramahansa-Famous Quotes

 The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail.

 When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited.

 The world is indeed a mixture of truth and make-believe. Discard the make-believe and take
the truth.

 If you must be mad, be it not for the things of the world. Be mad with the love of God.

 Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one
religious.

 God is in all men, but all men are not in God; that is why we suffer.

 One must be very particular about telling the truth. Through truth one can realize God.

 Work, apart from devotion or love of God, is helpless and cannot stand alone.

 Pray to God that your attachment to such transitory things as wealth, name, and creature com-
forts may become less and less every day.

 When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good
and bad, or of high and low.

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 Swami Vivekananda-Quick Facts
Swami Vivekananda, born Narendranath Datta,
was an Indian Hindu monk, a chief disciple of the
19th-century Indian mystic Ramakrishna.
He was a key figure in the introduction of the Indi-
an philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western
world. He was a major force in the revival of Hindu-
ism in India, and contributed to the concept of Indi-
an nationalism as a tool of fight against the British
Empire in colonial India. Vivekananda founded the
Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission.
He represented India and addressed the Parlia-
ment of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893
Swami
Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda’s Ethical Views

In his times morality in both individual life and the students to manifest their innate knowledge and
social life was mostly based on fear of societal power. He advocated a man-making character-build-
censure, but Swami Vivekananda gave a new the- ing education. He said that education must make the
ory of ethics and new principle of morality based students self-reliant and help them face the challeng-
on the intrinsic purity and oneness of the Atman. es of life. He was highly critical of the so-called edu-
cated who do not care for the poor and downtrodden.
Ethics according to Vivekananda was nothing but
a code of conduct that helps a man to be a good He was in complete agreement with the methods
citizen. Swamiji said we should be pure because and results of modern science. He did not discard
purity is our real nature, our true divine Self or reason in favor of faith. He recognized intuition or
Atman inspiration as a higher faculty than reason. But the
truth derived from intuition had to be explained and
Similarly, we should love and serve our neigh- systematized by reason.
bours because we are all one in the Supreme
Spirit known as Paramatma or Brahman. One Though growth of Nationalism is attributed to the
of the most significant contributions of Swami Western influence but Swami Vivekananda’s nation-
Vivekananda to the modern world is his inter- alism is deeply rooted in Indian spirituality and mo-
pretation of religion as a universal experience rality. His nationalism is based on Humanism and
of transcendent Reality, common to all humanity. Universalism, the two cardinal features of Indian
This universal conception frees religion from the spiritual culture.
hold of superstitions, dogmatism, priest craft and
intolerance. He believed that every religion offered a Swamiji believed that if our youth is determined, there
pathway to the eternal supreme – supreme freedom, can be nothing impossible for them to achieve in the
supreme knowledge, and supreme happiness. world. Hence Swamiji called upon the youth to not
only build up their mental energies, but their physical
Swami Vivekananda laid the greatest emphasis on ed- ones as well. He wanted ‘muscles of iron’ as well as
ucation for the regeneration of our motherland. Ac- ‘nerves of steel’.
cording to him, a nation is advanced in proportion as
education is spread among the masses. He said that Vivekananda propagated that the essence of Hin-
our process of education should be such that it helps duism was best expressed in Adi Shankara’s Advai-
ta Vedanta philosophy.

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 Swami Vivekananda-Famous Quotes

 Arise, awake and donot stop until the goal is reached.

 You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.

 You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There
is no other teacher but your own soul.

 All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes
and cry that it is dark.

 We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are second-
ary. Thoughts live; they travel far.

 The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.

 Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless
your brothers, and let them go their own way.

 Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.

 External nature is only internal nature writ large.

 All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of ev-
erything.

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 Jiddu Krishnamurti -Quick Facts

Jiddu Krishnamurti was an Indian philosopher,

speaker and writer.
J. Krishnamurti is regarded globally as one of the great-
est thinkers and religious teachers of all time.
From the time of his break with the Theosophical So-
ciety in 1929 (dissolution speech) until his death in
1986, Krishnamurti spoke throughout the world to
large audiences and to individuals about the need for a
radical change in mankind.

Jiddu
Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Ethical Views

The core of Krishnamurti’s teaching is contained in in his mind. The content of his consciousness is
the statement he made in 1929 when he said Truth his entire existence. The individuality is the name,
is a pathless land. the form and superficial culture he acquires from
tradition and environment. The uniqueness of
According to him, Man cannot come to it through man does not lie in the superficial but in com-
any organization, through any creed, through plete freedom from the content of his conscious-
any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any ness.
philosophical knowledge or psychological tech-
nique. He has to find it through the mirror of J. Krishnamurti attached a very high value to
relationship, through the understanding of the freedom. For him freedom is not a reaction;
contents of his own mind, through observation freedom is not choice. It is man’s pretence that
and not through intellectual analysis or intro- because he has choice he is free. Freedom is
spective dissection. pure observation without direction, without
fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is
Man has built in himself images as a fence of securi- without motive; freedom is not at the end of the
ty—religious, political, personal. These manifest as evolution of man but lies in the first step of his
symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images existence.
dominates man’s thinking, his relationships, and his
daily life. These images are the causes of our prob-
lems for they divide man from man. His perception
of life is shaped by the concepts already established

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 Jiddu Krishnamurti -Famous Quotes

 It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

 I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by
any religion, by any sect.

 The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.

 Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

 Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

 When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and church-
es become important.

 The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through
the rhythm of pain and pleasure.

 Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.

 We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer
free.

 If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are under-
goes a transformation.

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 Raja Ram Mohun Roy -Quick Facts

Raja Ram Mohan Roy was one of the founders of

the Brahmo Sabha, the precursor of the Brahmo
Samaj, a social-religious reform movement in the
Indian subcontinent.
He was given the title of Raja by Akbar II, the Mu-
ghal emperor. His influence was apparent in the fields
of politics, public administration, education and reli-
gion. He was known for his efforts to abolish the
practices of sati and child marriage.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy is considered to be the “Father

Raja Ram
of the Indian Renaissance” and the “First Modern
man of India” by many historians.

Mohun Roy
Raja Ram Mohun Roy’s Ethical Views

Raja Ram Mohun Roy realized that the foundational of superior services and separation of the executive
principles of every religion are the same. The ends from judiciary. He demanded equality between In-
of all religions are the same. His conception of re- dians and Europeans. He knew that the ideal of
ligion was based on monotheism and humanism. human civilization does not lie in isolation of in-
A true religion is the one that inculcates knowl- dependence, but in the brotherhood of inter-de-
edge, love of God and sympathy for the fellow pendence of individuals as well as nations
beings. It must soften the attitude and inculcate
human feelings. Raja Ram Mohun Roy -Famous Quotes
Raja Ram Mohun Roy was against the practice of
purdah, sati, restriction on women, child mar-  There is only one God. None equals him. He
riage, and division of the Hindu society into var- has no end. He is present in all living beings.
ious castes.
 The superstitious practices which deform the
Raja ram Mohun Roy tried to modernise the edu- Hindu religion have nothing to do with the
cation system. He established the Hindu College at pure spirit of its dictates
Calcutta in 1817, which went on to become one of
the best educational institutions in the country. Raja  The Present system of Hindus is not well cal-
ram Mohun Roy believed education to be an in- culated to promote their political interests.
strument to bring about social change or reform. It is necessary that some change should take
He characterised sati as the violation of every hu- place in their religion at least for the sake of
mane and social feeling and as symptomatic of the political advantage and social comfort
moral debasement of a race. He was a champion of
civil liberties and through his writings and activities,  I have now given up all worldly avocations,
he supported the movement for free press in India. and am engaged in religious culture and in
the investigation of truth.
He was a supporter of participation of people in
running an administration and equality amongst  “Just consider how terrible the day of your
all. He was against concentration of power in one death will be. Others will go on speaking and
man or institution. He demanded the Indianisation you will not be able to argue back”.

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 Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar-
Quick Facts

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was an Indian educator

and social reformer.
He was the most prominent campaigner for Hindu
widow remarriage.
He received the title “Vidyasagar” (in Sanskrit
Vidya means knowledge and Sagar means ocean,
i.e., Ocean of Knowledge) from Sanskrit College,
Calcutta (from where he graduated), due to his ex-
cellent performance in Sanskrit studies and philos-
ophy. Ishwar Chandra
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar’s
Vidyasagar
Ethical Views

Vidyasagar was a well-known writer, intellectu- he had a soft heart that melted into empathy for
al and above all a staunch supporter of humanity. other’s plight. Michael Madhusudan gave him the
Vidyasagar is credited with the role of thorough- epithet ‘Daya Sagar’ (ocean of generosity) for hi
ly remodelling medieval scholastic system pre- selfless altruism. After his death Rabindranath
vailing in Sanskrit College and bring about mod- Tagore said, “One wonders how God, in the pro-
ern insights into the education system. The first cess of producing forty million Bengalis, pro-
change that Vidyasagar made when he came back duced a man like Vidyasagar!”
to the Sanskrit College as a Professor was to include
English and Bengali as the medium of learning, be-
sides Sanskrit. He introduced courses of European Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar -
History, Philosophy and Science alongside of Vedic Famous Quotes
scriptures. He encouraged students to pursue these
subjects and take away the best from both worlds.
 Education does not only mean learning, read-
He was an ardent advocate of women education. ing, writing, and arithmetic, it should provide
He rightly viewed education as the primary way comprehensive knowledge
for women to achieve emancipation from all the
societal oppression they had to face at that time.  We want teachers who know both Bengali
Unlike other reformers who sought to set up al- and the English Language, and at the same
ternative societies or systems, Vidyasagar sought time are free from religious prejudices
to transform society from within.
 The life without suffering is like a boat with-
Vidyasagar’s compassionate heart could not take out a sailor, in which there is no discretion of
the plight of the widows and he made it his mission itself, it also moves in a light breeze
to improve the quality of life for these helpless wom-
en. Alongside the campaign for widow remarriage,  Self-restraint (moderation) gives discrimi-
he campaigned against polygamy. He faced raging nation; mediation gives concentration; peace,
opposition from orthodox society which termed the satisfaction, and charity give humanity.
concept as something heretic. He was an altruist

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 Rabindranath Tagore -
Quick Facts
Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian polymath-
poet, writer, composer, philosopher and painter.
He reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well
as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Author of the “profoundly sensitive, fresh and beau-
tiful verse” of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first
non-European as well as the first lyricist to win the
Nobel Prize in Literature. He denounced the British

Rabindranath
Raj and advocated independence from Britain.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Ethical

Tagore
Views
Rabindranath Tagore was an Idealist, Naturalist, Tagore was a great poet and patriot. His writings
Humanist, Patriot, Universalist, Vedantist and were filled with patriotic values. He had joined
Internationalist. in freedom movement to make the country free
from foreign yoke. Tagore’s philosophy reveals
Tagore believes that man should realize the that he was a Vedantist in true sense of terms.
“ultimate truth” which will liberate him from He had faith in one Supreme Being that is the
the worldly bondage. Experience according to Brahma.
him is within the world of illusion (Maya). He
thoughts the world is the place of both truth and
illusion (Maya). In Tagore’s view man is born with
enormous surplus force. This surplus is the limit-
less potentiality of human personality and creativ- Rabindranath Tagore’s
ity. According to Tagore, “By art man can expe- Conception of One World
rience the wholeness of life. The fine arts were
nothing but intellectual and spiritual discipline.
Rabindranath Tagore was in favour of one
The centre of Tagore’s philosophy was man of world creation of unit amidst cultural, colour
god. Even his concept of God was influenced by the and religious diversities is the need of the time
humanism inherent in his outlook. The supreme for peaceful co-existence in the globe. For-
reality thus according to Tagore, essentially human getting selfishness one we should work to es-
and could be realised only through love of man. tablish world culture based on love, affection
Love of God was thus translated into love of hu- fellow feeling and mutual understanding. Cos-
man. In a discussion with Einstein, Tagore said, mopolitan feelings are explicit in his writings
if there is any truth absolutely unrelated to hu- and paintings. Tagore’s internationalist thought
manity then for us it is absolutely non-existing. and attempt for making united world is appreci-
Tagore thus firmly believed that truth could be real- ated all over the world.
ised only in human society. Tagore said nature is the
great teacher which is not hostile to man. Nature is
kind, generous and benevolent like mother.

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 Rabindranath Tagore’s conception of freedom in education

Tagore had championed the cause of freedom. The same he wanted to implement in the field of
education. With that object he had opened Shantiniketan, Sri Niketan and Brahmachari Ashram.
Accordingly, he gave free choice to students to develop their interest in any field they like. To him,
education should be after the heart of a man. He explained freedom in three-categorized ways i.e.
freedom of heart, freedom of intellect and freedom of will.
According to him the true purpose of education is Self Realization, intellectual development and
attainment of freedom.

Rabindranath Tagore -Famous Quotes

 I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold,
service was joy.

 Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

 You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

 Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

 The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

 Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

 Facts are many, but the truth is one.

 Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.

 A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

 Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

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 Swami Dayanand Saraswati
-Quick Facts
Swami Dayanand Saraswati was an Indian philoso-
pher, social leader and founder of the Arya Samaj,
a reform movement of the Vedic dharma.
He was the first to give the call for Swaraj as “India
for Indians” in 1876, a call later taken up by Lok-
manya Tilak.
Although he was never really involved in politics direct-
ly, his political observations were the source of inspi-
ration for a number of political leaders during India’s

Swami Dayanand
struggle for independence. He was given the epithet
of Maharishi and is considered as one of the Mak-
ers of Modern India
Saraswati
Swami Dayanand Saraswati’s
Ethical Views
Maharishi Dayanand was a believer in Hinduism just He advocated the concept of Swarajya, meaning
as the Vedas have outlined, devoid of any corrup- a country free of foreign influence, resplendent
tion and embellishments. He strongly advocated in the glory of fair and just participants. The Arya
the concepts of Dharma which he believed to be Samaj established a number of educational insti-
free from any partiality and as an embodiment tutions like Gurukuls, Kanya Gurukuls, D.A.V.
of truthfulness. To him Adharma was anything that Schools and Colleges for the education of both
did not hold true, was not just or fair and was op- males and females. These educational institutions
posed to the teachings of the Vedas. He launched protected the Hindu religion and society and also
the Shuddhi movement; he was not against any promoted the growth of knowledge and education
religion but against religious imperialism and on modern scientific lines.
coercive alterations of religious orientations.
He believed in reverence of human life irrespec- His life and his teachings had considerable influence
tive of anything and condoned the practice of in several important personalities like Lala Lajpat
Ahimsa or non-violence. He advised his coun- Rai, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Madam Cama,
trymen to direct their energy towards better- Ram Prasad Bismil, Mahadev Govind Ranade,
ment of mankind as a whole and not waste away Madan Lal Dhingra and Subhash Chandra Bose.
in unnecessary rituals. He revoked the practice of Shaheed Bhagat Singh was educated at the D.A.V.
idol worship and considered them a contamination School in Lahore.
introduced by the priesthood for their own benefit.
He was against other social evils like superstitions
and caste segregation. He vehemently opposed
child-marriages, polygamy, “Purdah” and the
practice of “Sati” etc. Citing the teachings of the
Vedas, he proved that women should have equal
rights with men. Inter-caste marriages and in-
ter-dining were practised by the members of
the Arya Samaj

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 Swami Dayanand Saraswati -Famous Quotes

 God is the efficient cause of all true knowledge and all that is known through knowledge.

 God is existent, intelligent and blissful. He is formless, omniscient, just, merciful, unborn, end-
less, unchangeable, beginning-less, unequalled, the support of all, the master of all, omnipres-
ent, immanent, un-aging, immortal, fearless, eternal and holy, and the maker of all. He alone
is worthy of being worshiped.

 The Vedas are the scriptures of all true knowledge. It is the paramount duty of all Aryas to
read, teach, and recite them and to hear them being read.

 One should always be ready to accept truth and to renounce untruth.

 All acts should be performed in accordance with Dharma that is, after deliberating what is
right and wrong.

 The prime object of the Arya Samaj is to do good to the world, that is, to promote physical,
spiritual and social good of everyone.

 Our conduct towards all should be guided by love, righteousness and justice.

 We should dispel Avidya (ignorance) and promote Vidya (knowledge).

 No one should be content with promoting his/her good only; on the contrary, one should look
for his/her good in promoting the good of all.

 One should regard oneself under restriction to follow the rules of society calculated to pro-
mote the wellbeing of all, while in following the rules of individual welfare all should be free.

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 Mahatma Gandhi -Quick Facts
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian law-
yer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist
who employed nonviolent resistance to lead a success-
ful campaign for India’s independence from British
rule.
Gandhian ideas have in turn inspired movements
for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gand-
hi’s birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as
Gandhi Jayanti, and worldwide as the International
Day of Nonviolence.
Gandhiji is commonly, though not formally, considered
as the Father of the Nation in India and is commonly
called as Bapu. Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi’s Ethical Views

The ideals and ideas of Mahatma Gandhi emanated He believed that “only way to see God is to see
partly from four major sources as follows: him through his creations and identify oneself
with it”. This is possible through service to hu-
a) His inner religious convictions including manity. He maintained that there is no escape
ethical principles embedded in Hindu- from social service to those in search of God.
ism, Buddhism, Jainism and Christianity This underpins his long battle against untouch-
ability and social backwardness.
b) From the exigencies of his struggle
against apartheid in South Africa and the
mass political movements during India’s
freedom struggle.
c) Influence of Tolstoy, Carlyle, and Thoreau Mahatma Gandhi’s “Ends-Means”
etc. Principle
In fact, ethics provides underpinning to Gandhian
Gandhi believed that Men should adopt only
Thought and is so deep rooted in it that it is almost
impossible to segregate the two. good means to attain noble objectives. As per
him: “No good can follow from bad deeds, even
Gandhiji believed that as human beings, men if they are well intentioned.” It is contrary to the
can never reach the perfection of divine virtues. view that bad means can be used to achieve good
Still, they should strive with all their strength ends, and what matters is the end.
to follow the virtues of truth, love, nonviolence,
tolerance, fearlessness, charity and service to
mankind. Men have to uphold the right, regardless
of the personal consequences they may face. He
urged Satyagrahis to adopt these Virtues. Gandhi
equated God with truth and designated his religion
as religion of truth. He used to say God is Truth,
which he later changed to “Truth is God”.

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 Mahatma Gandhi’s “Trusteeship” Principle

Gandhiji regarded Rich as trustees of wealth. He said that ultimately all property belongs to God; the
excess or superfluous wealth which the rich possess belongs to society and should be used for supporting
the poor. Wealthy people have no moral right to what is more than their proportionate share in na-
tional wealth. They simply become trustees for the disproportionate share of God’s property they
hold. They have to use it for helping the poor

Mahatma Gandhi -Famous Quotes

 An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

 Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

 Where there is love there is life.

 In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

 The future depends on what we do in the present.

 Action expresses priorities.

 The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

 Hate the sin, love the sinner.

 Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

 An ounce of practice is worth a thousand words.

 A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

 Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

 Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

 Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served.

 If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we
shall have to begin with the children.

 The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

 Be the change you want to see in the world.

 The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.

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 Dr. B. R. Ambedkar -Quick Facts

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, also known as Baba-

saheb Ambedkar, was an Indian jurist, economist,
politician and social reformer, who inspired the
Dalit Buddhist movement and campaigned against
social discrimination towards the untouchables.
He is also known as the Father of Indian Constitu-
tion.
Ambedkar was appointed as India’s first Law Min-
ister in the Cabinet of Jawaharlal Nehru. He was post-
humously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest
civilian honor, in 1990.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s Ethical Views

Dr. Ambedkar devoted his whole life to fight He believed that Economic and Political issues
for the annihilation of caste by proliferating a must be resolved only after achieving the goal
movement against the evils of the caste system. of social justice.
Being himself a Dalit, he made all his efforts to
For Babasaheb, knowledge is a liberating force.
change the hierarchical structures of Indian society
One of the reasons for the degradation of un-
and restoration of equal rights/justice to the mar-
touchables was that they were denied the ad-
ginalized and abolition of Untochability. He stood
for a complete reorganization and reconstruc- vantages of education. He criticized the British
tion of the society on the principle of equality.for not doing enough for the education of the
lower caste. He insisted on secular education to
He advocated a society based on three funda- instill values of liberty and equality among the
mental principles of liberty, equality, and fra- students.
ternity.
He had complete faith in democracy. While dictator-
ship may produce quick results, it cannot be a valid
form of government. Democracy is superior as it
enhances liberty. He supported the parliamentary
form of democracy, which aligns with other nation-
al leaders. He emphasized ‘democracy as a way
of life’, i.e. democracy not only in the political
sphere but also in the personal, social and eco-
nomic sphere.

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 Dr. B. R. Ambedkar -Famous Quotes

 I like the religion which teaches liberty, equality, and fraternity

 Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.

 Men are mortal. So are ideas. An idea needs propagation as much as a plant needs watering.
Otherwise, both will wither and die.

 So long as you do not achieve social liberty, whatever freedom is provided by the law is of no
avail to you.

 Law and order are the medicine of the body politic and when the body politic gets sick, medi-
cine must be administered.

 What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social
system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fun-
damental rights.

 Caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of barbed wire which prevents the
Hindus from co-mingling and which has, therefore, to be pulled down. Caste is a notion; it is a
state of the mind.

 A great man is different from an eminent one in that he is ready to be the servant of the society.

 However good a Constitution may be, if those who are implementing it are not good, it will
prove to be bad. However bad a Constitution may be, if those implementing it are good, it will
prove to be good.

 My social philosophy may be said to be enshrined in three words: liberty, equality and frater-
nity. Let no one; however, say that I have borrowed by philosophy from the French Revolution.
I have not. My philosophy has roots in religion and not in political science. I have derived them
from the teachings of my Master, the Buddha.

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 Baba Amte -Quick Facts

Murlidhar Devidas Amte, commonly known as Baba

Amte, was an Indian social worker and social ac-
tivist known particularly for his work for the rehabil-
itation and empowerment of people suffering from
leprosy.
Baba Amte dedicated his life to serve the downtrod-
den people of the society. He was influenced by the
words and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and left
his successful law practice to join India’s struggle
for independence. For his humanitarian work, he re-
ceived a number of prestigious awards including the
Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1985.
Baba Amte
Baba Amte’s Ethical Views
Baba Amte is hailed as the last of the true follow- Baba Amte -Famous Quotes
ers of Gandhi’s philosophy. He not only internal-
ised the philosophies directed by the Mahatma,
but also embraced the Gandhian way of life.  Those who indulge in history cannot create new
history. You cannot legislate national integration
He inherited the Mahatma’s spirit of standing unless political work is done constructively and
up for injustice in society and serving the down- there is a lifestyle for life.
trodden classes. Like Gandhiji, Baba Amte was a
trained lawyer who initially sought a career in law.  When leprosy patients touched the soil, they
transformed it into gold, but the politicians did
Later, just like Gandhiji, he was moved by the plight that and made it into dirt.
of the poor and ignored people of his country and
dedicated his life to their betterment. In search of  I, who had never had planted single seed in the
his true calling, Baba Amte relinquished his ceremo- estate was expected to enjoy the comfort of a
nial dress and started working with the rag-pickers beautiful farm house, while those who had toiled
and sweepers for some time in Chandrapura district. there all their lives had only the meanest hovels.
When Gandhiji came to know about Amte’s fear-
less protests against some Englishmen disrespect-  Purna swaraj can only be possible when the
ing women, he gave Amte the title ‘Abhay Sadhak’. poorest of the poor is uplifted.

He later focussed his attention towards serving pa-  I have to be cautious, but caution also has its own
tients suffering with leprosy and spent most of his life adventure.
aiming to provide better treatment facilities as well as  I don’t want to be a leader. I want to be one who
social awareness towards the disease. Baba Amte’s goes around with a little oil can and offer help
ethics is ingrained in human dignity, service, cour- when I see a breakdown.
age and social justice.
 Those who do monumental work don’t need
Baba Amte launched the nationwide Bharat monuments.
Jodo Andolan in December 1985 and took up
the Bharat Jodo Yatra across India. His goal was  “Happiness dies when it is not shared.”
to spread a message of peace and unity, unifying the
country against communal violence raging across the  “A captain never deserts a sinking ship. To save a
length and breadth. sinking country, brave sailors must emerge!”

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 Jotiba Phule -Quick Facts

Jyotirao Govindrao Phule was an Indian social ac-

tivist, thinker, anti-caste social reformer and writ-
er from Maharashtra. His work extended to many
fields, including eradication of untouchability and the
caste system, and women’s emancipation
He is mostly known for his efforts in educating
women and lower caste people. He and his wife, Sav-
itribai Phule, were pioneers of women education in
India. In 1873, he, along with his followers, formed the
Satyashodhak Samaj (Society of Truth-Seekers) to
attain equal rights for people from lower castes

Jotiba Phule
Jotiba Phule’s Ethical Views

After reading Thomas Paine’s famous book ‘The Jotiba Phule -Famous Quotes
Rights of Man’, Jyotirao was greatly influenced
by his ideas. He believed that enlightenment of
the women and lower caste people was the only
 “Lack of education lead to lack of wisdom, /
solution to combat the social evils.
Which leads to lack of morals, / Which leads
Jyotiba’s quest for providing women and girls to lack of progress, / Which leads to lack of
with right to education was supported by his money, / Which leads to the oppression of
wife Savitribai Phule. One of the few literate wom- the lower classes, / See what state of the so-
en of the time, Savitribai was taught to read and ciety one lack of education can cause!”
write by her husband Jyotirao. He was a believer
 True education signifies empowering oth-
in gender equality and he exemplified his be-
ers and leaving the world a little better than
liefs by involving his wife in all his social reform
activities. the one we found.

Jyotiba realised the pathetic conditions of wid-

ows and established an ashram for young wid-
ows and eventually became advocate of the idea
of Widow Remarriage.
In 1868, Jyotirao decided to construct a com-
mon bathing tank outside his house to exhibit
his embracing attitude towards all human be-
ings and wished to dine with everyone, regard-
less of their caste. Perhaps the biggest legacy of
Mahatma Jyotirao Phule is the thought behind his
perpetual fight against social stigma that are enor-
mously relevant still today. Jyotirao Phule was the
first person to coin the term ‘Dalits’ to apply to
all people considered to be of lower caste and
untouchables.

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 Aurobindo Ghosh -Quick Facts

Aurobindo Ghosh or Sri Aurobindo was an Indian

philosopher, yogi, guru, poet, and nationalist.
Aurobindo studied for the Indian Civil Service at
King’s College, Cambridge, England. After returning
to India he took up various civil service works under
the Maharaja of the Princely state of Baroda and
became increasingly involved in nationalist politics
in the Indian National Congress and the nascent rev-
olutionary movement in Bengal with the Anushilan
Samiti. He was arrested and tried in the Alipore Con-
spiracy. During his stay in the jail, he had mystical and
spiritual experiences, after which he moved to Pondi-
cherry, leaving politics for spiritual work. Aurobindo Ghosh
Aurobindo Ghosh’s Ethical Views

At a philosophical plane, Aurobindo Ghosh claimed

that he acknowledges the divergence between In- Aurobindo Ghosh -Famous Quotes
dian ascetic transcendental idealism and West-
ern secularist materialism. According to him, the
Indian mind had achieved tremendous credit in the  “India of the ages is not dead nor has she spo-
realm of intellectual, vitalistic and political activ- ken her last creative word; she lives and has
ities, and its supremacy is evident in the writings of still something to do for herself and the hu-
Vedantic sages and teachings of Buddha. man peoples.
The supreme reality, according to Aurobindo, is a  Hidden nature is secret God.
spiritual principle that is not a mere static tran-
scendental immutable entity, but also a free real-  That which we call the Hindu religion is re-
ity that contains the potential seeds of dynamic ally the eternal religion because it embraces
mutation and multiplicity. Diversity, therefore, is all others.
as real as unity. According to Aurobindo, the philo-
sophical synthesis of Aristotle, Leibniz and Hegel is  To listen to some devout people, one would
merely intellectual, while that of his reveals a com- imagine that God never laughs.
plete course of a man’s spiritual consciousness. Au-  Spirituality is indeed the master key of the
robindo’s metaphysics grew out of a fusion of In- Indian mind; the sense of the infinitive is na-
dian and Western ideals. tive to it.
Aurobindo believed in spiritual determinism in
history. History, according to Aurobindo, is a mani-
festation and progressive self-revelation of Brahman.
He opined that the emergence of India as an inde-
pendent nation is the will of the God. The repres-
sion, humiliation and coercion used by the British
were also a part of the divine dialectic and it was a
method devised by the almighty to train the Indi-
ans in the art of self-respect and self-help. Culture
to him aims at creative attainments of Manas, the
Vedantic term for mind.

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 Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay -Quick Facts

Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay was an Indian politician

and thinker.
In 1951, when Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee found-
ed the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Pt. Deendayal became
the first general secretary of its UP branch.
Pt. Upadhyaya’s writings and speeches are based on
his philosophy of ‘Integral Humanism’ and his vision
for the rise of modern India.

Pt. Deen Dayal

Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s Upadhyay
Ethical Views
Deriving from Shankara’s Advaitavada and sim-
ilar to Buddha’s middle path, Deen Dayal Upa- Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s
dhyaya’s Integral Humanism is a negation of
the extreme prospects of Capitalism as well as
–Integral Humanism
Marxism.
Integral Humanism is critical of individualism
Integral Humanism is different from west-
as well as Communism as social systems. It de-
ern ideologies. Most of western ideologies are
based on materialism, emphasising more on de- fines society as a natural living organism with
velopment in economic term and eventually every a definitive national soul. Integral humanism in-
individual is treated as economic man. His social sists upon the infusion of religious and moral val-
contacts, his cultural milieu and special bent of ues in politics. It seeks a culturally authentic mode
mind is ignored in this theory. Economic without of modernization that preserver the values of Hin-
ethics and political discourse without morality are duism.
creating crisis in society. Therefore he propound-
ed that every economic theory and policy should a) Integral humanism consists of visions or-
be in context of specialism, local tradition and ganized around two themes-
nature, and temperament of people. In Indian b) Morality in politics – can be a game
thought he said- dharma kaam arth moksha– all
changer
four are important. If there is balance between
them, there is social equilibrium. Swadeshi and small scale industrialization in
Dharma and religion are different in Indian economy – initiating self-reliance that reflects
context. Dharma is more related to morality of in Gandhiji’s philosophy as well
person in individual and collective life. It is less Thus, Integral Humanism revolves around the
about religion. But religion in western countries is
basic themes of harmony, primacy of cultur-
more concerned about sects. There is difference be-
tween sects and dharma. No society can live with- al-national values and discipline. This doctrine
out dharma but can live without religion. Dharma of Pandit Upadhyay is quite relevant even in the
is above religion. On the basis of this truth, he present political and economic situation of India.
propounded Integral Humanism.

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 Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay -Famous Quotes

 “ It is essential that we think about our national identity, without which independence has no
meaning”
 “Independence can be meaningful only if it becomes an instrument of expression of our culture”
 “The fundamental characteristic of Bhartiya culture is that it looks upon life as an integrated
whole”
 “Strength lies not in unrestrained behaviour but in well regulated action”
 “Education is an investment. An educated individual will indeed serve society”
 “Religion means a creed or a sect and it does not mean dharma”

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 Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya-
Quick Facts
Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya was an Indian scholar,
educational reformer and politician notable for his
role in the Indian independence movement, as the
four times president of Indian National Congress
and the founder of Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Ma-
hasabha.
Pt. Malaviya founded the Banaras Hindu University
(BHU) in 1916. He was respectfully addressed as Ma-
hamana.

Pt. Madan Mohan

He is also remembered for his role in ending the In-
dian indenture system, especially in the Caribbean.
He was posthumously conferred with Bharat Ratna,
India’s highest civilian award, on 24 December 2014 Malaviya
Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya’s
Ethical Views

Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya popularized the Madan Mohan Malaviya was against caste dis-
term ‘Satyamev Jayate’. However, the phrase crimination. He worked immensely for Hin-
originally belongs to the Mundaka Upani- du-Muslim unity. He is known to have given fa-
shad. The term now is the national motto of In- mous speeches on communal harmony.
dia.
The one thing for which he was noted was not
He was given the title of ‘Mahamana’ by his intellectual gifts great as they were and his
Rabindranath Tagore and the second Presi- political fervor which knew no bounds but char-
dent of India; Dr. S. Radhakrishnan gave him acter pure, high and solid, and sense of devotion
the status of a ‘Karmayogi’. and sacrifice in the service of his motherland

Mahamana Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya would

always be recalled as a person who aptly fitted in
the slot of such an ideologue who cared always for
the betterment and enlightenment of the human-
ity, though he had every potential to emerge as a
man of consequence in the legal profession.
Mahamana’s was a life replete with varied and
high attainments, and it epitomized the values
of patriotism, virtues, saintliness and religious
adherence quintessential to the Indian ethical
value system. Mahamana was renowned for his
matchless eloquence and set an example for
others by honesty, impartiality and unshake-
able resolve to uphold the truth.

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 Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya - Famous Quotes

 If you admit internal purity of the human soul, you or your religion can never get impure or
defiled in any way by touch or association with any man.
 I implore all Hindus and Mussalmans, Sikhs, Christians and Parsees and all other countrymen
to sink all communal differences and to establish political unity among all sections of the peo-
ple.
 Let righteousness and Dharma prevail, and all communities and societies progress. Let our be-
loved Motherland regain its lost glory, and the sons of Bharat be victorious.
 We believe religion to be the surest foundation of character and the truest source of human
happiness. We believe patriotism to be a powerful elevating influence which inspires men to
high-minded unselfish action.
 In the midst of much darkness, I see a clear vision that the clouds which have long been hanging
over our heads are lifting. Let every son and daughter do his or her duty to expedite the advent
of dawn of the day of freedom and happiness. The truth is on our side. Justice is with us. God
will help us. We are sure to win. Vande Mataram.

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 Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam -
Quick Facts

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was an Indi-

an aerospace scientist and statesman who served as
the 11th President of India (2002 to 2007).
He served at the Defence Research and Develop-
ment Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Re-
search Organisation (ISRO) and was intimately
involved in India’s civilian space programme and mil-
itary missile development efforts. He thus came to be
known as the Missile Man of India. He also played a
pivotal organisational, technical, and political role in
India’s Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998. He was a
recipient of several prestigious awards, including the
Dr. A.P.J. Abdul
Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour.
Kalam

Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s Ethical Views Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s–Vision 2020

Dr A.P.J Abdul Kalam is a very good example of  A Nation where the rural and urban divide has re-
an ethical leader. He had a noble mind, strong- duced to a thin line.
ly believed in simplicity and has encouraged  A Nation where there is an equitable distribution
scores of Indians and people all of the world and adequate access to energy and quality water.
through his dedication, empathy and integrity.  A Nation where agriculture, industry and service
He was a visionary who had immense faith in sector work together in symphony.
the ability of the human mind.
 A Nation where education with value system is not
During his Presidency, he maintained his close con- denied to any meritorious candidates because of
nections with science and technology in the quest societal or economic discrimination.
to transform India into a developed country. He  A Nation which is the best destination for the most
upheld the virtues of a citizen and, as a scien- talented scholars, scientists, and investors.
tist, always combined ethics with science. While  A Nation where the best health care is available to
occupying the highest position in the country, Mr. all.
Kalam was not swayed by power but used love  A Nation where the governance is responsive,
and peace as tools to be one among the masses. transparent and corruption free.
Some of the lessons we learned from his leader-  A Nation where poverty has been totally eradicated,
ship is that everything is possible, leaders must illiteracy removed and crimes against women and
humble themselves and that leaders are the fire children are absent and none in the society feels
of their followers’ mind. He inspired millions alienated.
of youth to dream and believe in themselves.  A Nation that is prosperous, healthy, secure, peace-
He was a rational thinker who emphasised on ful and happy and continues with a sustainable
curiosity of mind. For him integrity was an in- growth path.
separable trait of, that helps in building a strong  A Nation that is one of the best places to live in and
ethically upright character. is proud of its leadership.

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 Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam - Famous Quotes

 You have to dream before your dreams can come true.

 A dream is not that which you see while sleeping, it is something that does not let you sleep.
 You should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.
 If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.
 All of us do not have equal talent. But, all of us have an equal opportunity to develop our talents.
 Man needs difficulties in life because they are necessary to enjoy success.
 Don’t take rest after your first victory because if you fail in second, more lips are waiting to say
that your first victory was just luck.
 Let us sacrifice our today so that our children can have a better tomorrow.
 I am not handsome but I can give my hand to someone who needs help; because beauty is re-
quired in the heart, not in face.
 The best brains of the nation may be found on the last benches of the classroom.
 Excellence happens not by accident. It is a process.
 Winners are not those who never fail but those who never quit.
 Two rules for a peaceful life: Depression in failure should never go to heart, and ego in success
should never go to the brain.
 Luxury and Lies have huge maintenance costs. But Truth and Simplicity are self-maintained
without any cost.

Thinkers Digest -”70 Thinkers 70 Thoughts” Page-114