Ethical Theory Quotes

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

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.

Moral relativism says morality is relative, not absolute, I want to show moral relativism, in its popular form, is logically incoherent.

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.

Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak.

I am not advocating a morality based on evolution.

For the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater. .

That a science, which distinguishes the criterions of right and wrong; which teaches to establish the one, and prevent, punish, or redress the other; which employs in its theory the noblest faculties of the soul, and exerts in its practice the cardinal virtues of the heart; a science, which is universal in its use and extent, accommodated to each individual, yet comprehending the whole community; that a science like this should ever have been deemed unnecessary to be studied in an university, is matter of astonishment and concern.

It appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychologyand sociology.

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world's most influential living moral philosophers. He has written 30 books on ethics and held a variety of professorial chairs over the past four decades in North America.

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

Injustice is not evil in itself, but only in the fear and apprehension that one will not escape those who have been set up to punish the offense.

In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity.

I do not believe that a moral philosophy can ever be founded on a scientific basis. … The valuation of life and all its nobler expressions can only come out of the soul’s yearning toward its own destiny. Every attempt to reduce ethics to scientific formulas must fail. Of that I am perfectly convinced.

Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.

Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.

Morality is either a social contract or you have to pay cash.

Graft Philosopher.

Morality's not practical. Morality's a gesture. A complicated gesture learnt from books.

That action is best which procures the greatest happiness.

Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology , and first establishes a Theology ; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology , which is incapable of any definite concept.

Pleasure and pain are the only springs of action in man, and always will be.