Ethical Philosohy
Thanks to Mr. Higham, I found this Ethical Philosophy selector. My results are detailed below.
1. Augustine (100%) 2. Kant (82%) 3. Ockham (69%) 4. Spinoza (66%) 5. Aquinas (62%) 6. Prescriptivism (62%) 7. Mill (46%) 8. Noddings (46%) 9. Sartre (46%) 10. Bentham (45%) 11. Cynics (37%) 12. Nietzsche (37%) 13. Plato (34%) 14. Rand (32%) 15. Stoics (30%) 16. Aristotle (28%) 17. Epicureans (24%) 18. Hume (24%) 19. Hobbes (0%)
And this is what they say about Augustine's philosophy--I am dubious of the accuracy of some of this:
Augustine (354-430)Happiness is a union of the soul with God after one has died
Bodily pleasures are relatively inferior to spiritual pleasures.
Philosophical reasoning is not the path to wisdom and happiness.
A love of God and faith in Jesus is the only path to happiness.
God is the one to allow people to practice the love of God.
One must love God in order to fulfill moral law.
People are inherently evil; only the grace of God (or is it merit to be saved?) can save them.
I wonder about the "inherently evil." Because of the doctrine of original sin, I suppose you could say that Augustine held to something like this, but I don't think "evil" is the right word. I think it might be better to say "inherently flawed" or "inherently inclilned to evil action." Surely Augustine did not deny the first chapter of Genesis? But I leave that to those who better understand/know these philosophers.
I have some considerable pleasure in contemplating the fact that the Philosopher who would exclude poets shows up relatively low on my list. I am surprised how high Immanuel Kant shows up on my list considering how little I care for anything he has to say.
Here's what the site says about Kant:
We can make a prior judgments; the negation of such judgments would a logical absurdity because a priori knowledge is known without sensory data. We combine a priori and a posteriori knowledge to We have freedom God is not essential for his moral argumentation The objective facts about the human knowledge leads to Kant's morality We must act ought of a sense of duty in order to be moral Moral action does not come out of following inclinations Moral standards must be followed without qualification We must always act so that the means of our actions could be a universal law We must always treat people as ends not means
However, if this is all true, it doesn't sound nearly so bad as Kant in person.
