AN EXPOSE OF

WESTERN AND
EASTERN ETHICS
 WESTERN ETHICS
The moral life in ancient Greece developed when a
Greek performed his duties as a citizen.
During medieval period, moral life dominated by the
church, and the good life was identified with the
holy life or the religious life.
In modern period, the revolt again church
occurred.
Today, ethics mainly by two influences: the free
reflections that arose in the Greek city states and
the moral tradition of Judeo-Christians that was
taught by the church of middle ages.
 A. GREEK ETHICS
1. ETHICAL TEACHING OF SOCRATES
- He is considered as the greatest moral philosopher of
Western civilization.
- His philosophy is evidently ethical rather than
ontological.
- His epistemology is always geared towards a moral
life, to the effects that whenever he speaks of truth, he
always sees to it that it is at the same time a
discourage of will and tat whenever he speaks of
knowledge, he always makes it a point that his
audiences will realize that knowledge is not an entity
for its own sake but means to ethical action.
- He taught that knowledge and truth provoke the will to
act fir the good so that the agent can live right or good
moral.
- For him a person can act correctly and well if he know
what is a good life.
- Correct or right action does not necessarily mea good
action, because correctness is different from goodness
just as wrongness is different from badness.
- Knowing what is right means doing what is right.
- The will of the man always aims at the good.
- A wise person is not a type of a mentally undisciplined
individual but of a well cultured person.
- Ethics embodies a fundamental principles which means
HAPPINESS: that demand 2 things; goodness and
virtue.
2. ETHICAL TEACHING OF PLATO
-Plato contents that happiness lies in reason.
-He posits that there are 2 Domains of reality:
IDEAL(eternal,immutable,self-existing,indestructable)
and PHENOMENAL
WORLDS(material,mutable,teleological,destructible.
-Man is a soul using a body, the man’s soul has three
parts; spiritual(feeling),appetitive(desire),rational.
-Spiritual soul located in the chest; appetitive soul in the
abdomen; rational soul in the head.
-Human body( phenomenal world) while human
soul(ideal).
-His ethics speaks four basic virtue; wisdom(rational
soul), courage(spiritual) , temperance(appetitive), and
justice(the observance of duty and righteousness).
-Moral laws are universal and absolute because
virtue and knowledge are parts of the moral law.
-Plato says that the good is- The harmony of our
native interest- to see, to know, to cultivate the
affections, to associates ourselves with the
movements of the visible world, to find our true
place in the community of social group, then join
the harmony the grace of symmetry, where
variations of temper are subjects to rational
control, all excess being forbidden; and finally, to
see to it that the good embodies the truth that
have been won by analysis and experience.
 ARISTOTLE

-Aristotle claims that ethics is a matter of planning,

purpose, and decisions: a matter of character.
-It is not natural for man to be moral, but for man to be
moral is something demanded by nature.
-He emphasizes virtues; moral and intellectual.
-Intellectual virtue- owes both its birth and its growth
to teaching(requires experience and time)
-moral virtue- comes about the result of habit(ethike
or ethos)
-Virtue is reason and reason is virtue. It means
excellence of a thing to perform effectively its proper
function.
*ARISTOTELIAN CONCEPT OF
THE MEAN CAN BE
CONVENIENTLY GROUPED AS
FOLLOWS:
*ARISTOTELIAN CONCEPT OF THE MEAN
CAN BE CONVENIENTLY GROUPED AS
FOLLOWS:

1. The mean from the standpoint of

conduct;
2. The mean from the standpoint of
intercourse between words and
actions; and
3. The mean from the standpoint of
passions.
*MEAN FROM THE STANDPOINT OF
CONDUCTS INVOLVES THE FF. VIRTUES:

a) Concerning feelings of fear and confidence,

Courage is the mean.
b) Concerning pleasure and pain, Temperance is the
mean.
c) Concerning the giving and taking of money,
Liberality is the mean.
d) Concerning honor and dishonor, Proper pride is
the mean.
e) Concerning anger, Good-temper is the mean.
 *MEAN FROM THE STANDPOINT
OF INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
WORD AND ACTIONS INCLUDE IS
FF. VIRTUES:
a) Concerning truth, the mean is truthfulness while
the exaggeration is boastness and the deficiency
is modesty;
b) Concerning pleasantness in the giving of
amusement, the mean is ready-willedness while
the exaggeration is buffoonery and the deficiency
is boorishness; and
c) Concerning friendship, the mean is friendliness
while the exaggeration is being obsequious or a
flatterer and deficiency is quarrelsomeness.
*MEAN FROM THE STANDPOINT
OF PASSIONS INCLUDES ONLY
ONE VIRTUE:
Concerning envy and spite , the mean
is righteous indignation.
 B. CHRISTIAN ETHICS
1. ETHICAL TEACHING OF JESUS CRIST
- The moral paradigm used by our Lord Jesus is similar to
those of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, personal call towards
self-realization.
*Lord’s ethical teaching through the ff. headings :
a) The ethics of Jesus shows more preference to the poor and
the oppressed;
b) Is an ethics of love;
c) Demands honesty and authenticity;
d) Is an ethics which teaches faith in the Father;
e) Is an ethics of peace and reconcilation; and
f) Demands sacrifice and suffering.
2. ETHICAL TEACHING OF ST. AUGUSTINE
*The focal point of Augustine’s moral imperative is
God; and because love is the highest attribute of God,
love, eventually, is considered by this so-called
proponent of medieval, philosophy as the basis and
central point of his moral teaching.
- Augustine believed that God is the starting point
and the terminal point of everything in existence.
- Evil for him is the negation or absence of good.
- Human acts are nothing else but gestures of man’s
free will.
- They refer to what he calls the five cardinal virtues;
prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, and
charity or love.
- To be good is to desire for God.
- He says that beauty, power, honor, fame,
health, and other cannot give man perfect
happiness and ultimate satisfaction because
they are by themselves finite and mutable.
- Augustine’s understanding of God as love
drives him to take love as the basis and
central point of his ethics.
- We should practice the cardinal virtues in
the name of charity of love because for him
love is the foundation of all virtues .
3. ETHICAL TEACHING OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
He as an avid follower of Aristotelian philosophy, in
general, and of Aristotelian Ethics, in particular-
Christianized the pagan moral philosophy of
Aristotle.
- His term of salvation(faith, hope, and love)
- The connatural virtues and supernatural virtues
will equip man with the necessary requirements
towards man’s well-being here on earth as well
as eternal life in heaven.
- “every agent acts for an end”
*Aquinas sketches some criteria:
a) If it is desirable to us for its own sake;
b) If it is sufficient in itself to satisfy us;
c) If t is attainable by the wise among us; and
d) If it is offers happiness to us .
*The agent performs voluntary or willing actions
through the ff. conditions;
a) If the act is in itself overt(externally manifested)
b) If the agents acts because of a motive that prompts
him to act; and
c) If the agent is responsible for the consequence of
his actions.
- God, in his divine providence plans for ll things and
direct all things to their proper order, to their proper
purpose, and to their proper ends.
- Natural Law when apply to man become Natural
Moral Law , these two are copies and reflections of
the Eternal Law.
- Natural Law and Eternal Law are one.
- Moral Law is the eternal law acquired by man trought
his reason.
- The Eternal Law of God rules all things in their order
and purpose (end) and man, in his rational nature,
cannot be exempted from the governance of the
Eternal Law.
- He admit that sometimes we commit evil acts but this
evil act appear as an apparent good to the agent.
“LOVE IS THE NUMBER ONE
MORAL ETHICS, SO LET’S
LOVE ONE ANOTHER”

“THE END”
PREPARED BY:
DARLENE RAUTT L. MAPA