Aristotle (q.v.) (384 ac.-322 B.c.) gave the philosophic consideration of Plato a more scientific and empirical turn—a contrast, how ever, which is often exaggerated. He protested against the identification by Plato of human end or good with that of the universe, and conse guently attached less importance to lcnowledge in the form of philosophic insight, and more to practical insight or wisdom. But, in the main assuming the Platonic basis, he carried into detail the analysis of human faculties or func tions involved in conduct, giving a careful analysis of desire, pleasure and pain, of the various modes of lcnowledge, of voluntary action and malting a remarkable analysis of the various forms of virtue and vice actually cur rent. In a word he emphasized in detail psycho logical and social aspects, merely sketched by Plato. On the social side, it had become obvious that the comprehensive scheme of reform enter tained by Plato was impossible; and here, also Aristotle is free to undertake a more empirical description and analysis of various forms of government and organization in their moral bases and bearings. When in the 12th and 13th centuries A.D. the works of Aristotle were again made known to the European world, first through translations from the Arabic and then from the Greek, Aristotle's ethics became em bodied in the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church, espedally in the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), and found literary expression in the Divine Comedy of Dante. His ethical writings have more pro foundly- affected common speech and thought than those of any other writer, and to a large extent have become a part of the moral com mon-sense of civilized humanity.
The details of later ethical philosophy in Greece and Rome form an interesting part of the history of ethics, but, with one exception, supply no pew idea of sufficient importance to need mention here. The exception is the Stoic conception of virtue as allying in accordance with nature,) and the conception of the (claw with nature° which grew out of this. This idea, under the form of jus naturale, was taken up into Roman jurisprudence, and became the ideal of a common moral law which underlies all dif ferences of positive municipal law, and which, accordingly, forms an ethical standard by which positive law can be tried, and its diversities re duced to a common denominator. It reappeared in the Middle Ages in the form of the natural law (as distinct from revealed or supernatural law), written on the °fleshly tablets of the Imam° and was thus indirectly influential in forming the still current notion of conscience as a moral legislative force. It came out in continental ethical thought of the 17th and 18th centuries in the conception of moral law as something analogous to a system of mathemati cal axioms, definitions and demonstrations, dis coverable by reason, and forming the frame work of both individual and political ethics.
Patristic Mediteval Period (5th to 15th cen turies a.a.)—The second period of ethical his tory is characterized by the subordination of ethics, as a branch of philosophy, to theology. The distinctive features contributed in this period to subsequent ethics are the emphasis laid upon ideas of law, authority, obligation or duty, and merit or demerit, namely, the good as religious salvation involving a knowledge and love of God as supreme perfection, possible only in the next world; and evil as sin, guilt also needing supernatural expiation. Because
of the emphasis upon law and authority, moral ideas are largely assimilated to forensic and ju ridical conceptions. Most significant, however, for ethical theory is the transfer of theoretical interest from the conception of the good, the central idea of ancient ethics, to that of obliga tion. Not the natural end of man, but the duty of absolute submission of will to transcendent moral authority was the keynote. And even when ethics was freed from subservience to theology, it still remained easier for the modern mind .to conceive of morality in terms of the nature and authority of duty than as the process of realizing the good. On the more concrete, empirical side, the great contribution of me dizval theory was in depicting the moral drama, the struggle of good and evil, as it goes on in the individual soul. The fact that this was fraught with significance for an endless future life made it a subject of anxious and minute attention ; and here, too, even when the moral region was later marked off more or less definitely from the religious, modern thought owes its consciousness of the subtle perplexities, temptations and shades of moral effort and issue to mediwval rather than to ancient ethics.
Early Modern Period (The Reformation to the French Revolution).— The complexity and variety of moral theory and inquiry since the• 15th century, as well as its relative .nearness, make it difficult to secure the perspective neces sary to its proper characterization. It is all more or less connected, however, with the strug gle toward greater individual freedom, and with the problem of maintaining a stable associated and institutional life, on the basis of recog nition of individuality — the democratic move ment. In its earliest period, modern ethics was largely characterized by reaction against scho lasticism; it was an effort to secure a basis for ethics free from subordination to theology and to mediaeval philosophy, and the schoolmen's versions of Aristotle. Moreover so much of energy was expended in the practical effort to get freedom of thought, of political action, of religious creed, of commercial life, that moral theory turned largely upon detailed questions arising out of the practical struggle. This ac counts to a considerable extent for the scat tered, fragmentary condition of modern ethics as compared with the systematic character of either Greek or mediaeval thought. Moreover, the very gaining of intellectual freedom of in quiry opened up countless fields of interest: Ethical problems sprang into existence at every turn; every new movement in industry, in poli tics, national and international, and in art, brought with it a new ethical problem. Social life was itself undergoing such rapid change. and in such tentative, uncertain ways, that each of these problems had to be attacked independ ently. The result is a critical controversial and individualistic, rather than a constructive and systematized ethics — with the advantage, how ever, of remarkable richness in detail.