Ethics - Marxism, Dialectical Materialism, Alienation

ethics

Table of Contents

Introduction & Top Questions
The origins of ethics
- Mythical accounts
  - Introduction of moral codes
  - Problems of divine origin
- Prehuman ethics
  - Nonhuman behaviour
  - Kinship and reciprocity
- Anthropology and ethics
The history of Western ethics
- Ancient civilizations to the end of the 19th century
  - The ancient Middle East and Asia
    - The Middle East
    - India
    - China
  - Ancient and Classical Greece
    - Ancient Greece
    - Socrates
    - Plato
    - Aristotle
  - Later Greek and Roman ethics
    - The Stoics
    - The Epicureans
  - Christian ethics from the New Testament to the Scholastics
    - Ethics in the New Testament
    - St. Augustine
    - St. Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics
  - The Renaissance and the Reformation
    - Machiavelli
    - The first Protestants
  - The British tradition from Hobbes to the utilitarians
    - Hobbes
    - Early intuitionists: Cudworth, More, and Clarke
    - Shaftesbury and the moral sense school
    - Butler on self-interest and conscience
    - The climax of moral sense theory: Hutcheson and Hume
    - The intuitionist response: Price and Reid
    - Utilitarianism
      Paley
      Bentham
      Mill
      Sidgwick
  - The Continental tradition from Spinoza to Nietzsche
    - Spinoza
    - Leibniz
    - Rousseau
    - Kant
    - Hegel
    - Marx
    - Nietzsche
- Western ethics from the beginning of the 20th century
  - Metaethics
    - Moore and the naturalistic fallacy
    - Modern intuitionism
    - Emotivism
    - Existentialism
    - Universal prescriptivism
    - Later developments in metaethics
      Moral realism
      Kantian constructivism: a middle ground?
      Irrealist views: projectivism and expressivism
      Ethics and reasons for action
  - Normative ethics
    - The debate over consequentialism
    - Varieties of consequentialism
    - Objections to consequentialism
    - An ethics of prima facie duties
    - Rawls’s theory of justice
    - Rights theories
    - Natural law ethics
    - Virtue ethics
    - Feminist ethics
    - Ethical egoism
  - Applied ethics
    - Equality
    - Animals
    - Environmental ethics
    - War and peace
    - Abortion, euthanasia, and the value of human life
    - Bioethics

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Marx was often portrayed by his followers as a scientist rather than a moralist. He did not deal directly with the ethical issues that occupied the philosophers so far discussed. His materialist conception of history is, rather, an attempt to explain all ideas, whether political, religious, or ethical, as the product of the particular economic stage that society has reached (see materialism). Thus, in feudal societies loyalty and obedience to one’s lord were regarded as the chief virtues. In capitalist societies, on the other hand, the need for a mobile labour force and expanding markets ensures that the most important ...(100 of 41429 words)

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