List of ethicists

List of ethicists including religious or political figures recognized by those outside their tradition as having made major contributions to ideas about ethics, or raised major controversies by taking strong positions on previously unexplored problems.

All are known for an ethical work or problem, but a few are primarily authors or satirists, or known as a mediator, politician, futurist or scientist, rather than as an ethicist or philosopher. Some controversial figures are included, some of whom you may see as bad examples. A few are included because their names have become synonymous with certain ethical debates, but only if they personally elaborated an ethical theory justifying their actions.

A

*Pierre Abélard
*John Stevens Cabot Abbott
*Mortimer Adler
*Thomas Aquinas
*Ambrose
*Andronicus of Rhodes
*G. E. M. Anscombe
*Aristotle
*Aristoxenus
*Asoka
*Augustine of Hippo
*Marcus Aurelius
*Avicenna

B

*Franz Xaver von Baader
*Francis Bacon
*Samuel Bailey
*Friedrich Eduard Beneke
*Jeremy Bentham
*Thomas Berry
*Maurice Blanchot
*Dietrich Bonhoeffer
*George Boole
*Nathan Braun
*Martin Buber
*Gautama Buddha
*Mario Bunge

C

*Arthur Caplan
*Randy Cohen
*Confucius

D

*Partha Dasgupta
*Abraham ibn Daud
*Hugo de Garis
*Philip Doddridge
*Elliot N. Dorff
*Ronald Dworkin

E

*Epicurus
*Rudolf Christoph Eucken

F

*Johann Albert Fabricius
*Ismail Raji' al-Faruqi
*Nosson Tzvi Finkel
*John Finnis
*Joseph Fins
*Owen Flanagan
*Joseph Fletcher
*Philippa Foot
*William K. Frankena
*Alexander Campbell Fraser
*R. Edward Freeman
*Erich Fromm

G

*Raimond Gaita
*Mohandas Gandhi
*Ghazali
*Allan Gibbard
*Carol Gilligan
*Peter Goldie
*Victor Gollancz
*Thomas Hill Green
*Stanley Grenz
*Hugo Grotius
*Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

H

*Hammurabi
*R.M. Hare
*John Harsanyi
*Robert S. Hartman
*Stanley Hauerwas
*Henry Hazlitt
*Paul Hawken
*Erich Heller
*Claude Adrien Helvétius
*Frank Herbert
*Abraham Joshua Heschel
*Hierocles of Alexandria
*James Hinton
*Wau Holland
*Hans-Hermann Hoppe
*David Hume
*John Peters Humphrey - author of UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights
*Francis Hutcheson
*Thomas Henry Huxley

I

*Lauri Ingman
*Alija Ali Izetbegovic

J

*Jane Jacobs author of Systems of Survival
*Paul Janet
*Francis Jeffrey
*Théodore Simon Jouffroy
*Jesus—Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel

K

*Immanuel Kant - "Metaphysic of Ethics"
*Rushworth Kidder
*Søren Kierkegaard
*Israel Kirzner
*Lawrence Kohlberg
*Christine Korsgaard
*David Korten
*Peter Kropotkin
*Hans Küng

L

*Aldo Leopold
*Barron Lerner
*Emmanuel Levinas
*John Locke
*Moshe Chaim Luzzatto

M

*Niccolò Machiavelli
*J. L. Mackie
*Mao Zedong
*Marcion of Sinope
*James Martineau
*John McDowell
*Donella Meadows
*Peter Medawar
*Mencius
*Menedemus
*Fatima Mernissi
*James Mill
*John Stuart Mill
*Moses—the Ethical Decalogue
*Carol Moore
*G.E. Moore
*Radhakamal Mukerjee

N

*Thomas Nagel
*Seyyed Hossein Nasr
*Oswald von Nell-Breuning
*H. Richard Niebuhr
*Reinhold Niebuhr
*Friedrich Nietzsche
*Carlos Santiago Nino
*Karl Immanuel Nitzsch
*David L. Norton
*Robert Nozick
*Martha Nussbaum

O

*John Cardinal O'Connor
*Onora O'Neill

P

*Blaise Pascal
*Bahya ibn Paquda
*Derek Parfit
*Craig Paterson
*Philip Pettit
*Philo
*Plato
*Richard Price
*Prodicus

Q

*Quintilian

R

*Fazlur Rahman
*John Rawls
*Martin Rees
*George Croom Robertson
*W. D. Ross
*Murray Rothbard
*Jean-Jacques Rousseau
*John Ruskin
*Bertrand Russell

*Marquis de Sade
*Edward Said
*Michael J. Sandel
*Julian Savulescu
*Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
*Ziauddin Sardar
*John Ralston Saul
*Geoffrey Sayre-McCord
*Giovanni Battista Scaramelli
*Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
*Friedrich Schiller
*Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher
*Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel
*Moritz Schlick
*Frank Schmalleger
*Arthur Schopenhauer
*Albert Schweitzer
*Amartya Sen
*Lucius Annaeus Seneca
*Russ Shafer-Landau

*Henry Sidgwick
*Georg Simmel
*Peter Singer
*B. F. Skinner
*J. J. C. Smart
*Adam Smith
*Wesley J. Smith
*Margaret Somerville
*Baruch Spinoza
*John Shelby Spong
*Charles L. Stevenson
*Dugald Stewart
*Stobaeus
*Jeffrey Stout
*John C. Stennis
*Leslie Stephen
*David Friedrich Strauss
*Sun Yat-Sen

T

*Jenny Teichman
*Judith Jarvis Thomson
*Paul Tillich
*Hsun Tzu

U to Z

*Francisco de Vitoria
*Johann Georg Walch
*William George Ward
*Otto Weininger
*William Whewell
*Philip Wicksteed
*Susan Wolf
*Christian Wolff (philosopher)
*William Wollaston
*Xenocrates
*John Howard Yoder
*Theodor Zwinger

See also

*list of economists
*list of ethics topics
*list of philosophers
*list of political scientists