A moral compass / ethical lodestone

Making moral and ethical decisions is an inescapable part of life, and, in a survival scenario, the ethical and moral decisions are likely to become even more challenging than when life is easy and the reticulated water, gas and power still works.

One way or another we are guided by any number of philosophical systems of thought....to see where you might fall..or stand...check the following website out.

Ethical Philosophy Selector A Philosophy Selector

Evidently my philosophical world view is guided to a larger extent by Sartre, Hobbes, Mill, Hume and Bentham....no surprises there.

 

There wasn't much in the way of choices in the 1930's and 1940's in Europe...centrists would cop it from both sides, and the die hard communists bent in favour of the fascists (while the Von Ribbentrop / Molotov pact was in place)..or against the fascists once Hitler charged into Russia via operation Barbarossa, depending on Stalin's whims and fancies. I do like Sartre's existentialist philosophy though...Essence precedes existence!

 

1.Jean-Paul Sartre (100%)
2. Ayn Rand (98%)
3. John Stuart Mill (93%)
4. Thomas Hobbes (78%)
5. Aristotle (77%)
6. Plato (70%)
7. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (67%)
8. Immanuel Kant (66%)
9. David Hume (64%)
10. Jeremy Bentham (62%)
I'm going to have to re-read what I have on Sartre, because I really didn't think that he spoke to me very well. The rest I can definitely understand, with the exception of Jeremy Bentham - I have no idea who he is. Some research is in order. The middle eight, I would have picked myself, though not necessarily in that order. I would have expected to find some of the Stoics in the top ten; they came in 18th.

 

1) John Stuart Mill 100%
2) Epicureans 95% (This one surprised me)
3) Jean- Paul Sarte 95% (and this one was a surprise)
4) Immanual Kant 86%
5) Ayn Rand 83%

John Stuart Mill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mill expresses his view on freedom by illustrating how an individual's amelioration of personal quality and self-improvement is the sole source of true freedom. Only when an individual is able to attain such a beneficial standard of one's self, whilst in the absence of rendering external onerosity upon others, in their own journey to procure a higher calibre of self-worth, can true freedom prevail. Mill's attitude toward freedom and individual accomplishment through self-improvement has inspired many. By establishing an appreciable level of worthiness concerned with one's ability to fulfill personal standards of notability and merit, Mill was able to provide many with a principal example of how they should achieve such particular values.

He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham. He worked on the theory of the scientific method

 

Mine came out Benedictus Spinoza

 

I understand where you are coming from....Sartre doesn't do any favours for the reader in helping them to understand what the hell he is on about. In the existentialist tradition, Camus is more readable.

A reasonably clear explanation of existentialism as it pertains to Ethical Humanism can be heard by listening to one of the Ethical Society of St Louis's podcasts called, unsurprisingly, "Ethical Humanism and Existentialism".

http://www.ethicalstl.org/platforms/ESSTLPlatform2013-06-30.mp3

Edit: A google search will find downloadable copies of Existentialism for Dummies in .pdf format. (Am not suggesting that the folks here at SM, scratching their heads, (including me), while reading Sartre's book Being and Nothingness, are dummies.)

 

Interesting thread.

 

I take your point BT...perhaps for some...the quiz indicates which philosophies one's own view generally aligns with, rather than which philosophies necessarily guide one's own world view or where the philosophical underpinnings of one's world view are derived from.

 

1. Jean-Paul Sartre (100%)  More Info
 2. Ayn Rand (95%)  More Info
 3. Immanuel Kant (81%)  More Info
 4. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (80%)  More Info
 5. Stoics (77%)  More Info
 6. John Stuart Mill (73%)  More Info
 7. Aristotle (68%)  More Info
 8. David Hume (68%)  More Info
 9. Thomas Hobbes (66%)  More Info
 10. Cynics (65%)  More Info
 11. Thomas Aquinas (54%)  More Info
 12. Plato (49%)  More Info
 13. Jeremy Bentham (44%)  More Info
 14. Epicureans (43%)  More Info
 15. Benedictus Spinoza (42%)  More Info
 16. William of Ockham (38%)  More Info
 17. Prescriptivism (38%)  More Info
 18. Nel Noddings (34%)  More Info
 19. St. Augustine (30%)  More Info
 20. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (12%) 
 21. William James (10%)

 

I ended up with that Mill character in the 100%...accidentally closed it before I caught the rest of them...

 

I just would not have put myself in the existentialist camp. I have found Sarte to be utterly depressing, and Camus more so. Camus is a main dish of depressing, with a side order of STRANGE. I can understand both of them not being all happiness and light, given their life experiences, but I think to relate to them I would have to endure similar experiences. The ones that I find myself most inclined toward are Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Hume, Aristotle, Plato, and Nietzsche; and probably in that order. It could be the readability of their works. Perhaps Sarte and Camus have points that I could better appreciate, were they presented in a different format. I'll check out the link you suggested. Thanks.

 

Immanuel kant 100%

 

Interesting but a little directional in the questions. I'm sure my last choice answers affected the outcome.

If one had to choose a question other than Don't like any of them, I'm sure the results would be quite different.

1. St. Augustine (100%)
2. Thomas Aquinas (87%)
3. Immanuel Kant (81%)
4. William of Ockham (80%)
5. Plato (76%)
6. Aristotle (70%)
7. John Stuart Mill (66%)
8. Jean-Paul Sartre (60%)
9. Benedictus Spinoza (58%)
10. Epicureans (56%)
11. Ayn Rand (52%)
12. Prescriptivism (43%)
13. Jeremy Bentham (41%)
14. Stoics (30%)
15. Cynics (24%)
16. William James (18%)
17. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (17%)
18. Thomas Hobbes (15%)
19. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (15%)
20. David Hume (13%)
21. Nel Noddings (12%)

 

I'm a huge fan of both of of your 1st two... Lol

 

My top 10 results. Very interesting quiz.

1. Jean-Paul Sartre (100%)
2. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (69%)
3. Benedictus Spinoza (65%)
4. Immanuel Kant (64%)
5. John Stuart Mill (63%)
6. David Hume (58%)
7. Thomas Aquinas (54%)
8.Stoics (54%)
9. Ayn Rand (53%)
10. Aristotle (50%)

I think @RightHand was very correct when she said birds of a feather.