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AN OUTLINE OF WESTERN ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY 1. GREEK ETHICS Greece is the springwell of European Philosophy. The Ancient Greeks were profoundly interested in questions pertaining to society, polity, morality, culture, art, literature etc. More importantly, they raised fundamental questions of philosophy and advanced highly significant cosmological, metaphysical and epistemological theories. The early Ionian philosophers such as Thales, Anaxaminder and Anexamenes were interested in cosmological questions. Their focus was on the nature of ultimate stuff of the universe. The Eleatic Philosophers such as Parmenides and Heraclitus were centrally concerned with the problem of Being and Becoming. Parmenides denied any becoming or change and advanced the view that nothing changes. As against Parmenides, Heraclitus underlined that Being or changelessness is an illusion and an interminable process of becoming is the only reality. The Pythagorean School was akin to a mystical movement. They were earliest ethical philosophers for they tried to figure out the purposefulness of human life. For Empedocles four elements such as Earth, Air, Fire and Water are the basic stuff of reality and various kinds of matter comprise of these elements in varying proportions. Becoming is nothing but composition and decomposition. Love and Hate are the moving forces separating and unifying particles or elements. The Atomists deemed the different kinds of Matter to be infinitely divisible and equally ultimate. 1.1 Pythagoras Pythagoras and his followers known as Pythagoreans were mostly engaged in cosmological questions. They wanted to figure out the primordial or ultimate stuff of the universe with a view to having an

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