Ancient Ethics and Contemporary Ethics

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine a few doctrines in the history of ancient ethics which can still be considered valuable and even perhaps valid today. Moral motivation for the Stoics and for Socratesis based on self-interest with the further assumption that the moral virtues are the true goods. But the Stoic and Socratic justification strategies are different. Attention is then called to the Protagorean brand ofrelativism underlying contemporary libertarian claims. The paper end swith the suggestion that only a theory of objective human goods can resolve the problem of moral motivation and of the indeterminacy of the harm principie in modern liberalism.