What really matters in life

Philosophers say:

Heraclitus:

Harmony

Democritus:

Happiness and balance

Sophists:

Individual freedom, by any means necessary

Socrates:

Knowledge

Plato:

Reason

Aristotle:

Self realization

Epicurus:

Pleasure

Stoics:

Harmony

Philo:

God; perfect purity

St. Agustine:

Union with God

Thomas Aquinas:

Realization of Self as God ordainer

Meister Eckhart:

Union with God; one

Christianity:

God is good

Eastern religions:

God of good and God of Evil (duality)

Thomas Hobbes:

Relative (no absolute good or evil)

Descartes:

God is perfect

Spinoza:

Self preservation and intellectual love of God

John Locke:

Enlightened self interest

Richard Cumberland:

Welfare of the group, society

Lord Shaftesbury:

Welfare of Self and group

Francis Hutcheson:

Greatest good for the greatest number

Leibnitz:

Innate principles in the human soul

Kant:

Discover the meaning of right and wrong;

good and evil

Rousseau:

Human will; moral law and duty

Fichte:

Know what is right and do it because it is right

Schopenhauer:

Sympathy and pity

Mill:

Greatest good for the greatest number ("utilitarian")

Bentham:

Greatest good for the greatest number

Spencer:

Scientific basis of right and wrong ("absolute right produces immediate pleasure;

relative right produces future happiness;

the goal is absolute right")

Dewey & James:

Good serves the ends of the group and the individual
and is relative

("food for a sick man may be poison")

Gandhi:

Nonviolence

Martin Luther King:

Love