Monday, October 19, 2009
Chicken or the Egg...
I have been thinking about the great debate about the morality that surrounds law. Many times we have cited that morals have preceded the law and has helped us make the law. While it is true that we have had these morals for a long time, it is hard to say that morality is the only thing drives the creation of law. While we also look at this and try to determine the morality of observing laws we must look at the inherent nature of obeying law. Is it immoral to obey a law that on it's face isn't immoral like speeding? We say that because the law was created, to disobey the law would be an immoral act because its the law. Is it immoral to disobey an immoral law? that is the ultimate question on this topic. I believe that only laws that prohibit immoral actions should be considered immoral to break. Breaking laws that have no morality involved with them should not be immoral to break because it is simply a law.
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I think this post makes a lot of sense. However, if each individual has the power to determine the morality of any of a number of laws, then people would probably disagree about the morality of lots of laws. There's no way to have 100% of the population agree that every law is moral. Therefore, it is important that breaking any law be considered immoral so that we don't have chaos!
ReplyDeleteI think that it is not immoral to break a law that is not based on any moral grounds such as speeding for example. On the other hand however, it is obviously immoral to break a law with a basis in morality such as stealing or killing someone for instance.
ReplyDeleteSince morality is subjective, this is a very hard topic to discuss. Morality isn't the same for everyone across the board, even though we would like to think that eating people, cats, and dogs, is gross and stupid. As far as whether it came before law, I think it did. I think this because when I look at myself, I don't look at the social things around me. I would look deep inside of myself and I would think about what is moral for me and how to help other people. Law is just merely a way to attempt to put everyone's level of morality at the same level.
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