Thursday, October 15, 2009

Should Laws be Natural or Positive?

The whole argument about whether laws should be Positive or Traditional Natural Law will never end. Each has their own valid argument. Whether Positivists like it or not, Positive stems from Traditional Natural Law. The laws that are written down came from laws that were in existence of some form and the laws that were in existence were moral laws. All Positive laws are derived from the Ten Commandments. The last five Commandments have clearly influenced certain laws that are still in place. Most of the written laws we were taught as children, under the pretense of the Golden Rule. People grow up knowing most of the written laws because they were taught, as children, that certain acts are wrong or “not nice.” I do believe that Positive Law is more secular and easier to understand then Moral Law, but not necessarily more valid. I am ruled more by Moral Law then Positive Law, but my morals just happened to coincide with most Positive Law. And the morals that don’t coincide with Positive Law, I just haven’t been caught doing yet. I think Moral Law refines the sticky area of Positive Law. Taking the religion out of a law makes it more applicable to more people. If every person had the same religion then Moral Law would still rule the land. Positive and Moral Law both serve the same purpose; to control the masses. Laws and rules of any kind are made to prevent anarchy.

4 comments:

  1. I agree that moral law and positive law definitely both play a role in society. I also agree the moral law has helped shape natural law. Without moral law being the basis our positive law could be completely contradictory to what they are now. The only reason positive law is needed is because there are people with different sets of morals.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with what Chris said. The only reason that positive law is needed is because there are people who possess different sets of morals. I believe that the positivist argument is not that Natural Law and Positive Law are composed of completely different laws; just that they are independent of one another. "No killing" is not a law BECAUSE a Commandment says that it is so- it is a law because it is a norm that a society must abide by in order to not result in total chaos.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree with the post in the fact that most positive laws are derived from Traditional natural law. Since natural law has been around much longer than positive law and many of the positivist's beliefs mirrow that of traditional naturalists, it is obvious that some basis for positivism has come from natural law theories. While there are many laws such as traffic violations that have no moral grounding, the bigger laws such as sanctions against murder and theft are based on morality. Our society is changing so much today that there needs t be positive laws not based on morals so taht order can be kept in our ever changing society.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think that Traditional natural law is the origin of most of the laws. Religion reflects pretty much every society. As people are believe more in rules that they feel are morally true.

    ReplyDelete