Will a person of high morality break any law?

What if the law is wrong?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Basically, there is no direct connection between law and morals. Obviously you can think of situations where it would be immoral to follow the law.

Hans

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

You should read the essay CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE by Thoreau.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Define law.

Moral law? In that case, name one.

Laws seem to be something which cannot be wrong. People only mistake somethings as laws and wrongly name them thus, however, that does not make them laws.

This reminds me of the question that was put before Socrates. What is justice? Somehow a law that can be wrong seems to come from the type of justice that Thrasymachus describes.

 

If a law is about to be abandoned or amended tomorrow, someone break it today?

 

That sounds like taking advantage of the laws demotion. Break laws that won't be out of circulation for a while....Larsony, muder perhaps? anyone?

 

To give a good and practical law, we need sufficient information to assess the situation, to balance the damage with the punishment, to demand evidence to prove the breaking, Do we have all that when putting the law down on the book?

 

Were conscientious objectors morally wrong? Legality and morality are quite often separate things.

 

they are not comppletely seperated because we have to ask if it is moral to give laws under insufficient information.

 

It would be nice if more consideration of the morality of legislation were considered but the reality is that laws are usually passed as a matter of political expediency.

 

I didn't bother to read the whole thread but something seemed to be overlooked:

Morality is reletive. If you meant; Will a highely Ethical person break any law?' the answer is:

That depends if the Ethical system he adhers to is in accordance to the law system which has jurisdiction over him.

Also, in the off chance that he does violate a law, wil he get caught?

Also: If he is highely Ethical it doesn't mean he is perfect.

Now those are all the simple theoretical answers that spring to mind. In reality:

1. No one is highely Ethical
2. Most people who are even slightely Ethical have hardly a clue about even 10% of the laws ont he books
3. People violate laws constantly and almost never get caught unless it's a MAJOR infraction.

This entire question is really alluding to a higher questiona bout Order and Chaos in society and their relationship to Justice and fairness.

We don't live life in a vacuum. Our justice systems are the last lines of defense we have against an upsurge in Chaos that will threaten to comprimise the soceital system. Our soceities have many such defense systems: The Law making branch, The diplomatic community, The milatary defense machine. All these systems are about regulating the Chaos levels within the systems that compose society.

The problem is that these Order devises over time grow too numerous and too powerful and thus the average citizen quickly looses site of all the laws. Thus no matter how Ethical or Moral he may be he will likel be in violation of laws since something as contacerous as human society (as it is) requires such an abundance of order to maintain.

I think that human soceity is structured at the moment in sucha s way that the Order/Chaos balance within the Individual is upset and this is really where your questions heart lies. Human Society in general is a thing of Evil Order; though is the case of Islam I'd say it's a thing of Evil Chaos.

 

The moral standards are not relative.

They won't be the same thing, because they have differet purpose. If you got western law system and a Islamic morality belief, you got a big problems.

this is irrelevent to the question. Caught or not, he violate theoretically.

Not perfect dose not mean he is going to break laws.

A fool is highly ethical because he dose not know how not to be.

Can we say that we are not serious about laws unless the damage is serious. Or the law is not practical any more. 90% of people just act to their morality perception, natural or learned, not laws.

The Chaos/Order perception is technical, it dose not address the goal. What is the goal of order or chaos? No one will enjoy a complete order or chaos.

 

WHAT? Of course THEY ARE RELATIVE! Relative to every single culture! There is so much evidence for it that really do not understand how anybody cannot see it! Take slavery for instance – it was considered perfectly moral AND legal for several THOUSANDS years. Today, in most cultures, it is considered one of the biggest evils! (BTW: Ethics is relative as well).

For “highly moral” person this is not crucial question. For “highly moral” the most important thing is to act in accordance with his beliefs. Imagine you live in some totalitarian regime – under many such regimes YOU MUST break the law if you want to survive. And of course – you must break the law if you want fight against such regime. Even the countries which governments and jurisdictions are generally considered OK have sometimes very big problems, which can be solved ONLY IF some “highly moral” people deliberately break the law. When there was slavery in USA, abolitionists were breaking law because they believed that slavery is wrong. Even after slavery was abolished, there were still many discriminating laws – so again many people were breaking them quite openly and in many cases not only did not care about being caught – they did it IN ORDER to get caught, because they wanted to draw public attention.

 

But there are still elements that are not relative, for example, theft,rape,murder, they are redarded as crimes anywhere.

 

No, they are not. Among Gypsies the ability to steal is actually prized. Rape is almost classical example - even today there is a discussion in western culture what is and what is not "rape". In some African tribes, if warrior killed an enemy during a battle, he was forbidden to go back to his village unless he "purified" himself by raping some strange women. Attitude towards "murder" evolved in similar way.

 

Gypsies do not steal each other.
Rape is accepted on special occasions in special tribes, but not as a usual one.
As murder, some regimes take political killing as granted, but not a general practice.
That is to say, they must find some execuses to do it. Not as natural as eating.

 

But it is evident that moral standards differ, isn't it?

 

Cetainly not completely the same.To be precise, there is common ground but also dispute too.

 

When the cows take over the world it will be up to people of high morality to break EVERY LAW! MOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo

edit::: Unless of course you're one of those FREAKS who will abide by the "dont eat cow" law....weirdos