There have also been many examples throughout the world of just and unjust laws being enforced on many unhappy citizens. In Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, he wrote to fellow clergymen in Alabama who felt that his rebellious behavior was not justifiable. Dr. King proceeded in this letter to tell the clergymen that there are laws that are “just and unjust” and his behavior has been to protest the many unjust laws that were in place for African Americans at the time. Dr. King felt that we as human beings have the right to disobey unjust laws in the attempt to get it repealed. This is actually upheld in the First Amendment, Freedom to Assemble and Petition.
2. Examples: a) ”the notion of duty” A good will is a will that is for duty and what you do is only moral if it is done for duty. Doing something with duty being your only reason to act is morally right, and it does not have to be enjoyable only morally right. b) ”I would express thus, Duty is the necessity of acting from respect for the law. I may have an inclination for an object as the effect of my proposed action, but I cannot have respect for it, just for this reason, that it is an effect and not an energy of will.
He is malevolent. Is God both able and willing? Then whence commeth the evil. If he is neither able nor willing then why call him god?” This is called the inconsistent triad; if God has all these Omni qualities then why does evil still remain on earth? Augustine’s soul deciding theodicy was the demonstration that God is not responsible for the existence of evil.
Explain what is meant by moral absolutism Moral absolutism also known as moral objectivism is the belief that there are fixed universal laws which are true irrespective of time, place and situation. This belief is that an action can be intrinsically right or wrong in itself, and this is not dependent on outcome, culture or time. Moral absolutism is a priori and objective; based on facts and logic, and on the most part deontological. It is always right or wrong. It is important to note that although all moral absolutists agree that there are fundamental ethical laws they disagree on the origin or authority of these laws.
Morality, in his system, is a vehicle to move from state of nature into law of nature, and is a move mandated by self-interest. In the laws of nature, there is a covenant among people in which one of the parties must perform after the other through promise. However, promise in Hobbes’ system is not based on trust, virtue or any intrinsic purpose, because by the first natural right which is self-preservation, such justification seems as a luxury. Since one on trusts no one, promise keeping should be enforced by the fear of sovereign, whose job is to enforce the contract by punishing those who break it. Thus, the fear of punishment by sovereign makes promise keeping possible.
This is an idea which is absolute and according to Kant, the way we decide the morality of an action. Kantian ethics explains that for something to be good, the only true motivation behind it would be Good Will, with desire or instinct considered and the only purpose being to fulfil your duty and act morally. These moral principles are thought to be categorical imperatives which everyone should abide by even if they are of no benefit to them, There are three principles of the categorical imperative, the first being the universal law. It was believed that you should only act on a maxim, which is a personal law or rule. If you would not want the rule to be universalised, you should not be completing the action.
Comparison between deontological and utilitarian ethics Deontological ethics Deontology is a normative theory attributed to Immanuel Kant, which focuses on the concept of the duty. It is concerned on fulfilling what is believed to be a moral duty without considering its impact to other people. It takes the stand that the duty defines the right actions regardless of the consequences. The hold of deontological ethics is that doing right is what conform the moral laws. According to Kant, right actions are not done by following inclinations, impulses or obeying the principle of greatest happiness but are done simply and purely from the sense of duty.
Reconciling the existence of Evil, in a world that was created by God The question of how can evil exist if an all powerful, all knowing, and morally perfect being, God, exists. He should know of the evil, and since he’s morally perfect and all powerful be able to stop it. Many moral philosophers have attempted to answer this question throughout our history. Some have used it to prove that God doesn’t exist, others to show the nature of evil. Plato discussed the question of God being good.
In Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" we learned how Mr. King and his many supporters used the laws and the hatred of others to benefit their cause, a just cause, righting unjust laws without breaking any real laws. In the writing, "On The Duty of Civil Disobedience." by Thoreau, we learned how he felt about the need for a government, such as it was, and how we as law abiding citizens unwittingly become accomplices in the injustices caused by the government. He refers to his night in jail, the reason for it, and how we have an obligation to break unjust laws. The two men have very similar views on the subject of just laws and unjust laws, but each goes about dealing with the problem of injustice differently.
On the one hand, one’s prima facie obligation to obey the law remains intact where its injustice is relatively minor and it would be unfair to others if one disregarded the law. On the other hand, a gravely unjust law may provide one with an overriding all-things-considered reason to disobey the law. The [maxim ‘an unjust law is not a law’], then, does not deny the significance of the law’s positivity. Rather, it expresses the conditional nature of the complex relations that hold between moral obligations and the positive law.’ (Ibid. )” (Anon 2011) ------------------------------------------------- Briefly trace the development of natural law theories from their origins in Greek and Roman thought to the birth of Modernity, and in particular the distinction (if any) drawn by theorists between moral validity and systemic validity, and then discuss whether George’s defense of this maxim meets the positivist critique both theoretically and practically.