urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:elneely Erica Neely Erica Neely 2005-08-31T04:00:13Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:elneely:584 2005-08-31T04:00:13Z 2005-08-31T04:00:13Z Aquinas argues that laws are to benefit the common good - we still argue about this today. Mainly, however, we are not debating whether laws should benefit the common good but whether particular laws <i>are</i> benefitting that good. This is especially true in the cases where it is unclear whether the laws impact public (as opposed to merely private) behavior: gay marriage, sex, drugs, porn, seat belt laws, abortion...the list goes on. A key element of all of these debates, however, is whether the actions in question are purely a matter of personal choice, affecting no one except the actor, or whether the acts have ramifications for the society as a whole. We might object to certain kinds of drug use on the grounds that they turn people into homicidal maniacs, for instance, but what about a drug that just made people stay at home being happy? Does society have a right - or even a responsibility - to regulate this? We argue about this still.<br /><br />Aquinas also has a curious argument in his section about eternal law. One of the objections he considers claims that it makes no sense to speak of eternal law because a) something is only a law if the object it applies to exists (after all, there's no point making laws about ghosts if they don't exist) and b) nothing but God is eternal. Since the laws aren't about God (the only eternal thing) they must be about non-eternal things; hence the laws themselves are not eternal. Aquinas avoids this by arguing that all things exist in potential in God, and this is all that is needed; once there are trees and rocks, the law of gravity will fall into place as well. <br /><br />This might seem odd, but consider this: we talk and reason about things which exist only in potential every day - they're called "ideas." Karl Capek wrote his play "R.U.R." about a race of mechanical beings and how they interacted with humans - a race he called "robots." At the time, nothing resembling a robot existed (in fact, this is how "robot" was introduced into English). This did not stop Capek from reasoning about them, of course; he simply reasoned and invented about them in potential, not in actual fact.<br /><br />Aquinas might be a strongly Christian philosopher, and many of the questions he was concerned with may seem irrelevant to people today, but the most secular and modern thinker can see the echoes of his thought in issues we consider today. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:elneely:267 2005-08-31T03:50:39Z 2005-08-31T03:50:39Z Plato's <i>Crito</i> seems to me to be the first explicit example of social contract theory. Socrates argues that since the state has raised and educated him, he owes it obedience; furthermore, by remaining in the state when he is free to leave (and suffer no harm by doing so), he has agreed implicitly to be bound by the rules of the state. This is a social contract.<br /><br />Question: what should we do if the state is unjust?<br /><br />Thought: since Socrates argues that it is wrong for him to escape even if his imprisonment is unjust, presumably the injustice of the state does not permit a citizen to act unjustly in return. (He argues that if someone is acting unjustly against him, at least he has done no wrong; if he acts unjustly in return, then he has done a wrong.)<br /><br />Question: what would Socrates make of civil disobedience? Is he, in fact, merely exhibiting it in his own behavior? After all, part of civil disobedience is accepting the consequences of your actions.