One question that came up today concerned punishment of violent crimes. It was assumed that a morally correct action should synonymously be a legal action. We assume no disparity between what's correct and what's legal. This assumption breaks the whole discussion and makes some forms of ethics instantly useless.
When we think about issues of legality, we have to consider it an issue of what must happen for society to work the way that the government says it should. Legality doesn't determine whether and action is right or wrong, and right or wrong doesn't determine whether an action is legal or illegal. So when a strict relativist says it may be morally acceptable for someone to murder someone else (I can't think of a realistic situation in which they would, but I'm sure there is one) they aren't also claiming that it's legally permissible - simply that it wouldn't be immoral for that person.
With the separation in place, some earlier absurd relativist perspectives become more rational. Individual egoism, though it's no way to run a society, may have some truth for someone from a relativist perspective.
It may seem sick and twisted to have laws disallow actions that are morally correct and force actions that are immoral, but that's the way it has to be for society to work. Interpersonal interactions have to be bound by a universal, or at least constant through each society, set of rules. Truth must be put aside in honor of functionality, the real concern of government. However, for those actions that do not effect society's capacity to function, government must step aside. Morality and legality for actions concerning only rationally consenting people should be synonymous; when functionality is off the table, there is no reason for laws to determine truth.
When I wrote this the title was "Societal Morality: Functionality Before Truth." It wasn't until this last paragraph that I realized it couldn't be Societal Morality, it had to be Societal Correctness. The distinction is a hard one to make, but to consider rationally our ideas of permissible/impermissible compared to right/wrong, it must be made clearly.
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2 comments:
You make an excellent and needed distinction between the moral and the legal. Question: if the legal does not make the moral, then what does?
You write: "but that's the way it has to be for society to work." Is this not a utilitarian perspective? What ethical system shapes the legal?
Another question: if the legal shapes what actually takes place, then what effect does the moral have? In other words, what does it matter for someone to believe X is moral if he or she cannot do X within his or her society? Either the person refrains from doing the morally correct X, thus bowing to the legal, or works to change the system, thus proving that the moral is superior.
Even the legal is not strictly utilitarian. It seems to be a blend between utilitarian and Kantian, doing the best for the most but avoiding the irrevocable.
If a person believes an illegal action is moral, there are a few situations that could result: the person refrains from X to avoid punishment/the person does X and is punished/the person works to change the law to accept X. In order to change the law, the person would have to be able to convince government why X is better for the society, so the overall legal principle of doing the best for the most without doing anything irrevocable would still persist.
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