I understand your original position, but consider that there's a transitory element to it: if you obey an unjust law, are you not furthering its unjust objectives, and in doing so ultimately acting against the good?
I understand your original position, but consider that there's a transitory element to it: if you obey an unjust law, are you not furthering its unjust objectives, and in doing so ultimately acting against the good?
I, like you, am not sure how rigidly to use (or disuse) words like "valid."
I have to visit my father in the hospital every day this week (and likely next week). As you can imagine, the covid theatre is overwhelming. My father needs my presence- he's incapacitated and I'm his only family and health proxy. A moral case could clearly be made that I am obliged to aid my father and be present, so now we have competing causes. And that seems logical to me.
Buuuut, that sort of sophistry can also be used to justify every instance of apathetic obedience. "I have to have a job, don't I? I have to go see my kid's game, don't I?" And so on.
An eternal problem: terms like morality, right, wrong, justice, law, ethics have no meaning except as regards human beings. Your belief, or lack thereof, in a God or other supernatural being changes this fact not in the least. Absent some promised Final Judgment or its equivalent, like it or not, it has always been human beings deciding these issues. The core problem is all standards are arbitrary. One man's good is another man's evil. All that being said, by no means am I saying that morality, law, etc. have no value Even Nietzsche, moral chameleon par excellence, said (more or less) that what is moral tends to produce good results for one, what is immoral tends to produce unhappy results.
I understand your original position, but consider that there's a transitory element to it: if you obey an unjust law, are you not furthering its unjust objectives, and in doing so ultimately acting against the good?
I think a valid option is to comply under protest—clear & unequivocal, articulated protest. But otherwise I think you’re right.
I, like you, am not sure how rigidly to use (or disuse) words like "valid."
I have to visit my father in the hospital every day this week (and likely next week). As you can imagine, the covid theatre is overwhelming. My father needs my presence- he's incapacitated and I'm his only family and health proxy. A moral case could clearly be made that I am obliged to aid my father and be present, so now we have competing causes. And that seems logical to me.
Buuuut, that sort of sophistry can also be used to justify every instance of apathetic obedience. "I have to have a job, don't I? I have to go see my kid's game, don't I?" And so on.
An eternal problem: terms like morality, right, wrong, justice, law, ethics have no meaning except as regards human beings. Your belief, or lack thereof, in a God or other supernatural being changes this fact not in the least. Absent some promised Final Judgment or its equivalent, like it or not, it has always been human beings deciding these issues. The core problem is all standards are arbitrary. One man's good is another man's evil. All that being said, by no means am I saying that morality, law, etc. have no value Even Nietzsche, moral chameleon par excellence, said (more or less) that what is moral tends to produce good results for one, what is immoral tends to produce unhappy results.