Posted by alexandra_k on October 7, 2014, at 18:12:45
In reply to Re: books, posted by alexandra_k on October 7, 2014, at 0:05:12
i think i keep surprising the law people with just how little i know about... everything. their focus is so... different.
i've been thinking a lot about socrates. his trial. 'corrupting the young'. he was sentenced to death by hemlock. his friends visited him and said they could escape him out and help him go live someplace else. he thought that that wouldn't be the right thing to do. they tried to persuade him why it was acceptable... he rejected all their reasons. reasons about how he didn't have a fair trial (positivist reasons, i guess). reasons about how what he was doing was alright (appeal to some natural law, i guess). i can't remember all the reasons... he said that those laws protected him and raised him and he was thus bound by them. a positivist, i guess. sometimes the law... simply doesn't track morality.
the ring of gyges... a symbol of unlimited power. why be moral if you could do anything you like - and you were guaranteed to be able to get away with it. most people: you have no reason at all. that surprises me. most people are... psychopaths. huh.
i think law runs together morality and legality because... they don't really have a sense of morality. they are trained to focus on legality and morality just kind of... falls out. there is a sense of a distinction between what the law *is* and what the law *should be*. and i guess some sense that moral considerations (among other considerations) play some role in determining what *should be*. but there is no real sense of morality...
something... kantian. something... intrinsic. like the cogito. to see... to comprehend... a sense of morality as something like that. a reason to be moral even though nobody will know if you aren't. a reason to be moral even though being moral will have no good consequences at all. being moral because... it is the right thing to do. morality... goodness... a world with more morality is a better world - whether we know it or not. something... like grasping the cogito... you just see the validity / rightness / indubitibility...
i do miss philosophy sometimes.
and plato's republic. i was extremely lucky to get to TA for someone who is... just brilliant on plato's republic. and kant. to understand why kant thought the will to suicide was contradictory. to... actually grasp some of that and simply see the rightness. of course to then start to question the source of the feeling of rightness and the veracity of that and so on and so forth... but to at least grasp what it is that we are talking about.
i do miss philosophy someitmes.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1058481
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20140828/msgs/1071984.html