Subject:
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Re: Essay on Emerson vs. Thoreau; civil disobedience
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 30 Jan 2001 14:29:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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317 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton writes:
> > Can you elaborate on this? Slavery is morally wrong and it doesn't matter to
> > me what the law says about it. A government that abides it (yes, even the US
> > government of the time) doesn't have consent of the governed in that area,
> > right?
> >
> > So why do you say that it's OK for the government to oppress?
>
> Well, difference of opinion on our parts, I think. By my moral theory,
I noted that you had expressed this moral theory in another thread but I didn't
backtrack far enough to find it. Can you point me to the post?
> slavery is not necessarily morally wrong. Is that to say that I think
> slavery in the US wasn't wrong? No. In fact, I'm pretty sure it WAS wrong.
> Basically, my morality triest to judge via intent--
Does it come down to behavior x is only immoral when those doing the behaving
think that it is?
> so if a particular set
> of people all thought slavery was great (not just not bad, but good) then
> they're fine morally with me.
What does the phrase "they're fine morally with me" mean?
> > The abolitionists knew that there was a downside for their moral stance if
> > they got caught. That's different than saying that the government was right
> > to punish them.
>
> Here's where we get to one issue I was trying to get at a little more
> cleanly. Is the government right to punish them?
No.
> Well, let's be more
> specific, because it's tough to morally judge 'a government', because it's
> really the people that define it.
So we can morally judge the government that makes slavery legal and the people
who support it as equally evil.
> Bob is a regular citizen of Bobia, the country of Bobs, where everyone
> really honestly loves slavery. They think slavery's nifty keen. Now Joe
> comes in. Joe hates slavery. He thinks that the laws about slavery are
> unjust.
Is there a difference between unjust and wrong in your use?
> So what does Joe do? He tries to steal slaves and release them to
> Bobia's neighboring country Joeia, where slavery is illegal. Now Bob catches
> Joe, and along with all his other Bob-friends, they all put Joe in jail
> because Joe broke the law of Bobia.
>
> Now, by my philosophy, Joe is perfectly within his rights to say that the
> LAW of slavery is unjust and immoral. But he CAN'T say that Bob(s) were
> wrong to imprison him, unless his only basis for saying such is based on the
> law being immoral.
What other basis would it be? When Joe claims that Bobians are evil for
slavery and evil for imprisoning him, it not because he's faulting the Bobian
system's internal consistancy. It's because they're committing attrocities. I
say that the Bobs are wrong to imprison Joe. But wrong means evil. It seems
that wrong might mean something else to your story.
> And to give a better idea of that, I'm saying that Joe was punished
> fairly, but immorally (by his own standard). Does that help at all?
I would say that the fairness of their justice system is based on whether the
laws are upheld equally and is completely outside the spectrum of right v.
wrong. So maybe it was fair. But still evil.
> > Maybe. I suspect many bank robbers know their actions are wrong.
>
> Exactly.
I'm not sure. I think more and more, that we (various people) have quite
different understandings of right and wrong.
> And similarly for slave owners in the US. Did they honestly think
> that slavery was good? Probably not. But who am I to say? My guess is that
> they just never thought about it-- and when they try to, their decision will
> either be that slavery IS unjust (immoral), OR their own personal emotions
> will 'get in the way' of that decision.
There is pretty good evidence that Thomas Jefferson thought that slavery was
wrong but just couldn't figure out a way to maintain his lifestyle without
slaves and he chose to be morally weak.
I suspect that is the case for many other slave owners of the time too. (I
mean, in addition to refusing to look deeply into the ideas because it was
scary for them.)
Chris
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