@olivia1021,
olivia1021 wrote:
Hello! I was assigned an essay in my philosophy class and I seem to be having difficulty coming up with a good idea for my hard case. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions! Thanks so much!
Here is the question/info
Topic:
The famous legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin once argued that the usefulness of laws and philosophic ideals are often put to the test when they are confronted by a "hard case" (qtd. in Tebbit, 2000). For example, the Dudley and Stephens case we discussed at the begining of this unit was a hard case because it tested the British government's definition of murder and also pushed utilitarian principles to a gruesome extreme. For your paper I would like you to find your own hard case. It can be based on an actual historical event, a personal experience, or a fictional scene from a book, movie, or your own mind. You will use this hard case to discuss a MINIMUM OF FOUR ethical philosophies/philosophers (e.g. utilitarianism, existentialism, stoicism, Aristotle, Plato etc.).
what Dwarkins says is false, and he is a scumbag; and if your teacher is reading him he is a scumbag too...
Moral ideals are not proved to begin with, so they can never be disproved... Law is a social form, for an example and justice is a moral form; but at no point does justice as a concept enter the courtroom... The law is made by some legislative body, and the court determines the facts in the matter and rules accordingly, and others execute the sentence... Dwarkins uses a right to argue against rights out of a misunderstanding of rights...
Consider the trial of Socrates as the rights of the individual to advocate ideas against the welfare of the state, and the republic makes the countrer argument since there the power of the state over the lives of people is absolute.
Consider Jesus, and his trial as the right to hold religious beliefs contrary to the established religion, in effect, religious liberty... Jesus was clearly guilty of attacking the money changers on the steps of the temple, and that was a racket since the coin of Israel they were exchanging for foreign coin must have come from inside the temple... The sort of God Jesus was advocating really needed no intermediation... That God was clearly of the mind, and treats all as individuals... So Jesus was rejecting the form of a religion that was clearly corrupt for one that was incorruptable, that is, all relationship, and no form...
Galaleo is another example, though no formal facts of a trial exist as far as I know; but what was his crime??? He was challenging the right of the established religion to rule on matters of physics, and in the process of doing so he ridiculed the Pope who, from a philosophical point of view stood an firmer ground.. The Pope was saying, in my opinion, that if one accepts God, and the power of God, that he has the power to remake all existence at will, the rules of matter, even matter... From the point of view of people of a God with the to create all the cosmos, none of our knowledge and understanding need apply... Galaleo, whose greatness as a physicist remains unchallenged was suggesting something that cannot be reasonably maintained: That we know something of infinites by the finite, and Kant would say we can only have finite knowledge... So we presume of infinites as though they are finite, but that is not proof or argument.
The trial of Martin Luther though it is on its face an argument for individual religious freedom is in my opinion an argument of secular authority against the power of religious authority which the Pope had won nearly three hundred years before when the king of England was forced to walk on his knees to the pope to confirm him as king...
The whole father son equality debate in Eastern Christendom is the result of the church existing under the wing of secular powers, the king being as father... The Western Church after the end of the first millenium took over society and ever after appointed their cardinals and bishops, and annointed their kings rather than being annointed by them... In Germany it was not just Luther that stood up to the Pope, but the nobles with the help of the rising national bourgoise... Protestantism is simply more capitalist friendly than Catholicism, which has always maintained limits on exploitation without often practicing them...
So go find your own facts, and find your own opinions..
Do not think to judge rights on the basis of some misunderstanding of them as dwarking... He is an idiot... Like Socrates, who saw the rights of the people as useless because he could not grasp how they were arrived at, and what was their purpose, is dwarkin saying: these rights are not needed, not justified...
The notion of rights is an infinite by which I mean that no limited number of example of right serves to do more than illustrate their purpose, or to attempt their definition... Every single case is different, and this is an idea with law rejects... Though the individual is a recognized concept to law, they treat all individuals in a cookie cutter fashion, when if we truly accepted the individual we would see that every individual is different and ever case is different with different facts...
The problem stated is this... Law is a social form made from our moral froms, like Goverment is made from the moral ideal in the preamble of the constitution... Logic is a social form made out of the moral form of truth... But truth is never directily the goal of logic any more than justice is directly the goal of law... Each social form exists apart from its stated moral form, but we do not... Our moral forms are indistinguishable from out lives, essential to our lives, living and dying with us... We have these quasi concepts from a time when humanity had no legs for excess baggage... If they kept these notions alive it is because they recognized they were essential to their lives... Now, when people who do not understand their value think to turn logic and law against the seed from which they sprang it is out of pure stupidity... No amount of hard cases can disprove an infinite virtue... No easy cases can prove them... The law can only prove itself useless to humanity..
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