What is the highest form of law?

[TickTockMan]

You should define the poll options.

 

[josher]

"Religious law" is not "God's law."

From the traditional philsophical and theological perspectives: "Natural Law", which is innate to every person, is "God's law."

"Religious Law" has different names in different religions: "Canon Law" for mainstream Christians, "Sharia Law" for Muslims, etc.

From a mainstream religious perspective Natural Law has the highest call on human morality.

 

[Ambrocious]

The highest form of law doesn't exist right now on earth. The highest form of law will arrive when people realize that no one has the right to rule over them and everyone rules with justice. This simply will never happen in our life time. Mankind will always try and rule over mankind. People have a willing mind to enslave themselves and sometime, they love it to bits.

Anarchy is opposite of law and that is the form of law of animals in nature. But train a dog from a puppy to behave and lay down and play dead and be gentle and you got yourself a trained justified dog. Tell your citizens that live in your country how to live and enforce it at any means and the people MUST obey the laws.

Are we any different from animals in the respect of learning what we can do and cannot do? Self governance will not be accomplished in my opinion until we can populate the planets of distant places in the galaxy.

Until mankind can reach other planets and each able minded person can actually repopulate on each planet, human beings will always rule over each other. This is the nature of maintaining things. A good ruler will admire the wants and needs of his people under him. A tyrannical ruler will not listen to his people's wants and needs and will do that which please HIM/HER.

Every truly good ruler will always seek the well being of those under him or her. A good ruler is honest about situations and offers true transparency to the people.


The highest form of law in Theology is God. If you think of God as an alien then it may seem logical to also think that he MIGHT be our creator and there for, once again, we come back to the fact that mankind cannot become truly free until we transcend into the stars to rule over other life...thus continuing the cycle of teaching.

Ruling over people is a form of education for future generations. The generations into the future may look into the past and reflect on how to rule more for the well being based on what happened in the past. Until transcendence, no one is ever under a good rule; it is always bound to have flaws and tragedies.


I chose an option not on the list and that is Self Governance, not to be confused with Anarchy.

 

[iman]

There is no such thing as natural law or natural rights. Humans determine what are rights and what is moral and ethical with a bit of help from the wiring of our brains.

 

[Ambrocious]

The law of nature can be defined by what "feels" right. This can be very good and it can be very bad. Go out into the jungle and take note of the Panther. Notice that in the law of nature, the Panther can hunt down it's prey and kill it and eat it and is free to do so.

Humans are above the law of nature but if we successfully backtrack into thinking that we aught to live as animals, free and brave, we will also entrap ourselves below those who rule over us outside of the rule of nature. Those above us who rule over us know that in order to get a people to accept the rule of nature and of gaia, they must teach us to accept anything, including lawlessness.

While humanity finds it easier and easier to carve up each other in wars and conflicts and battles through a mindset and assurety that it must be done, we are lowering ourselves into an animalistic and tribal form of life. In the ancient tribes of this world, the people didn't understand deep concepts of freedom and liberty and they usually trusted the medicine man who was heralded as the highest form of law. The ancient Mayans under a misconception of worship would sacrifice their children to the gods to be in sync with nature and to not upset the earth gods.

If we revert backwards to a rule of nature (do not mistake this for a disregard to natural cures and such) then we also go back to a more tribal mind where we accept anything we are told and ultimately we become enslaved through the brittle center of control: our minds.

Mankind's greatest form of law is love really. Self governance takes love and justice and care for those under you. Does someone rely on you to survive? Has anyone ever told you that they don't know what they would do without you? This is love. Any law that lacks love is an abomination. Love is the desire to create and to grow and to be glad for that which you own and that which is under you. Love continues to produce good things and it does not restrict growth of goodness.

 

[iman]

That sounds like moral nihilism, which I believe in as well. However I believe that there are rights of humans which arise from nature and which cannot be limited. It's interesting to study anthropology and see in the earliest humans lived in egalitarian bands rather than stratified societies which are as a consequence of the rise of civilization.

I very much believe in morals and ethics, I just don't believe and certainly no one can prove that morals emanate from anywhere other than social and intellectual selves.

 

[construct]

I understand the dangers of legal positivism, but I fear the vicissitude of so-called natural law even more.

Please show how natural law would in any way support even the existence of same-sex desire.

Our Constitution, by requiring due process and equal protection, seeks to protect us from fang-and-claw natural law. Take THAT, Monsieur Rousseau!

 

[construct]

Huh

I actually believe that our Constitution embodies natural rights like equal protection. The two are not necessarily exclusive. However if our Constitution embodied discrimination, would you not feel that you have the right to something else?

Natural law, as understood by our founders, most certainly did not extend to the protection of sodomites from severe state punishment.

The best depictions of natural law are the novels of the divine Marquis. He is the epitome and the end of the Enlightenment. Take THAT, Herr Kant!

Do I not have a right to something against the law? Of course not. I would simply take the liberty of breaking the law--just like I did before Lawrence.

 

[Kulindahr]

I chose an option not on the list and that is Self Governance, not to be confused with Anarchy.

Self Governance isn't a form in and of itself, it's a derivative of natural law/rights.

I understand the dangers of legal positivism, but I fear the vicissitude of so-called natural law even more.

Please show how natural law would in any way support even the existence of same-sex desire.

Our Constitution, by requiring due process and equal protection, seeks to protect us from fang-and-claw natural law. Take THAT, Monsieur Rousseau!

You're confusing two things here.

The point of the Constitution was to attempt to enshrine natural law. Natural lawis not the sort of law you get in the "state of nature", it's the law which arises out of reasoning from the state in which we find ourselves, in nature.

The first means the highest form is "might makes right"; the second is a matter of reason. Reason begins with the observable fact of self-ownership, which is opposed to "might makes right".

Democracy is out the window because it is merely a hidden form of "might makes right". Plutocracy goes for the same reason.

Constitutional law is inferior to natural law because the task of a constitution is to set down how a people are going to go about guaranteeing the rights which are part and parcel of natural rights. Statutory law is inferior to Constitutional law, because its sole function is to establish a working mechanism for the application of Constitutional to society.

But as for forms of governance, that which Ambrocious set out is the highest, because it means that every person realizes, accepts, honors, and functions according to natural rights.

 

[Kulindahr]

Natural law, as understood by our founders, most certainly did not extend to the protection of sodomites from severe state punishment.

That's because they weren't thinking it through: they tended to hold some form of moral and/or religious law to be above natural law.

 

[construct]

But as for forms of governance, that which Ambrocious set out is the highest, because it means that every person realizes, accepts, honors, and functions according to natural rights.

My, my! You do seem to be extremely optimistic about human nature. Fine. Try governing from that.

I got to thinking about the original intent of the founders--Enlightenment men all. Certainly, the Declaration of Independence is grounded in natural law theory--"inalienable rights" and all that. No doubt, they thought that the Constitution was in some way a working out of those ideas, and there is some natural law language in it, e.g. rights being "reserved." However, documents (especially those that are preserved and revered) are not limited by the original intent, and the language of natural law does not permeate the Constitution. Thus that document is not tied down to the limitations of natural law. It is set loose to collect sedimentation. Acceptance of natural law theory is not necessary for its use.

Now as to all this talk about self-governance, self-restraint, self-discipline and so forth--that is fine as guidance toward aspirational ideals, but it does not protect the people from their inevitable moral shortfalls. Only the imposition of governing law can protect a people from each other and from their inevitable confusion of their own prejudices with what they revere as "natural law."

This is not to say that unquestioning adherence to governing law is necessarily good. I have implied as much in one of my previous posts here about "taking the liberty to break the law." Failure to recognize this enslaves us to the prejudices of the public. However, we should be aware that such deviation will have its consequences in public opinion and perhaps in the punishment meted out by governing authorities. This is, in effect, how the two-tiered ethics of Our Pal Nietzsche (hereinafter OPN) works out. The master morality can never form an adequate foundation for governance.

 

[josher]

That's because they weren't thinking it through: they tended to hold some form of moral and/or religious law to be above natural law.

Sorry, but that is not true.

Until very recently in the history of philosophy, same sex sexual contact was universally considered to be an unnnatural act (as were many opposite sex acts of intimacy) and therefore by definition against the natural law. Natural law principles are independant of and precede any religious point of view. (Though theologians may cite the natural law to support their reasoning.)

As evidence builds that same sex attraction may be "natural" (e.g. genetic/intrinsic to a person's identity), then the balance of natural law philosophers will probably conclude that same sex sexual intimacy is not an unnatural act.