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July 13, 2006 There are differing views on morality and how we came about them. To some, morality evolved along with humans. Moral behavior isn’t an absolute but relative to society and culture and ethical behavior is nothing more then a social contract to insure survival. Individuals are obligated to obey those rules. If morality isn’t absolute then it does raise some interesting problems. During the Nuremburg Trials, the Nazis indeed raised this as a defense. In his book, The law above the law, John Warwick Montgomery describes the argument as follows: “The most telling defense offered by the accused was that they had simply followed orders or made decisions within the frame work of their own legal system, in complete consistency with it, and they therefore ought not rightly be condemned because they deviated from the alien value system of their conquerors.”(1) This was obviously not accepted as a defense as in the words of chief counsel for the United States, Robert H. Jackson, “[the tribunal] raises above the provincial and transient, and seeks guidance not only from international law, but also from the basic principles of jurisprudence which are assumptions of civilization…” (2) As we see, some things are just wrong regardless of what society says, forced labor and genocide being a few of them. Another problem is that there can be no such thing as an immoral law. As society is the final measure of morality, then all of its judgments are moral by definition. Before new laws are enacted doesn’t it make sense to question not only the legality but also is the law just and good? If these are good questions then there would appear to be a difference between sound moral behavior and what a person ha |
