Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

to maximise their own benefits in a bargain with others. Meanwhile, in contractualism, participants pursue their own interests in a way they can justify to the other contracting parties, who, in turn, have their own interests to pursue. It’s in this process of justification that we can see the link back to forming universal laws, as with the earlier definition. Discourse ethics could be seen as a similar but more informal approach, being just about groups and communities deciding what’s best without making rules or signing contracts.

From ethics to law, there is morality and justice as stops along the way. It could be said here, simply, that justice is the conventions or rules of moral behaviour — morality applied, as it were. Meanwhile, laws are the rules we apply based on theories of justice — therefore, justice applied.

Whether the concept of an absolute morality is accepted or not, the fact that we do not definitely know means that we are forced to be pragmatic in defining laws. Nevertheless, the legal system represents a kind of absolute authority within society. Although we cannot write down and define morality, we create laws — even laws that refer to events that have never happened in reality.

Can anything be ‘above’ the law? The answer should probably be no, although this should not preclude the law being challenged. The fact that the leaders of a nation — a president, monarch or Prime Minister — are not above the rule of law is now more or less fundamental to Western civilisation, and in some other parts of the world. But the law is always consensual to a

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