Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

touched on at the start of the chapter, is a form of discourse ethics, in that there is a kind of social contract between citizens and the state, with the aim of maintaining an ordered society. This is true for all kinds of government, although clearly some contain a lot more discourse than others!

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.

Given that we do not really have a final and agreed system of ethics and morality, 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 degree, whether there is a general belief in absolute morality or not.

The purpose of the law, in simple terms, is that the individual and society be free to go about their lives in peace, provided they do not

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