The founding fathers of the United States were mostly Christian and wouldn't have supported abortion. Of a hypothetical society with the quite unreal original position scenario with laws that are made by blind mice legislators and justices it is possible that homicide wouldn't be outlawed.
Boundaries would need to be established regarding social behavior. Libertarianism taken to an extreme would be an abeyance of government regulation socially. It is quite an unrealistic premise. The idea that blind mice legislators would be forced to act rationally without certain moral information such as what is good begs the premise of the good in-itself as being inducted in a vacuum of moral opinions and cultural continuity.
If Rawls wanted to find a way to make a working social contract without savagery and iniquity perhaps he had good intentions with an existential idea about humans as pieces that could be played with few characteristics distinguishing them. That isn’t a valid working premise i.m.o. If some people were cannibals, and some not, that behavior would clash law making and what are considered moral premises innately. Real people bring baggage with them.
Some socio-economic structures are ecospherically adapted, including contraception, veils, patriarchal social structures, matriarchal, egalitarian and so forth. Many behavioral characteristics socially are adapted to the environment and economy. Eating with one particular hand in a desert ecosystem, protecting women where contraception doesn’t exist…those are not structures derived from abstract values. In some respects academics in a bland sensory environment without particular external challenges tend to manufacture unreal theoretical situations. People aren't as malleable to moral configurations as units in Hilbert space are to self-organizing coordinates.
There is also the problem of original sin to consider. I believe that is the thermodynamic criterion of energy input requisites and processing + reproduction. That is an implicit moral challenge with existing social adaptations to it. One cannot just reinvent the wheel with the removal of knowledge and experience. Original sin itself predisposes society to certain savage behaviors that continue for sundry reasons including demographic changes, resource depletion, the will to power etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position
The cultural and religious prevailing opinions of the founders led them, with philosophical and historical insight, to write a constitution that supported their values. If one knows the New Testament well enough one realizes that the founder said his kingdom is not of this world. The founders of the U.S.A. knew that and designed a constitution for the world that would allow their faith to be practiced without intimidation by any government structure or persons in government. The prophet Jeremiah related in the Old Testament that one day the laws of God would be written on the hearts and minds of the faithful. That prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus Christ and what he taught. It isn’t a secular judicial code.
Separation of church and state was a need learned from history (European history) with the 30 Years was, 100 years war, the Smalcaldian War etc.
With a particular cultural norm and beliefs pervasively accepted and internalized concerning behavior, laws need be made about aberrant things that aren't. There is no mention of laws against homicide and numerous other behaviors or acts in the U.S. constitution, yet a structure was created that allowed people through legislators to promulgate laws where needed ("Article Three, Section Two, Clause Three of the United States Constitution provides that: Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.").
Laws were made that reflected cultural norms and beliefs then and now over the course of U.S. history. Self-government in the U.S democracy allows people to make laws suitable to their beliefs, while in theory respecting the rights of dissenters. In practice the nation and world are becoming over-populated and cultural norms are driven by dynamic pressures toward conformity, authoritarianism, communism and equality in thought consistent with keeping pigs happy in feed-lots. In my opinion Rawls' original position is most suitable for a B.F Skinner kind of behaviorist paradigm for brainwashing and social control of the masses. It seems to be based on incorrect assumptions and explanations of why wars and civic injustice occur.
Governments are some of the most egregious propaganda purveyors. Most are guilty of shaping events to serve their own interests over history. Big business is up there too in issuing propaganda and thought conditioning, as are some of the more corrupt advocates for scientific atheism. Don't overlook the media as primary propagandists! They just go too far. God is a serious, perennial concern for philosophical and even scientific thought within the realm of Christian philosophers. Cosmological systems, eternity, artificial intelligence that could create forms and manufacture Universes, the nature of good and evil, original sin and more benefit from Christian philosophical and theological inquiry. Maybe the central problem is in that people from all walks of life may want to force other people to think about particular topics and content instead of what the subjects would think about for-themselves. Sapere aude (think or know for-oneself) did not mean to put blinders on about eternity, God or the history of the appearance of Jesus Christ in-the-world as related through the Bible.
Boundaries would need to be established regarding social behavior. Libertarianism taken to an extreme would be an abeyance of government regulation socially. It is quite an unrealistic premise. The idea that blind mice legislators would be forced to act rationally without certain moral information such as what is good begs the premise of the good in-itself as being inducted in a vacuum of moral opinions and cultural continuity.
If Rawls wanted to find a way to make a working social contract without savagery and iniquity perhaps he had good intentions with an existential idea about humans as pieces that could be played with few characteristics distinguishing them. That isn’t a valid working premise i.m.o. If some people were cannibals, and some not, that behavior would clash law making and what are considered moral premises innately. Real people bring baggage with them.
Some socio-economic structures are ecospherically adapted, including contraception, veils, patriarchal social structures, matriarchal, egalitarian and so forth. Many behavioral characteristics socially are adapted to the environment and economy. Eating with one particular hand in a desert ecosystem, protecting women where contraception doesn’t exist…those are not structures derived from abstract values. In some respects academics in a bland sensory environment without particular external challenges tend to manufacture unreal theoretical situations. People aren't as malleable to moral configurations as units in Hilbert space are to self-organizing coordinates.
There is also the problem of original sin to consider. I believe that is the thermodynamic criterion of energy input requisites and processing + reproduction. That is an implicit moral challenge with existing social adaptations to it. One cannot just reinvent the wheel with the removal of knowledge and experience. Original sin itself predisposes society to certain savage behaviors that continue for sundry reasons including demographic changes, resource depletion, the will to power etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position
The cultural and religious prevailing opinions of the founders led them, with philosophical and historical insight, to write a constitution that supported their values. If one knows the New Testament well enough one realizes that the founder said his kingdom is not of this world. The founders of the U.S.A. knew that and designed a constitution for the world that would allow their faith to be practiced without intimidation by any government structure or persons in government. The prophet Jeremiah related in the Old Testament that one day the laws of God would be written on the hearts and minds of the faithful. That prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus Christ and what he taught. It isn’t a secular judicial code.
Separation of church and state was a need learned from history (European history) with the 30 Years was, 100 years war, the Smalcaldian War etc.
With a particular cultural norm and beliefs pervasively accepted and internalized concerning behavior, laws need be made about aberrant things that aren't. There is no mention of laws against homicide and numerous other behaviors or acts in the U.S. constitution, yet a structure was created that allowed people through legislators to promulgate laws where needed ("Article Three, Section Two, Clause Three of the United States Constitution provides that: Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.").
Laws were made that reflected cultural norms and beliefs then and now over the course of U.S. history. Self-government in the U.S democracy allows people to make laws suitable to their beliefs, while in theory respecting the rights of dissenters. In practice the nation and world are becoming over-populated and cultural norms are driven by dynamic pressures toward conformity, authoritarianism, communism and equality in thought consistent with keeping pigs happy in feed-lots. In my opinion Rawls' original position is most suitable for a B.F Skinner kind of behaviorist paradigm for brainwashing and social control of the masses. It seems to be based on incorrect assumptions and explanations of why wars and civic injustice occur.
Governments are some of the most egregious propaganda purveyors. Most are guilty of shaping events to serve their own interests over history. Big business is up there too in issuing propaganda and thought conditioning, as are some of the more corrupt advocates for scientific atheism. Don't overlook the media as primary propagandists! They just go too far. God is a serious, perennial concern for philosophical and even scientific thought within the realm of Christian philosophers. Cosmological systems, eternity, artificial intelligence that could create forms and manufacture Universes, the nature of good and evil, original sin and more benefit from Christian philosophical and theological inquiry. Maybe the central problem is in that people from all walks of life may want to force other people to think about particular topics and content instead of what the subjects would think about for-themselves. Sapere aude (think or know for-oneself) did not mean to put blinders on about eternity, God or the history of the appearance of Jesus Christ in-the-world as related through the Bible.
No comments:
Post a Comment