Socrates 'Law Vs. Morality'

The American University in Cairo

Philosophical Thinking

Law vs Morality

Ahmed El - Omla

Dr. Jason Blum

November 16th, 2015

According to Socrates, it would never be justified to break the law, Socrates believed in the idea that if you live in a place you should abide by its laws. Socrates would say that those who created the laws have a better understanding of what is right and wrong. And if one is med with those who hold more knowledge in a particular matter it would be foolish to argue against their opinion. In Socrates’s eyes personal judgment and the opinion of the majority held no power when it was faced by those of an expert. And since Socrates was put in a similar situation where he was going to die unless he broke the law

James claims that he is the only one of the three who knows how to play with it (the others confirm this), and if so it would be quite unjust to deny the toy from the only one who can actually play with it. If that is all the judge knew, the case for giving the toy to the first child would be compelling. Then Sam says in defense of his case for having the toy by pointing out that he is the poorest of the three and that he has no toys of his own. The toy would give him something to play with (the other two confirm that they are richer and already have other toys). If the judge had heard only Sam and not the others, Sam would most likely get the toy. Finally, Jenny speaks up and claims out that she has been working diligently for many months in a factory to make the toy with her own labor (the others do not deny this), and just when she had finished her work, ‘just then’, she complains, that they are trying to take the toy from her and deny her right. If Jenny’s statement is the only one that the judge had heard, he might be inclined to give the toy to her in recognition of her understandable claim to something she has made herself. After hearing all three claims, there is a difficult decision that the judge will have to make, but the judge will decide to give the toy to one of the children. Whoever the judge choses to take the toy will

And the fact that in layman’s terms, the law is carried out by a bunch of people that are usually right but might sometimes be wrong in certain cases doesn’t actually help. So, this means we should justify breaking the law. However, before I give up and justify breaking the law, consider what would happen if whenever an individual felt that the law was wrong and decided that a mistake was made and justified breaking the law and broke it. If everyone did the same the law would be more a series of guidelines for people to consider and not necessarily follow, and when the law holds no power, courts will be useless and eventually in my opinion, chaos would ensue. People will do whatever they want without a fear of consequences because they will always find a reason to justify breaking the law

I believe what makes this whole law argument extremely confusing and difficult is the nature of the law. The problem with the law in general is that it is based on ideas and notions that are somewhat as previously mention subjective and prone to change through time. And until we could all agree on what we believe to be right and wrong, just, moral, and virtuous, the law will be sometimes but not always unfair, but that doesn’t give us the right to break