stolze philosophy notes on peter singer practical ethics  4 individual conscience
{"Image DocumentName": "Individual Conscience and the Law", "Image ImageDescription": "Are we under any moral obligation to obey the law if the law protects and sanctions things we hold utterly wrong? A clear-cut answer to this question was given by the nineteenth-century American radical, Henry Thoreau. In his essay \u2018Civil Disobedience\u2019 \u2013 perhaps the first use of this now familiar phrase \u2013 he wrote: Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first and subjects afterwards. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. In similar vein, the American philosopher Robert Paul Wolff wrote: The defining mark of the state is authority, the right to rule. The primary obligation of man is autonomy, the refusal to be ruled. It would seem, then, that there can be no resolution of the conflict between the autonomy of the individual and the putative authority of the state. Insofar as a man fulfills his obligation to make himself the author of his decisions, he will resist the state\u2019s claim to have authority over him. Thoreau and Wolff resolve the conflict between individual and society in favour of the individual. We should do as our conscience dictates, as we autonomously decide we ought to do, not as the law directs. Anything else would be a denial of our capacity for ethical choice (pp ).", "Image XResolution": "37", "Image YResolution": "37", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "SlidePlayer", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered"}