Is there a Rational Ground for Morality?

Is there a Rational Ground for Morality?

 

There can be no morality without law but there can be law without morality.

 

Law can create particular obligations but law cannot create a law that dictates an obligation to obey law.   Law can punish but cannot create the general obligation to obey law.  Such an obligation comes via moral character.  “Morality must be distinguished from self-interest, although the two can often coincide…What is the rational ground for morality and its obligation?”

 

The rational ground for morality rests upon the need for mutual cooperation within a community.  With mutual cooperation comes mutual dependence.  Mutual cooperation demands trust, which relies upon honesty.  Honesty implies obligation.  Violence destroys cooperation.

 

Cooperation is essential for social life; only if we wish to withdraw into isolation can we afford to ignore cooperation.  Empirically we can find cooperation within every community.  Morality is about human relationships thus empirically we can find both the need and presence of morality in all communities.

 

Morality exists in all communities but it has many variables and much diversity.  Three factors are important here: differences in religion, differences in politics, and differences in production and economic relations.

 

“Certain moral commitments with their attendant obligation are necessary for any kind of human co-operation whatever.  These must first be acknowledged before there can be other values which vary.  This is an a priori not an empirical thesis.”  By definition, a group of individuals without human co-operation is no community at all.

 

A diversity of moral codes within a community can be accepted but primary loyalty to all within the community must be to the community and not to particular groups or classes within the community.  Those values that unite must be more important than those that divide.

 

A community is a group committed to the rule of law, which entails three specific principles of law: the law is supreme with equality and freedom under the law.  Legal rules are supreme and all members are subjected to and protected by those rules.

 

Public interest, when properly understood, forms the “rational basis of both government and politics”.

 

Quotes from The Morality of Politics edited by Bhikhu Parekh & R. N. Berki

gcle2003, wrote above;

"There is no obligation to obey law. You get punished if you don't, and get caught, that's all."

This seems like a very over simplified answer?

Perhaps gcle2003, from Luxembourg, has never really looked up the definition of the word "obligation?"

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/obligation or;

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/obligation Or even:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obligation Or perhaps more meaningful?;

http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/m142.htm

And from the above and last site are these words;

"A duty which one owes, and which he ought to perform, but which he is not legally bound to fulfil.These obligations are of two kinds 1st. Those founded on a natural right; as, the obligation to be charitable, which can never be enforced by law. 2d. Those which are supported by a good or valuable antecedent consideration; as, where a man owes a debt barred by the act of limitations, this cannot be recovered by law, though it subsists in morality and conscience; but if the debtor promise to pay it, the moral obligation is a sufficient consideration for the promise, and the creditor may maintain an action of assumpsit, to recover the money."

Perhaps gcle2003 might well want to reconsider his position?

Regards,