Sunday, February 14, 2021

Is there a legal ought?

I was thinking about oughts this morning. In the past, I have said that there are three kinds of oughts--the rational ought, the pragmatic ought, and the moral ought. The moral ought comes from the fact that we have moral obligations. Moral obligations are kinds of imperatives. They prescribe behavior.

So, I was thinking this morning about how in any authoritative heirarchy, there are prescriptions for behavior involved. The biggest one is legal prescriptions. So, should we consider a legal requirement to be a legal ought? Is this a fourth kind of "ought"?

Or should the ought in this case be lumped in with the moral ought? After all, in the Christian point of view, we have a moral obligation to obey the civil law. "Obey the law" is a moral ought.

Or does it really matter? Is it all just semantics?

1 comment:

Psiomniac said...

Off the top of my head, we can have legal obligations, hence it makes sense to talk of legal oughts and I also think it makes sense to distinguish them from moral oughts. This is because they can diverge, as in the case of a morally corrupt state.