Letter from Birmingham Jail

It is Black History Month and I think it only fitting that a thread be started to address the contributions of African-Americans to the United States and the World at large.

Here, however, I plan focus less on the obvious or tangible contributions to the advances in popular philosophy.

I would hope that every American reads the quoted letter at least once in their lives. It provides both a perspective on the Civil Rights struggle and a enduring portrait of civil ethics that should outlast the circumstances of its authorship for years to come.

I could go through the different posts and issues that prodded me to start this debate, but I think it would kill the delivery, so let's get to it.

What is law?

What is the purpose of law?

Is legal authority the highest value of modern Western society?

Should it be?

If not, what value outranks the law?

Do you agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that an "unjust law is no law at all"?

Do you agree with Martin Luther King Jr. that "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws"?

What is law?
According to wikipedia, laws are ".... a set of rules or norms of conduct which mandate, proscribe or permit specified relationships among people and organizations, provide methods for ensuring the impartial treatment of such people, and provide punishments for those who do not follow the established rules of conduct."

I would say though, that laws should reflect normal human behavior, and not mandate any specific conduct.

What is the purpose of law?
To explicitly describe the norms of society.

Is law the highest value of modern Western society?
Law is not a value..... ideally law is a tool to ensure the relative wellbeing of a society, but it can also be used to less noble tasks. Ideally we should not need any laws.

Should it be?
See above.

If not, what value outranks the law?
I don't think you can say one value "outranks" another, even if I were to agree law was a "value".

Do you agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that an "unjust law is no law at all"?
Yes. Unjust laws have no validity. The problem is of course getting the majority in a society to agree that a law is unjust - otherwise you will still be subject to society enforcing their unjust laws on you, using their violent tools of opression, like the police. In essence, every form of government, no matter how free and democratic, is a mild form of tyranny.

Do you agree with Martin Luther King Jr. that "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws"?
I don't think you have a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, as much as you have a moral right to disobey them. I think drugslaws are unjust laws, but since I don't do drugs, I am not disobeying these laws per say, but I do believe I have a moral right to disobey them if I so choose. I know by doing so I will risk being punished by society, and there is probably nothing I could do about that, but that has less to with morasl than it has to do with fear of the state violencemonopoly.

You make a good point here, I was imprecise in my language. By "law" in that question I meant "legal authority".

I will take this opportunity to amend.

What is law?
It's a set of rules and a structure for determining guilt or innocence to charges, and can be totally irrational.

What is the purpose of law?
To decide punishments or innocence, and to give society a feeling that it is ordered sensibly and protected. It can be totally irrational.

Is legal authority the highest value of modern Western society?
NO! Principle is the highest value of all societies. My hope is that someday we'll have a "legal system" based on compliance with a set of principles, and not on a set of rules.

Should it be?
NEVER!

If not, what value outranks the law?
Principles and ethics. Einstein gave a very short, and to me the perfect definition as something like: " We know the laws of logic. There are a few "principles" with which all people agree (perhaps only after discussion I add). Therefore all justice can be determined for all!"

Do you agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that an "unjust law is no law at all"?
YES! Also that any manmade laws that are contrary to the laws of nature or that contradicts their stated purpose (requires a purpose be stated for all laws) are also no laws at all, and to be ignored.

Do you agree with Martin Luther King Jr. that "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws"?
YES! Civil disobedience must always be.

Law is a tool. Like all tools, it can do great good or great harm. Off the top of my head, the best definition for law I can come up with is a system of rewards and punishments, imposed by a designated authority, intended to control the behavior of human beings under that authority. Put that way, it sounds rather sinister; and it's probably a good idea to have a healthy skepticism about any law.

Legal authority is one of the most powerful forces in modern society, although it can sometimes be overcome with money, violence, and other forces. I wouldn't call it a "high value" as much as a mechanism used to express the values of those who impose law. These may be very high values or very low values. This is why we argue over law endlessly.

Where we really get into trouble is when we try to decide what values should outweigh law. For one person, this will be the Will of God, as expressed in a particular interpretation of ancient writings. For another, it will be absolute equality. For a third, it will be absolute freedom. I hope it is obvious that these three values (along with many others I could name) will often clash with each other.

The best approach to a "highest value" I can imagine is a never-ending attempt to find out how to minimize suffering of all kinds, based on an imperfect system of reason and experience. One should expect to make many mistakes, and be ready to change the law as needed.

I wouldn't say that "an unjust law is no law at all." It's still a law, as you will find out if you break it.

As much as one must admire the civil disobedience of Doctor King and others, I hesitate to say that one should always disobey unjust laws. I would have to add the proviso that one should disobey them, except in the most extreme circumstances, in peaceful ways. (By the most extreme circumstances, I mean when an oppressive government is using violence against those under its rule. Under such horrible circumstances, armed revolt may be a terrible necessity.) Once we open the gates to disobedience of all kinds, we allow anyone who disagrees with a law to use violence against it. Window-smashing protesters and abortion clinic bombers all claim to answer to a "higher value," but we cannot excuse this.

What is law?

I don't view law as sinister or darkly as most of you, firstly because I think there are many laws and sources of these laws so I don't feel like one body has the absolute.
Secondly I think most of the horrific Human Rights violations of our time have been committed in direct violation of law or Legal Authority.
I think slavery was illegal, the Holocaust was illegal, genocide is illegal, terrorism is illegal etc.




What is the purpose of law?
All laws have different purposes or intents. I would argue that the laws that forbid slavery or murder are very different from the laws that regulate commerce and trade.

Is legal authority the highest value of modern Western society?
I am not really feeling the distinction of principles and law when we look at ourselves collectively. I think law is the collective output of principles of Western society.

If not, what value outranks the law?
I guess it depends if you are speaking of us singularly or collectively. Singular it would be a person's own set of principle, ethics or faith. And that person could easily find a law too restrictive as they could find it too liberal. Abortion would be a good example of that.
Collectively we really don't share many other "values" other than law...except culture and that varies in degrees from person to person.

Do you agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that an "unjust law is no law at all"?
I would agree yes .. my idea or concept is that for a law to be considered "unjust" we would have to of based this belief of "unjust" on a higher principle or legal authority or else we would not feel it was "unjust". So I suppose I more accurately feel that a unjust law is outranked by a just law or principle.


Do you agree with Martin Luther King Jr. that "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws"?

Of course, an unjust law is subservient to a just principle or superior law and so I feel one is always obligated to disobey the lesser of the two.
But I don't consider it civil disobedience. Because I feel you are still obeying a law or principle that was probably reinforced or widely held within your civil community.

What is law?
Law (a loanword from Old Norse lag), in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules or norms of conduct which mandate, proscribe or permit specified relationships among people and organizations, provide methods for ensuring the impartial treatment of such people, and provide punishments for those who do not follow the established rules of conduct.

From wikipedia I thought it was thorough enough to suffice and open ended enough not to get too argumentative over.


What is the purpose of law?
To insure one thing or another, perhaps safety or impartiallity or economic status. As well as to punish those who donot abide by laws.

Is legal authority the highest value of modern Western society?
Well I think everyone would agree that worldwide through out the course of history wealth has been of the highest value whether recognized or not. Even force, as Victoria points out is only capable through wealth or the promise there of.


Should it be?
That depends on the circumstances. If you live in a country that does not protect the rights of those in a minority to speak out their beliefs and alter a system over time then not only are the laws not in their favor, neither are the chances that moral authority will ever prevail for those people, which must lead to change through force. This is why real democracy or republicanism is the only true government that allows for maximum freedom and happiness within a society.


If not, what value outranks the law?
Moral authority always outranks law. However, if you find a law unjust it is your duty as a citizen to move through the legal ranks and orders to change the law. Using protest is also an acceptable form of argument but violence should never be accepted when there are alternative ways to change things, like moving through the legal channels.


Do you agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that an "unjust law is no law at all"?
Moderatley. As I said before, if you have no other option, if you live in a country run by a dictator, and your chances of death are better before change, then I would advocate ignoring laws and even use of violence.


Do you agree with Martin Luther King Jr. that "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws"?
To an extent yes and no. First on the list of priorities is to change things through the system. Also, one must factor in what is at stake versus what is to gain. When lives are at stake unjustly, people must make dramatic changes even if you have to break the law. If in the south during the 1950's a black man were running away froma lynch mob I would advocate direct disobedience to any laws that allowed such things and hide the man even protecting him with force if necessary.

In all I would say that as civilzed human being s we have a duty to uphold laws even ones we don't like until we can change them, unless those laws were *unchangeable or there were lives at stake immediately. If we behave any other way then we subject ourselves to barbarianism like that of cowardly terrorists who kill and maim indescriminantly, even the innocent to change things that could otherwise be changed through civil politics.

If everyone stood up and began to list off laws they felt unjust and stated that they just wouldn't follow them for being unjust we would be subjecting ourselves to mob rule again. Certain concessions; we've all made for the common good. We pick and choose our battles based on what is truly unjust hopefully. However, if we begin to advocate civil disobedience for the slightest measure of moral discourse, we would be in anarchy.

* unchangeable meaning perhaps you live in a country run by a dictator with no hope of ever changing the laws.

(2): The purpose of the law is simply to protect me from myself. And so, any judge, lawyer, or law enforcement officer who understands the matter of, why the law, will rejoice that we have such things as Miranda v. Arizona. Or to make the matter more personal to me, why we have State v. Bowe [holding that the conduct of a purely private actor may be sufficient to render a confession involuntary under my state constitution's due process clause, departing from the US Supreme Court's decision in Colorado v. Connelly, and so one less reason for me to torture someone to extract a confession]. The point was otherwise made by Tom Clancy in his Patriot Games, when Sgt. Highland reflects on the warder-instigated beating of an inmate, and also by whoever wrote the Star Trek Next Generation episode wherein Jean Luc Picard reports that the Prime Directive serves many purposes, not the least of which is to protect us from ourselves.

(6) and (7): The answer to these questions depends on one's reading of the due process clause of the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. More specifically, if you read the due process clause to embody those things you think just, then one need never disobey the law since the thought process would be that one's disobedience is "merely" one's adherence and/or loyalty to the due process clause. The matter otherwise gets a tad bit harder for lawyers, given that most ethics codes governing the conduct of members of the various state and federal bars have a provision providing that a lawyer shall not knowingly disobey an order or rule of a tribunal. And so we find ourselves in some tough spots every now again. For example, while the stated ethical/professional duty exists, there is also the notion that a decree, judgment or order is void when the court rendering the same did not have jurisdiction over the subject matter and/or the party/ies, and/or otherwise acted in a manner inconsistent with due process of law. And a void decree, judgment or order is supposed to be a legal nullity, and so we have the numerous recitations that disobedience and/or disregard of a void decree, judgment, or order is not contempt, since the void decree, judgment or order is indeed a legal nullity. Now, for the proverbial $64,000 question, how well do you think it plays when the lawyer stands before the judge and reports that he/she knowingly disobeyed and/or disregarded an order or rule of the tribunal because the same was void, given that the court rendering the same lacked jurdistion over the subject matter and/or the party/ies, and/or otherwise acted in a manner inconsistent with due process of law? Which is to say that while I agree with the espoused statement of principal, as some have already pointed out, there will indeed likely be a price to pay for one's adherence to the same. And not all of us yet have the moral courage possessed by the late MLK.

(3), (4) and (5): At the risk of being chided once again by the moderators otherwise so gracious enough to provide this forum, the law isn't the highest value. The highest value? Well, to answer that and to also address something that Victoria raised, since this seems to be the place to do so, simply recall the words of that other Paul, to wit, all things are lawful for us, but not all things build up. So there's your highest value, and there's also the explanation for why there ought not be any conflict re our values [which is not to say that we won't make some mistakes in judgment along the way].

What is law?

Believe it or not, this question was the basis for my entire Western Legal Tradition class first semester. And guess what? We never got an answer because we soon learned that there was no correct answer for this. Our professor tried to relay this one way by making us watch The Godfather (not a bad choice ). Basically the question was, was Vito Corleone's words and actions constitute law? Law is a highly subjective term that has transcended through many forms since the earliest instances of government.

Is law based only on legitimacy or does it also require force? Is it a law if it is not enforced and thus do we still have an obligation to follow it? If a person held a gun to me and told me my money or my life...is that a law? So many questions...so many answers.

My personal belief was that in today's world, the main component of law is legitimacy. If the populous finds the laws to be legitimate (even if they dont necessarily agree with some) than that is what constitutes law. Its a hazy line...not easy to come to a solid conclusion.

What is the purpose of law?

There are many purposes...such as maintaining order or establishing justice. Sometimes these concepts clash and as i said ealier...it is tough to come to a real solid conclusion.

Is legal authority the highest value of modern Western society?

I think legal legitimacy is the highest value in Western society. Since we enjoy so many rights, it is the legitimacy and not the authority that we look to most.

Do you agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that an "unjust law is no law at all"?

Do you agree with Martin Luther King Jr. that "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws"?

These two great men of history held two different views on law. Aquinas was obviously under the belief of Natural Law which is exactly what you quoted...the argument that unjust law is not law at all. The obvious religious foundation for this belief was used back in the day when the church was powerful to justify its power and rule over nations. Basically that the laws in place were God's laws and must be followed.

MLK was a little more positivist which means he recognized that something was a law...but that we could choose to disobey it. The difference between positivism and natural law is actually pretty small in that only acknowledgment that something is law is the difference.

My belief is kind of a mix. I believe in some natural law foundations for the very big things (eg murder is wrong, people have certain inalienable rights) and positivist in other ways. Again this is a very interesting debate and nobody is really wrong because its impossible to come to a right answer.

What is law?
I agree with Victoria that the law is a system of behavior modification by those with the power to enforce it. I diverge with Victoria in that I do not see the law itself as a force, but rather as the threat of force. Threats may or may not have the same effect as the threatened force.

What is the purpose of law?
The purpose, clearly, is to minimize undesirable behavior as defined by the weighted sum of the stakeholders' values. The stakeholders are the people who have some means to enforce the law, whether socially, economically, or martially.

Is legal authority the highest value of modern Western society?
I sense that the essence of this question is really: "Do we in the West hold the law higher than, say, religion?" Really, religion is the only other major system for behavior modification that we recognize in "civilized" societies. Clearly, the secular nature of most Western societies implies that we respect law more than religion.

Should it be?
Insofar as most stakeholders cannot agree on a single religion, it makes sense that they would compromise with a legal system instead.

If not, what value outranks the law?
The very notion of an absolute value ranking implies some absolute point of reference. Choosing such a point of reference is naturally a very contentious issue. Do you choose the President's values? The Pope's? The people's, as defined in the most literal democratic sense? Do criminals get an equal vote with law abiders? Even though "society" might sound like a singular point of reference, it just pushes the distinction down one level of abstraction into an even murkier quagmire. After all, "society" is composed of numerous individuals with strongly held and fiercely conflicting values. Any statement you make on behalf of "society" will be forcefully debated by many members of that society. Thus, I think the only "value" we can meaningfully identify outside of the social contract of law is selfishness. Yes. We in the West, just like the East and the North and the South and the Past and the Future hold ourselves in the highest regard, and no other. Thus, when we perceive that our actions cannot be realistically curtailed by the law, we flout the law. When the threat of force described by law is less than the perceived benefit of breaking the law times the probability of getting caught, we brazenly hold our banditry in highest esteem, and judge it to be The Right Thing.

Do you agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that an "unjust law is no law at all"?
Since a law is a social contract among enforcers, an unjust law is a law some of the enforcers believe should not exist, and will thus actively work to oppose. If a sufficient proportion of the influential enforcers fail to enforce the "unjust law", then it most certainly is no law at all, since the contract which guarantees force in the presence of violation no longer exists as a threat. The idea that a law can be intrinsically unjust, and not merely relatively unjust requires a universal/absolute value system/point of reference.

Do you agree with Martin Luther King Jr. that "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws"?
Well, the problem is defining an "unjust law". It all comes down to values. "Moral responsibility" usually implies that some action may cause harm to a person or persons. The problem is that some games in society are zero-sum, and others are not. If there is one ice cream cone available, either you can eat it, or I can. We cannot both eat the entire ice cream cone, nor could a crowd of a hundred people realistically or meaningfully share it. In that case, what is the "least evil" path in allocating the ice cream cone? We generally say that giving it to a particular person on the basis of race is unfair, and thus, unjust. We capitalists would generally say that the ice cream cone should go to the highest bidder. But what if the highest bidder is disproportionately wealthy through corruption and theft? Should we really reward that person by letting them participate in a free-market activity? Or should we declare that giving the ice cream cone to the highest bidder is "unjust", and engage in a civil disobedience of some kind?

Let's put a finer point on it. Suppose that we have a spare heart from a willing donor, and two people who need a heart transplant. Suppose that they are both on a waiting list, but there was no way to tell who was entered first. Is there any "just" solution to such a dilemma? Does free market economics give us a way out? Give the heart to the highest bidder? If you were a legislator forced to write a law governing such cases, how would you avoid writing an "unjust law"? And if you were a parent of one of the people needing a transplant, to what extent would you "disobey an unjust law"?

MLK and the civil rights movement got away with breaking the law because there was a change in the hearts of the enforcers. The values held by many stakeholders was changing, due to many socioeconomic and political events, and the civil rights movement was largely civil. This made it less threatening to those who would lose privileges under a more equal social structure. But don't be deceived. People did lose privileges under the New Order, and even though most people today would say "Rightfully so", there are those even still who would passionately disagree.

Who is right? Should people of all races be treated equally? Modern liberalism holds that to be a universal truth, but the old adage is actually correct: Might makes right. Those who are "right" are those who have the power and the will to enforce their definition of "right". So if there is a socioeconomic benefit to treating some classes of humans as less-than-human, why would any human willfully relinquish their power in such a circumstance?

I claim that the answer lay in selfishness. Progress of self-interested organisms ultimately converges on cooperation as the optimal strategy. By working together, self interested agents receive the benefits of synergy, or economies of scale. Even when the local benefits are not tangible, there is a sense of belonging to something bigger, and that bigger entity can only evolve through the greater integration of its parts, which are the members of society. Social groups are defined by "in groups", or those members which you consider "allies", more or less. Human progress corresponds to widening the definition of the in-group from the immediate clan, to the tribe, to the city, to the race, to the nation-state, to the species, etc. Each level of widening creates conflict as those who prefer the status quo rebel against the change. But ultimately, the benefits of larger in-groups overwhelm the internal resistance and those unwilling to change are increasingly left behind.

The civil rights movement was successful because technology and society advanced to a point where the majority of people could realize the benefits of integrating the black population rather than exploiting it. In the future, I predict the same will be true of other marginalized groups, like developing countries and humans in fringe biological states. While biologists like to point out that there is no such thing as "progress" in biology, only "change" and "adaptation", I beg to differ. I claim that "progress" is exactly the changes in social structure which lead to larger in-groups for a given class of organisms. Furthermore, I claim that progress is inevitable for any sufficiently adaptable class of organisms, exactly because of competition for scarce resources and the ultimate benefits that accrue to consolidated social structures.

That is to say, companies that hire employees on the basis of merit, without regard to race, are going to be more successful than companies that exclude potentially competitive employees on the basis of race. In that sense, the market is a far more powerful enforcer of civil rights than the law. The market is not "fair" and does not bring justice to every individual. But over the long haul, it is the greatest single force for social change. Competition requires cooperation, and the one with the largest in-group will ultimately dominate.

I think that's taking the case a bit too far. Slavery was certainly legal for most of it's history, Jim Crow long after that. Genocide was legal in many countries as well as it was the expressed will of legislative authorities (or as Hitler put it "Who remembers the Armenians"?)

Before the advent of international law a great many atrocities were committed, legally.


Wowzers, I love that!

I think that is a great look at the practical purpose of law... but what if the stakeholder's values are not strictly of a materialistic nature?


I think this oversimplifies the situation some what. It seems to me that rather than religion the other major factor that should be considered is philosophy.

Religion is really a subset of philosophy. It is philosophy that references the supernatural in some way. There are some who, despite not being religious may hold philosophical values that they place above the law.

Therefore, it's not so simple as religious versus secular.

A good point, but that is not an impossible proposition. You brought up the fact that no one value system in universally held.

However, a value system need not be popular to be correct. In the sense that this value system is better for the well-being of mankind as a whole.

I would argue that consensus is not the basis of justice and that the "greatest good" does exist independent of anyone's opinion of it.

I disagree. Philosophy is primarily about truth, while religion is primarily about values. The distinction is that truth is absolute, while values are relative (namely, they are personal). Philosophy sometimes tries to suggest that truth implies certain values (which is why ethics is considered a part of philosophy), but after many thousands of years, we still do not have an absolute moral system derived from philosophy that all intelligent people can agree on. Why is that? Well, it goes back to something I said before...truth is not the highest human virtue. Self is. Values are not predicated on truth, except where truth provides a tangible benefit to self. Values are ultimately predicated on self, which must necessarily be the case, because any replicator which values something other than self most highly will eventually lose to replicators which value self most highly. Progress occurs when the definition of "self" is expanded to include membership within a superorganism (like society, say).

Religion claims to have the truth, but only for the purposes of validating its set of values. Ultimately, religion itself is a meta-replicator which values itself most highly and breeds by infecting cognitive hosts. But replication, indeed, the very existence of the meme itself, is defined by the behavior modification which results from the infection. Claiming to be religious and then acting in a way that contradicts the religion is like claiming to have chicken pox without having any pox virus present in your body. Philosophy, on the other hand, is not virulent in the way religions are because it does not depend on behavior modification for its survival. It has an independent existence by virtue of its basis in truth, which is by definition objective. No amount of legislation or polemics will subvert the consistency of, say, Aristotelian logic. In that sense, Philosophy is an impartial, but also inactive beast. It attempts to describe the consequences of various behaviors, but it is not the nature of philosophy to prescribe behavior. On the other hand, that is really the central purpose of religion. That is what moral systems are all about.

Perhaps the reason that law is so powerful today is that it is a form of secular religion. It is a secular religion that is created cooperatively, rather than centrally. We continuously update the religion through well-defined and agreed-upon processes. It has its set of traditions and rituals, which include things like rising when a judge enters a courtroom, observing various flag statutes and national recognition days, etc. The "deities", or law-givers, of the religion are both the legislators and the judges. While Americans pretend that judges interpret the law, the reality is that legislators create law-templates, and judges instantiate those templates into concrete laws that apply to specific cases. That is why lawyers do not cite laws as precedents so much as decisions. Laws do not have a concrete existence because they are meant to be general. In traditional religion, it is the priests and imams and shamans and pastors that instantiate the divine law-templates. When they do so in incompatible ways, you end up with sects and denominations.

Religion tells you what to do and why to do it. Philosophy tells you the consequences of your actions, without necessarily saying that an action is right or wrong. Rather, philosophy says: "The action would be wrong if you held this value." That is all the better truth can do, because truth is not relative to individuals. Even though we have "political science", that does not mean we can arrive at a scientifically rigorous ethical framework that all reasonable people can agree on. And that is because at the end of the day, ethics are about values...yours and mine. And our values are a statement of ourselves, our very nature and being. You cannot abstract the essence of individuality into a generic set. The very concept is oxymoronic.


The problem is in the word "good". For instance, Hitler thought it was in the greatest good to eliminate Jews, who held a disproportionate amount of the wealth in a Germany wracked by onerous war debt from the Treaty of Versailles. Whether they openly admitted it or not, many German citizens doubtless felt the same way. Even more foreboding, the Germans imported their ideas on eugenics from the American elite during the turn of the century. People who think that the redistribution of wealth to poverty-stricken Germans would reason that Hitler's program constituted the "greatest good". After all, if the Jews were not eliminated, what is to prevent them from re-concentrating the country's wealth over time? You and I might argue that genocide is absolutely evil, and thus, no program of genocide can ever be considered part of the "greatest good". But then again, you and I are the "victors", so we have a certain luxury to define "greatest good" in retrospect.

Let's take something less emotionally charged: entitlement programs. To what extent do entitlement programs like welfare and MediCare contribute towards the "greatest good"? Can that even be measured? What if welfare is actually contributing to the delinquency of many individuals by propping up socially undesirable behavior? This brings up the problem of tractibility. Even if we were able to theoretically examine every possible outcome of various entitlement laws, we certainly cannot do so in practice, and we can barely assess the effects of laws that have been in existence for many years. So at best, it would seem that the concept of "greatest good" is little more than a theoretical ideal which must forever remain out of reach.

But ultimately, consider a much smaller universe...consider a universe of just two people: a mother and her 10 year old child. A ship is sinking, and there is only a one-person lifeboat available to save one of them. Which action constitutes the "greatest good"? One might glibly proclaim that the child must be saved because he has the longest potential lifespan. But what if the child despairs of losing his mother and commits suicide? What if the child is sickly and not likely to outlive his mother? What if the mother still insists that the child should take the lifeboat? Is the greatest good to override the will of the mother and put her in the lifeboat because she has the greatest chance for survival? These are not easy questions because they ultimately depend on values. The values of the child, the mother, and us, the observers. I hope it is clear by now that all of those values must be taken into account when defining "good" by any means, let alone comparing it for the purposes of determining "greatest".