Jesus Jaquez: The Morality Of Social Contract Law

Community College of Aurora

Philosophy, Bork

Jesus Jaquez

I can 't remember ever not questioning something.Humans are curious animals. We question what hear, what we see, and what we or others do.We question ourselves and we question the authority of others.It’s the way we are, yet we still manage to keep some order and function as a society. While there are things we will over analyze and question, we often let things off with so much as a whisper even if they are against our own moral values because we let society dictate what may be right or wrong. This is often proved by the many unjust,crazy or just plain oppressive laws that have made it, been in or are still making it on the books.

Society functions because of rules and regulations

While laws and a respect for the Social Contract help keep the wheels of society turning not all laws are morally correct. From a young age we are taught to obey laws and respect authority. A lot of these laws are common sense, like obeying traffic signals or not hurting others, But what happens when we run into laws that don’t we are not morally in favor of? Do we still obey them since they help keep the Social Contract alive or do we disobey them? But then what power do we do other laws have? or the state for that matter? Depending on who you ask you will get a variety of different answers, there are those who will believe that it is our duty to disobey and bring down these laws, there are others who believe in utilitarianism and that they should be followed or disobeyed depending on what side of the majority they fall in, and some just follow the old Japanese proverb that, “the nail that sticks out shall be hammered down.” and remain quiet. Jim Crow was a set of laws intended to oppress African Americans following the Civil War that were in effect well into the 20th century. During the time there were many different viewpoints on Jim Crow Laws, you had those like Malcolm X who were maybe considered a little more radical compared to the peaceful view of those like Martin Luther King Jr. or Booker T. Washington but they were all for the same cause just in a different way and you also had similar approaches on the other side of the issue by looking at people like the Klan who had a more hands on and violent approach to their opposition of civil rights and those of people like Senator Strom Thurmond and his filibuster on the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Jim Crow was a sickening way of keeping entire generations in the shadows without a way out of them. Yet while looking at some of the philosophical theories in Philosophy: A Text With Readings by Velazquez revised in 2011, I’m not sure we would have gotten rid of it, if we acted according to a few of them, for