[lit-ideas] Re: "A right and an obligation"
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:32:16 -0700
Omar wrote
Right, well, to situate it, here in Montenegro we have a choice between
two (2) candidates, and I (and I am not alone in it) don't consider
either one of them quite right. On the other hand, a difficult economic
and political situation would seem to call for doing something, but I am
not sure that voting will change much of anything. Can my legal right to
vote be construed as a moral obligation to do so ?
I'm not clear about the relative badness of the two. Surely, no country
wants to be governed by a bad (corrupt, ineffectual, megalomaniacal sex
abuser) but you say that neither of the candidates 'seems quite right,'
which is hardly damning criticism. (A painting hung upside down, vs. one
whose frame needs just a touch to set it straight.) So, suppose that a
totally corrupt person were running against someone whose only 'flaw'
was that he had a very bad memory and sometimes had trouble recalling
what he'd just said. Here there would seem to be a difference that mattered.
Surely that one has a right to do something does not entail that one is
under an obligation to do it; this could hardly be a general principle.
In the American South before the War Between the States, certain people
had a right to own slaves. They did not, simply in virtue of this right,
have an obligation to own slaves. Moral worth is not coextensive with
legality. The Nuremberg laws surely reveal this.
Rained all day in this corner of Northwestern Oregon. It's OK with the
local government if I rake the fallen cherry petals in my yard; but
I won't be fined or arrested if I don't.
Robert Paul
I am recently hearing things such as: "We have a right and an
obligation to vote." Can something be both a right and an
obligation ? It seems to me that the concept of "right" entails a
notion of choice (you can choose to do it or not to do it) which
the concept of obligation clearly does not. Any opinions on this ?
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