Theos-Talk Archives (December 1999 Message tl00149)

In a message dated 12/13/99 5:47:32 PM Central Standard Time,
Drpsionic@aol.com writes:

> That presupposes that the ancient traditions have some evidential validity
to
>
>  back them up and that the people who promulgated the ideas were honorable
>  folk not interested in feathering their own nests.
>
Classic natural law tradition (i.e. the ultimate causality is moral feedback)
has often been used to criticize regimes.  It is the basis to contrast
justice and law, and thus,
be able to say a law is unjust (otherwise, you are left with an "idiotic
illegal law"???).
Zarathustra protested against the Brahmanic/warrior cult of power (might
makes right) by appeal to a cosmic standard of good and evil that any regime
is measured
by.  Buddha appealed to a cosmic Dharma to criticize the adharmic caste system
and scandalized the Hindus by allowing women as followers.  Socrates
criticized the
legitimacy of Athenian laws, exposing the moral confusion behind them, in
terms of
an appeal to a cosmic form of the Good.  Taoists criticized imperial Chinese
legitimacy by appeal to the Tao.  Gandhi protested the legitimacy of the
British regime by appeal to the universal natural justice as did Martin
Luther King (where
the US violated the _natural rights_ of blacks by denying them their _civil
rights_.)
The second century gnostics can be read as a covert protest against the
cosmos made in the image of an authoritarian and imperial order by a
conception of real good and real justice utterly beyond and alien to the
powers that be.  Chuck, your own
protest against traditions' moral legitimacy appeals to what higher standard
that they fail to measure up to if there is no such thing to appeal to? For
if there is no thing as
objective justice, there is no such thing as injustice.

Grigor