| Ed: “Brendan, Luther's point was about morality.” Hi, Ed. I’m getting a sense of deja vue here. Weren’t we just recently discussing perception on another thread? It seems to be lingering unfinished somewhere in cyberspace. Never mind, prudence the better part etc.
My reading of Luther’s article is that it is about identity. My cues for this reading are the heading, “A is A”, and the climax of the article, the claim that identity is “the most basic law of nature”.
Ed: “The issue is not whether humans can make choices contrary to the law of identity - it is whether or not they will flourish if they do.”
The analogy that Luther used was between laws of natural and human laws. His demonstration was intended to show that human actions cannot violate the “laws” of nature, which is true. But the implication that human beings cannot enact laws that are considered to be violations of man’s “nature” is simply false, since human beings pass such laws all the time.
Some time ago, George Bush raised steel tariffs, an action some people would consider a violation of man’s nature. But the tariff exists, and has real-life effects, so Luther’s attempt to draw an analogy between natural and man-made laws is a failure.
If you are arguing that actions such as the imposition of a steel tariff will have bad effects, you may well be right, but that’s an entirely different argument.
Brendan
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