Lukuvuoden varrelta 2020-2021 Hml lyseon lukio

LUKUVUODEN VARRELTA 2020–2021 32 Adding to the first premise, Scruton explains that a free society with only the obligation- al structures of family and the laws of sympa- thy, isn’t a morally free society. From this we can conclude that Scruton defines society as a community with moral constraint. This is not a free society when talking in absolutes, but as free as a society can be. There are many ways that this moral constraint can be reached. In modern society, many moral actions are con- trolled by law and order. This means that if you encounter a decision with morally signif- icant consequences, you are usually bound by the law to do a certain decision, or else you will be punished.This does notmean thatmo- rality and state-made laws are the same thing. I believe that Scruton has seen this and real- ized that law and order isn’t the most effective when dealing with morality. Instead he sees that family and a natural sympathy is the way to approach his definition of society. They are both ways to approach a morally well-be- having society. I’ll show an example: hurting someone or stealing can be tackled in society by law, but also, our sense of sympathy. In our society, we don’t want to hurt anyone because firstly, it is stated in the law as a wrong action. In Scruton’s view, a person should be firstly constraint by his sense of sympathy, because he/she wouldn’t want to get hurt himself. ”Laws of sympathy” could mean an inherent, natural sense of sympathy that guides us, or laws made with the main goal being sympa- thy. These kind of sympathetically made laws would be harder to reach, because sympathy is often relative to the situation at hand. In the last sentence of the quote, Scruton also says that there is no societal progress able to be made if there isn’t moral constraint. It is true that if people don’t behave morally, it is hard to do the usual things we are accus- tomed to in modern society. If we lived in a Hobbesian state of nature which is a cruel war between everybody, we wouldn’t be able to do even the basic things, let alone make any progress. So, it is feasible that in a society that consists of chaos and amorality, it could be hard to make any progress, or even have a happy, healthy family. Where there is no moral constraint, there is no society, according to Scruton. It seems that Scruton has made many great points about how a society works and how people in it should behave. It is easy to agree that there should be moral constraint and that it would be hard to cooperate with anyone If there wasn’t any. The only controversial part here is how do we obtain it? Scruton clearly believes that a society should be free, which points to a society with few, if none, state- made laws. The trouble lies in finding mor- al constraint through only the sense of sym- pathy and family obligations. I The nature of a family is very sympathetic and noble. All members are trying to make everyone suc- ceed and feel good, because they know that they owe that to them, and that it might ben- efit themselves. But trusting every single citi- zen of a society to be morally constraint only through their sense of sympathy? I believe that that is a leap of faith.