The Specificity of Duties Required by Community Life

Extract

[...] In the same way, some families decide out of love for their loved one to practice euthanasia rather than therapeutic persistence. By doing so, they disobey a collective moral framework. By the same token,equently, it is worth noting that if society seems to prescribe a large number - indeed, the majority - of our behaviors and duties, the individual always retains their free will. In other words, they remain capable of evaluating the imposed behavior and conforming to it or not. [...]

[...] To what extent does the individual still have freedom of action within a society structured by common moral rules? Introduction In our societiesIn our modern societies, many of our behaviors are governed by legislative, moral, or regulatory provisions that sometimes constrain our desires and aspirations. Whether it is the moral imperatives erected by religions or the laws of states, society offers the individual moral values and imperatives to promote community life. But societydoes it dictate all our duties? For some moral imperatives, even if they are controlled by society, are generally actually respected spontaneously by individuals - protecting their children, providing assistance to their peers, etc. [...]

[...] Thus, the modern state generally imposes a duty to its citizens to contribute to social life through taxation. Similarly, many of our behaviors are governed by moral imperatives specific to the societies in which we live: when the human being accepts submitting to justice and renouncing personal revenge, he accepts the moral duty to reconcile his personal interests with those of the group. In this perspective, Aristotledefined in The Politics man as a 'political animal' by nature, that is, a social being who is destined to live in society. [...]

[...] In other words, it seems that there are duties that are not those prescribed by society but that belong to a more natural impulse of man. Although sociologyhas been encouraged to assist its fellow human being - and condemns those who do not do so in the name of non-assistance to a person in danger the one who, moved by the sight of an unknown child drowning, dives into the river to save him, certainly does not do so because of the moral duty imposed by society. [...]

[...] However, this imperative cannot completely suppress our free will, so we always remain responsible for our actions, even when they seem to have been imposed on us. C'This is particularly the reason why courts continue to judge crimes committed under the Nazi regime today: the fact that a behavior was dictated by society at a given time does not mean that the individual had to necessarily conform to it. However, this free will is precisely one of the properties of man. [...]