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Natural Law

Natural Law 1

RUNNING HEAD:   NATURAL LAW

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

NATURAL LAW

By
HILLARY L. JOHNSON

Summer Session, 2008

Natural Law 2

Abstract
This paper will discuss how all people are born with the natural law or inherit feeling that it is unjust to kill others and how and when the government changes that law in times of war persuading troops as well as the entire American society that is acceptable to kill and leave the judgment of who lives and who dies with those serving in our armed forces.   The paper will also discuss the role of media in the “brainwashing” of American culture.   The war in Iraq will be used as evidence to support these notions.   The author will also discuss different religions and their natural law roots.

Natural Law 3

How is that all people are born with the natural and inherit feeling not to kill and then all of the sudden during times of war and conflict all those laws are thrown out the window and people find reasons to justify the intentional murdering of another human being?   Various theological theories hold that all killing of human beings is evil, but that sometimes this evil is necessary to avoid greater evil.   The way is open to justify war, capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, and other forms of “killing in some circumstances.”  
Historically, many natural-law theories have proceeded on a conviction that respect for human life is a primary moral principle.   Each man by nature desires to preserve his own life, and no one can reasonably expect others to value his life except on the basis of a universal principle that human life has a dignity in virtue of which it should be respected and protected.   The lives of those who attack the common good are not always considered unbreakable; thus there have been theories of justifiable capital punishment and just war. (Walzer, 1977)   Actions which have a deadly affect but which are primarily directed toward some other good purpose have sometimes...