State, law, moral and religion

• Author: Elena Mihaela Fodor
• Position: Associate professor dr. Faculty of Law Cluj-Napoca of the Christian University 'Dimitrie Cantemir' Bucharest, Public Law Department
• Pages: 298-301

STATE, LAW, MORAL AND RELIGION

Fodor Elena-Mihaela*

Abstract

Among socia l nor ms, there is a strong connection between religious, mora l and legal norms. Religious

norms enter the spher e of lega l norms thr ough moral. Legal norms influence chur ch law. The connection and

separa tion between these norms in the course of history is commented.

Key words: law, religious nor ms, moral.

Introduction

The legal norm may be defined as “a way of coordinating human actions and of imposing the g eneral

interests of the collectivity upon each participant”

1with the purpose of achieving the objective of wide social

scope. Society is unconceivable without these rules which re gulate the complexity of social relations.

Social norms are in a continuous process of transformation and change not only from one social system

to another, but also within the same system, depending on the changes in life, spiritual and material conditions.

The nor m’s field of reference includes those situations which are significant to the social group where it was

issued, trait captured in the statement: “to formulate norms means to use in a selective manner in future

experience the results of past experience”2.

The legal norm is a rule of conduct instit uted and sanctioned by the state, whose ap plication is ensured

through j uridical conscience and, when needed, through the state’s coercive force. Its role in society is to set

certain coordinates for guiding the conduct of individuals in the direction of strengthening and developing social

order and relations. The application of coercion ensures legal order n society, conferring the needed stability to

social relations.

Moral norms are sentences or prescriptive enunciations, through which i s indicated what must or must

not be done, respectively how should or should not be t he subject conscious in rep eatable situations, so that his

manifestation or way of being to be appreciated as good and not bad. As a body of general norms of practical

personal conduct “moral norms impose themselves upon the conscience as absolute ly valid and imply the

exclusion of any contradiction”3. Morals are based on the intimate conviction and personal conscience o f the

necessity of respecting its precepts, the r eason of the moral norm being firstly d uty towards one self and then

towards the other members of the human community. The utilitaria n concept considered that good enhanced

happiness and abated suffering. “Utility - sais Bentham4 - is a abstract term, he expres ses the quality or tendency

of something to shield us from harm or to obtain a benefit; benefit means pleasure or source of pleasure…Pain

and pleasure consisted in what each feels as s uch, the peasant as well as the prince, the ignorant as well as the

philosopher”. This point of view is criticized by Kant. In “Critique of Practica l Reason”, he refutes, first of all,

the moral systems based on utility5. He denies that the supre me nor m of conduct is the tendency o f happiness,

this being a variable element. Moral is to be radically distinguished, on the other hand, from what is useful and

what is pleasurable. If one works to achieve utility, the action loses its moral character. Moral is independent, it

is superior to utility. She commands absol utely; it is like a sublime voice that imposes respect that inexorably

reprimands us, even when we try to silence it and we tr y not to listen to it. It wants that our actions should posses

a universal nature. The moral norm is regarded by Kant as a “categorical i mperative” and is formulated as

follows: “Work in such a way that the maxim of you action may serve as a principle to a universal legislation”.

The same philosopher considered that “the moral law cannot influence our activity without the aid of virtue”,

which in his opinion is the p ower to resist any temptation that would p revent us from respecting t his law. He

who struggles against all that might distract the will from the moral nor m is a virtuo us man. G.G. Antonescu

considers that this notion, which Kant creates of virtue, leads him to an excessive moral purism 6. The same

conception of morals is to be encountered at John Rawls7: “to be moral is analog with assuming a firm

 Associate professor dr. Faculty of Law Cluj -Napoca of the Christian University “Dimitrie Cantemir” Bucharest, Public Law Department,

mihaelafodor@yahoo.co.uk

1 Cornel Popa, Praxiologia şi teoria general a normelor în F ilozofie. Materialism dialectic şi istoric, Didactic and Pedagogic Publishing

House, Bucharest, 1975, p. 421.

2Cornel Popa, Preliminarii la o teorie general a normelor, Philosophy Magazine, no. 12/1969, p.1437.

3 Eugeniu Sperania, Introducere în filosofia dreptului, Cartea Româneasc Publishing House, Cluj, 1964, p. 254.

4 Jeremy Bentham, Deontologie ou Science Morale, trad. B. Laroche, 1834, quoted by Emilia Stere in Din istoria doctri nelor morale, Vol.3,

Scientific and Enciclopedic Publishing House, Bucharest, 1979, p.159.

5 Immanuel Kant, Critica raiunii practice, IRI Publishing House, Bucharest, 1997, p. 47.

6 Gheorghe G. Antonescu, Din problemele pedagogiei moderne, Cartea Româneasc Publishing House, Bucharest, 1924, p. 58.

7 John Rawls, Dreptatea ca echitate, în Teorii ale dreptii,, editor A. MIROIU, Alternative Publishing House, Bucharest, 1996, pp. 69-84.