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The Changing Status of Moral Authority
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
King Creon had, for political reasons, forbidden the burial of Polyneices. But Antigone, for religious ones, defied Creon and buried her brother. She justified her act by drawing a distinction between the changing regulations of a human ruler and the eternal laws of heaven. Creon speaks: “Knowest thou the edict that forbade this deed?” Antigone answers: I knew it. Why, how else? for it was public. Creon: And such laws thou couldst dare to overstep? Antig.: Yes; for it was not Zeus that published them … I did not deem your edicts of such force That a mere mortal could o'erride the Gods' Unwritten, never-failing ordinances. For these live not today nor yesterda But always; none knows when they first came forth.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1966
References
1 Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr., eds., The Complete Greek Drama, trans. R. C. Jebb (New York, 1946).
2 The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Joshua 7:25.
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10 (New York, 1964).
11 Ibid., 28.
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13 An error that I doubt naturalists have actually committed. Mill certainly did not assume ethics to be a deducible logical relation between the happiness principle and moral decisions. The relation is inductive in the same manner as psychological or sociological theories are inductively related to individual or social behavior.
14 Value and Obligation (New York, 1964), 75.
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20 On the Knowledge of Good and Evil (New York, 1955), 238.
21 Ibid., 239.
22 See the significant contribution of H. L. A. Hart, Alf Ross, H. Kelsen.
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24 Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York, 1958), Chapter 7.