While both logic and emotion come into play in just about all aspects of human behaviour, quite often this is not a good thing. Allowing the wrong one to dictate one's actions can in fact be disastrous. Consider the situation of REALLY having to get across a busy highway. While you may have a very valid emotional reason to do so, allowing your emotions to guide your actions in this case isn't very wise. No matter how strongly you feel about getting to the other side if you don't logically look at the situation and cross when it's safe to do so you're very likely to become road kill. The cars don't care how you feel about the situation.
Conversely look at the situation of choosing what to eat at a restaurant. While logically one knows that certain foods are a more healthy choice, if putting them in your mouth makes you gag, then of what benefit are they really? In that situation one should certainly allow emotions to play a more significant role in determining the actions one takes, and in fact logic can quite properly be ignored in this situation, at least in the short term.
When considering interactions with other people the choice is often not so cut and dried. While we all share the same physiology which requires that we fulfill the same basic needs to insure our continued survival, the complexity of our brains creates a vast range of varying emotional responses to a given stimulus. Put most simply, we all don't feel the same about everything. Allowing emotions to affect our interactions with others therefore by definition implies discrimination. This not always a bad thing and is quite often very good. The word discrimination in its simplest definition has little to do with the popularly accepted usage of the word. Choosing chocolate over vanilla is an example of discrimination. Preferring a particular hair color or body type is as well. This is all well and good in many aspects of life, but a serious problem in others. For example is preferring brunettes as sexual partners on a par with only hiring brunettes to do a job? I will grant that there could be certain situations where being brunette could reasonably be argued to be a necessary requirement, such as in hiring actors to play specific roles, but generally speaking this emotional preference is a poor criteria for employment and is legislated against, quite properly in most cases.
This brings me to laws. Laws in a society which claims to be just must be applied equally in order to actually be just. But given our emotional differences, a law based upon the emotions of one person or group is by definition discriminatory, in the generally accepted usage, to those who don't share these same emotions and by nature cannot be applied equally. Laws based upon the fundamental similarities of all are the only laws which can be considered just. We all have a right to our own life as required by our nature. Therefore a law which forbids the taking of anothers life is a just law. We all have a right to own property, again because of our nature, and therefore laws against taking the property of others are just laws.
This is not to say that these rights which are the basis of just laws are absolute. The taking of a person's life in self-defense is generally accepted as legal, and is actually a moral imperative if one values his/her own life above that of ones attacker. Property may be justly taken from one under certain specific instances such as in reparation for monetary damages one inflicts upon another. But even these exceptions are really an upholding of the specific rights involved. We kill an attacker to protect our own right to life. We sue for monetary damages to replace property which has been taken from us, by theft, destruction or whatever causes us to not be able to exercise our right to do with said property as we wish. These exceptions are the justification for courts of law, where disputes can be settled by a (hopefully) impartial judge who decides the outcome based upon the merits of each disagreeing parties case in accordance with what should be impartial laws.
Conversely look at the situation of choosing what to eat at a restaurant. While logically one knows that certain foods are a more healthy choice, if putting them in your mouth makes you gag, then of what benefit are they really? In that situation one should certainly allow emotions to play a more significant role in determining the actions one takes, and in fact logic can quite properly be ignored in this situation, at least in the short term.
When considering interactions with other people the choice is often not so cut and dried. While we all share the same physiology which requires that we fulfill the same basic needs to insure our continued survival, the complexity of our brains creates a vast range of varying emotional responses to a given stimulus. Put most simply, we all don't feel the same about everything. Allowing emotions to affect our interactions with others therefore by definition implies discrimination. This not always a bad thing and is quite often very good. The word discrimination in its simplest definition has little to do with the popularly accepted usage of the word. Choosing chocolate over vanilla is an example of discrimination. Preferring a particular hair color or body type is as well. This is all well and good in many aspects of life, but a serious problem in others. For example is preferring brunettes as sexual partners on a par with only hiring brunettes to do a job? I will grant that there could be certain situations where being brunette could reasonably be argued to be a necessary requirement, such as in hiring actors to play specific roles, but generally speaking this emotional preference is a poor criteria for employment and is legislated against, quite properly in most cases.
This brings me to laws. Laws in a society which claims to be just must be applied equally in order to actually be just. But given our emotional differences, a law based upon the emotions of one person or group is by definition discriminatory, in the generally accepted usage, to those who don't share these same emotions and by nature cannot be applied equally. Laws based upon the fundamental similarities of all are the only laws which can be considered just. We all have a right to our own life as required by our nature. Therefore a law which forbids the taking of anothers life is a just law. We all have a right to own property, again because of our nature, and therefore laws against taking the property of others are just laws.
This is not to say that these rights which are the basis of just laws are absolute. The taking of a person's life in self-defense is generally accepted as legal, and is actually a moral imperative if one values his/her own life above that of ones attacker. Property may be justly taken from one under certain specific instances such as in reparation for monetary damages one inflicts upon another. But even these exceptions are really an upholding of the specific rights involved. We kill an attacker to protect our own right to life. We sue for monetary damages to replace property which has been taken from us, by theft, destruction or whatever causes us to not be able to exercise our right to do with said property as we wish. These exceptions are the justification for courts of law, where disputes can be settled by a (hopefully) impartial judge who decides the outcome based upon the merits of each disagreeing parties case in accordance with what should be impartial laws.
