Morals vs. Law

So this is waaaay late. It's been sitting in my drafts since February 15. And now, a full two months later, I'm posting it.
So here is that George Steiner's Antigones passage that we were supposed to blog.

I found the following passage to be intriguingly true.

“What is demanded of us is the attempt to think through or, rather, to bring to full life in our moral imagining the enigma whereby the ‘cursed’ deed of Antigone seems to embody the ethical aspirations of humanity whereas the civic legalism of Creon brings devastation.” (Steiner 257)

Sophocles’ Antigone is an example of a debate between what is ethically right and what is lawfully right. It allows us to question what is permitted through ethics and what is permitted through law. A governing body in any society must make laws to control and pacify its people, however, some laws may be disliked because they go against certain morals or traditions, but they are not made to please everyone; they are made to set up boundaries. A current example of debate between ethics and law in our own country would be the argument of gun use and ownership. I’m sure we’ve all heard of the mantra “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people” and I’m also sure each of us has our own opinion on what is right. And there’s even the example of God in the public and what the government is doing to appease everyone’s individual rights. It all comes down to which consequence would you rather face for your actions? Would you rather uphold your traditions and morals and stand up for your opinion? Or would you rather uphold the law of government and its search to pacify the people and set boundaries?

I honestly don't know what I would choose and I guess it would depend on what my morals are and how strongly I'm attached to them. Certain morals that concern my family and friends are way up on the list of those that I'm attached to and I feel almost certain that I would choose being ethical if those morals were threatened.

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