Gile. Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at Kings College London and the LMU in Munich, online at History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode, The Price is Right, Law and Economics in the Second Scholastic.

Back when I was a college student I got into a dispute with my father during dinner one night about marijuana.

Not that I'd been smoking pot or even had any intention of doing so.

When I was growing up, Nancy Reagan told me to just say no and who was I to defy Nancy Reagan?

Instead I was trying to make a point of principle, namely that it isn't wrong to break a law that you consider

unjust. If it isn't morally wrong to use marijuana and doing so

doesn't hurt anyone else, then the government has no right to tell people not to do it.

Practically speaking, of course, it might still be a good idea to follow the law, to avoid being arrested,

but that has nothing to do with morality. It's just that it's in your interest to stay out of trouble.

I seem to recall that I drew an analogy to running a red light late at night when you can see that there are definitely no cars coming.

It's illegal to do so but not wrong. My father, who's a very law-abiding person, took the contrary view. He argued that if you believe in the legitimacy of your government, then you should also accept anything the government decides. strongly disagree with a law, you might work to change it through activism and the democratic process,

but you are still obligated to follow the law as long as it remains on the books.

Our discussion became heated.

I found it absurd to claim that something morally acceptable could become wrong, just because the government outlaws it.

So you can imagine my chagrin, upon discovering recently that my father has some of the best philosophers of the 16th century on his side.

The thinkers of the second scholastic in Spain and Portugal explicitly said that a legitimate

authority can make a morally indifferent action into a sin just by forbidding it or into a virtuous action by requiring it.

There are some limits here. Even a rightful government cannot make an intrinsically unjust action right or an intrinsically just action wrong.

Thus no government, however legitimate, can make it obligatory to commit murder or make it wrong

to show charity. This presupposes a deeper distinction which I was just

hinting at when I said that some things are intrinsically right or wrong, while other things might

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