TS: What is Best vs What is Right

isn't the right thing, by definition, always the best thing? and certainly better than the *wrong*thing, as you have posed the question. How could the wrong thing be the best thing?

the best thing for me to do would be to get lots of money.

the right thing for me to do is to not kill you and steal yours.

im not sure that it is, i feel that the right thing may satisfy an ideal, whereas the best thing might satisfy a given situation at that time.

say there is some vote rigging which is done by townspeople to keep a bigot out of office, is that the right thing, or the best thing? which is the ideal, which is the situation. can things like not adhering to a law which you believe in because you think it serves a greater good to ingore in a particular circumstance ever be a better thing to do? even though it goes against your principles.

is the right thing inflexible, an abstract, that can be transparent and clear? or is it contextual, reliant on interpretation.

if you are antidrugs, and your neighbour, a single parent, is smoking blow, is the right thing to inform the authorities, and the best thing to let it slide. in the former, perhaps idealism is the victor but no one wins, in the latter no one loses, except your conscience? or are the best thing and the right thing the same in this instance?

is there ever ambiguity in such situations?

i often flirt with the best over the right, but it is a slipper slope (and may not favor me). who is to judge the best and are they the best to judge?

William Roper

So, now you would give the Devil benefit of law?

Thomas More

Yes, what would you do, cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper

Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that.

Thomas More

Oh, and when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast. Man's laws, not God's. And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety sake.

I think that it is rarely so simple - there is often right and benefit and wrong and drawbacks in different, often unpredictable, quantities, on different sides (there aren't just two!) and with different approaches of and towards many complex situations. I don't think there is much generalising that can be done about this question, personally.

gilligan and kohlberg to thread;)

Thomas More wz not a very nice man, when it came to prosecuting and punishing heretics and stuff like that

I agree w/Martin. You often times can't get two people--even identical twins-- to agree on what is the right thing to do on a single situation, let alone make generalizations about many situations.

And yet More, being a not very nice man when it came to punishing heretics, could create the world of 'Utopia' in which religion is practiced in an entirely different way and no negative editorial comment is made about this. :) What is best in More's opinion for his era in England (+ Wales) vs what is best in No-place.

(nb: the introduction of Christianity to Utopia *does* happen, but the practice thereof in no way tallies with the form More was 'protecting' with his heretic-persecution.)

well this is why i was wondering about your own definitions of right and best

Best beats right. There is no right without a best. Reality should govern morality. Sabbath is made for man, not man the sabbath.

Etc.