Neither manipulated individuals nor any tribunal can legitimately decide true needs

Evidence

This inapprehensible fact of my condition, this impalpable difference which distinguishes this drama of realization from drama pure and simple is what causes the for-itself, while choosing the meaning of its situation and while constituting itself as the foundation of itself in situation, not to choose its position. This part of my condition is what causes me to apprehend myself simultaneously as totally responsible for my being—inasmuch as I am its foundation—and yet as totally unjustifiable. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 343 (#complicates, via linked claim)

By contrast moral rules or principles cannot be brought into being or changed or eliminated in this way. To assert that this ‘cannot’ be is not, however, to deny that some conceivable state of affairs is actually the case, as the assertion that human beings ‘cannot’ alter the climate would be. Instead this assertion points to the following facts. It is perfectly good sense to say such things as ‘As from 1 January 1960 it will be a criminal offence to do so-and-so’ or ‘As from 1 January 1960 it will be no longer illegal to do so-and-so’ and to support such statements by reference to laws which have been enacted or repealed. By contrast such statements as ‘As from tomorrow it will no longer be immoral to do so-and-so’ or ‘On 1 January last it became immoral to do so-and-so’ and attempts to support these by reference to deliberate enactment would be astonishing paradoxes, if not senseless. — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 443 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The for-itself is fully responsible for its being yet cannot justify or choose it — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 343; Moral rules cannot be created or altered by deliberate human enactment — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 443; An ultimate power to decide generates its own norms and cannot be trusted

Related

• Moral rules cannot be created or altered by deliberate human enactment (similarity 0.80)
• An ethics cannot be derived directly from ontological descriptions (similarity 0.80)
• Nothing in society is eternal, so moral standards must be revised (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The for-itself is fully responsible for its being yet cannot justify or choose it #complicates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 343
• An ultimate power to decide generates its own norms and cannot be trusted #corroborates (0.80)
• Moral rules cannot be created or altered by deliberate human enactment #corroborates (0.75) — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 443