[Mrs. Don-o]

One interesting angle on Moral Absolutes might be of interest to you: the paramount value of human life. In law, there is a concept called "legal necessity" which sets aside almost any other law, if the object is to preserve a life.

Here's a practical example. Say you are passing by a deserted stretch of seashore and you see somebody apparently thrashing about and in danger of drowning in the sea. You yourself are no very adequate swimmer. but you do see a rowboat with a coil of rope and a pair of oars in a nearby boathouse. You also see that the beach and the boathouse are clearly posted "Private Property: No Trespassing."

So what do you do? You go on the property, break into the boathouse, take the raft and launch it into the water, paddle rapidly over to the drowning person. The person is in a panic and struggling wildly, ao you throw a lasso around him and restrain his flailing arms, and then drag him into the boat and haul him back to the shore.

You've technically committed:
*trespassing,
*breaking and entering,
* burglary,
*assault and battery, and
*kidnapping (?)

but I doubt there's a policeman anywhere who would arrest you for it, a jury that would convict you, or a judge that would sentence you, due to the absolute value of human life.

It is not clear that doing all of the above would be obligatory. In other words, if you chose to do otherwise --- say you chose to run to a residential area half a mile from the drowning person, in hopes that you could find a phone and dial 9-1-1, knowing that it might be too late --- you would not have violated a moral absolute (though people might well think you were stupid.) The point here is only that other moral values can be set aside to uphold the one paramount value of life itself.

The uniqueness of this value can be seen even more clearly in the negative form: there is an absolute moral prohibition against directly and deliberately killing a non-aggressor, i.e., an innocent human life.

[Mrs. Don-o]

In Orthodox Judaism, only three of the commandments necessarily require "yehareg ve'al ya'avor," meaning 'One should let himself be killed rather than violate this commandment', and they are the commandments against killing the innocent, idol-worship, and prohibited intercourse.

Hmm. I remember years and years ago, when I was a teenager, having a discussion about whether you could tell a lie, for instance, to save hidden Jews from the Nazis (the answer was Yes) or if a starving man could steal food from a store (again, Yes.) So I asked my teacher ---a good man, educated way, way beyond his pay grade--- if there was any action you could never, ever do, even to save your own life or the life of others, and he answered without hesitation: Murder, Blasphemy, Sodomy.